Academic success of a child

Today I read an interesting article in NY Times. This article tries to explain the reason behind academic success of Asian Americans, Jews and West-Indian blacks in United States.

"Asian-Americans are renowned — or notorious — for ruining grade curves in schools across the land, and as a result they constitute about 20 percent of students at Harvard College."

"...Jews, they have received about one-third of all Nobel Prizes in science received by Americans. One survey found that a quarter of Jewish adults in the United States have earned a graduate degree, compared with 6 percent of the population as a whole."

"West Indian blacks, those like Colin Powell whose roots are in the Caribbean, are one-third more likely to graduate from college than African-Americans as a whole, and their median household income is almost one-third higher."

The reason behind their success?

1. Encourage basic practices as talking to children. (Continuously talk to children)
2. Hard work.
3. Parents taking active interest in the education of a child.

Sounds like common-sense to me. I remember reading another article that gives exact number of hours of hard word required to become genius. I will try to find that article and post it on this blog.