| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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Recent trends show that immigrants from countries in Asia who were part of the working class or were refugees are not as upwardly mobile as compared with immigrants with means who moved to the United States immediately after 1965.
A distinction that is often attributed as particu-lar to Asian American immigrants and subsequent generations is the transmission of cultural capital in the guise of traditional values. For instance, Caplan et al. (1991) proposed that the maintenance of traditional values is the most crucial factor in the academic successes of refugee children that would eventually aid in their upward mobility and consequent assimilation. Caplan et al.’s construction of culture comprised of a set of instrumental values that are supposedly inherent to the Boat People (pp. 89–92). They also believed parents to be the “carriers of the culture” (pp. 96–98). Caplan et al. therefore suggested that parents are the vessels that preserve the values and practices of the home country, which is then transmitted to their children, who in turn transform these assets to navigate educational and socioeconomic success in the United States.
However, a closer examination of Caplan et al.’s data reveals that the supposed meteoric success of the children of the Boat People is not as dramatic as initially proposed. In fact, while their rates of education achievement in terms of improvement in test scores seem impressive, in comparison with national statistics, they are still failing in large numbers and do not compare equally with children of immigrants with greater resources in social and financial capital in their home countries.
Nevertheless, the myth of the model minority persists due to the assumption that culture is an integral aspect of raising successful children. In 2006, Korean American sisters Sarah Abboud and Jane Kim wrote the self-help book Top of the Class: How Asian Parents Raise High Achievers—and How You Can Too that outlined the ways in which Asian cultural practices can be used to raise academically and professionally successful children. This book drew a lot of criticism from scholars in Asian American studies, including Kyeyoung Park who was quoted in the New York Times saying the following: