Thursday, September 27, 2012

"l'm an East Asian Engineering Failure"


Here's a Youtube video of a flash mob at the University of Toronto disrupting a class where freshmen engineering students are writing an exam.

What I found interesting about the video is that the majority of students in the class are East Asian. The instructor and a group of teaching assistants (usually graduate students who assist the instructor) are all East Asians.

The flash mob calls itself Skule Nite, and is:
a musical revue/comedy/sketch show run entirely by Engineering students at the University of Toronto.
From the video, the majority of the members of Skule Nite are also East Asians, including the violin players who "accompany" the rapping.

One of the phrases they rap to is: "I'm an engineering failure."

I've written about the unusually high percentage of East Asians in undergraduate engineering programs. I attribute this to an idiot savant type of learning method, where rote memorization takes precedence over creativity and imagination.

I think this video shows this insecurity of East Asians - "I'm an engineering failure" - who are well aware of their weaknesses.

Meantime, our universities are filled with such students who are highly likely to bail out, pushing out more competent white students who may not get perfect scores at college multiple choice exams, but who are the ones most likely to advance science and engineering because of their more creative, inquisitive and inventive nature.

On another note, rather than sing some popular song, or a religious classic, as these "flash mobbers" performed at an Ontario mall, Skule Nite chooses the ugly, unmelodious rap style to project its message.