A Model Minority

gain the cultural identity they are seeking—without wasting energy on demand-based campaigns.The news report is given below. Ticket To Success No matter what their route, young Asian Americans, largely those with Chinese, Korean and Indochinese backgrounds, are setting the educational pace for the rest of America and cutting a dazzling figure at the country’s finest schools. Trying to explain why so many Asian American students are super achievers, Harvard Psychology Professor Jerome Kagan comes up with this simple answer: “To put it plainly, they work harder.” “Even with the problems (of restriction and discrimination), many Asian-American students are making the U.S. education system work better for them than it has for any other immigrant group since the arrival of the East European Jews began in the 1880s. Like the Asians, the Jews viewed education as the ticket to success. Both groups feel an obligation to excel intellectually,” says News York University Mathematician Sylvain Cappell, who, as a Jewish immigrant, feels a kinship with his AsianAmerican students. The two groups share a powerful belief in the value of hard work and a zealous regard for the role of the family. Such achievements are reflected in the nation’s best universities, where math, science and engineering departments have taken on a decidedly Asian character. At the University of Washington 20% of all