This is a news from Toronto Star today:
Chasing dreams instead of marks
Panel's advice for Chinese-Canadians
Work on social skills, not just grades
NICHOLAS KEUNG
IMMIGRATION/DIVERSITY REPORTER
Cecilia Leung has spent her young life working hard to earn high grades but lacking the courage to follow her dreams.
She yearned for a career in social work. But, to please her parents, the 27-year-old Chinese Canadian earned a degree in economics and psychology ― a compromise, she says ― and landed a job as a retail inventory analyst.
"We seldom talk about our dreams and, for many of us, the only way to succeed in life is to get high marks in school," Leung laments, 10 years after emigrating from Hong Kong with her teacher parents.
But that cultural emphasis on academic achievement may be misguided. A panel of experts is now warning Chinese Canadians that high marks won't take their children very far if they don't have social and leadership skills ― factors they say are the keys to success in the West.
Last week those experts, along with Markham-based non-profit group Across U-Hub, launched a new leadership certificate program to encourage and teach young Chinese Canadians to speak out, make more friends, improve their social skills and pursue their dreams.
"On one hand, Chinese Canadian youth are doing quite well academically, but in other areas, they are really lagging behind," said Maria Yau, a researcher with the Toronto District School Board.
"High IQ and good academic performance are only one of the components for success. What they also need is their social and emotional well-being."
A groundbreaking study she co-authored in 1997 surveyed 27,000 high school students in the old Toronto public school board.
Yau found that 80 per cent of Chinese students were deemed to be university-bound ― a full 20 percentage points above their peers. But they fell short compared with non-Chinese students on how confident they felt about all the other essential skills:
Speaking up in class: 24 per cent of Chinese students reported doing so vs. 39 per cent of other students;
Social skills: 55 per cent vs. 74 per cent;
Oral skills: 32 per cent vs. 57 per cent;
Writing skills: 31 per cent vs. 51 per cent;
Research skills: 45 per cent vs. 54 per cent;
Problem-solving skills: 46 per cent vs. 58 per cent;
Leadership skills: 32 per cent vs. 54 per cent.
Yau's findings echoed those of a Queen's University report, Study of Adolescents in Selected Ethnocultural Groups: School, Health and Home, also released in 1997.
In that study, researchers found that, among ethnic groups, Chinese students were the most likely to report they were "too shy" to have many friends and also the least likely to have friends from other ethnic backgrounds.
Wilfred Fong, an associate dean at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, said the research corresponds to his daily experience in class, where Chinese-Canadian students tend to pursue what their parents want instead of what they're passionate about.
"Their parents want them to be engineers, doctors, maybe surgeons ... There really is no good English translation to it. They just respect their parents, listen to them and do it," explained Fong, one of the experts consulted for the new leadership program launched by Across U-Hub, a decade-old community group that works with Chinese youth.
In many ways, the Chinese community's problem is an unusual one.
The Hispanic, Portuguese and Somali communities, by comparison, are dealing with high dropout numbers, a trend revealed in a study by the Toronto District School Board that prompted the creation of a Spanish Speaking Education Network to figure out what's going on. Next month, parents and educators will hold an emergency conference to seek solutions.
Students born in China have, by comparison, very low dropout risk. But the alarm is being raised in the critical area of interpersonal skills.
Ernest Cheng, managing director of Canadian Test Centre and a member of the expert panel, blames the problem partly on Chinese cultural traditions.
"They are not open-minded enough to explore different possibilities, or accustomed to thinking analytically. It could come from the family's emphasis on compliance and obedience," Cheng noted.
"They are wishing to take the most direct academic pathway and have a narrower focus in academic preparation because they are subscribing to a utilitarian view of education," a view shared by Chinese in China and Taiwan. To keep their marks high, these students are less likely to take risks and venture out of their comfort zones or broaden their horizons, he added.
The executive director of Across U-Hub, Nicole Wong, said the group has been working with experts over the past year to create the year-long certificate program, which consists of 22 individual units designed to polish the participants' leadership, organizational and public-speaking skills through interactive workshops and seminars.
Young Chinese Canadians need to build their self-confidence and identity so they can develop "a sense of citizenship, commitment, social and political consciousness," she said.
The one-day courses start in September. For more information, go to http://www.acrossuhub.com