21 Feb 2006 - 20:48

Asians in Great Neck

The TIMES was chock-full of interesting items pertaining to education today.

College students sending inappropriate email to their professors, and Asians in Great Neck.

GREAT NECK, N.Y. — In the annals of American newcomers, there must be relatively few immigrants like the Shins. They are an affluent couple in their 40's with two teenage children. They were well established in their careers in Seoul. And then, last July, Maria Shin came to the United States for her first visit, carrying a pocket translator, a laptop and a map on which she had marked out the best American schools with sizable Asian populations.

She visited Scarsdale. "A little bit too much," she said, meaning it was a little too expensive.

She visited the suburbs of Los Angeles. "Too much fun," she said, referring to what she perceived as California goofiness.

Then she came to this community on the North Shore of Long Then she came to this community on the North Shore of Long Island, where houses cost $1 million and the schools are known for producing Ivy League-bound graduates.

"Great Neck is where we chose," she said in halting English, which she works to improve in conversation classes two or three times a week at the Adult Education Center here. "Here are many Asians. And here my children have more ... more ... chance to live normal."

The chance to live normal is a relative value and might mean many different things to different people. But among a growing group of monied Chinese and South Korean newcomers arriving in this community of 40,000 in Nassau County, there is a strong feeling of what it means: the chance to spare their children the grinding competition and unrelieved pressure of scholastic life in their homelands.

[snip]

"Too much pressure, the children," said Fu Hong, 34, whose 5-year-old son was born in Shanghai just before she and her husband, a manufacturer's representative with interests in several factories, moved to a house in Great Neck. Their daughter was born here in 2002. "A lot of pressure. Here, he has fun. Skate. Swim. Aikido."

Just wait 'til these folks find out that in Great Neck skating, swimming, and aikido are not fun.

In Great Neck skating, swimming, and aikido are mandatory activities for entrance into Ivy League universities.








slave parents in Singapore



-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Feb 2006

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Title:	Asians in Great Neck
TopicType:	WebLog
SubjectArea:	CompareAndContrastPosts
LogDate:	200602211547