I went to a mid-tier public college. Certain cliques of asian students with no ability to communicate verbally in English were somehow able to produce amazing criticisms of 19th century english poetry.

It's difficult not to draw a parallel between people like that and the fraternity people (who were incapable of communicating in English for other reasons) who achieved similar feats.

I think everyone would be at the same disadvantage, regardless of English competency, when it comes to 19th century English poetry. ;-)

I was able to semi-decently communicate technical things before I come to Shakespeare's "To be or not to be". It completely changed my view on English language. Before that I was reading English prose as a deformed version of Deutsch (language I learned at school). What worked for technical prose stopped working for verses. I had to dig deeper.

From my experience I think that someone who barely speaks foreign language cannot have an adequate opinion on that language verses.

And I think that GP is right about cheating.

Unfortunately I think that the weakness in Western culture here is the same as its fundamental strength -- anti-authoritarianism. For white students (and to an even greater extent black students), it's not cool to study hard because that's what authority figures like teachers and parents want you to do.

I'm not sure what can be done about this. I doubt it would work just for teachers and parents to pretend they don't want the kids to work hard in the hope that they will.

Part of the solution, I think, is to provide pointless and arbitrarily rules for the kids to rebel against harmlessly. At my school, the teachers were very keen on making sure we had our shirts tucked in, and I never understood why, but now I understand that these sorts of pointless rules provide an opportunity for kids to rebel against something without actually engaging in any destructive or dangerous behaviour.

I think its great to point out these studies. Make them part of the HS curricula to learn about them. But at the end of the day I think each of us needs to make our own decision about our path forward.

Myself, I was a pretty good student. And I partied some, but looking back a little more partying probably wouldn't have killed me.

"I just don't understand it, Dr, Sowell," he said. "The Jewish students do twice as well as we do."

"Only twice as well?" I said. "When they work three times as hard? What I can't understand is how you fellows do as well as you do, with no more effort than you put into it."

Earlier in the book, he talks about how he nearly flunked out of Harvard during his first semester there because he was working like he had at Howard and it wasn't enough. (pp.118-9)

I wonder if all foreign students struggling with English exhibit the same behaviour. I say this because such students would find it hard to fit in and participate in other campus activities. They would probably be concentrating on their studies.

Yet in athletics, China (or perhaps most Asian countries) tend not to perform as well in team events compared to Western nations.