Revisiting the occupational aspirations and destinations of Anglo-Australian and Chinese-Australian high school students

Abstract

Evidence from Australia lends support to the “Asian high achieving syndrome” in Chinese-Australian students and “self-deprivation syndrome” in Anglo-Australian students. Applying ethnographic case studies approach for doctoral thesis the author collected data on a longitudinal basis from homes and school of these students. All of these students attended the same school located in a predominantly middle class suburb of Perth Metropolitan area in Western Australia. Chinese-Australian families had settled in Perth from Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong, whereas Anglo-Australian families had been residing in Perth for three generations. Impetus to revisit these students (now young adults with their own families) 10 years later came from an urge to test the validity of the prediction the author had made in the concluding chapter of his doctoral thesis. The author had claimed that “if Anglo-Australian parents keep on dwelling in the era of 1950s and 1960s and do not change their laid-back attitude about education, their children could eventually be under-privileged in their own country”. Ten years later, the author undertook a follow-up study on these young adults from six of the eight original families in order to find out their occupational destinations and future aspirations. Data for the follow-up study were collected from these young adults and their parents. These research cases were interviewed twice, each time approximately for two hours and their parents were interviewed once for two to three hours. The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of the follow-up study which reveals a remarkable relationship between the attitude towards schooling and academic performance with their subsequent occupational destination.

Keywords::

• accommodation without assimilation
• Confucian heritage cultures
• self-deprivation syndrome
• shirk-work ethic
• Asian high achieving syndrome

Notes

^1. Lee Kuan Kok, not included in this study, was bullied in primary as well as in high school. He ended up getting psychiatric treatment. The heart-broken experiences of the family are discussed elsewhere (Malik, 2000).