Recognizing Good Parenting — Part 7/8

May 1, 2011

About a year ago, Business Insider.com published, “It’s Official, Asian-American Students Work Way Harder to Become More Educated Than Everyone Else” then went on to say Asian-American students take far more Advanced Placement (AP) classes during high school than most other Americans.

To verify this, I used the Academic Performance Index (API) in California to rank and compare four high schools.

Although Chinese are the largest Asian minority in the US, they are not listed separately but are included with other Asian-Americans, which are Chinese, Filipino, Asian Indian, Vietnamese and Koreans.

Today there are about 14 million Asians in the US. As a group, Asian-Americans outperform all other racial groups academically.

At Rowland Unified School District’s Nogales High School, 76% of the student population is listed as Hispanic and 11% as Filipino. The Filipino/Asian students averaged 790 on the API while the Hispanic students averaged 627

At Oakland High School, three ethnic groups were listed. African Americans make up 26% of the student population with an API average of 517; Asians are 53% of students with an API of 667 and Hispanics are 16% of the student population with an API of 519.

At Los Lomas High School, 74% of the student population is white with an API average of 851 while the 11% Asian population averages 861.

At Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California, 53% of the students are white with an API average of 895. Asians make up 32% of students and average 921 on the API.

Education.com says that Asian-American students generally fare better than other racial minority groups in respect to grade point averages, standardized test scores, or even numbers of high school, bachelor, and advanced degrees obtained compared to other racial minorities (National Center for Education Statistics, 2003; U.S. Census Bureau, 2003).

Continued on May 2, 2011 in Recognizing Good Parenting – Part 8 or return to Part 6

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

This post first appeared on March 25, 2011, at Crazy Normal, a blog about education, parenting and coming of age.

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A Child’s fun and Self-esteem versus the Survival of a Nation – Part 2/3

April 15, 2011

Once a child’s behavior becomes a habit, the child feels entitled to always live that lifestyle.

Who is in charge of a child’s diet creating lifestyle habits?

The answer should be “parents” but in the US, it is normal for the child to make these decisions leading to children eating unhealthy food, watching TV, playing video games or social networking on Facebook for about 10 hours a day.

Unfortunately, statistics show the average American parent is doing a lousy job. One exception may be the Asian-American community, which includes Chinese and Japanese.

The definition for average says, a statistic describing the location of a distribution; “it set the norm for American homes”, which means this is the largest segment of parents in the country.

This is what parenting is measured against and if you don’t parent like this, you are not considered normal by  American standards—a form of peer pressure.

That normal American parent also protects the child from experiencing failure since failure hurts self-esteem.

Life Span reports, “The Japanese still live longer than anyone else…. The Japanese said their long lives was due to moderation in eating and drinking. Other advice was early to bed and early to rise, religious faith and hard work.”

However, in the US, the “average”, normal American parent is obsessed with the child’s self-esteem and is more concerned with the child having fun and telling the child to follow his or her dreams.

Did you know that about 40,000 young Americans migrate to Hollywood, California every year dreaming of becoming the next super star but less than one percent will actually land an acting role with no guarantee of fame, fortune or winning an Oscar?

President Barack Obama is the 44th president of the US since 1789 when George Washington was sworn in as the first American President. What are the odds that any child will become a president?

Individuals that achieve his or her dreams are in the minority — a very small minority.

When children dream such dreams, it is up to the parent to teach the child reality.

To be continued on April 16, 2011 in Part 3 or start with Part 1 

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Why Blaming China is Wrong

March 14, 2011

It wasn’t until I finished reading Jonathan Fahey’s piece for the Associated Press of a new drilling method opening vast oil fields in the US that I discovered more evidence of how wrong many Americans are of China.

North Americans that blame China for lost jobs react from “ignorance” and “anger” — not facts.

Most are incapable of understanding the complexity of America’s suffering economy and are unwilling to sacrifice so the US can compete globally in manufacturing.

Unable and/or unwilling to understand, these people need a scapegoat so politicians running for office give them one — China.

The clue came when Fahey wrote, “At today’s oil prices of roughly $90 per barrel, slashing imports that much would save the U.S. $175 billion a year. Last year, when oil averaged $78 per barrel, the U.S. sent $260 billion overseas for crude, accounting for nearly half the country’s $500 billion trade deficit.”

What happens in China is not the reason for lost US jobs.

In fact, most of what China earns in global trade from exports is spent in other nations such as Australia, Pakistan, Brazil, Myanmar and South Africa until Chinese exports and imports are about even.

That $260 billion the US spent for imported oil that added to the deficit revealed the truth. Many in the US are unwilling to sacrifice for the good of the country.

However, as the Amy Chua Tiger Mother debate reveals, the real culprit of the trade deficit in the US is illiteracy caused by the average parent focused on the child’s daily fun instead of his or her education and the work it takes to earn it.

Begin to Read.com says, “Many of the USA ills are directly related to illiteracy.” Then the site provides a few statistics to make its point.


“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” – Ray Bradbury

  • Literacy is learned. Parents who cannot read or write pass along illiteracy. (Did you notice there was no mention of teachers getting the blame? As long as parents blame someone or something else, illiteracy in the US will not improve.)
  • One child in four in the US grows up not knowing how to read.
  • Forty-three percent of adults at Level 1 literacy skills live in poverty compared to only 4% of those at Level 5
  • Three of four food stamp recipients perform in the lowest two literacy levels
  • Ninety percent of welfare recipients are high school dropouts—according to NumberOf.net, there are about 50 million Americans collecting some form of welfare.
  • Over 70% of the more than two million inmates in America’s prisons cannot read above a fourth grade level.

According to literacy fast facts from the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), literacy is defined as “using printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one’s goals and to develop one’s knowledge and potential.”

Studies say that about 13% of the adult population was at or above proficient in literacy. Since there are about 230 million adults in America that means only 30 million are proficient.

A CBS report on The Future of Jobs in America said, “Education has to be the final part of the strategy for job growth.”

Illiteracy is America’s “real” culprit and it is not the fault of China or America’s teachers. It is the fault of parents and middle-class Americans unwilling to sacrifice by changing spending and lifestyle habits.

Until most Americans face the facts, nothing is going to change. It is only going to get worse until there is no one left to blame but the face in the mirror. By then, it may be too late.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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