I find Outliers' chapter on Chinese people and rice field preposterous. It was like reading astrology: The entire Chinese people have grit, and their grit came from growing rice because it was such a laborious job. Really? Really? Really? Did the author even know that for thousands of years, it was the Northern China that dominated the history, and Northern Chinese largely grew wheat? And the book said Chinese were good at math because Chinese digits are short to pronounce. I'm sure Apollonius of Perga, Newton, Euler, Gauss, Hibert, Poincare, and countless others are rolling in their graves. Besides that fact that arithmetic is tiny part of maths, China produced good students in the past decades because Chinese invested in modern education, believed that a nation needed to have many great scientists and engineers, and relentlessly pushed students to learn more maths and science. The Qing Dynasty was a laugh stock in front of the rest of the modern world. The entire nation of China felt the pain and humiliation for not catching up with modern civilization.

They will fuck anyone over for telling them they must lower their standards for the crap like being inclusive or no kids left behind, as if everyone can learn advanced maths. They's how they got better at maths. That's how they produce good students: they believe everyone's potential, and push students as hard as necessary. They still have catch-up to do, but they are getting closer everyday.