Oh, No! Not Another Test....

Recently Mira Hu, a 16-year-old student from Arcadia High School said she had enough of testing and academic pressure. After her mom dropped her off at Arcadia High School in Canada to take the SAT that every high school senior expecting to enter college must take, Mira did something, I think, to slap the studious Asian American culture right in the face. Mira not only skipped the test, she disappeared completely to parts unknown. Wow! The ancient Chinese test Gods will surely seek revenge against Mira.

But what Mira has done should in fact happen more among, not only all those super smart and studious types that live in Silicon Valley, but with average ordinary dolts like me. I find it refreshing that the first high profile case of "I don't care about your tests or your Ivy League plans, mom" is from a super high academic, Asian community in the wealthy Silicon Valley area. Give that girl a scholarship for creative arts...or something. I like her style, if not the fact that she may have carried her protest too far by running away from home. Her Tiger Mom is not gonna like this whole scene.

Anyway, after she disappeared from school test taking demands, Mira Hu sent a message to her brother indicating that she was running away because she was overwhelmed by school and the exam.  Chinese and other Asian immigrant parents routinely pressure their kids to study, study, study. Outside interests and activities are so discouraged that the little one become a little computer, for which Tiger Mom and Tiger Dad are extremely grateful. After all, how can an immigrant earn widespread social class and respect if their children among them is not the next genius at Stanford or MIT?

Too, such study fanaticism is an on-going problem in  many Asian countries, one which mom and dad take with them and embellish when arriving in the U.S. There have been cases in which a number of suicides here by kids were the result of too much pressure to do well in school and to please Tiger Mom and Tiger Dad.  It's an odd cultural clash with the often lazy, empty headed native born parented kids of the U.S.  Second generation (of both Asian and non Asian families) are slacking too much and Asian immigrant kids are cracking the books too much and becoming little geniuses but with little personality or private interests compared to the doltish slacker kids found everywhere in America.

I suspect Mira wants to be a slacker because the pressures of being the Chinese immigrant kid are too much for her to be something in-between the too (what we used to call "normal").  It's sad when just being a kid isn't possible today for all kids, that kids can't choose on their own how much study is enough, and that too many kids can't find joy in life because of it.