I have to say, this is part of the problem with both the education system in the US and anti-intellectual attitudes.  Kids who had help and did work hard are rarely told to thank their tutors and good fortune to be born into a situation where they could go to an affluent preschool, and pat themselves on the back for studying hard, but are just told that they're "smart."  And "smart" and "success in academic pursuits" are considered more or less the exact same thing, at least up until undergrad.  Yet, I knew so many people who I wouldn't even consider "book smart" who were lauded as "the smartest," from first grade all the way through graduating college.  For whatever reason, these people got good grades despite an inherent lack of knowledge of the material they were being tested on.  Similarly, people dismissed as "stupid," especially in middle school, somehow became "the smartest kid in class" once introduced to a new environment in high school.  Furthermore, the "smartest kid in class," at least in elementary and high school, is usually never challenged, and allowed to slide on things that do challenge them while still clinging to the label of "the smart kid."  Which presents a problem when they graduate to a more challenging level of education.

Not that I think the Japanese or Chinese ways of education are necessarily what we should be striving for, because they present a lot of problems too, but simply chalking up what is usually a lot of different factors to a kid being "born smart" doesn't really do much but breed resentment from other students and a false sense of superiority for those "smart" ones.

Success based on effort is integral to maintaining the American dream, the American myth if you will.  It is foundational and has been a key element in helping to stitch together the various cultures that have immigrated to the US.  Most US citizens and aspiring citizens believed their hard work would be justly rewarded, if not in time for them then for their children.

There is a long tradition on the far left that has sought to destroy this belief because in doing so the system of individual rewards can also be destroyed and then more easily replaced by a system of collectivism.  The irony is that the wackiest on the far right are energetically supplying the ammunition that is being used to great affect to destroy much of what the right and center-right hold to be most dear.  

These admirable traits are cultural.  The perceived east Asian cultural ethic is to the information age what the Protestant work ethic was to the industrial age.  In the US, cultural criticism is off limits.  Differentiating people by intelligence (with its ugly hints of race based genetic differences) is also off limits; however, we think we know intelligence its opposite when we see it even if we don't speak about it in polite circles.  I wonder how much of the above reported cultural drift towards accepting intelligence as the primary limiting standard has arisen from our fear of talking about cultural influences on success?

I've seen this in action at school. I've always been "academically gifted," as they say, but the downside is that if I have trouble doing something it tends to hit hard. I feel like a failure. I've been working hard to approach problems with a hard work attitude, and I can see the difference it makes.

On the flip side I've seen many, MANY young friends, who are all very bright and skilled, give up on things like reading and math because they "just can't." It seems like once you're placed in the "dumb" category it takes a lot to get back out, particularly since it's so easy for students to fall through the cracks.

Can also be tied to grades; grading children at a young age cements the perception that they have of themselves at a young age. Kids with high grades feel that they're on the right track and have it easier, while kids with low grades finds school much harder because it's already established that they're "bad at it"

Oh, China and Japan sound a lot like Latin America then.

When little:

Me: Mummy, I can't!
Mum: Shut, up. If you can't go ask your grandma.
(Mum wasn't a very good student so de facto help was grandma/grandpa/dad when I went visiting/uncles)
Me: Grandma, I can't!
Grandma: This is how you do it. Do you understand better now?
Me: Sort of, but I still can't!
Grandma & Mum: Then shut up! Keep going at it! You know you need good grades. If you work hard you'll get it soon enough and you'll get good grades.

This is a fairly typical exchange in any household I've heard of, just replace grandma and mum with any suitable family member or caretaker or Figure a Child Looks Up To (e. g. older school mate). I also have seeral friends across many other Latin-american countries and, quite honestly, our school experiences have been so similar (aside from obvious differences in school systems) that it had HONESTLY never occurred to me why that there was ANY OTHER way to teach a child to do school work.

Interesting learning this tidbit about the States. I wonder if this also applies to other Anglophonic societies like UK or Panama? I finished my education in the UK and it struck me the relatively lack of enthusiasm about school (not that I enjoyed it) and down-trodden attitude here and if people in the UK focus their learniing ability in a SIMILAR way to the States, then no wonder young people have such a depressing outlook on school.

This is purely anecdotical evidence, of course. But it DOES make me wonder.

(In an unrelated note, is this why Chinese families tend to integrate fairly rapidly into the fabric of my country despite maintaining their distinct tradition and culture, because of similar family and education values in many, many respects?)

This only just raises questions.

This is quite interesting. I just moved to Japan 2 months ago to study one semester at a Japanese university , and I see this attitude everywhere. I'm actually following a course in Education in Japan, and I just made a field trip to a high school last week to 'teach English' to 14-year olds. 

I see the described behavior a lot here: hard work is fundamental here, be it in academics or something more trivial like juggling (one of the squares in my university is flooded daily by jugglers, who practice juggling for hours every day. I still don't really understand why, but I think it has to do something with training 'hard working' skills instead of just juggling skills). Also, if you want to wish someone luck, you say 'ganbatte', which means 'work hard!'. You don't need luck: you just have to try your very best.

I think it's important to note that both East (in this case Japan, which is quite different from 'The East') and West (in my case Western-Europe, I don't know about the US) methods have their up- and downsides. The 'working hard' thing becomes a burden when many high school students suffer enormous amounts of stress to score high on their exams. And the results are not always very good. Looking at English education, I was quite shocked to find that the actual level of English verbal skills amongst the 14-year olds was dramatically low (even though they had studied English for years): their grammar was great, but they couldn't carry on a normal conversation. I have also read critiques on the Japanese education system as focusing on hard work and monotonous learning, because it would prepare students for a life of boring, hard-work office jobs. 

The UK education system appears to focus on test results. Most students are 'finished' secondary school at 16 with little to stand on.

Having completed a degree here as a mature student, I can say my classmates basic general knowledge coming into uni was woeful. I found schooling here very narrow scope, simple geography or civics are lacking, and don't get me started on the xenophobic history segments that are taught sporadically.
They teach for the test, that's it.

And the answers are at the back of the book.

India: It's been 17 yrs since I've been to school and the education system is pretty much the same, intelligence is based on how much information you can store and regurgitate on demand. Science subjects are valued, mathematics especially because it ups your average. Standard dialogue at home: If you don't study hard, you'll have to take Arts (only below average intelligence students opt for Arts, unless you have want to go into journalism or something and your parents support your decision). After years of getting fucking bored, struggling to keep an average percent in school I figured I'm just not academically inclined. I also figured it has a lot to do with how it's taught. They like robots and most kids seem to fit right in, the rest fall through the cracks, only get to learn what they want once they reach college. You pretty much become allergic to learning. My kid is going through the same thing, and I have narrow choices for schools, so I plan to make up for that shit with my own inputs. 

For anyone interested in understanding this stuff at a deeper level, I highly recommend the book "Mindset" by the psychologist Carol Dweck. The difference between the US and Chinese approach is important in a wide range of activities - not just school.

No matter what approach you take, there will still be retards.

"... in the U.S., we often assume that learning comes easily to you if you’re smart, and if you struggle to learn, that you lack ability."

So, there are people in the USA who think that smart people never struggle to learn something? Is this a relatively new attitude? It's not one that I recognize.

This attitude -- if it doesn't come easily then you're not smart -- is not something that I remember being taught either directly or indirectly. I can't tell whether my situation was simply an anomaly or whether there has been a big culture shift.

I was born and raised in the USA. When I was growing up (I'm in my 50s now) both my parents and my teachers emphasized that hard work and lots of practice was the way to learn. This applied not only to schoolwork but also sports, music, etc. I grew up with the idea that struggle was an important part of learning. Of course, this struggle might also be fun at times (not trying to make it sound like drudgery) but it would take time and effort.

I'm sure there was also some idea of natural talent or ability but a lot of hard work was assumed to be an important part of learning to do anything well. It's interesting to read a different perspective on this.

I think this is a very interesting perspective on the concept of intelligence, one that I have not heard before. The grading system in the U.S. doesn't encourage the process of trial and error. Kids are so focused on getting A's to prove their intelligence, but getting an A does not necessarily mean that one has mastered the class material. A student can be intelligent even if they don't obtain the best grades. I think our education system should place more value on the ideas of persistence and perseverance in order to prepare youth for the real world Everyone will face challenges in life, and we should learn that it is important to try and overcome them to the best of our abilities instead of giving up at the first sign of failure. 

Snide attempt at diminishing natural differences, very liberal of you. I'm Chinese, and we value BOTH. Parents will often tell their kids how smart they are even when they're average. The focus on hard work is just the norm in Asia, not a "different approach".

"Hard work beats talent until talent works hard". 

I am from south east asia and having inculcated the values of hard work and perseverance, I always thought success is just a matter of how much work o e puts in for their goals. Of course, I couldn't be more wrong. Talent plus hard work reigns and if met with someone who possess the two qualities, those who rely solely on hard work is usually unable to compete.