In many places in this world, getting into a proper college is seen as critical to having a decent-paying job. In some places, such as East Asia, the matter is well-organized. One takes tough exams to get into a good high school, studies very hard in high school, takes a rigorous exam to get into a college, and then parlays this education into a respectable, profitable job somewhere.
In East Asia, especially in China, this has been going on for quite some time -- centuries if not millennia. One of the hallmarks of the Chinese Empire over the past two thousand years has been its efficient bureaucracy manned by highly learned and dedicated civil servants, whose dedication and proficiency is tested by an exam so difficult that it makes modern college entrance exams look like a kindergarten homework sheet.
Thus the concept of parents pushing their children to study, study, study, is a well-trod one in East Asia, and in that place it does not seem out of place or problematic -- it is a method of parenting well-suited for the job environment.
But then East Asian immigrants come to the United States, and they run into American educational culture, where things are, to put it delicately, less well-organized. Private colleges and state universities retain a great deal of baggage from their origins as finishing schools for the children of the upper class. A great deal of fripperies, academic politics and emphasis on sports, leading to spiraling expenses and declining quality of education -- nor is there nearly the same rigor to the two main college entrance exams. Nor, indeed, is an entrance exam the only means by which a given student is selected for a given school -- the selection committee also considers childhood extracurriculars, entrance essays, assessments of personal character, and other criteria that are, let us face it, nebulous and impossible to quantify --
Which is not merely an unfortunate habit of people trying to be nice and holistic, but a holdover from the days when colleges were specifically trying to avoid having too many Jewish students get into their precious rich-people finishing schools. Can't have a bunch of Jews among the White Anglo Saxon Protestants! This is about the upper class, not a bunch of un-Christian economic climbers! Humph!
Like I said. A lot of baggage.
And then when you get in, the question becomes, for what benefit? If it's just to learn and get smart, great, you've found the best place. If it's to furnish your credentials for the job market...that's not exactly a clear path. Undergraduate colleges are split between the humanities and the sciences, and where the sciences are better at training people for specific professions, the humanities mostly train people for intra-academic professions, which is an increasingly tough field to enter. You have to go on to grad school to find academic institutions that are clearly intended as job training, like med school and library science schools.
And then when you're in the job market, you find a business culture that, in its efforts to get every penny of value out of everyone, tends to hire people on as unpaid interns -- which means that unless you or your parents have money to burn, you're not going to be able to survive the first months of working in those places.
And then you spend five years of your life trying to find a job and getting nowhere until you finally join the USPS.
But I'm not bitter or anything. No, really -- I'm a lot less bitter now that I've actually found a decent place to work. It's not any field that college was supposed to get me in good with, but it's important to be flexible these days, in world of education and hiring where it sounds like the key players aren't really discussing things with each other.
And, you know, this is the modern world, and the Old Ways have been steadily falling apart ever since people invented the railroad. Things that are seemingly certain and solid this generation are superseded by new technology in the next, and the kids you raise connect to your way of life even less than before -- they grow up in a different world than you did. Which means that any detailed advice you give them about what to expect here or there might be useless within five years.
Therefore it is important to teach your children how to be adaptable to changing times. Which means you have to model such behavior, because simply telling someone to be adaptable isn't going to cut it. Which means you have to give up on the idea of strict obedience -- if your kids learn to perfectly obey you they're going to be following outdated modes within twenty years and depending on you for everything until you die, and then where are they?
Which is not to say study itself is not highly valuable -- becoming educated is worth it for itself, because if you know more about the world you can see more ways to solve problems, and you are more difficult to fool. But as a means of economic climbing? That's yielding diminishing returns. Study to be a doctor! You'll work yourself to death and drown in debt. Study to be a lawyer! You'll drown in debt and probably won't find a job.
This business was brought to mind by a friend of mine, whose parents, both of them Japanese immigrants, seem to embody the sterotype of Harsh Asian Parent -- they used to smack my friend on the back of the head for getting math problems wrong, and they told my friend that if she was in their house she should either be studying or sleeping. Like, come on, she's not studying for the Imperial Civil Servant exams.
There's even less value in being such a strict parent than there ever was, and far more value in being fexible.