I agree that it’s great if people work hard and think it’s cool when people do well at things, whether it’s STEM or sports or the arts or something totally different. But as the daughter of Asian immigrants, I would say Vivek is missing the mark on what makes America so great. My mom was the valedictorian of her high school class, which made her kind of famous because it was a top high school in Seoul. This concept might seem weird to an American, but the only thing I can think of to equate it to would be like if you were valedictorian of one of the top schools in NYC? I am not sure as I’m not from NYC (and perhaps this is no longer true in Korea), but at least for my mom’s generation, I gleaned this from the way people spoke to me about my mom. Also, she went to the Harvard of Korea. Anyway, probably because my mom is smart, she would compare the US and Korean educational systems and laugh at how her schooling was based on rote memorization and marvel at how I was learning to write long papers of my own original thoughts. For that reason, she thought the US educational system was far superior. Vivek seems fixated here on STEM as if that’s the only thing that can make a country great. But the U.S. encourages people to be the best they can be in whatever it is they are good at. Individuality is prized, and if your gift is cracking jokes in the lunchroom cafeteria rather than winning math competitions, we wouldn’t force you to become an engineer. We would love to see you become the next great comedian, which is not the kind of career that most Asian countries or cultures would value. Yes, I agree aspiring to mediocrity is a bad thing. But also, the school system isn’t even all that. Einstein was a middling student and become one of the most important scientists in all of history! And he himself said imagination was more important than knowledge! People who excel in the system generally reinforce the system. People who learn to think original thoughts can upend the system and improve it. Let’s celebrate each person becoming the best at their specific gifts, whether it’s something that initially seems unimportant. I wrote my college thesis on Nietzsche who said, “God is dead,” by which he meant that science is the new religion that displaced God. I think Vivek is falling prey to the same fallacy here. There are many axes on which humans can excel, and the U.S., because it fosters creativity, originality and diversity of thought, is the best place for any one human to fulfill their potential.