Clash!

For all their interdependence, Asian students don t talk much. At least that s the perception many educators wrestle with, including Gail Davidson. Davidson is the principal of Lynbrook High School in Cupertino, California, which serves more than 1,700 students, 80 percent of whom are of Asian heritage. A public school, Lynbrook High is the envy of its competitors, with one of California s highest academic performance index ratings, a blue ribbon from the U.S. Department of Education, and a gold medal from Newsweek s rankings of the nation s high schools.

Our students are fantastic and achieve at a high level by all objective standards, Davidson says, but our teachers are concerned when students don t speak up in class. Students absolutely need to develop their communication skills to succeed in the wider world.

East-West clashes, like the one over how much students should speak, cause ripples of contention through schools around the world, ranging from prekindergarten classrooms to postdoctoral lecture halls. In the United States, for example, many teachers see how Asian interdependence can send a kid to Harvard (as it did Chua s daughter), but they still feel put off by it. Why do Asian students so seldom talk or get excited? they ask. Why do they put their parents wishes before their own? Why do they work so hard to fit in? These are not the sorts of hearts and minds most Western teachers were trained to educate.

Western teachers also worry that their students with Eastern backgrounds are not cultivating the skills they will need in the Real World. Some even see how the independence of Westerners can hold Easterners back, both in the classroom and in the workplace. At the same time, many suspect, as did the op-ed writer, that Eastern students way of being is somehow unfair to their Western classmates.

A closer examination of the selves of people with Eastern and Western heritages can help demystify their different ways of doing school. For many East Asians and their children growing up in the West, listening, following the right way, fitting in, and keeping calm are not odd classroom behaviors; they are the very route to being a good person a good interdependent self, Eastern style. But for their Western classmates and teache

of new scientific findings about profound cultural differences. As the world grows smaller and flatter, the wisdom of Clash! will prove essential for effective functioning." 
Richard E. Nisbett, PhD, author of Intelligence and How to Get It
Finally! An entertaining and scientifically rigorous explanation of how our cultures work on us and how we can work on them.  Clash! is a must-read for crafting effective personal change strategies that work within and across most cultures.
Philip Zimbardo, PhD, author, The Lucifer Effect
 
In the conflict of cultures lies, paradoxically, the ability to construct a self with integrity, agility, and the potential to grow in ways previously unimagined. Full of good science and sage advice, Clash! provides the evidence and strength to approach the hard question, "Who am I?"
Mahzarin Banaji, PhD, author of Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People