I lived in China, and they'll tell you why they couldn''t field a winning Olympic team in any sort of real sport for decades. (It's a bit different now, because they figured out the "study" stuff is kinda unrewarding as the country developed).

They would say, the West (more so in the past) allows more freedom for children to discover their aptitudes or interests and develop on those, you get much better outcomes across the whole spectrum: art, music, academic, athletic, social, ect... And that had historically been a huge win for us.

Asian culture, forces kids into achieving academic outcomes, and sure, that sounds good on paper, but they don't discover or cultivate their own interests. This not only creates unfilled needs in society, but it even produces mediocrity in the academic arena. Because when society selects "the best" academically, it's just jam packed with dismal uninterested people who grinded (or cheated), all on the same path, for the same outcome, and the signals that identify the true raw aptitude/talent/passion gets destroyed.

I'd argue brining the Asian influence in over the last 40 years, has fucked shit up, because again, Western society's classifiers can't find the genuinely interested academic kids among the seas of all these "results at all costs" grinders who've jammed up the paths to colleges and the job market... Which has also produced this hated mediocre elite that runs shit like a bunch of retards.

Trying to be more "Asian" legit, has been a cultural setback.... Let the fuggin' kids who are interested in studying, study. Let the kids who aren't, find out what they're good at, and do that shit to the best of their ability... It's like a full spectrum win.

But, don't let these fuckers tell you our culture is backwards. The results speak for themselves.