- Welcome to Amherst Reads. I'm Catherine Epstein, provost and dean of the faculty at Amherst College. And in this Amherst Reads, I'll be speaking with Professor Pawan Dhingra, author of "Hyper Education: Why Good Schools, "Good Grades, and Good Behavior Are Not Enough." Pawan is professor of American Studies at Amherst, and he's also one of two faculty equity and inclusion officers in our Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Pawan came to Amherst in 2018 after serving as professor of Sociology and chair of the Sociology Department at Tufts University. He is the author of several award-winning books, including "Life Behind the Lobby: "Indian American Motel Owners and the American Dream," in 2012, and "Managing Multicultural Lives: "Asian American Professionals "and the Challenge of Multiple Identities" in 2007. Pawan is also active as a public intellectual. In recent years, he has published op-eds based on this project in The New York Times, CNN, The Conversation and elsewhere. "Hyper Education" came out last spring, and I had the pleasure of reading the book over the summer. And I'm delighted to have the opportunity to speak with Pawan about his book. So let's get started here. And, Pawan, I wonder if you could just give listeners a brief overview of your book.
- All right. And thank you, Catherine, for taking time, and for all of those who are engaging with us, and to Amherst Reads for the invitation to be part of this. This is a great series. So "Hyper Education," a brief overview. The book kind of looks at a growing trend in education that actually takes place outside of school. So increasingly number of families are seeking after-school education for their kids, whether it be in tutoring centers outside after school or academic competitions or online or some version of this because they're convinced that somehow school's not enough. And so we're not just having kids do club soccer and violin lessons on the side. We're also having them do more math and more reading and more spelling and more everything, right, all in this race towards admission to some elite school. So this growing trend has been something that educators have been worried about, actually, and that families are getting stressed about, and that kids are at the center of. And that's what the book does. It looks at this growth of what I call hyper education. Part of it, much of it, focuses on populations that are kind of at the leading edge of this, so Asian immigrant parents, who are kind of known in this sphere, but also white families who engage in this, white professionals. And the crux here is that why are families whose kids are in well-resourced schools, they're well-ranked schools, and their kids are doing just fine. Third-graders who are, just everything's at grade level or even above, saying, "No, I need more education "for my kid outside of school." And what are the implications of this? How do the teachers feel about it? And how do the kids, who are the center of this, right, how do they experience this? So that's what the book takes on.
- Is the main motive getting into an elite college?
- A lot of it.
- Is that what these kids, is that the thing that they're going for, or is there more here?
- So as a blanket statement, you can't say it's any one single rationale or motivation. And this is mostly driven by the parents. From looking at young kids, the parents are the ones who are making these decisions. The kids themselves aren't in the driver's seat. And these are some of the fastest growing, some of the tutoring companies I look at are some the fastest-growing companies in the country. So Kumon and Mathnasium and others are ranked as some of the fastest-growing franchises nationwide, and these are increasingly international companies. And right now, in our remote learning environment, they're even prone to grow even more. And they're advertising as such. They're saying, "COVID slide is a problem. "Your children aren't learning as they should. "Come to us. "We can fix this for your kids." So in some ways, cashing in. So why are parents doing this, even before COVID hit? And the motivation has a lot to do with, well, getting into college. Not even the Amhersts of the country, but selective colleges is competitive. And so, in some ways, not to do this becomes a question you have to answer, rather than why do you do it? And parents, maybe, that's kind of a blanket... you can't give any kinda blanket rationale, but it is a general trend. Then parents add in other rationales, too, because they don't wanna be seen as simply just strategic, looking 10 years down the road. And they're sincere, but at the same time, the other motivations include, well, you know, my kid really likes these subjects, and so doubling down on these just make sense. And there's also kind of a gendered aspect to this. So a lot of mothers will say, We know that daughters, girls, have fine abilities in math at younger years, but once they hit middle school and high school, their self-confidence in math goes down and their aptitude suffers as well. So a lot of mothers want to preempt that dip for their daughters and say, I want my daughters to be confident. And so if I get them extra math, third, fourth, fifth, sixth grade, then when the time that dip would happen, they're not gonna fall into that trap. And so there's that element there as well. And then, I know we can talk about this later, but another kind of motivation has to do with what kind of kid will my child become if they do this? Maybe it can help them in other ways beyond just strategic resources of cognitive growth and competitiveness.
- Interesting. So what made you actually decide to write the book? I mean, you spent eight, 10 years on this. What made you wanna do it?
- Yeah, thanks for asking that. So I got into this in a kind of backdoor kind of way. I didn't know about this trend, generally speaking, even though I have kids who are of that age. Before I joined Tufts, I was a curator at the Smithsonian for a couple years. I was a professor at Oberlin College, and took a leave and was at the Smithsonian. And part of that project was looking at kinda the growth and tendencies of Indian Americans. So one of the things you know about Indian Americans, if you know anything about them, in terms of pop culture, is that they tend to win a lot of spelling bees. So I was kinda talking to families and researching this for an exhibition that I was a curator of at the Smithsonian. As I talked to families whose kids were involved in spelling bees, I was somewhat surprised to learn that they weren't even that motivated by spelling bees, per se, which I thought was kind of strange. They weren't even motivated by a great demand of spelling. It was more that we want our kids to be in something educational after school 'cause that will help them down the road in terms of higher-level academic classes in high school and then, of course, college. So that kinda struck me, and I kept that in the back of my mind, how families care about education or doing educational things, even though they're not really motivated by that subject that they're spending hours and hours and hours a week on. So as I started thinking about this trend or this kind of, this interest in growing command of education outside of school, I thought, well, where else do we see this? And that's where the tutoring centers kinda became an obvious choice 'cause they're nationwide, they're growing, they're in the suburbs and exurbs or cities. And this becomes the most likely space, low-hanging fruit, for parents to access after-school education. 'Cause once I learned how fast these were growing and got a better sense of how they work, I realized this is a really important part of the education sector, but because that falls outside of the school, we're not paying attention to it. But the broader theme here is that even if you don't have kids, or you have kids and they're not involved in this, and most families aren't involved, it still impacts us, right? Because these are schools, these kids are in schools that are getting well resourced and well ranked. So in other words, the public system is working very well for these kids. And we all can sit back and critique the public system for when it's failing, but here it's working quite well. But even here, parents were saying, "No, it's insufficient and is a problem, "which is why I wanna go to the private marketplace "and invest in that for my kids' education." So it has the implications for our public system are quite negative in this realm, and so it's important to unpack what's behind this trend.
- So without getting too personal, you mentioned before you had a couple of kids, and I wonder whether either of them have been involved in these sorts of trends? Go to Kumon or have they participated in spelling bees? Like anything along those lines?
- Have we hyper educated our kids?
- Yeah.
- Yes, guilty as charged. I note this in the book, that we actually had our kids in an after-school math class when we lived outside of Boston and our kids were young. I forget how old they were now, but let's say third grade and first grade or fourth grade, something like that. And they, one of the kids liked it fine. You know, enjoyed it. Other one, older one thought this was just, like, "What did I do wrong? "Why are you punishing me for this after-school math class?" And we believed in it because I thought, not because we weren't satisfied with the school's math, but because we thought it just added a different kind of learning. But then we soon realized listen, if he doesn't like it, why are we doing this? And even if the child does like it, he may end up not liking it if we push it too hard, so we stopped. And that was actually still useful because I could understand, at a visceral level, why parents would do this, why parents would not do this. And especially if you're in certain spaces where it's normal, again, it's like, why do you not do it? How do you choose to avoid this? You're hurting your kids. So we are part of a demographic that is likely to be found in these spaces.
- So full disclosure, we have also had a child in Kumon for actually many years, and so I know this. But again, it was one of three children-
- Oh, three.
- Actually two of them at different times. But, yeah, I sort of understand the motivations as well.
- If I may, what drew you to that?
- What drew us to it was that we had a daughter who was clearly really talented in math really early on. And we just thought she should get started and grow really confident. And she remains a really stellar math student. And then we had a son who was not so good in math, and this helped a little bit. He's never been a math star. He's not gonna be. Fortunately, he's done with college. That's the end of it.
- That's right.
- And then the third one, we didn't do it, and maybe we should have, I don't know. I mean, it's interesting. She's just now entering ninth grade and she's starting to really doubt her confidence in math. And so when you were talking earlier about the mothers who wanted to make sure their daughters were really confident, it's like, oh, no, maybe I should have sent her to Kumon, you know, whatever. Maybe then she wouldn't be crying over her algebra test. But anyhow, in "Hyper Education," you're really careful not to judge parenting styles, but rather to explain them. And you've talked a little bit about why Asian American parents look for supplemental education for their children. Do you wanna say anything more about this? 'Cause that's really sort of a major thrust of the book is what all these Asian American parents are trying to accomplish. And you've got a lot of interesting insights. And so I wonder if you'd just share some more of them.
- Yeah, thanks. So, and part of what motivated the book was, and this has been a theme in my work, is you wanna kind of get past some of the stereotypes or narratives we have of groups, but without necessarily saying, "Oh, they're completely false and how dare we have this idea in our head." So one of the major images of Asian Americans in the past 10 years has been that of the tiger parent. And so the tiger parent is referring most directly to the "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua. And so we have that book out there, a national news cycle for quite a while, like months and months and months and months. And then there was a swift reaction against it. So we understand that an average person, like you and I, will understand what the tiger mother stereotype is and we'll understand all of the critiques of tiger parenting. That it's authoritarian, that it's too top-down, that the children have mental health issues, that it doesn't even work anyway. Why would you wanna do that to your kid? Et cetera, et cetera. But what gets missed in that kind of discourse is understanding what actually motivates real parents who may do things that fit a tiger parenting model, or at least performance. And so if you think about some aspect of tiger parenting being putting your kids in after-school education, even though they're doing just fine, even though they're not asking for it. Like, your daughter was seemingly wanting it, right? But why do it? So that became part of why I wanna study Asian Americans. And because they're very known to be educational achievement, generally speaking, keeping all the caveats in there about what we all know, then it becomes even more reason to study them. And also, Asian Americans get used in our kind of public discourse as saying, "Well, they've achieved. Why haven't others achieved?" And so you wanna unpack what's behind that. So as I studied Asian Americans, in terms of why they pursue after-school education, there were motivations that kinda pertained to all kinds of parents, like I alluded to, but there were some that are kinda specific to the immigrant experience. And so a lot of parents said, Our goal, getting back to the spelling bee isn't really about spelling, Our goal really isn't for our kids to be amazing in education. I mean, that's not what I wake up in the morning worrying about. What I really worry about as a parent is that my kid can outperform and outcompete other kids for these very few slots at the top of the pyramid of higher education. And not just higher education, of jobs. And then a lot of these families that I'm talking about are professionals, and they moved to the U.S. as professionals. And so for them to get these few slots that are allowed through immigration systems, they have to be not just achieving more than most Americans, but more than most people in their homeland, which is a lot and very hard to do. So in their minds, competition for the fewest slots in life is how they understand what it means to be an adult. So therefore, to be a proper parent, you have to prepare your children for competition. And so they look around and say, Well, how can our kids compete? And they'll say things like, Well, we can't compete in the same venues that most Americans compete in, which is sports, right? And we don't trust the arts as a space where our kids can outperform others. We got where we are through intense educational experience. So doubling down on education makes sense. But they were quick to say like, If we were, you know, they'll name some music star or cricket star or something else and say, If I was that person, I wouldn't be doing this. That'd be crazy. I'd be making sure my kid knew how to get into whatever industry I know because that's where I can really guide them. So tied to this idea of we do what we kind of know is a sense that as immigrants, we're gonna have fewer networks to really help guide our kids into different venues if they show interest in. So you know the old adage, right, it's not what you know, it's who you know? But if you don't know that many people because you're an immigrant, you don't have the fraternity or sorority networks, you don't have your parents' connections, you don't have your relatives' connections or anything else, then it really is depending on what you know, how well you get ahead. And you better know more than someone else to compensate for whom you do not know. So that adds another motivation, right, to pursue hyper education. And so those are some of the key reasons why. And then they also worry that there could be a double standard, whether in college admissions. And they were quick to cite certain statistics, right? One dad said, On the SAT, you gotta be 130 points above everyone else just to get the same level of recognition. He had a specific number attached to that. And so it kinda says that people are really worried about something very tangible.
- That number is actually statistically correct. Is that, right? It is.
- Well, there's been one study that came out that showed 130 or 140. But then there's been, it's not like a universally accepted. People debate this, put it that way. And I'm sure our own admissions office would have something to say about this. But no, it's not far off to think that.
- Can you say anything about sports versus after school, these kinds of after-school activities? 'Cause it's, certainly in some of your writing, you suggest that this is almost, it's a substitute. It's a substitute for Asian American kids doing sports. I don't think you say that quite so much in "Hyper Education," as in some of your other writings that I've read before, but I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about that?
- Yeah, that's great. And so a lot of parents, regardless of their background, will refer to sports and academics as like some kind of mutually exclusive option. I remember I was in one after-school center. And like one U.S. white mother was talking to another one. They didn't know each other. It was just kind of like explaining what you're doing here. So one mother said, One of my kids love soccer. I forget what the sport is. The other one doesn't, which is why I'm here. So it's kinda like sport and non-sport framing of who people are. And so that's not really true, right? A lot of kids do exceptionally well in both. And a lot of our Amherst students do exceptionally well in both. But the thing, and a lot of the Asian kids who were in these spaces can be really good in tennis or some other kind of athletics endeavor. But the parents did believe that there are certain venues you have to excel in in order to make a name for yourself and stand out above the rest for some recognition down the road. Again, college admissions, job, a spouse. Whatever, whoever you're competing for, right? You have to make a name for yourself. And these parents would say, If my kid shows promise in a sport, it'd be silly not to help pursue that. But we can't rely on that. And we don't know those avenues as well as we know the academic circuit. So we have to double down on academics. That goes without saying, it's a safer route, it's the more practical route. And so it could be sports in addition to something else, but it was not sports instead of something else.
- Right, so you don't write about this, but it'll be really interesting to see as so many schools go test optional, as Amherst has for this academic year, it'll be interesting to see what happens in the future. I wonder if the lesser emphasis on standardized testing will in any way impact the use of Kumon and other enrichment programs?
- I mean, my hunch, it's only a hunch, obviously, at this point is no, I mean, if you wanna get a clear answer, because parents don't know if this is gonna be a temporary change in admission policies or a permanent one. And so you don't assume it's, you're not gonna assume it's permanent. And then if it is permanent for Amherst, is it permanent for all these schools of our level? You know, maybe not. So you don't plan on that. And even if it is permanent, it's still optional, right? And so you want to, again, you have to distinguish yourself. And so if taking the SAT could help me distinguish myself, especially now when most kids aren't taking it, right? They're not taking it. I'm gonna triple down. Forget doubling down.
- Great points. So you write a lot about the children who are participating in these activities, and like the parents, you really don't judge them. You try and explain them. So why are kids doing this? Talk a little bit about that.
- So I talked, yeah, I talked to a lotta kids, some who are still, in the moment, they're children, and some who were in these experiences when they were kids, but now they're adults. And the kids, again, most of 'em are just driven there, literally and figuratively, by their parents. It's not typically the case where a kid says, I really wanna do this extra math. Please, Mom and Dad, take me there. Although that did happened.
- Yep.
- Okay. So this is kind of where it's important to distinguish between tied to the hyper education. So I won't dwell on this, but the competitions that children may take part in, math competitions or spelling competitions or science or whatever else, right, the parents may instigate that, but for a child to really do well and put in the hours. And again, for a spelling bee, for instance, you're studying during that final time, like, three hours a day on weekdays during the school year, eight hours a day on weekends. So that kind of commitment to actually make it to an elite level, the child has to be committed to this has to want this. And the children, by and large, took a lot of pride in what they achieved. They had all these rationales for why spelling was like the most awesome thing one could do with their time. Children would say, I tried to stop spelling, but I got bored, so I went back to learning how to, studying spelling. So when the competition, and the same thing with math, they would say. So those kids are really more self-motivated. In terms of these tutoring companies that we talked about, those kids typically were lukewarm, frankly, about their participation and could take it or leave it. Some would resent it. Mothers would say, parents would say, I remember one mother in particular saying, "I tell my kid, 'You can't play soccer after school until you finish your after-school math.'" Right? Those are common strategies, obviously suggesting that the kids didn't have a choice, much less a preference. So it goes without saying that that's gonna be more of a challenging venue. And, of course, these tutor companies try to make it more kid-friendly.
- Right.
- But it only works to an extent.
- Yeah, lots-
- And even then, there's some pedagogical concerns that can come up with how tutor companies do this that I can talk about if you're interested.
- You can, well, why don't you say a little bit about that?
- So oftentimes, I get asked, and I've written about, like, should your child do tutoring, right? Kind of a practical suggestion. What do I do as a parent, which is a really legitimate question. And I'm not gonna get into all that right now, though I can, but one of the points around that conversation is that some of these centers, tutoring companies, or whatever they might be, can have really great short-term effects on your children's learning, but have negative long-term effects on your children's learning. So it depends on how they structure their pedagogy. So a common approach that these, that some of these systems will use, is the reward system. If you do well in our homework and you're turning it on time, you get to pick a toy out of a box. And then, as one of the directors, as a director of one of the centers told me, the older kids, like teenage years, they're no longer interested in whatever's in the box, and you have to up the ante for them to actually start being motivated, like an Amazon gift card or iTunes gift card. In other words, these children realize I'm not interested in the reward anymore, so my interest in actually doing the work goes down, and that's not surprising to any psychologist who's studied behavior and the effect of rewards on behavior and stimulation and such. And so the actual interest in learning, long term, right, in the subject can go down, but in the short term, when parents are paying for this service, they're seeing their kids should be motivated. they're seeing the kids do better and faster homework. One kid said, one mother, one father said, My child's had a real improvement in homework, not because they were struggling before, but very few errors anymore. Like, the mindless errors you can make in a math assignment were gone because they had so much practice and they we were taking the after-school homework so seriously. And so parents love this. They see great results, right? I'm getting my money's worth. But the long-term effects were not necessarily positive. So parents should be asking these centers, how do you teach? How do you incentivize? And be wondering if it's good for the short term and long term.
- That's really interesting, really interesting advice for what people can be thinking about as they seek out these services. So in "Hyper Education," you did a lot of interviews. You interviewed children, you interviewed parents, you interviewed the center administrators, you interviewed principals. Can you tell us one or two of your favorite anecdotes? You did all this work and there's some nice stories in "Hyper Education." So it would be great if you just shared one or two of them, your favorites.
- Thanks for asking. I try to make the book very story-driven, so I appreciate you saying that. So a couple of things surprised me. And the parents, when I was asking them why they do these kinds of activities, they would give the reasons I pointed out, on competition and interest and everything else. And after a while, the parents were saying these reasons that seemed really convincing and compelling. And here I am wondering, oh, my God, am I parenting incorrectly because they were so persuasive in why they do this. So then I started raising the question, well, would you ever stop doing this? And what do you think of families who don't do this? And when I kind of flipped the question around as to not why you do it, but what do you think about people who don't do it, or would you yourself not do it, that revealed some really informative rationales and motivations for their pursuit. So one story, I was at a competition, after-school academic competition. And a parent there, this immigrant father I was sitting at a table with and I was asking the question, If it makes so much sense to do this, why aren't more Americans doing this? He was an immigrant. Why aren't most Americans doing this? And he picked up a glass and he said, Because they're too busy doing this. And he pretended as if he was drinking, like, it's an alcoholic drink. In other words, because they're drunkards, as my father would say, is why they don't. Like, that's a judgment they will make. I was liked shocked that this is how they interpret the choice to parent in a slightly different way and not do after-school education. And then another story, I was talking with a U.S.-born white mother and I was asking her a similar question, like, What do you think of those who don't do it? It wasn't exactly that question, but anyway, to the point, and she said, My grandparents survived the Holocaust. My parents put me through school through hard work. This is why, in effect, we have our son in an after-school math class that meets once a week. So she drew a line-
- Wow.
- Between surviving the Holocaust to taking part in an after-school math class. All of that, for her, and for many parents I spoke to, right, how does that compute? The after-school math class is more than just being smarter or capable in any academic subject. It's about creating a certain kind of person. And a lot of parents saw this commitment to education as distinguishing them from basically their white American peers, which is very odd because we're talking to people who live, like, literally next door, in the same neighborhoods, same kinds of jobs, same houses, same cars, same vacations, whatever else, but they saw themselves as this different moral pathways.
- So is this building character or what is it? I mean, is that?
- It's about building a certain kind of morality and value system. Be a moral person means to be hard-working, to be committed to sacrifice, to be willing to delay gratification, to realize that you can't always get what you want in life, so you have to do things you don't want because that makes you, that builds up achievement later. Whereas most Americans, quote, unquote, are more interested in the immediate pleasures of life. And if it's not fun, as one father said, most America, a white U.S.-born male said, Most Americans think that if it's not fun, my kids enjoy it, I'm not gonna do it. But sometimes you have to do things you don't enjoy now so you can enjoy things later," right? So it was not just about, well, maybe those parents have different preferences or is justifying it in terms of their own kids' needs or wants. It's about what kind of person do you wanna raise? Do you wanna raise someone who's an alcoholic and lazy? And won't survive challenges in life, right? Or do you wanna raise someone who's hard-working, strive for the best and et cetera, et cetera, right? And that's kind of the moral differentiation they made.
- So you've raised now the issue of white parents, and particularly advantaged sort of white families. What are some of the insights from your book that you learned about sort of white families? To the extent that you can generalize, obviously.
- So, yeah, that's great. So the families that I looked at were those who took part in these after-school centers, in competitions. I didn't just find just all kinds of families. And they were, by and large, professionals. They had college degrees, and most had advanced degrees. They had white-collar positions. And a lot of these families lived in Boston suburbs, middle-class, upper-middle-class suburbs. So that's kind of the profile, right? So within those parents, a lot of them would say kind of, they were motivated by the reasons I said, but they also felt that if we don't do this for our kids, immigrants are coming to our country, immigrants are coming to our schools, and they may outperform us. So we have to do this to keep up with the Joneses, although their last name is not Jones anymore.
- Yeah.
- Keep up with the Joneses, right? And so the way in which I typically understood is I, the parent, the American parent, am resentful of this coming in. I have to now conform. And that happens, and that's definitely an issue and I've talked about that elsewhere. But one thing that struck me is a lot of the parents were like, kind of appreciative. They're like, these kids are coming in here and showing what's possible and what they're capable of. I think my kid could be capable of that, too. There was this kind of model minority idea that they kind of wanted their kids to emulate. And so they took a lot of pride when they were some of the few white kids in an after-school math class and all the other kids were Asian. Like, this is exactly where I wanna be, right? And they would say things like, I identify as an immigrant, too. I moved to the Boston area from the Midwest. I'm kinda like an immigrant. And so in other words, they were really kind of clinging onto something about this immigrant ethos. What they're actually describing is somewhat of a ossified stereotype notion of an immigrant, right? Of someone who comes here with nothing and learn English by candlelight and pushes themselves up, right? That's the kind of mentality they have, you know, bootstrap mentality. But, nonetheless, because they saw immigrants succeeding and assume they had that kind of work ethic to help them rise up, they thought, well, it's not just an idea you can be that hard-working. Look at these people, they're actually doing it. Our family should do it, too. Because otherwise, what's the alternative? It's like American culture of instant gratification and everything else that we wanna be wary of.
- So that's certainly some of the white families, but near the beginning of the book, in particular, you talk about how resentful some white families are about the immigrant kids doing this kind of hyper education. So they're all getting ahead, and that's basically causing stress and all sorts of things for these white families. So there's another part of the story as well.
- Yeah, and I talked a lot about the stress and anxiety that is, I mean, it really is rampant in schools across the country, at various levels and various kinds. There's a lot of the white families, and also the teachers, in particular, and administrators would say these, you know, primarily, again, these Asian American families, because they're the ones who fit the profile doing this and they're the one, they're known for doing this and they are doing it. Because they're seeking education outside of school, they're now creating like an educational arms race, even at lower levels. Not waiting for junior year, right, when we kind of imagine that maybe being more pronounced, right? So for my third grader or my sixth grader to be considered smart in something, right, just meeting the grade level and the teacher expectations are no longer enough because these other kids are getting trained in these subjects outside of school. So they enter school with knowing a lot more and being more well-versed. And so then maybe the other kids feel bad. And so I feel, then, I, the parent who's not doing this for my kids, am resentful that my kid is feeling anxious for not achieving enough. And now I have to either choose, right, do I keep them in this possibly unhealthy environment? Or do I have them go into after-school education to keep up with this new normal? Or do I withdraw, right? And all three of these are bad options. None of these are good options, right? And so there was a lot of resentment. A lot of teachers were really critical of parents doing this. And that was actually one of the things that really surprised me. Not that they were critical, but the disconnect between how the parents understood what they were doing, and how the teachers and school principals understood the same thing. So parents would say, as I already alluded to, like, "If we don't do this, our kids will be behind. They won't be able to compete. And there's higher expectations for us, you know, in college and everything else. And we're not gonna make it in the sports and everything else that a lot of parents put a lot of money into. We could talk for another hour about club sports if we wanted to. "So we had no choice but to do this. And then we think if we're doing it, we're raising proper kids, like good, hard-working kids." So they have all these moral and strategic and capital-based reasons for doing this. The teachers and school principals look at the same activity and think, and one school principal said to me, "I don't believe you're gonna find any fourth grader who wants to do long division after school. I just don't believe it." Parents who do this are, in effect, uncaring and ungrounded.
- Right.
- Right. And so they would actively try to assimilate the parents into their model of proper parenting and education, which was because they thought the Asian parents were like, they're the ground zero for this. And somehow we got rid of their kind of motivation for this and told 'em how to act properly, then they wouldn't do this, and the white kids wouldn't feel stressed and have to do this. And everything would go back to some kind of like, you know, beautiful and romantic image of what school could be for children. And again, it's not to say that parents, Asian American parents weren't at the forefront of this, but they weren't alone. And also, there's a lot of reasons for stress and concern for children that have nothing to do with the practices of certain parents, Asian American parents, that get overlooked in this process, right? The book talks about how these tutoring companies, for instance, they're not some of the fastest-growing companies in the country because of a lot of Asian American parents who want them, right? In fact, their growth strategy, oftentimes, is to grow in neighborhoods that already have very strong schools because that's where-
- That's where the-
- Will be, will pay for this. So they're making money off families who are trying to compensate for poorly resourced schools, that's fine, but a lot of their growth is in affluent areas, so parents like the ones I'm talking about, and they're not banking just on Asian parents for being their clientele. So this is, again, a growing trend that got reduced to one kind of nugget of people. The problem with that is, in part, we can't solve the problem if we don't know what the problem is.
- Interesting. So let me just focus in on another aspect of the problem. You wrote this book, obviously, well before this summer, when we really started to talk a lot about anti-black racism. And it was fascinating to me, though, that you were suggesting that anti-black racism actually also impacts Asian American students and their families. And I wonder if you could sort of draw out those connections because particularly as I was reading the book during the summer, I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What's going on here? This is really interesting.
- No, thanks for that. So one of the ideas here. So what I argue in the book is that it's not, the anti-black racism I'm talking about is not the parents' attitudes towards Africa Americans. So that's not where it's coming from. It's more an interpretation as opposed to a reporting, okay? So I wanna make sure that distinction is clear. And both Asian American parents and the white parents, how they talked about morality and what it meant to be a moral person fits a certain, it had a certain kind of attributes for that, right? And it wasn't just about being hard-working, although that was one of the main tenants. It was also about not drinking instead of parenting, not being too invested in sports, being self-sufficient as opposed to relying on someone else's money. A lot of parents would say, particularly the white parents, would say, "Our neighbors, their kids will get ahead because their parents are gonna pay for their education 'cause we're in affluent areas. But I want my kids to be self-sufficient and to value what it means to earn money and be hard-working, and not rely on someone else's money." And there's many other examples I could give, but all the traits they were saying, what makes someone a proper person versus an improper person, they map directly on to a lot of the negative stereotypes we have of African Americans. And what I'm trying to get at, then, is we shouldn't just take what people consider to be moral or proper at face value. Like, where does that idea come, what does it mean to be a moral person? We could debate that for a long time, and we should debate that, obviously. And so the fact that so many people, immigrants or not, were referring to the exact same characteristics that map on to anti-black stereotypes, of being lazy, not invested in school, too addicted to sports or drugs or premarital sex, all these things, horrible things I don't wanna keep talking about, but are out there as part of our kind of dominant kind of discourse in terms of anti-blackness, right? It demonstrates how this depth, how the depth and pervasiveness of anti-blackness, that we can be informed by it in spaces that really have nothing to do with African Americans, right? It becomes taken for granted what's the right person and wrong person. I'm not saying that these notions of morality are only dependent on when I say blackness. They wouldn't be there, otherwise. But they map on so clearly that we can't assume that that's not part of the kind of undergirding of what we expect to be moral and immoral. So I wanna draw that out as opposed to just take for granted what a moral person is 'cause it shouldn't be taken for granted.
- That's fascinating. Just a couple more questions So in your teaching and learning, you're really deeply concerned with neoliberalism and how it fuels inequality in the United States. And I wonder what you see, does hyper education, the participation in that, make inequalities worse or is there any way that it sort of helps to lessen inequality? So how does that work?
- So that's great. And so hyper education is, to be more specific about it, is when parents who, I'm using the term, when parents who don't really need this extra education for their kids, but still pursue it, right? That's what the hyper part of it is. So parents whose kid are struggling in a subject or are so advanced that the school can't meet their needs, and like anything else, you would seek something else for them, right? Or they're compensating for schools that are not serving the children, and you seek some kind of tutoring for them. It makes a lot of sense. And that's not what I mean by hyper education. But in terms of hyper education, right, where you don't need something, but you pursue it anyway, and you're pursuing something that is the role of the school, right? So my analogy, I mean, I don't wanna get disjointed. My analogy is Little League. So I had two kids and they both played Little League. And Little League, it makes a lotta sense. It's like a civic form of extracurricular. 'Cause you can't learn softball or baseball except through Little League. There's no other way of learning it. And by the time you get, there's a school team in middle school, you don't make that team unless you learned it through Little League. So that's an example of an extracurricular activity that complements the school system. Whereas what I'm referring to are for-profit, private enterprises that are not complementing the school. In some ways, they're competing with the roles of what the school's about, reading and writing and arithmetic. So it fits neoliberalism in the following way, which is parents are saying, "I want more choices for my kids. I'm not gonna rely just on the school system, again, even when the school is doing perfectly fine, and I'm gonna seek those choices out in the private marketplace 'cause I don't trust the public sphere to provide for my child. And I'm going to consume, right, use my financial dollars in order to better myself and my children because if I don't do that, right, and my kid doesn't make it into Amherst down the road, then I only have myself to blame." Right? So all of those, the fact that the options are there, how they're situated, the impact on the public sphere and the motivations behind them all fit a neoliberal kind of opportunity and kind of ideology, right? And I distinguish that between liberalism in the book. I don't dwell on this, but it's like something I pull out 'cause I think it really does help explain how these are, you know, we can blame certain parents for making this a popular enterprise, but that's wrong because it's part of a broader, it's a cultural shift that we're all part of.
- Yeah, really reflects the times. So now, you've thought a lot about education. You have kids yourself. What are we supposed to do? What kind of, you know-
- I was hoping you would answer.
- Education or would you just leave the educational system as it is? Or are there reforms that you would advocate? I mean, you know, this is a huge problem, inequality in education, and so many other things. But what have you, if you could, what would you change?
- Yeah, that's great. I mean, that is the hardest question. And so if I could change anything, right, I would try to seek less of an emphasis on the standardized kind of way, standardized testing, if you will, not to put everything on that 'cause it's an easy kind of straw man of some sorts to beat up on, but it does kinda contribute to this idea that there's one way of learning and then one measurement of achievement. And we need to move past that to think about how we can assess children in ways that don't rely on their kind of individuality as what marks them as capable or not capable. And so let's think about, quickly, our kind of current moment right now, where I'm asked to wear a mask and you're asked to wear a mask, but our mask doesn't protect us. I wear a mask to protect you, and you wear one to protect people around you, right? In other words, it's demonstrating that, obviously, we're interconnected, but for us to do well, I have to take care of you and you have to take care of me.
- So interesting, yeah.
- And we don't think about that at all in terms of our education system. That is not how our system is designed. Now, I don't know if we designed some system that way, A, what exactly it would look like. And just as importantly, I don't know, B, how Amherst would decide, well, who do we let in if we don't have a system where individuals have to outcompete others, right? Because you don't wanna create a system where volunteer hours counts for something because then I'll just rack up volunteer hours. It has to be some kind of interconnectivity that really does matter, right? And now, that's what I'd love to see. I'll leave it to others more qualified than me to take that dream and turn it into a reality. But in terms of practical suggestions, right, parents and teachers, one thing that really surprised me was how little parents and teachers talk to one another about what they saw or wanted for the children. Parents would never, wouldn't even tell teachers they have them in after-school centers or any kind of hyper education. Or wouldn't even tell them their concerns about the school. And teachers wouldn't tell parents, necessarily, about some of the emotional and social challenges they saw in the children, unless they were like at an extreme level where they had to worry about safety. There's such little communication between parents and teachers in the few times where they come together that a lot gets left unsaid. And the children are the ones who suffer from this, right? They're the ones who aren't getting people to really appreciate them from a full 360-degree angle. So a practical suggestion is just that we need more communication so that parents can say, "Wait a minute. My child is actually. Since we started this after-school activity, our child's participation in school has actually gone down, not up," right, which we see, right? Teachers worry that kids come into class who have been hyper educated and they actually learn less in school than they would otherwise, for various reasons that I explain. That's not communicated to parents. And parents themselves don't communicate that we have real concerns over how things are going here, even though we're in a very promising district, and here's why. They keep all that to themselves. There's no opportunity to share and to learn and then adjust because everyone's assuming they won't understand my point of view. They're just stuck in whatever they're doing. So a practical suggestion is to open up that, and then adjust in response to those conversations.
- There's a lot more in the book. I've gotta show a copy of it, "Hyper Education." Here it is. Pawan, thank you so much for such a, first of all, for writing such an interesting book, and then also for all these really intriguing answers. So I really-
- Thank you, Catherine.
- Really appreciate it.
- Really appreciate you taking the time. What a pleasure.