There is lots of basis to support that this runs along cultural lines and none whatsoever that it has anythigng to do with race.
Such as?
Well I remember a comment from a dear friend of mine when she first walked into a Canadian university. She couldn't believe that the instructors were basically going through the book and teaching the class the contents. In her country of origin, standard practice was that students would come to class with the text material in their heads, prepared to discuss, analyze and expand on its content.
To her mind, the first few years of Canadian university was like a high school education model in which the teacher holds the students' hands and walks them through through it, and teaches them to learn information, not think. I know that since that time (and since my stint in university) our old school now has a mandatory class to teach students how to write.
So is it cultural? Not sure if I have the right perspective to answer that. And is it genetic? I may not be smart, but I know enough to not even go near that one.