“Eighty Per Cent is Not Enough for Chinese‐Australians but Seventy Per Cent is Okay for Anglo‐Australians"—Some Disturbing Consequences

Abstract

In a doctoral study undertaken at Edith Cowan University the author set out to investigate the influence of home and school environments on the academic performance and educational/occupational aspirations of high school students from eight Chinese‐Australian and Anglo‐Australian families residing in a middle class suburb of Perth metropolitan area. These students graduated from a high school where the author conducted this research as a teacher‐researcher. In this longitudinal study data were collected by employing ethnographic techniques such as participant observation, semi‐formal interviewing and document analysis. The author spent 500 hours in the homes of the participating students, observed and interviewed them at school for 2 years, and collected data on their educational performance from Year 8 to Year 12.

Pivotal to this research was the key question: Do Chinese‐Australian and Anglo‐Australian high school students perform differently? If so, how do we account for this difference? An investigation of the home experiences and attitude towards school revealed the existence of “Asian high achieving syndrome” in Chinese‐Australian students and “self‐deprivation syndrome” in Anglo‐Australian students. Nonetheless, the unexpected finding is that excessive parental pressure takes its toll on the mental health of Chinese‐Australian students and deprives them of the other opportunities that Australia offers. On the other hand, the leisure and sports oriented life style of Anglo‐Australian parents leads to low educational expectations and their children fail to reach their full potentials. To substantiate this claim the experiences of students from four families are discussed.