Americans Are Just as Intelligent

Like some of my fellow classmates, I work one afternoon a week at Math Monkey. Math Monkey is an academic enrichment program where parents can send their children to learn more about math. It is designed for students who excel in math and want to learn more than their teachers can teach in school. As an assistant in the classroom, we help students to understand the concepts being taught and we give them problems that they try to complete for the game that the class plays at the end of the class period. Interestingly enough, at work today I realized some similarities to the mental health ward that Ken Kesey describes in his novel. We must be strict with the little kids and we do not answer all the silly questions. Also, we want them to follow directions and do as we say. Now obviously, this is only for one hour of their day and not their entire life, but in order to maintain control and a sense of order we must rule with an iron fist. We treat the crazy and hyper students like the patients in the mental ward because this is necessary in order to teach the lesson plan and try to help everyone learn. All the students must be doing the same activity at the same time, whether it is the warm-up, the practice problems, playing the game, or starting the homework. However, this is not the style of education that all people favor. Some parents and educators think that a Montessori school better educates children. In a Montessori school, students can choose what activities they want to work on and when just as long as they complete certain assignments by the end of the week. With small children and mental health patients a schedule planned out to the minute seems necessary.

The second thing I pondered while I was exercising my authority was the ratio of Indian children and Caucasian children in the classroom. The percentage of Indians in America is much smaller than the percentage of Caucasians, however, in the classroom at Math Monkey, the breakdown is roughly equal. I found it very interesting that such a high number of Indian American parents choose to send their children to math enrichment classes. Some of the students, such as Jahnavi and Aambar, have a mom and dad that were actually born in India. For my previous data sheet I found that over sixty-four percent of Indian Americans have earned at least a bachelor’s degree. This number is extremely high compared to the national rate of only twenty-eight percent. There is a similar phenomenon with Chinese Americans. The fact that these two populations seem so much smarter than Americans makes us feel second-rate and inferior. I think Americans are much to critical of themselves; we are a very intelligent population and the numbers are skewed for Indian Americans and Chinese Americans because only the best and brightest from India and China make the journey to America to receive an education and then start a life here. We have the best universities in the world, so we attract the brightest students from the rest of the world. If India had the best universities, then the most intelligent students from America would go to India to get educated and then start a career in India. And then Indians would be impressed with the intelligence of Americans, because they would only see our very best. The reason for this blog post is because I become frustrated when Americans are intimidated by the intelligence or hard work of Indian Americans or Chinese Americans. We are just as smart as they are and we work just as hard in many cases. Our elite American students (AP English students) equal the elite from not only India and China, but the rest of the world.