Asian Americans in the Classroom

Asian Americans in the Classroom

Asians are one of fastest growing minority groups in America today. During this century, various factors at home and abroad have caused people from Asia to immigrate to the United States for better or for worse. Due to these factors, Americans and American teachers, in particular, need to educate themselves and become aware of the Asian American students’ needs in terms of success and happiness. Before beginning my research, I felt I had an easy subject: studying Asian Americans in relation to their education in public schools. How simple! Everyone knows they are smart, hard working, driven to succeed in spite of their nerdish, geeky, non-athletic, broken-English stereotype. Of course they are successful and happy! Why wouldn’t they be?

In this research paper, I hope to enlightened those who thought the I did. Like any other minority group, the Asian American has been stereotyped, discriminated, commercialised, propagandised, and packaged in a box with a pretty ribbon around it bearing the tag: Model Minority. Closely related to this concept is the Panethnic Identity. These two issues were indeed the strongest images of the Asian Americans today. How we came about it and how it is affecting student’s will be discussed in detail. A word of caution: It is neither simple nor pretty, as many of the reasons both a result of the Asian and American cultures.

First some technicalities: Most of my research focused on the Japanese Americans and Japanese culture. There will be examples that are specific to this particular ethnic group and race. However, due to the lack of articles specifically on Japanese American students and the tendency to study Asian Americans as a group, I ...

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