"Paper Tigers"

This is the title of one of my favorite articles; it is authored by Wesley Yang, and one extremely dedicated online student recommended it to me about a year ago. See the New York Magazine article here. While this article is about Asians in particular, I think you could replace every instance of the word "Asian" with the word "introvert" and gain a lot of insight. (I am not the only one to make this Asian-introvert analogy. In Quiet, Susan Cain visits a predominantly Asian-American Silicon Valley high school to see what a culture that values introversion is like. She treats the high school as a microcosm of an introvert-centric society.)

Yang discusses the "bamboo ceiling," which is, of course, a play on the "glass ceiling," that is, any un-talked-about barrier that prevents a certain group from advancing in the workplace (although Yang discusses areas of life outside of work as well). His argument is that Asians' strong work ethic, attention to detail, and sense of community (as opposed to the Western superstar individualist) make them excel at technical tasks, but in our extroverted American society, it's not technical knowledge that gets paid the big bucks. Promotions go to managers: people who can talk about how great they are.

When I first started teaching, and people didn't yet know that they'd get their heads bitten off for asking, they'd say, "Oh, maybe someday you can move up into administration." That would be my worst nightmare. I don't want to manage people who get to talk about content all day. I want to be the one who gets to talk about content all day. That's why I became an English teacher. Now, my dean comes from a psychology background, so managing people is part of her "content" background, so it's a good fit. But for other types of faculty, like those who know a lot about Shakespeare or chemistry or Latin or calculus or lots of other stuff, it probably wouldn't be a good idea to put those people in charge of other people. The disciplines that they've devoted their lives to require them to enjoy solitary, focused, detail-oriented work. They would not enjoy constant interruptions, conflict management, and "fighting" for their status among other campus groups. These are extroverted tasks.

The thing is that both kinds of tasks are important. We need people who focus on what Yang calls technical skills or what I would call "content." We also need extroverts who can sell our ideas and programs to the power-brokers. I am thankful there are people willing to do my dean's job. The problem in society (and in education) occurs when the extroverts receive higher prestige and higher pay. That's where the "bamboo ceiling" comes in. The introvert/Asian invents the technology or teaches the Shakespeare but does not get the higher-paying job because this goes to an extrovert who can "sell" it.

Remember the Peter Principle? Laurence Peter said that people will be promoted until they reach a position that they are incompetent to fill, and this usually happens because the higher position requires a different personality type. Will we introverts always be lower on the American career food chain than the extroverts?