This is gonna sound a bit like a rant, so I apologize in advance if I offend anyone.
Having been through college and remembering how joyous psyche class was, I look back at my childhood and I am thankful. I did get punished for grades at a C level and below. My parents knew which three children should be getting As and that their oldest would be lucky to get such marks outside of shop class. My brother is a very talented welder and mechanic, but he has a reading disability and easily led astray by the more tyrannical members of his religious affiliation. This being said, my parents never let us quit anything during the year we committed to it. If it was a sport, we had to play through the season, we needn't play in the future, but we had to finish the season we started. We didn't drop/add/change classes in High School, although they did not say anything when I dropped a class in college one term going from 20 to 16 hours for that term. That was suicidal anyway. Now I look back and even in my psyche class, I realized my parents raised me in a supportive but firm manner, which seems to be one of our problems in the west. I see my childhood friends and how the ones with the spoiling parents aren't really worth a damn, yeah, they have a paycheck, but their children are rude and disrespectful.
I would also point out, that we in western culture have become more materialistic and care more about ourselves and what we have than helping our families. Yet I look at my own family, how either of my grandmothers could have been locked away in a home in their final days and it didn't happen, how I did know most of my great-grandparents because their children gave them a place to stay when they reached their 90s. How I would rather go fishing in a small rowboat with my grandfather, or weed his garden on a Saturday instead of going to see the game. Maybe there is something wrong with that.
I do agree there is a point at which you must step back, my parents gave me that leniency. We do not want automatons for children, but when I wasn't studying or involved in a club/sport or practicing a musical instrument, I was outside, with my friends, playing in the barn, or the creek and usually getting a chewing for coming in the house covered in mud, or other substance.
The point, there is a happy medium on all things in life, but my parents expected good grades, their parents expected good grades and even my great grandparents expected good grades. Even though they were mostly farmers and factory workers, it was still expected and there was no psychological trauma or mental illness. For some reason, we just decided somewhere in the 70s and 80s, who cares, it's just a grade and your best is good enough. Unfortunately, a best effort, doesn't equal a best result in the real world.
OH and David E. What do you mean Asian do not excel at music??? What planet are you on? Maybe the recording industry keeps them off the pop charts in the US/UK and Canada, but there are some very amazing Asian musicians in all genres of music. Most that are known in the west are involved with classical music, but they are there and they can play the pants off most other people and do it with great passion in their music.