My person opinion of the South-Jungyeon Alice Lee

I came from South Korea around 2005 and have lived in South Carolina for about 4 years and a half and in Georgia for about four months. Through my high school life in South Carolina, I once thought that American (southern) students might be less intelligent, which is one of the Southerners stereotypes. In terms of academic achievement, Asians (mostly Indians and Koreans) seemed to be much better than American students. Asians, despite its small number, took a large proportion of the top 10 percent students in GPA. Also, seeing that high school students were learning basic algebra, which was covered in the early middle school years in Korea, made me think that American students might lack in intelligence.

Getting to understand American students more and more, however, I realized that the difference in academic accomplishments does not come from any intelligence difference between races but from cultural differences. In fact, what is valued most in Asian countries is getting a good grade, which might lead me to unconsciously believe that getting an excellent grade means being intelligent. In contrast, what I noticed from Americans’ (Southerners’) school life was that they have so many jobs as valuable as getting a good grade. While Korean students like me spend most of the time in studying school subjects, American students divide the time to spend on many different things such as extracurricular activities, community services, church activities, and so on. Check this video out from Youtube published by bettatrey! He is saying, "I hunt on Mondays, drink whiskey on Tuesdays, and play my Banjo on....listen to my country musics on Saturdays, and go to church on Sundays because I am from the South."

In this light, the stereotype of Southerners being less intelligent should be related to cultural differences between Southerners and Northerners. Northerners might look more knowledgeable in academics or socio-economic situations. However, such differences, if any, should not reflect any difference in intelligence but in what they value highly. Northerners, who live in urbanized settings, might put more values in knowledge about economy and science. By contrast, Southerners living in countryside might prefer to develop social skills needed to keep local communities. This difference in culture should not be interpreted as that in intelligence.