Quote:
Originally Posted by jluetjen
3) Education is important, primarily because it leads to money, but also because it earns respect from people. Scholars are always respected in the Chinese culture.
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Pretty good understanding, for a gwai-lo.
Education is important, because that's one of the fairly consistent ways you can earn a good living, in America. When you're immigrant Chinese (or most any other immigrant), you don't have a lot going for you. You don't have money. You don't have connections. You don't have parents that can get you cushy jobs.
So if you want to "make it," a fairly solid way of doing so is to become educated to allow you the opportunity to get a job that pays well. That's one reason why medicine is highly regarded in Chinese-American (and most Asian-American) culture. In the sciences, if you are smart enough and study hard, you can do fairly well. A lot of advancement is based upon knowledge and accomplishment, as opposed to connections or how slick you can sell yourself. And lacking English fluency is less of a hindrance in the sciences than in other fields.
Education is something that you, yourself, master--as opposed to something that gets determined by people and circumstances out of your control. (To a certain degree.)
12-17-2009, 02:55 PM
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