I have sat on a top-tier college's admission committee. After the hundred or so piano and violin players who applied, the two saxophone players were a huge breath of fresh air and the tuba player appeared a downright rebel.I think that's a really big problem for these parents and their kids. Elite colleges don't really reward that kind of parenting or the kids it produces. You're not going to get into Harvard on the basis of having straight A+s, perfect SATs, and being really good at the piano or violin, because they could fill an entire class with kids who are just like you, and it wouldn't be a very interesting class. So in a weird way, their kind of perfection is not rewarded (or not given the very highest rewards) in American culture. I don't exactly know how they deal with that.
I guess we'll have to settle this professorial parenting debate at the annual football scrum.Dude, gym is the only class in which her kids don't have to be number one! Harvard has an unfair advantage. Maybe they should have a piano-off or something!
OK, since that's clearly aimed at me...It wasn't, actually. The word "robot" comes up all the time in these discussions.
That is why Chinese will be the next superpower, and we will slowly become Britain and France.I'm not really sure what you mean by "Britain and France" but if you mean free healthcare sign me up. The more developed countries in Europe have already surpassed the United States in quality of life and in some cases per-capita income.
I think many of you have missed the point here - How to raise successful kids, not (necessarily) happy ones.But, truly successful people are the ones who are well socialized and fun to be around, so that other successful people will pick them to work with because that's how the world actually works. It's run on networking, not talent. You can certainly be successful by working hard 24/7, but you will never be as successful as people who both work hard and know how to network.
The real world doesn't care what you "want". It doesn't validate your "feelings". It doesn't let you grow up as a princess ballerina rockstar astronaut who marries a smart and funny supermodel.
I've actually known a few Asian-Americans who weren't overachieving study-grinds. Wotta revelation, I know. A few of them were even burnout hoodlums like me and my friends.Obviously the result of slacker, "Western born" parents, according to the Chua.
What I did say is that most new styles come from the West. That's clearly a subjective view since the originality of music is debatable, but it's my impression. It will maybe surprise you to learn that I'm a fan of some of the music you linked to. But I don't think, for example, J-Pop is very original or uniquely Japanese, it's just Western pop with a little bit of Japanese flair. I've listened to quite a lot of it, as I happen to like it better than American pop. Again, I feel like they've refined and perfected the genre. There's also Japanese rock and Japanese rap, but rock and rap both came from the US originally.All of that music could be summarized as "technological music" (i.e. music created with electronic machines), which of course was developed first in the west because that's where technology was advancing. But actually the styles that underly a lot of rock and pop came from Jazz which came from African American music in the early 20st century. Is that really "western" though? Maybe in some technical sense but I don't really think you can credit the "Western" way of doing things for those musical styles.
Ms. Chua,posted by gen at 6:57 PM on January 9, 2011 [30 favorites]
By your argument, the entire nation of China should be teeming with incredibly successful, well-educated high achievers. News flash: It's not.
Chinese kids in America are predisposed to be successful (as defined by the standards of our meritocracy -- a lousy standard, in my opinion) because their parents were hard-working enough and intelligent enough to be given the privilege to immigrate from asia to the United States. The immigrant population is highly selected. Many immigrants come to the U.S. for graduate school -- which automatically puts them in one of the most educated sectors of the population. Others come through sheer dedication, perseverance, and adaptability. However they get here, the Chinese who immigrate here are freaking strong people, and it should be no wonder that they raise very strong kids. The pedestrian Chinese are not given visas, so they stay home in China, and raise normal Chinese kids.
The argument that these kids do well -because- of their parenting ignores how many Chinese kids have horrifically broken relationships with their parents. It also ignores how many Chinese kids sink into a pattern of low self-esteem and angry rebellion, dropping out of college as freshmen, getting hooked on drugs, getting involved in asian gangs, whatever. Those kids exist, and are actually quite numerous -- you just never see them, because the parents do a very impressive job of hushing it up.
Do I think American parents could learn a thing or two from Chinese parents? Sure. Holding your kids up to high expectations is a good thing. Not coddling them is a good thing. Teaching them to work hard at everything they do is a good thing. Teaching them to always strive for self-improvement, even when they are doing well by everyone else’s measure, is a good thing.
But Chinese parents could learn a thing or two from American parents too. Allowing your kids to explore their own interests (even when they stray outside of what -you- think is best); allowing your kids to choose their own social circle and interact with their friends both in and out of school; providing encouragement when they succeed; and, providing actual guidance (as opposed to just berating them and calling them garbage) when they fail -- those are all good things too.
Ms. Chua, as far as I can tell, your kids have yet to leave the house. They have yet to leave their mark on society. I am not saying that they are not wonderful kids, but I do question your credentials when you claim victory for your own parenting approach. A football game is 60 minutes long, but you have declared victory in the first quarter.
Furthermore, Ms. Chua, you seem to fail to recognize how lucky you are to have such wonderful kids. However important your facilitation has been in their lives, do your children not deserve a great deal of credit for their own achievements? If they were born as lazy creatures devoid of character or drive, do you really think they would have achieved any of the things you pushed them to achieve? Coaches do not win games. Players win games.
Ultimately, where I take the most issue with your article is your unilateral declaration that Chinese parenting is “superior” to American parenting. If achievement in math, science, piano and violin during K-12 is the ultimate measure of good parenting, then yes, Chinese parents in America are an unparalleled success. But I think that everyone -- Chinese or otherwise -- can agree that that is a rather shortsighted measure of good parenting. We would all do better to learn from each other's cultures, instead of declaring one culture's parenting to be unilaterally superior to the other.
Bob Lee
University of Colorado School of Medicine
Dear Christine: Thank you for taking the time to write me, and I'mThe whole quora thread is worth reading.
so sorry about your sister. I did not choose the title of the WSJ
excerpt, and I don't believe that there is only one good way of raising
children. The actual book is more nuanced, and much of it is about
my decision to retreat from the "strict Chinese immigrant"
model.
Best of luck to you,
Amy Chua
Background information about the children's everyday lives revealed much greater attention to academic activities among Chinese and Japanese than among American children. Members of the three cultures differed significantly in terms of parents' interest in their child's academic achievement, involvement of the family in the child's education, standards and expectations of parents concerning their child's academic achievement, and parents' and children's beliefs about the relative influence of effort and ability on academic achievement. Whereas children's academic achievement did not appear to be a central concern of American mothers, Chinese and Japanese mothers viewed this as their child's most important pursuit. Once the child entered elementary school, Chinese and Japanese families mobilized themselves to assist the child and to provide an environment conducive to achievement. American mothers appeared to be less interested in their child's academic achievement than in the child's general cognitive development; they attempted to provide experiences that fostered cognitive growth rather than academic excellence.Chua mentions self-esteem somewhat dismissively. I'd be less dismissive, but I'd also note that competence (or lack of it) has a major influence on self-esteem. Paradoxically, I think focusing on short-term happiness can lead to greater unhappiness in the longer term--if you find it difficult to work hard, for example, your life opportunities are going to be narrower.
Chinese and Japanese mothers held higher standards for their children's achievement than American mothers and gave more realistic evaluations of their child's academic, cognitive, and personality characteristics. American mothers overestimated their child's abilities and expressed greater satisfaction with their child's accomplishments than the Chinese and Japanese mothers. In describing bases of children's academic achievement, Chinese and Japanese mothers stressed the importance of hard work to a greater degree than American mothers, and American mothers gave greater emphasis to innate ability than did Chinese and Japanese mothers.
In 1967, Diana Baumrind defined 3 contrasting styles of parenting--Authoritarian, Permissive and Authoritative. I have always found these terms confusing, so I will call them Too Hard, Too Soft and Just Right....posted by russilwvong at 11:59 PM on January 9, 2011 [25 favorites]
... Middle-class Americans of European descent try to use the Just Right parenting style, because that is the style currently approved by their culture. If they don't use it, it's because they have problems or the kid does. ... If the kid has problems--a difficult temperament for instance--the Just Right style might not work and the parents might end up switching to the Too Hard method. So among European-Americans, parents who use a Too Hard child-rearing style are more likely to be the ones with problem kids. This is exactly what researchers find.
In other ethnic groups--notably Americans of Asian or African descent--cultural norms differ. Chinese Americans, for example, tend to use the Too Hard style--the style Baumrind called Authoritarian--not because their kids are difficult, but because that's the style favored by their culture. Among Asian and African Americans, therefore, parents who use a Too Hard style should not be more likely to have problem kids. Again, this is exactly what the researchers find.
What they find, in fact, is that Asian-American parents are the most likely of all American parents to use the Too Hard style and the least likely to use the Just Right style, and yet in many ways Asian-American children are the most competent and successful of all American children.
I await the day that a non-white Mefite recuses herself from a discussion about middle class white America because she wasn't raised in that culture.As if middle class white America is just another culture on the National Geographic pick-n-choose platter of the month.
So fuck you, Amy Chua, for reinforcing that tired old model minority stereotype. For speaking for an entire group of people and ascribing your abusive parenting to your culture.posted by dustyasymptotes at 12:22 AM on January 10, 2011 [9 favorites]
Yeah, I have to say I sometimes bought into this stereotype. Despite the fact it went against what I know to be true. I have taken a lot of time to unpack and disassemble this particular bullshit trope. And yet I still found myself thinking, “His parents let him do what?” when I read about fashion designer Jason Wu. He played with dolls as a kid, and his mother drove him to bridal salons so he could look at the dresses.
And fuck you again, Amy Chua, when I think about the high rates of suicides among Asian Americans, especially young women. Fuck you for the fifty percent of crisis calls at the university from Asian American students.
Fuck you for every person who expresses surprise at my chosen profession. Because we don’t do that. Fuck you for all those people who interviewed me and marveled how they didn’t know any Asian Americans in that line of work. Despite the fact I was sitting right in front of them. Because obviously my parents should not have “allowed” me to enter my field.
Fuck you for the abuse kids get because their parents don’t know any better.
Fuck you for the kids who are made to feel like idiots because they are not geniuses. Or musical prodigies. Or the kids who are told that our people don’t speak out, don’t protest, aren’t politically active, aren’t activists.
Fuck you for making us think our parents aren’t proud of us. (I saw Helen Zia and Lia Shigemura’s wedding video. And I saw her mom beaming in the background.)
Fuck you for perpetuating racism. And fuck the Wall Street Journal for promoting your majority view voice.
Okay. In 1994, I had just started teaching in North Carolina. I received a call from my mother in Berkeley. She told me that my aunt, my father's twin sister, had been murdered in her home in the Philippines, in Manila. She'd been killed by her chauffeur. Obviously, this was a terrible family time for us. We were very close to my aunt. She was my father's twin.posted by benzenedream at 10:37 AM on January 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
My aunt, as I mentioned, was a member of the Philippines' extremely entrepreneurial 1 percent Chinese minority, and her chauffeur was a member of the indigenous Filipino majority. Everybody was upset, but I, in particular, was very upset by the criminal investigation, because we went back and I asked if there had been any developments in the murder, and my uncle said, "No, the case has been closed. The suspect ... " And, actually, it wasn't even ... You know, the maids ... There were two maids who were also complicit -- they confessed. There was no doubt as to who had done the killing. But the police said the suspect had disappeared, the maids were let go, the case was closed.
I asked my uncle, "How can this possibly be?" And he said, "You're so naïve. This is the Philippines; not the United States." It turns out he wasn't just being cynical. It's true. My aunt's killing was part of a much larger pattern in the Philippines. Hundreds of ethnic Chinese are kidnapped annually, not always killed, but kidnapped all the time. The police force and the military are principally Filipino. In fact, they all are; there are no Chinese. They are sympathetic [to anti-Chinese sentiment], and often they're quoted in the papers as saying, "Look, the Chinese can afford the ransom. It's a form of redistribution." I'm not saying they condoned the murder, but they're sympathetic to the frustration of this very large majority in the face of a tiny, outsider minority that controls so much wealth and has all these servants, and seem very arrogant. The Chinese don't intermarry. They speak a different language.
Because most of the book is written in such a deadpan way I know there will be a lot of misunderstandings. ...There's also an excerpt describing a confrontation with her second child at three years old. It's even worse than the piano story (although she did back down).
I haven't done a study but I think that, ironically, although Western parents are the ones that worry so much about self-esteem -- and Chinese parents don’t, they assume strength rather than fragility -- I wonder if the Chinese approach isn’t better at creating self-esteem. You can coddle your child and tell them, "You're the best no matter what." But in the end, when they go out into the real world, I think it's pretty tough out there and other children are cruel. When your child doesn’t do so well at school or make the team they'd wished they'd made or can't get the job they want, that’s when people really lose self-esteem.
How could this have seemed a good idea to publish? Both Chinese and Westerners are likely to squirm.
I showed it to some family members and some Chinese friends of mine and a Korean friend. They all thought it was so funny and they completely related to it, but they all said, "Of course you can't publish this. You’ll get in so much trouble." I thought, "I wonder why should that be?" Millions of people raise their children this way. It’s not just Chinese people. It's really an immigrant thing. I know Indians and people from Nigeria and Ghana and Jamaica. Even some Irish. I did not write this book to promote the Chinese model. It's as much about mistakes as it is about successes.
You do openly disdain the current "Western" parenting style.
The dominant or prevalent Western approach right now is much more permissive than parenting was in the West, say, 60 years ago. Western parents romanticize the idea of pursuing passions and giving your kid choices. If you give a 10-year-old the choice to pursue his or her passion, it's going to be doing Facebook for six hours. I don’t think it’s going to be playing the violin or doing any school work very seriously.
Was it your parents' wish for you to be a Yale law professor?posted by russilwvong at 5:09 PM on January 11, 2011 [2 favorites]
My parents were very narrow. They wanted me to be a scientist and get a PhD or to be pre-med. The PhD/MD is a trope in Asian families. So in a way it was kind of rebellious that I didn't go into science and went into law. I forged my father's signature on my Harvard application....
It's silly to say something as stereotypical as to say that all Americans are lazy, but if you raise your kids from an early age to think that all you need is to be happy, then they tend to set their standards low. After all, I might have the potential to be the next Steve Jobs or something, but do I really want to put in that much work? After all, I can be happy just partying all throughout high school and college, and as long as I get a job that pays the rent and feeds me, what else do I need?The thing is, though, that the real Steve Jobs and other people who have gotten rich in tech did so because for them working on computers was fun. The kind of pressure on these kids to get super-good grades in everything is actually narrowing the range they can end up in. Sure they'll be upper class but they're never going to 'break through' to be Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or whoever, because time they would have spent programming for fun was spent over-studying to get an A instead of a B.
"I don't think people pick up on this enough, but I'm an unreliable narrator!" she laughs. "My daughters kept telling me, 'You're exaggerating this, Mom. People are going to think you're so harsh!' But the truth is, even though I was maniacal about music, I did actually let my kids go on playdates. And I say in the book that 'I don't care if my kids hate me,' but if you read on you'll realize, that's not how I actually feel. Who wants their kids to hate them? I'm very close to my daughters, and I wouldn't trade that for the world."posted by chunking express at 7:56 AM on January 13, 2011
That's what leads to the "humbling" mentioned in the coverline: The book climaxes with a wrenching confrontation between Chua and her indomitable younger daughter, Lulu, who has resisted Tiger Parenting throughout her childhood. It's she who ultimately makes Chua accept that she's gone too far, and vow to change. And, as it turns out, letting Lulu make her own choices doesn't prove to be the disaster that Chua fears.
The more I re-read the Wall Street Journal article, the more I felt like I wasn't getting the whole story. The "excerpt" made the book seem like a harsh diatribe against American parenting standards and a handbook of Ancient Chinese Secrets for fixing your lazy, sullen, Wii-addicted kids.Yang then contacted Chua:
And yet, pictures of the actual book on Amazon clearly showed a coverline that seemed to directly contradict that impression: "This is a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs. This was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones. But instead, it's about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how I was humbled by a thirteen-year-old."
There was little, if any humility in the Journal piece. Something was definitely missing.
Then I saw a tweet by Jen Wang, who blogs at Disgrasian about her own "hardass Asian mom," in which she also noted a disconnect between the Journal story and the book from which it was supposedly excerpted. When I reached out to her for details, she explained, "The book isn't a how-to manual, as the Journal excerpt would have you believe -- it's a memoir. As such, you'll see some truth in it, and you'll also see glaring blind spots and a sometimes-woeful lack of self-examination. That truth, instead of making you hate Chua, will cause you to reflect on your own upbringing -- and your own parenting style, good and bad. And I think this is especially important for Asian Americans who feel that they were parented Chua-style, and are bitter about it -- that is to say, most of us."
I consumed "Battle Hymn" in a single sitting, and Wang is absolutely right. It's a riveting read, and nothing like what the Journal "excerpt" suggests. There's still plenty to be horrified by at in the actual book, but even more, as Wang noted, to think about -- and laugh at, as odd as that may seem to those who haven't yet read it: Far from being strident, the book's tone is slightly rueful, frequently self-deprecating and entirely aware of its author's enormities. It's a little, but not quite, like a Chelsea Handler book -- if Chelsea Handler were a Chinese American law professor and Momzilla of two.
I decided I had to connect with Chua herself to learn firsthand what she was really trying to say through her book -- and why that message ended up getting lost in its newsprint translation.posted by russilwvong at 5:13 PM on January 13, 2011 [2 favorites]
Chua responded to a brief message I sent her introducing myself and asking for an interview by saying that she was glad to hear from me, as she'd been looking for a way to discuss her misgivings about the Journal article. Apparently, it had been edited without her input, and by the time she saw the version they intended to run, she was limited in what she could do to alter it.
"I was very surprised," she says. "The Journal basically strung together the most controversial sections of the book. And I had no idea they'd put that kind of a title on it. But the worst thing was, they didn't even hint that the book is about a journey, and that the person at beginning of the book is different from the person at the end -- that I get my comeuppance and retreat from this very strict Chinese parenting model."
While the Journal article was unquestionably good for sales and awareness of the book, which has already hit #7 on Amazon and is only headed upward, it has been painful for Chua. "I've gotten scary messages. Death threats. All from people who haven't yet read the book," she says. "And while it's ultimately my responsibility -- my strict Chinese mom told me 'never blame other people for your problems!' -- the one-sided nature of the excerpt has really led to some major misconceptions about what the book says, and about what I really believe."
But the younger, Lulu, rebelled. At the turning point of the memoir, Lulu, then 13, begins smashing glasses in a Moscow restaurant and yelling at her mother, “I HATE my life, I HATE you.”And yet, Chua comes across even in this retraction as not having learned much. She thinks it worked out Just Fine Thanks for her other daughter and obviously isn't sorry that she gave it a go. She is extremely lucky that a few smashed glasses were the only hint she needed that she was destroying Lulu's sanity.
Foreign girlfriends care too much about respecting their boyfriends’ individuality. By contrast, Chinese girlfriends believe that the best way to nurture a relationship is by stripping their boyfriends of individuality, so that existence as a couple – complete with its many rules and expectations — is the only existence these men will know, and be able to survive in.posted by grouse at 10:54 AM on January 15, 2011
There are multiple studies that report that despite high levels of academic achievement, Asian American students report poor psychological adjustment (Choi et al, 2006; Greene et al 2006; Rhee et al 2003; Rumbault, 1994; Yeh, 2003). The high level of parental interest in grades soley can create depression and anxiety for youth (Pang, 1991). And perception of parental dis-interest in emotional well-being is significantly associated with depression (Greenberger 1996; Stuart et al 1999). There are more studies but I'll stop here, but it's shown that harsh parental discipline is related to depression of Chinese-Am teens (Kim & Gee, 2000).Even if one accepts the "but Asian cultures are collectivist and Western culture is individualistic" trope, it does not present a justification. You're committing the is/ought fallacy. Besides, there's an argument that collective responsibility , at least in the Chinese sense, derives from the baojia system of collective punishment that dates to imperial times. That isn't really the kind of thing we want to encourage in a republican democracy.
Link
Last week, Penguin Press published Amy Chua's book Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Mother, which criticizes "Western" parenting and advocates an "Asian" approach that includes forbidding playdates and being highly critical of children in order to make them more successful. Here are some other tips from the book:posted by Rhaomi at 11:40 AM on January 19, 2011 [2 favorites]- Take your children to Chuck E. Cheese's and let them play any game they choose, then make them watch as you burn their tickets
- Ice cream is a great motivator for kids; promise them that if they do everything you ask, they can have some when they turn 18
- Inform your child that televisions receive all of their power from flawless renditions of Brahms' Violin Concerto in D
- Only let your children have a pet dog if they can tame the most rabid dog at the pound
- Should your child express interest in spending more time with his or her friends, simply pack up and move several hundred miles away
- To ensure academic excellence, inform your children that there is a mark higher than an A-plus and then shame them for failing to attain it
- Replace their frail little limbs with less fragile prosthetics
- Remember, you may have to put up with one or two suicides before you finally craft that perfect child you've always wanted
Anyone who has ever asked unsophisticated Chinese informants why they follow such and such a custom knows the maddeningly reiterated answer: "Because we are Chinese." At first one assumes that this is simply a stock response to the uncultured foreigner or a way of fobbing off an impertinent outsider; after a time one realizes that most of one's informants do themselves see it as a correct explanation of almost all their own cultural behavior and social organization.Pan continues:
They carry something in their minds labelled "Chinese", a model they use "to explain, predict and justify their actual behavior". To put it another way, the Chinese have stereotypes of Chineseness...."In other words: Chinese parents feel pressure to raise their children in a particularly Chinese way, e.g. to learn Chinese (hey, I haven't talked about weekly Chinese classes!), to respect authority, to be hard-working, etc. They feel that if their children assimilate completely, and become just like any other American kids, they'll have failed.
As Barbara Ward has observed, "What the people of one locality or time in the vast territory and history of the Chinese people think of as 'Chinese' may not necessarily be recognized as such by people elsewhere."For "mainstream" American parents, there's a much wider range of parenting styles, as demonstrated by the parenting section at the bookstore. I think one reason there's so much variation is that American society embraces technology and technological change in a uniquely enthusiastic way, and this leads to extremely rapid social change. The best analysis I've seen of technology-induced social change is Joshua Meyrowitz' analysis of television, No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior. According to Meyrowitz, compared to print, television greatly reduces the social distance of authority figures, and hence their effective authority. It's not just the content ("Married with Children" vs. "Father Knows Best"), it's the structure itself.
Early television shows such as "Leave It to Beaver" are, in manifest content, much more conservative than more recent programs such as "One Day at a Time," but the two types of programs are, in one sense, very similar: They both reveal to children the existence of adult weaknesses and doubts. ...This is one reason why we don't have a television. Of course these days the Internet is mutating practically before our eyes, and it may take years or decades before we figure out how each new development (the web, Facebook, the mobile Internet) has impacted society. We realize that one day our kids will be exposed to all of these technological developments (including TV); we just want to slow down the process as much as we can.
Children's books of the past generally presented only an "onstage" image of adulthood, but even conservative television programs tend to reveal a backstage or "sidestage" view of adulthood. Child viewers see adults behaving one way when they are among adults and another way when they are with children. This view is very damaging to the traditional adult role.
In one episode of "Father Knows Best" ("Margaret Learns to Drive," NBC, November 20, 1957), for example, the three children keep quizzing their parents on their relationship. They wonder if their parents ever fight. After all, they have never seen any evidence of fighting. But when their mother, Margaret, asks their father, Jim, to teach her to drive a car, the wheels are set in motion for the revelation of a backstage argument to the children. Margaret and Jim have an argument on their first drive, but they are still composed enough to say "Let's look a bit happier before we face the kids," and they enter the house pretending that nothing unusual has happened. By the end of the program, however, the driving lessons have continued to go badly, and Jim and Margaret find themselves yelling at each other in the middle of the living room. Unknown to them, their three children have partially descended the staircase and are leaning against the banister (in size places, of course). The children witness the first argument between their parents they have ever seen. When Margaret and Jim turn and see the children, there is a moment of stunned silence. But the children begin to applaud, saying "great show," "good performance." The children declare (ask): "You were just pretending to fight for our benefit, right?" After a moment's hesitation, Jim and Margaret "admit" that, yes, they were just pretending to be fighting. Everyone laughs, and the show ends.
Thus, while the child portrayed on traditional television shows may be innocent and sheltered, the child watching the programs sees both the hidden behavior and the process of sheltering it from children. "Father Knows Best," for example, exposes child viewers to the ways in which a father and mother manipulate their behavior to make it appear to their children that they "know best." The behavior in the revealed adult backstage may be idealized, but from a social dynamics perspective, the particular content of the backstage behavior portrayed is less significant than the revelation of the existence of the backstage itself.
Xinhua reports today that a Chinese-language version of Ms. Chua’s book, whose English title is “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” has hit the shelves in Beijing. As Xinhua notes, the cover of the Chinese edition of the book is substantially different from the original, featuring a photo of a smiling Ms. Chua standing against a red, white and blue map of the United States.Why?
The Chinese edition’s title translates to “Being a Mom in America,” or, as Xinhua rendered it, “Being an American Mum.”
Western-style parenting is in vogue among some in China, where traditional parenting methods have come under fire for producing robot-like children who find it difficult to socialize and be creative.
Suzuki's program is primarily oriented toward capturing and sustaining the interest of the very young child. We all know with what phenomenal success this has been done. However, the percentage of Suzuki-trained students in Japan who continue to take private lessons and participate in Suzuki concert and recital programs throughout high school is not large. ... high school exams require a great deal of study, consequently limiting or eliminating time for practice.Personally, I think the primary benefit of studying piano or violin is self-discipline, not the ability to become a professional musician. Chua notes that her second daughter displayed great self-discipline when she dropped violin and took up tennis seriously; but was it really necessary to push her to such an extreme level in order to develop her self-discipline?
This pressure causes many of the students to stop taking lessons. Others continue with less and less time allocated to practice. ...
I don't think that thoughts of regret cross the minds of many of these students or their parents. I met a young man who had been a member of Suzuki's original tour group and who was then studying medicine. "Do you play the violin any more?" I asked. "No," he replied. "Do you wish you could?" "Not really but I did enjoy it very much when I was a boy. It was a wonderful education for me."
I really think that many Japanese parents feel that their children's education via Suzuki instruction can come to a natural close as their children enter high school. They see the mission accomplished. Recalling the following words of Suzuki, they feel that they have fulfilled an important parental obligation toward their children's total education: "The greatest duty and joy given to us adults is the privilege of developing our children's potentialities and of educating desirable human beings with beautiful harmonious minds and high sensitivity. I believe sensitivity and love toward music and art are very important things to all people whether they are politicians, scientists, businessmen or laborers. They are the things that make our lives rich."
To me, at least, the idea that changes in demand will normally be offset by Fed policy--so that they will, on average, have no effect on employment--seems both simple and entirely reasonable. Yet it is clear that very few people outside the world of academic economics think about things that way. For example, the debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement was conducted almost entirely in terms of supposed job creation or destruction. The obvious (to me) point that the average unemployment rate over the next 10 years will be what the Fed wants it to be, regardless of the U.S.-Mexico trade balance, never made it into the public consciousness. (In fact, when I made that argument at one panel discussion in 1993, a fellow panelist--a NAFTA advocate, as it happens--exploded in rage: "It's remarks like that that make people hate economists!")Conversely, as adults and especially as parents, I think we should make an effort to behave more like adults and less like adolescents. Personally, I think "behaving naturally" is overrated.
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I understand refusing to allow your child to give up on things you are confident that they can do and how this can lead to benefits later in life. But c'mon, you're kidding yourself if you think that calling your children pathetic is only motivating them and not insulting or detrimental to them in any way.
posted by cyphill at 7:55 AM on January 9, 2011 [3 favorites]