People are unhappy that I said the Anglos’ best quality is that they are patient plodders. I do believe this is one of the best qualities a person can have and see that the Anglos do think so too, even though they might protest aloud.
For instance, my students always easily accept that they might have all kinds of intellectual limitations. “Yes, I’m not good with writing,” “You are right, I hate reading,” “Yes, my vocabulary is limited,” “I have no analytic skills,” “I’m very bad with technology,” etc. they say very easily.
But God forbid I say something like, “It seems that you didn’t work as hard on this as you could have,” they invariably explode.
“No! I worked hard! I worked extremely hard! I’m just bad at this! But I worked for 6 hours every day! For weeks! I just have no capacity for literary analysis, that’s all!”
I’m from a different culture, so I can accept a lot more easily that I was lazy and didn’t work than that I might simply be a bit stupid.
Clarissa's Blog 
There’s a problem with the suggestion from authorities that one ought to have worked harder, and that is, it opens the door to basic extortionism. “Harder” is unquantifiable most of the time. So poltiicans suggest the need of harder work in order to justify their austerity programmes, and abusive bosses always, –but always — make this demand.
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I completely agree about the anglo tendency towards patient plodding and its many, many virtues. Living in a place without a history of patient plodding will do a lot to inculcate an appreciation of it in people who don’t believe in stereotypes.
On the other hand, harder =/= more effective.
What I find over and over is
a) a lot of the students I get didn’t have to study much in high school to get good grades and now that they need to study they don’t really know how.
or
b) they’re willing and able to put in the time but only in very ineffective time consuming things that don’t do much good
or
c) they don’t study unless they think they can do it ‘right’, ie for two or three hours. The idea that continual small installments are more effective than occasional binges is a very tough sell.
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Ah, the generalizations abound.
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“I’m from a different culture, so I can accept a lot more easily that I was lazy and didn’t work than that I might simply be a bit stupid.”
I think the same for me…
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