A note on the learning behavior of college students in USA

A note on the learning behavior of Generation Y students

Many faculty at Colleges in USA may found students do not expect themselves to spent too much effort on studying.  Mark Taylor thinks the center-of-the-world rearing environment, child centralism in his words, plays major in shaping the behavior of NeXt students, if I understood his points correctly. Dr. Taylor just gave a wonderful talk at Spelman College on how to educate the NeXt generation. His views were well received, and he was applauded by hundreds of faculty. I have a different view on this. Most of the Asian kids are treated as center of the world in their family. In fact they are called "little emperors" in China. However Asian students are mostly better at compliance and meeting teacher's expectations at schools. So, the fact that American kids can get all the As without too much effort have to do with many other factors.  Dr. Taylor also acknowledges the cultural difference on performance: American culture's emphasis on talents versus Asian culture's emphasis on effort.  But the societal and cultural factors are probably more important than Dr. Taylor acknowledged. During my first year of teaching at Spelman College, I remembered a student with exemplary academic record was asked to share her experiences to first year students. She bragged about how little effort she spent on studying. At that time, I thought that was just due to a individual student's personality.  After a few years of seeing this again and again, I now have a whole different perspective on this issue.  Although many students of mine work really hard and do not appear to share this view of 'effortless success', I do see this in many students. If American kids are continually to be raised to think that they can compete with the rest of the world by talents but not efforts, big problems are yet to come.

Success is one percent aspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.  Students need to focus on the effort part.

It is wise for me to make it clear that all views are my own, here.

Reference:
 http://www.taylorprograms.com/images/Gen_NeXt_article_HLC_05.pdf

Updated on 2013 March 2.
I read a book comment by David Brook, titled "East vs. West: The Chinese superstudent vs. the American slacker".  The difference is that Westerners learn to understand and master the external world. Asians learn in order to cultivate virtues inside the self. The comment is based on a book by Jin Li. The article concludes,

I’d just note that cultures that do fuse the academic and the moral, like Confucianism or Jewish Torah study, produce these awesome motivation explosions. It might be possible to champion other moral/academic codes to boost motivation in places where it is absent.

Reference: 
http://seattletimes.com/html/opinion/2020467092_brookscolumnchinalearningxml.html?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=t.co