The importance of work

Joanne Jacobs has a post about the achievement gap in education. This relates to something which has been on my mind the last week. Joanne links to an article by Dan Seligman in Forbes which says:

"... the prime objective of educational policy is to eliminate the "achievement gap"--the gap between what's learned in school by disadvantaged kids and what's learned by middle- and upper-class kids."

Dan says this can not be done:

"It is not possible to close the achievement gap. The mission statement is a summons to a fool's errand. The reason that the gap will never be eliminated is that intelligence rises with socioeconomic status."

Dan says that the gap is due to the socioeconomic status of poor families which determines their cognitive ability, and thus the achievement gap. And he closes with:

"Absolutely nothing has happened to suggest that the federal government will succeed in this effort ..."

Joanne responds with:

"I suspect intelligence accounts for a small percentage of the difference in achievement. After all, Asian-Americans of all socioeconomic groups have closed the gap and become high achievers. It's not IQ. It's culture."

Several of the comments on Joanne's blog make the point that in general, Asian students work much harder than American students.


A couple years after my wife and I got married we spent did some research into investing, trying to improve our financial education. One point has stuck with me over the years. When trying to build a nest egg there are two very important factors. The first is related to the size of how much is invested. Someone who puts aside 10% of their income will, all other things being equal, have a better end result than someone who only saves 5%. But the second important factor is the growth rate of the investments. If the person saving the 10% puts all of his money in the bank and gets a low rate of return, after 40 years he won't have that much more money. In contrast if the person who saves 5% is wise and looks for investments with growth potential, like stocks, then over time he will get several times the return on his money, and by 40 years later will have a much bigger nest eggs, several times bigger.

Education and parenting are similar to this. We all start with a certain basic investment, our gifts and talents. Unfortunately we can't change this. But what happens with them over time is a direct result of the effort and work we put in to develop our initial abilities. If we can help our children learn the principal of work, and help them to get on a higher growth rate, then as adults they'll be able to achieve much more than if they merely coasted through school. Many Asian families understand this principal and have their children work hard.