> It's a combined mix of culture and parenting within that culture.

The problem is, that culture (and other more or less closely related Asian cultures) also produces an awful lot of psychologically awfully damaged adults - and many Asian countries are now facing the consequences of that, with hikikomori, women not finding suitable partners, rock bottom fertility rates and collapsing demographics.

And on top of that, you may get really obedient children, excelling at following what they know to do... but creativity? Thinking outside the box? Going against the script? Thrown into unfamiliar situations? Whoops.

It's getting better, slowly, no doubt, and we're seeing the results, but I'm not certain that progress comes fast enough to save some of the societies facing the demographic bomb the hardest (especially Japan, but China is also heading for serious issues). With China especially, it may also get interesting politically once a generation grows to adulthood that can see through the CCP propaganda.

> Perhaps if the people so invested in trying to improve the education of children were, themselves, having more kids - we might not have such a problem.

That assumes we have people actually interested in furthering the education of our children, and that is something I heavily doubt.

All we have here in the Western world is the contrary: we got austerity / trickle down finance ideologists that see education in general as a field ripe for savings on one side, then we got history revisionists actively trying to erase what children get taught about our past, and if all of that weren't bad enough we got the religious extremists trying to sell the gullible public that if you ban stuff like LGBT from even being mentioned in school books, children wouldn't turn out gay or trans - which is obviously bonkers.

> "And on top of that, you may get really obedient children, excelling at following what they know to do... but creativity? Thinking outside the box? Going against the script? Thrown into unfamiliar situations? Whoops."

Usual Western racism, reassuring themselves they're better than those "uncreative" Asians, even as Asia continues to eat away at the West's technology lead in a variety of sectors.

One wonders if the Europeans ever told themselves that the backwards folk of the colonies could never catch up to the technological or scientific achievements of the continent's great centers of learning and industry.