Education: Challenges & Perspectives – Greetings

Betty Lee Sung:

Good Morning, thank you all for coming.  As Chair of the Asian American / Asian Research Institute, I welcome you one and all to the Asian American Asian Research Institute Conference on Education: Challenges and Perspectives. I am Professor Emeritus, Betty Lee Sung, formally on faculty and Chair of the Department of Asian Studies at the City College of New York.

First let me give you a little background about the institute. The Institute was founded – which I would refer to as AAARID because it’s something shorter to pronounce – we came into existence only a year and a half ago, only two months after 9/11, although Asian American faculty at the City University had clamored for many years.  But you can imagine what happened to our promised funding from the university right after 9/11.  In spite of this, due to the unswerving dedication of our Executive Director Dr. Thomas Tam—this tall fellow, where is he? – we have chalked up a very impressive record of accomplishments.

The first thing we did was we galvanized the academic community, the Asian American community and the government to come together and address the question of rebuilding Chinatown, a community that has been severely impacted by 9/11.  Our conference was held in this very building on May 10, 2002.  Over 300 of conferees attended, the speakers and panelist were able to highlight the economic and social impact inflicted upon Chinatown and to recommend solutions.  It was an impressive meeting of the minds, proceedings of the conference were recorded and disseminated.

The mission of AAARID was to serve as a university-wide scholarly research and resource center that focuses on the policies and issues that affect Asians and Asian Americans.  As an institute of the City University of New York, we can tap into the expertise of the faculty in Asian and Asian American studies of the 20 campuses of the university system.  Each year, over 24,000 Asian American students are enrolled in the City University colleges.

In addition to our very successful conference, Dr. Tam has provided a forum for scholars and community leaders to address issues of Asian and/or Asian American concerns.  A series of lectures has been given, even though you might not be able to attend the lectures in person, you can view the lectures at leisure on your home computer by a process called “web casting.”  Dr. Tam has been in full use of the modern technology by disseminating our activities on our website at www.aaari.info.  So if you want to access any lecture, you can log on.  This year, AAARID has awarded five research grants to our faculty, and they will be making presentations of their research at this conference.

Our theme for this conference is Asian American Education: Challenges and Perspectives.  We are honored today to have some ranking officials of the New York City Department of Education speaking to us, and please stay for these lectures because they are very informative.  One will be Vice Chancellor of Education Dr. Dianne Lam, and Superintendent of Programs and School Improvement Ronald Woo, Commissioner Betty Wu is going to represent Mayor Bloomberg.  And among our speakers will be Dr. Nicholas Michelli, Dean of Education at City University of New York, Vice Chancellor Otis Hill, Vice President of Queens College Joseph Scelsa, the Honorable John Liu, our city councilman, the honorable Judge Doris Ling-Cohan, Dean of Students Fran Shee of the Community College Law School, and Dean Erwin Wong from Borough of Manhattan Community College.

I can’t name all the distinguished faculty and speakers who are invited to participate in this conference, because it will take too long.  We are thankful that they are here today.  I was speaking to Superintendent Ron Woo a few days ago, and he tantalizingly dropped a few bomb shells about what’s happening with Asian American students in the New York City public schools. I pressed him to tell me more, but he said: “I’ll save that for my remarks at the conference.”  So, with the range of expertise, I am sure this conference will bring out a great deal about the state of education for Asian Americans that will give us much room for thought.

And now let me present my co-presider Dr. David Cheng, Director of the Counseling Center at Baruch College.

David Cheng:

I am David Cheng.  Welcome to Baruch again.  Let me say that it seems like a déjà vu to me.  It seems like only yesterday that I was standing right here, and around this time, 8:45, 9 o’clock, welcoming you to Baruch for the first AAARI conference.  So, here I am again, welcoming you to the second annual AAARI conference.  Somebody asked: “Is this going to be a tradition, will we have more?”  I think we will have to talk to Tom about that.  In any case, although it seems like yesterday we were here, but so much has happened in the past year, that I think the conference today is very timely.

As an Asian, or Asian American, I really think that we have a lot of challenges nowadays.  For instance, I think just coming here, being an Asian, you can probably get a seat on the train very quickly, as long as you start to cough or sneeze.  I think many of you have a lot of issues and questions and think that you are interested about the community and about Asian, Asian American research, hopefully they will be addressed today.  And may I remind you that this afternoon will be a chance for you to speak out.  As Dr. Sung has said, in the morning you will be listening to all the important people talk, but in the afternoon, perhaps, there will be an opportunity for dialogs and you will be in smaller groups and ask some questions.  Perhaps you will be able to have dialogs with some other people who share the same interests about particular issues that you are interested in today.

Once again, I have the opportunity of introducing our President to you, President Ned Regan, whom really needs no introduction.  He was very well known and well respected long before he became the President of Baruch College.  He was the New York State Controller for 14 years, and we all knew a lot about him.  In the past year that he has been here, he has done so much for Baruch College that we are all proud and respectful and glad to have him here again today to be our first speaker.  Present Ned Regan…

Ned Regan:

Thank you very much.  I first would like to say thank you all for coming to this marvelous building.  I am sure everybody knows, this is a high tech building, but the only way to keeps the doors open is a low tech way – we have to put plastic waste baskets so that you can walk in.  But if you ignore a few of these things, this is a marvelous building.  We hope you will walk around and take a peek at it, and just imagine what it does for teaching and learning, because it does allow for spontaneous interactions between students and students, faculty and faculty, and importantly, faculty and students.  Which is the important thing, it allows for that and encourages interaction.  You picked up that tradition of college campus in an urban setting.

My only concluding remark other than to welcome you is to pick up on something David just said and Betty said earlier.  There are 24,000 Asian students, and obviously you  gather my background is public.  There are 24,000 Asian students, all of who live in somebody’s New York State Assembly district, somebody’s New York Senate district, and somebody’s City Council district.  We all know John Liu, but other than that…  And that is power, that’s power.

The last thing I did before I got here, was to read the Assembly and Senate bill that’s on the New York State Assembly computer site.  And CUNY takes it in the jar again.  That means everybody in this room, as of how the bill stands now.  The Governor threatens to veto it, but there is nothing in there.  They didn’t increase our revenues.  As a matter of fact, if you read it carefully, they kind of decreased our revenues, which is kind of consistent with where the Governor’s program is, which is to not increase taxes.  So while they are increasing taxes at the Assembly and Senate, CUNY is not benefiting, in fact it is just the reverse.

So, I am for a very active, participatory Asian American community.  Lord knows we certainly have that to some extent, not enough for as far as I am concerned, but to some extent at Baruch, with hundreds of Asian Americans here, and then of course enormous number coming from overseas.  So we have a very strong community as David and others know.  But for the Asian Americans, if we want to create superb educational experience for our students, and our colleagues, and our friends and our community, there are a lot of ways in going about it.  You can get great professors, you can get a great building like this where there is interaction occurs, and you can get funded.  You get funded by elected officials, and elected officials will pay attentions if voters who live in their district – voters, not just people – writing them a little post card and simply say: “Fund CUNY the proper way”, signed “the voter”, or something similar.

So, there is political power in this room, there is political power in the five boroughs, there is political power if you want to use it.  And don’t think that an institute that is designed around educational goals, that being concerned about how you fund educational goals is something beneath us.  It isn’t; it’s how we get here.  You all got to help me and help Jim participate in this.  This is what is called democracy, everybody is supposed to participate.  We’d like to see the real muscle that exists in the Asian American community – to come to work to help who?  The very people that all in this room desire to help.  I thank you for coming here, please enjoy this great building, your taxes paid for it.  Alright.  Your taxes that you paid are allocated by the elected officials that you elect, and they ought to spend it the way you want it spent.  Thank you very much.

Betty Lee Sung:

Thank you, President Regan.  I think of all you are familiar, whether you knew it or not, he signed our paychecks, if you are with any city or state government official here.  Now we have another president.   AAARI is housed under Queens College.  President James Muysken is the president of Queens College.  I am going to keep my introduction remarks very short in keeping with our schedule.  I know all of our speakers have very , very impressive credentials, very impressive records and achievements.  But I am going to keep the introductory remarks very short.

We would like to present President Muysken, president of Queen College.  He was formerly CEO and Dean of Faculty of the [Inaudible] University Center in the University System of Georgia.  He is a philosopher and has special expertise in bioethics and the philosophy of religion.  He has more than 25 years of administrative experience.  We are very honored that President Muysken has come to address us.  President Muysken…

James Muysken:

Thank you very much.  It’s certainly a pleasure to be here, and to be at this college.  It is great to follow President Ned Regan.  He said what I wanted to say, and he said it very eloquently.  We have opportunities here and to hear it from someone who’s been a public official.  So I want to say just a little more about that, but first just to say it really is a pleasure to be here.  I want to recognize one person who is in the audience, one of our Board of Trustees member Wellington Chan.  I have been seeing him since a few hours ago last night.  I am always gratified, I’ve been now in the university for 8 months after some years here years ago, the kind of support we get from the trustees.  I am particular, from you Wellington, and I appreciate you being here today and where you were last night, I appreciate all that you are doing for us in this tough year.

As you know, the institute is located here in Manhattan, but is affiliated with Queens College.  And we are very, very proud of that, and happy that that’s the case.  Queens College, as many of you all know, is located in Flushing, and that is the most vibrant Asian American community in the United States.  I think our councilman will agree with that.  So, it’s fitting, that this institute is associated with the College.  Our campus has students from nearly every country from Asia, and so we always sought to highlight the issues of importance to the Asian community.  Therefore, very much as President Regan said, we are eager to see the political clout of the community being enhanced, as well as what we are trying to do to raise the issues that the Research Institute deals.  We have many, many faculty on our own campus who we want more and more to be involved in activities of the Institute.  Thomas Tam who’s doing a wonderful job with the center, and I have had a number of conversations where we are very hopeful that we are going to be able to do a lot with tapping the resources that we have.  So, in fact, the sum of the whole is greater than the parts.

As a new institute, only a year and a half old, you have certainly done remarkable things.  And I comment you for that.  Most notably the conference, “Healing and Rebuilding New York after 9/11.”  You may know that I was not here at the time when the conference took place, but I read through the published proceedings.  They are packed with wonderful analysis of problems that Asian Americans faced before and after the destruction of the Twin Towers.  I must say that although reading the proceedings is very helpful in terms what one learns, it is also a bit discouraging.  Because as you well know, and here I am speaking to a choir, many of the problems that were brought on by 9/11 have yet to be addressed by local and by the federal governments.  Therefore, the work of this group and the work of the entire community clearly is there for us.  We must continue to raise the visibility of the Asian American community.  I continue to demand that the voice is heard and that these problems are addressed.  And that’s what I, President of Queens College, want to insist in, both with the many initiatives on our own campus in Queens, and with the Institute here in Manhattan.

So today’s conference is valuable in that respect, because I think it tells people that Asians are now a permanent part of the social and political landscape of New York.  I see from the program that you will be addressing many of the problems that we at Queens College also are wrestling with everyday.  Such as how to improve teaching of English to new immigrants?  What forms of counseling would be the best and most effective for Asian students?  So, what I say in addition to what my colleague, President of Baruch said about the importance of political involvement, is that we must do much more within our campuses to talk about those questions and be sure we address the unique issues that face the community.   So collaboration is what we need, I think we are well on our way.  I want today to make it clear to all of you that I will do everything in my power as President to make sure that collaboration strengthens.  And I am very proud to be here today.  I think this is an exciting conference.  The list of speakers is truly impressive.  So I congratulate all of you who put this together, and thank you for having me here today.

Betty Lee Sung:

Thank you very much, President Muysken.  And now our second speaker is John Liu, I don’t need any introduction to John Liu, his name has already been mentioned.  The subway fare and the bus fare is going to increase tomorrow or the next day… John Liu has been working very hard to get the fare hike reversed, and he is the one who started the whole conversation going about the extra money of the MTA budget.  We are all very proud of John Liu, he is the first Asian American city councilman elected to that office.  He is Chair of the Transportation Committee as I mentioned.  A member of the Committee on Education—which is the topic that we are dealing with, Consumer Affairs, Oversight and Investigation, and the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Project.  The Honorable Liu has served as President of North Flushing Civics Association, he’s a member of Queens Community Board 7, he is Vice President of Queens Civic Congress.  And he’s also served as Vice President of the New Century Democratic Association.  Please welcome the Honorable John Liu.

John Liu:

Thank you very much Professor Sung for a very generous introduction and comments.  I want to thank you and Professor Cheng for once again presiding over this very prestigious conference that I know Dr. Thomas Tam has put a great deal of work into.  Just a quick note before we talk about education.  Since you mentioned the subway system, we are doing whatever we can to restore accountability to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which actually bills itself to be the largest transportation agency in this hemisphere.  Millions of New Yorkers clearly rely on the services that the MTA provides, most basically to get to and from work or to and from school.  And it is incumbent upon them to do the right thing, and in this case to simply restore public confidence in what they are doing.

It turns out that Comptroller Hevesi, the state comptroller, put out a very detailed report on how this agency is not accountable, and in fact has deceived the public.  Actually Comptroller Hevesi testified at my hearing yesterday, and he gave a great deal of credit to his staff members who actually were discovered by former Comptroller Ned Regan a while back, two comptrollers ago.  And of course, Ned Regan gave us some opening remarks just before.  So I want to thank him for finding the talent a number of years ago to make sure that we are now able to figure out what is going on at the MTA.

I am very proud to be here once again, to talk about issues that are very, very critical for the Asian American community and for New York City as a whole.  I think what we try to do at this institute and this institute has grown in size and magnitude and in the realm of issues that it covers.  What we try to do is to make sure that most of the issues of the times are well covered.  Last year it was in the aftermath of September 11th.  While I wasn’t able to stay the entire conference last year, I read through most of the transcripts.  It was amazing how much material that was covered.  And I am have every confidence that today’s conference, just flipping through the program and taking a look at all the different people who will be giving us their comments and sharing with us their insights, that this is going to be a groundbreaking conference of large proportions.

I want to thank this institute and I know Jim Muyskens who is the president of what I consider my college, Queens College in Flushing, is very supportive of this.  There are a number of educational issues that really are going to be critical in the next month, as the state budget gets resolved, if it may be resolved that quickly.  I know that the state legislature has been meeting nearly nonstop trying to figure out a budget that will be workable for the residents of the State of New York, and that may or may not be with the blessing of our Governor.  The Governor has clearly launched an all-out assault against public education in this state, and much of that assault is directed straight at the City of New York, with his proposals to cut a vast amount of funding for our public institutions of higher education, as well as public schools from secondary schools down to pre-kindergarten.

The consequences of his cuts are going to be the death of the future of so many of our young people, young people ranging from 4 to 24 and beyond that.  Because I think if the Governor’s cuts go through, the tuition increases for CUNY and SUNY students are going to be astronomical.  I don’t think that the Governor understands that a thousand dollars or twelve hundred dollars or maybe fifteen hundred dollars a year is a tremendous burden for many of the students who rely on CUNY institutions and for, that matter, SUNY institutions as well.

Our President Muyskens and our other college presidents in Queens—[Edwardo Martee], [Gail Mellows] and [Russ Hustler] from York College, we had a meeting several weeks ago, talking about how the cuts the Governor is proposing has a very leveraged effect on the CUNY system.  Not only will the students of CUNY have to pay much, much more for their tuition, but that will also force the colleges, even with those tuition levels, to cut back on many of their vital services, instructional and otherwise, that students currently enjoy.

I know that the State Legislature is restoring some of that money to our CUNY and SUNY system schools, but nonetheless, it’s clearly not enough.  And of course CUNY is so relevant to Asian Americans because as many new immigrants come to New York, CUNY often has been the place they can go to for a quality education.  CUNY has always had a tradition of being the institution that educated people of color, minority communities, and clearly we have a very, very large Asian American population in the CUNY system.  So, we really have to put the pressure on the Governor to understand the values and the contributions that CUNY provides to the State, to the City, and most importantly, to the community that we all belong to, the Asian American community and the immigrant community in general in New York City.  The immigrant community is what keeps, and what has kept, New York City for centuries the leading city in this nation and the leading city in the world.

As far as the cuts to public education, a billion and a half dollars that the Governor proposed in cuts to public schools all throughout the state, a little more than half of that affecting New York City public schools directly.  The elimination of pre-kindergarten, the elimination of class size reduction programs… all of those cuts are going to be so detrimental to the kids at the most, at the earliest ages, where we are trying to set their educational foundation off on a very, very solid level, and these cuts are simply going to take away from our ability to do so.

I think everyone of us here, by being at this conference and talking about these issues, we will all have an impact.  And it is really important to send a message to the Governor that these types of cuts will ultimately result in higher costs for the State and for the City.  These cuts in public schools for New York City are going to really decimate the quality of education for our youngsters.  The Asian American population is the fastest rising group of kids that are in our public schools, especially at the early childhood level.

I have a distinct personal interest in early childhood education.  First of all, I am proud to be a product of the New York City public schools, from kindergarten to twelfth grade, and then I did go on to public college in New York.  But now my own son, who is two and a half years old, he’s a year and a half away from pre-K.  And now every night I go home and Jenny, my wife, asks me: “Have you put the money back in pre-K yet?” So I did tell her that I was coming to this conference, and we would talk about how we can get the funding back for this very important program, so that all the kids in New York City and New York State can start off their school on the right footing.  And also, to make my wife happy.  Thank you very much for having me this morning.

Betty Lee Sung:

Thank you Councilman John Liu.  Aren’t we all proud of him?  Not only does he want us to maintain the subway, but he is also fighting equally strongly to support our school system and our school budget.  He is our first Asian American representative in city government, and I am so glad that he has been such a strong voice.  Thank you again, Congressman… um, City Councilman John Liu.

Our next speaker is Professor Rishi Raj, he is president of the Society of Indian Academics in America.  Again I am going to abbreviate his long introductory and his background.  He is a graduate from three continents.  He received his undergraduate degree at the Punjab University of India, he went to Russia for his MS degree, and then he came to the United State for his doctorate at Penn State University.  He’s been Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and was Associate Dean of Engineering at the City College of New York. He is also the founding president of the Society of Indian Academics in America.  Professor Raj…

Rishi Raj:

Thank you Betty.  I have a double role to play today, first I am a professor at City College of New York, and I am part of the system.  Secondly, I connect 16,000 professors of Indian origin throughout the United States of America.  I am very proud to be part of this intellectual group today.  The education concept is not new to the Asian people; the only thing that has happened to Asians in the U.S.A. is that our environment has changed.  In ancient times, some of the first universities in the world were founded and established in Asia only.  And the concept was slightly different than what we have today.

The earlier concept of education was focused on creating a total person with a balanced mind, and well rounded in knowledge. That involved 14 knowledges, which included knowledge about seven intelligences, six philosophies of the universe, and the knowledge of God and Soul.  These 14 knowledges were actually subdivisions of only two knowledge.  One is what we call inner knowledge, which the present day word call as biology, biomedical engineering, and spiritual knowledge. The other is called outer knowledge. The outer knowledge is related to time and space and materialistic entities.  We were not aware that we were dealing with inner knowledge, which with a scaling like 10 to the power minus 56. Presently we are only talking about nanotechnology, which is only 10 to the power minus 9.  So you can figure out how the depth of knowledge existed, and how the interpretation of this universe was taking place during those times.

As early as 3,000 years B.C., a learned scholar ‘Vashist’ in India said: “Time and space do not exist, they are only perceptions of thought.”  This concept has been proven only in the last century by Einstein, that at the speed of light, there is no distance between space and time.  So you can see that this whole inner knowledge concept and outer knowledge concept existed much earlier.  Emphasis was mostly hard on the inner knowledge because the ancients and the scholars believed that the inner knowledge actually lead to the more accurate knowledge of the outer world.  Similarly, a Chinese philosopher Lao Tze said: “About the Ultimate Truth, it cannot be said or written, but it can only be acquired.”  And what is that ultimate truth?  It is really acquiring the knowledge for which we come to the universities.

Further, the concept was for teachers.  Teachers were not just to teach, teachers were to make the pupils in possession of themselves.  That was the main idea.  That was the ancient concept which again, here we go to the classroom, teach the students, give exams, and then we go home.  The ancient scriptures also pointed out that it is only education that can lead you from darkness to light, from unreal to real, and make you feel timeless, or get you beyond the bounds of time.

But how to go about this?  That is the question.  And it is certain, in practically every literature, that especially for students now, that it is the sacrifice that you make.  That is the key element in acquiring the knowledge.  I have recently done some research in this area, and I collected 29 other assisting virtues which help in acquiring knowledge of what we call education.  For example, absence of [inaudible], jealously, deceit, [inaudible], nonviolence, dedication, service, self control or discipline, duty, equal-mindedness, forgiveness, a respect to the teacher, to the parent, and so and so forth.  It is also said that the power of the knowledge that you acquire can accomplish anything, it has no weight, no baggage to carry, it will never be lost no matter wherever you go or live.  The right student therefore should be sophisticated enough to distinguish between, an action in inaction and an inaction in action, this is that, and that is this, as Zen theory said.

I am very pleased to know the topics you have chosen for today’s conference and discussions.  Incorporating the strengths and heritage we have acquired from our ancestors, and our wise men free of cost, we should strive to incorporate them in this land in our current education system.  This is the challenge which I presented to you at this conference.  Once again, I am very proud to be part of this group, and good luck in the conference.

Betty Lee Sung:

Thank you very much Professor Raj.  We are going to change the order of the speakers a little bit, because Deputy Chancellor Diana Lam has to leave in a few minutes.  I would like the introduce our Deputy Chancellor Diana Lam.  She is the Deputy Chancellor I think to Joe Klein, the second ranking person in the Department of Education.  I was told also that, I think John Liu noticed the lights in the front here.  The yellow light is a warning, the red light means you time is up, because we would like to keep our schedule.  Without further a due, let me introduce Deputy Chancellor Diana Lam.

Diana Lam:

Thank you, and good morning everybody.  Thank you for changing the schedule.  I am actually involved in a two-day retreat in the IBM Center… so that I can address all of you here this morning.  Last week, a film about violent Asian American teenagers opened to considerable attention.  I have not seen Better Luck Tomorrow, but the tag line in its advertisements intrigues me: “Never underestimate an overachiever.”  The publicity campaign does not actually show the teens overachieving, or even in school; it takes on faith that millions of potential moviegoers already connect Asian students with academic success.  How odd, then, that the four words, “Never underestimate an overachiever” warn us not to sell short the depth and complexity of these teens’ lives, even while that loaded term “overachiever” plays up sweeping generalizations.

In some ways, many students of Asian ancestry really do surpass academic expectations.  Though many are challenged by poverty and the disruption of recent immigration, Asian students have some of the highest reading scores on New York City’s standardized tests, and math their proficiency rates stand nearly than five times higher than those of other students of color.  Though these scores are relatively high, the majority of Asian students have yet to meet our city’s rigorous proficiency benchmarks.   Even students who soar academically continue struggle in other ways.  The August, 2000 Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal finds that Asian American teens exhibit more depression and withdrawn behavior than do their White peers.  Another study shows nearly two-thirds of Korean, Vietnamese, and Hmong students report that non-Asian students are “mean” to them.

We have no choice but to look closely at the problems facing students of Asian heritage, but the very act of doing so gets at one of the oddities of school in America.  The ethnic diversity of Asia is so incredible that a country as small as Laos is home to over eighty languages and dialects.  However, as soon new immigrants step off the plane at Kennedy Airport and go to register their children for school, much of their subtle ethnic differences meld into just one cultural designation: Asian.  Sixty years ago, most people in Korea and Japan could never have imagined that in America their grandchildren would unite based on their cultural similarity.  We see what we hold in common, even as we hold onto the range of our differences, all the way from Assamese to Zhuang.  Still, to most of the nation in which we live, we are monolithic.

New York City, of course, could never be so simple.  Researcher Sau-Fong Siu notes that students whose parents are professionals from Hong Kong and students whose parents were laborers in the Chinese countryside are both Chinese, but their school experiences will be quite different.  Obviously, second-generation kindergartner whose family owns its house in Bayside and a kindergartner who just moved from Guangzhou to Grand Street share Chinese heritage, but probably start school with very different needs and expectations.  Given the enormous variety of ethnic, class, and school experience here, there is no one way for New York City schools to address all Asian students’ strengths and struggles.  Instead, our curricular reforms aspire to a kind of diverse sameness in teaching.

Some people have interpreted our citywide restructuring and common curriculum as attempts to concentrate power, to make it easier for a small number of people to dictate orders.  Actually, our purpose is to facilitate listening.  Our new, common curriculum will bring cohesiveness to all our schools so that our teachers and instructional leaders can share a professional language.  The citywide conversations that follow can develop the essential values and skills that foster innovation.  Within the classroom, we will have a common framework and teaching structures, but here again, we want greater structural similarity to support flexibility and adaptation.

Teaching without identifying individual students’ specific strengths and needs is like running an emergency room by handing antibiotics to every patient who walks through the door.   Imagine the man who comes in complaining of chest pains, the girl whose ankle turned purple after she tripped on the sidewalk, and the woman with fainting spells all leaving with the same prescription for two weeks of penicillin.  For far too long, many schools in this country have failed to see the individuality of Asian students.  Just as dangerous notions about so-called model minorities can be used to excuse inadequate social and government support for Asians Americans, unfounded assumptions about model students keep Asians from getting all the attention they deserve.  A study by the Educational Testing Service shows enormous variation in Asian American student performance, even within the same ethnic group.  Clearly, teachers, like doctors, must analyze each case separately.

One of the major emphases of our ambitious professional development efforts is training teachers to observe students individually and in small groups.  We want them to look for patterns – what each student is doing well, and what each student needs next.  Teachers must adapt and individualize instruction.  Again, it makes no sense to think everyone who comes to a hospital needs antibiotics, and it makes no sense to observe that a student is struggling if you do not also observe why.  How can you build on what a student already knows about geometry to give him strategies to call on when his problem-solving bogs down?  How can you look at a student’s accomplishments as a reader to figure out what she – not just the class as a whole – should learn tomorrow?

Teachers’ daily, close work with individuals and small groups also helps them know students better and listen for the best ways to address individual differences that arise from cultural dimensions.  Consider the case of Hoang Vihn, an eighteen year-old Vietnamese immigrant used as a case study in Sonia Nieto’s important book, Affirming Diversity.  A central educational belief in this country is that teachers must praise student accomplishment to build motivation.  Vihn finds such praise hollow and frustrating.  He says:

If my English is not so good, [the teacher] has to say, “Your English is not good.  So you have to go home and study.”  And she tells me what to study and how to study to get better.  But some Americans, you know, they don’t understand about myself.  So they just say, “Oh!  You’re doing a good job!  You’re doing great!  Everything is great!”  Teachers talk like that, but my culture is different…. They say, “You have to do better.”

Realistically, we could not expect Vihn’s teacher to begin the year knowing he equates being praised with being patronized.  And if his teacher simply assumed many Vietnamese students share Vihn’s self-deprecating intensity, she would misunderstand Vihn’s friend Duy, whom Vihn says is smart and of “good character,” but also “very lazy” and more interested in the mall than school.  And since Vihn absorbed his family’s lessons about humility and self-reliance, we cannot expect him to tell his teacher directly that her compliments seem empty.

What we can expect of Vihn’s teacher is that she begins to observe Vihn’s reaction to her praise, and to see what might affect him more.  Such reactive teaching is possible even in New York City, where we have reduced average class size to less than twenty-five students in grades four to nine, but where some classrooms still hold as many as thirty-two students.  When teachers spend less time at the front of the room and devote more time to sitting alongside students to observe and listen to them as they work, students do not have to hunt teachers down after school or during lunch to get individualized support.  In a sense, that can help students like Vihn, whose brave independence makes him work incredibly hard, but who gets less out of school because, as he says, “I don’t want [teachers] to spend time about myself, to help me.”

For teachers, the residue of knowing students’ academic strengths and needs is knowing their strengths and needs as people.  Given the phenomenal cultural diversity in New York City classrooms, many teachers will never become experts in traditional Vietnamese values around education, or in how students like Vihn and his friend Duy reflect and reject them.  But we can help teachers gain increasing expertise in Vihn and Duy as individuals.  We can help teachers understand that Vihn isn’t just making coy conversation when he insists his English is not as good as they say; he’s providing valuable information about his concerns as a learner, and he will not learn as much until he trusts his teachers take those concerns seriously.

I just mentioned traditional educational values.  Here again, our teachers have to see individuality, even as they look for broad understandings about culture.  Of course family and culture matter a great deal in educating students of Asian descent; I can’t think of anyone who has grown up without some familial and cultural influence.  But if we take too seriously what we often hear about how all Asian families demand good grades and quiet obedience from their children in school, then we begin to reduce expectations.  Why take that extra effort to make sure that Indian student in Jackson Heights deeply understands a new algebra concept if we’re sure she’ll make that extra effort herself when she goes home?  Why call to get insights from that Korean mother in Flushing about her son’s struggles as a writer if we’re sure she’ll just defer silently to our authority?

As educators, we must give Asian American students real opportunities to learn and to define themselves.  I do not mean to belabor the marketing pitch for Better Luck Tomorrow, but it encapsulates so much of how this nation’s wider culture sees Asians youngsters, a view that affects the climate in which they learn and grow.  The film’s website claims, “Everyone knows someone like Ben – the perfect Asian American high school teen.”  I’m sure many of you can imagine how constricting it must be to be “perfect.”  And if you work so hard to uphold that impossible reputation for flawlessness, imagine how disheartening it must be to realize that perfection isn’t special, that everyone knows someone just like you.  Literally dozens of movie reviewers claim this film ‘busts,’ ‘shatters,’ ‘explodes,’ and ‘blows the lid’ off of stereotypes.  It’s just a shame that it takes a violent crime spree to make people realize that Asian students are more than the sum of their SAT scores.

I said earlier that carefully assessing and listening to individuals gives educators so rich information about how to teach.  Vihn agonizes over his inability to express himself fully in English, but his words are absolutely clear when he says that teachers

have to know about our culture.  And they have to help people learn whatever they want….  I want to learn something good from my culture and something good from American culture.  And I want to take both cultures and select something good.

Helping students “learn whatever they want” does not mean dropping standards.  Rather, it means rigorously working with students to meet them wherever they are and pull them up to standards.  They need access to a world of options.  When we give that third grader in Chinatown such a strong foundation in literacy and mathematics that she can do anything her future employers ask, we fulfill our best hopes for equity.  If we inspire such ravenous reading that that seventh grader in the Bronx grows up to investigate every initiative on the ballot, we fulfill our best hopes for democracy.   If we ignite in that tenth grader in Sunset Park a lifelong curiosity of about the history, science, and art of the world around him, we fulfill our best hopes for joy.  Until all Asian students achieve the impressive outcomes many already have, we cannot claim success.

Vihn is very dedicated to traditional notions of helping others, but he talks of culture as a matter of individuality.  Numbering more than 135,000, the population Asian students in New York City schools is big enough to be the largest city in nine different states.  Each of these students is a little different.  There exists no single method to address the differences between their ethnicities and home life.  There exists only the chance to know them separately, to teach them the academic skills they need for ever-growing independence, and to let them guide us in teaching them more.

Thank you.

Betty Sung:

We are grateful that Deputy Chancellor Diana Lam has come to speak to us in spite of her very busy schedule.  We all know that the Asian American students from the NYC public schools will feed into the colleges of the City University system, and she has brought us a great message.  She also mentioned that the movie Better Luck Tomorrow, I understand that it’s a great movie, everybody go and see it.

Our next speaker is the representative of Mayor Bloomberg, Commissioner Betty Wu.  Betty Wu is the Commissioner of the Department of Employment of New York City.  She is seeking to advance the city’s human services and economic development.  For nearly two decades, Betty Wu has a proven track record of developing solid relationships with the business community as a business development executive.  Prior to her appointment, Betty Wu held senior management positions with Mayor Bloomberg’s firm and other leading global financial institutions.  Commissioner Betty Wu…

Betty Wu:

Good morning everyone.  This is my second time attending this conference.  First of all, this morning I have very, very brief remarks.  In fact, I would like to challenge you as you convene today on the conference, to really think of education beyond the four walls of our educational system.  Think of education as a lifelong experience, think of education as the stepping stone into career development.

As we see in here today, the 10% of our New York City population are Asian American.  I came from Taiwan at age 11.  I have to thank the public school that helped me to go to college, and now in my current role.   But I also want to challenge the parents as community leaders, the parents as educational leaders, to think about how are we going to educate our next generation for the 21st century, how are we going to prepare them for the future work force, and how can we help them to migrate into the mainstream.

Let’s think of the traditional career path as doctors, as lawyers, as investment bankers.   How about let’s get involved and ask them to become a policymaker, who will work in city, state, and federal government to really shape that education policy which our voices currently avoid.  That is a big challenge isn’t it, Dr. Betty Lee Sung?  And what I would like to challenge this conference to do next year, instead of talking about education, why don’t we expand it into workforce advancement and development.  After all, this is a very important policy on the national front, what do we need to give our youths in terms of preparing them for the future of the workforce.  I am so happy that you are doing this today, keep up the good work, and I look forward to joining you next year.

Betty Lee Sung:

Thank you very much Commissioner Wu.  Maybe for our annual conference we will take up that challenge, Commissioner Wu.  It is a very excellent idea, the workforce development, and that is actually what our education should lead us to.  This concludes our first session; we will turn the next session over to Professor Ngee Pong Chang, who is going to chairing that.  Please stay with us, you will be hearing some more concrete educational issues from some of our very, very knowledgeable speakers.  So stay right here.  Thank you.

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