<p>I haven’t read all the 26 pages of posts here, but I just did read the WSJ article. To me, it sounds just like any other sicko abusive relationship. Guy hits girl, tells her she’s stupid and instead of reporting him, she wants to please him. </p>
<p>When Lulu was a little girl and had to learn a very difficult musical score. Mother admits she was abusive. *I used every weapon and tactic I could think of. We worked right through dinner into the night, and I wouldn’t let Lulu get up, not for water, not even to go to the bathroom. The house became a war zone, and I lost my voice yelling, * When Lulu finally “got it”, she snuggled and hugged her mother.</p>
<p>To elaborate on my previous post, I understand that people might think that, again, parents simply force their children to participate in the arts, and to some extent this is obviously true, especially in music. My mother made me pick up the cello at a very young age, and although it was definitely something I hated for the first seven-or-so years of my experience with the instrument, I’ve come to love it. It’s probably one of my greatest passions, and a true creative outlet for me. I would NEVER have the gift of cello in my life without my mom’s constant nagging and pushing, and I’m sure I’m not the only case. In fact, I’d daresay that cases like my own far outweigh cases in which children simply pick up musical or artistic talents and skills on their own with limited parent involvement.</p>
<p>In terms of visual art , I know a lot of Asian-Americans who participate in painting/drawing (as an activity, meaning that they go to art school, enter into art competitions, etc.) without their parents’ forcing them to - in some cases, they are even discouraged because things like painting or drawing are largely interpreted as simple hobbies/pastimes - but still are deeply passionate about art.</p>
<p>Perhaps the “much more rational in practice” makes all of the difference. Wouldn’t there be a difference between encouraging the child to explore his/her musical talent in the instrument, genre, and method of his/her choice, rather than “you must play ____ or _<strong><em>, and you must not play anything else, and you must practice _</em></strong> genre at least ____ minutes per day”? Of course, the parent should tell the child that becoming good requires practice, but the micromanaging style of Amy Chua appears to be counterproductive in that it leaves little leeway for the child to develop in a way even slightly different from what the parent envisions.</p>
<p>This is a psychology study I did a project on recently. I’m not sure how much of it you can see without a login (I sign in through my school), but it basically says that authoritarian methods work better for Chinese families while authoritative (less strict) methods work better for students of European descent; different methods work for different families, and none should be denunciated.</p>
<p>I get a bit sensitive when people, especially my friends, say my parents are too strict or scary just because they’re asian. One of my friends tried to plan a surprise birthday party for me, and said, “She won’t do it herself because her parents won’t let her.” That was not the case at all. Her plan failed and I was able to plan my own party for a month later (after finals). It was my own choice.</p>
<p>Both my parents graduated from the same prestigious university in China. I think they’re surprisingly lenient - as long as I finish my work, I can spend the rest of my time however I want (well, within reason), but that might just be because the stereotypes have become so exaggerated, or because I live in an extremely uncompetitive area. Of course, they do force me to do certain things - like working through a vocab book even though I didn’t want to, or practicing piano when my skills were slipping…but these things helped me. They let me cry not because they wanted me to be miserable, but because they wanted me to succeed. And I guess it worked. I’m doing pretty well, and I am able to motivate myself now.</p>
<p>My mom was actually talking about this book at dinner last night, I believe. She laughed at it and thought that mother was too extreme.</p>
<p>As a graduate of TJHSST(Magnet school which is 50% asian), I have seen kids, especially the asian ones complain about how they got an A- a 4.2, and a 2200 on the SAT and I have heard lots of complaints about strict parents. But none of my Asian friends had parents that were anywhere near as strict as Chua.</p>
<p>btw, I had to watch Chua being interviewed for homework last year, and she talked about how her parents had incredibly high expectations for her. Perhaps she is just using a modified version of her parents’ parenting style.</p>
<p>“I would NEVER have the gift of cello in my life without my mom’s constant nagging and pushing,”</p>
<p>You really don’t know that. Many children excel in music and other arts and sciences with nothing but support from their parents, and the option to switch at any time. Memory is tricky: how do you know you would have rebelled and left it if she didn’t nag?</p>
<p>That’s like me saying, “If only my mother would have pushed me, I would have been a composer.” Maybe, maybe I would have rebelled. It’s impossible to tell on an individual level.</p>
<p>I think the Asian kids who do succeed and are pressured believe they can and should excel, even if that’s partially a racist belief they hold about themselves, and hence, they succeed. Self-fulfilling prophecies and all that.</p>
<p>I commented earlier to the poster who thought Asian performance was similar to ‘white,’ but I am so struck by the ignorance I decided to post some numbers related to Ivy school admissions. I chose Ivy because the data is easy to find, although other ‘academic’ performance metrics look the same.</p>
<p>First, ethnic representation in the US:
Jewish: 2%
Asian: 4.5%
White: 80%</p>
<p>Harvard:
At Harvard, the current enrollment is
26 percent Jewish,
17 percent Asian,
7 percent black,
8 percent Hispanic
41 percent White
Note that internationals are folded into the above categories somehow.</p>
<p>Now lets look at over or under representation:
Jews: 13x
Asians: 3.7x
White: 0.5x</p>
<p>Clearly, putting ‘White’ in the same achievement category as Asian or Jewish is a wee bit off the mark. Thus the interest in Chinese parenting, and the Jewish contributions. As an aside, I want to thank the Chinese posters for their insightful and honest writings. Fascinating!</p>
<p>Well Asian is a broad category. I think this forum itself is mainly referring to East Asian, so the ethnic representation would be lower.</p>
<p>And isn’t Jewish a religion? If we consider it a race, isn’t there a lotttt of mixing between “Jewish” people and “white people”? A lot of the Jewish people I know are and refer to themselves as German, Italian, English, Russian. They basically look white and say they have this mix of western/southern European heritage and that they are white, because many are white. Even though they may be “Jewish” they may be more “white” than “Jewish” or claim to be Christian over Jewish. Yes, I know that was confusing. </p>
<p>The people who are Jewish usually report to be white. And it can get confusing because of all of mixing.</p>
<p>Anyway, and then there are Hispanic people who claim to be Hispanic and from South America but basically have European heritage.</p>
<p>Not to dispute your conclusions (being Asian myself), I thought admission to Harvard may not have been a good example. Harvard uses “Holistic Admission” Process, which means that test scores, GPA’s are only part of the process.
Criteria for Success can vary, in many profession or trade. I would leave the judgment to folks who are studying this for living.</p>
<p>^^ In the countries you mentioned they are Jews; when they leave they become german, spanish etc. Even with all the genetic admixture Jews remain genetically distinct as a group. Neonatal screening for Tay-Sachs and high frequency of inflammatory bowel disease e.g. are two outward examples of differences between European Jews and pan-Europeans. Beyond genetics, and much to the point of this thread, Jews self-identify as a cultural sub-group. Read a couple of the Jewish college student threads in this forum to have a feeling for how important it is to Jewish parents that their children marry other Jews. While US “whites” might find it convenient to adopt Jews into their group for the purpose of reporting standardized tests, I assure you the reverse is not true. Lastly, and perhaps the most glaringly obvious, 2000 years of anti-semitism culminating in the third reich’s attempt to eugenicize Europe of Jews was not based on temple attendance.</p>
<p>As a cultural group, Jews value education. Partly, this may be because Jewish religious practices involve quite a lot of study. But perhaps more important, when Jews came to the United States, they were subject to a lot of discrimination, and they needed to figure out ways to be successful in spite of it.</p>
<p>The Jewish parents of a few generations ago figured out that a good way for their sons to be successful was for them to become professionals who could have independent practices – in such fields as medicine, law, dentistry, or accounting. The idea here is that such careers can provide a good living and put a man into a position were he is respected in his community, but they don’t involve climbing a hierarchy in someone else’s business, where being a member of a group that is subject to prejudice might work against him. Being a professional requires education – for most of the professions, quite a lot of education. Thus, the emphasis on the importance of grades, college, etc.</p>
<p>kxc,
College data includes breakdown of ‘whites’ into its Jewish sub-group because of the Hillel; you will not find similar granularity in run of the mill US standardized tests. I think I have seen SAT data for Jews but I am not sure.</p>
<p>If you accept the proposition that IQ tests correlate tightly with SAT scores in large enough groups if language is not a barrier, then the same quantitative differences in achievement between Asians, Jews, and “Whites” shows up. In US testing, Asians test about 1 SD above the “white” norm and Jews test about 1.6 SD higher. If 2 SD above the median is the approximate threshold to enter the Ivy league it follows that 2.3% of “whites” fall in that range, 16% of Asians, and 34% of Jews. Notice how closely these numbers parallel the deviations from proportional representation ?</p>
<p>Please note that I am not in any way arguing that one group is “smarter” than another; I am pointing out that the Harvard data is typical and predictable.</p>
<p>And so long as I am boring people stiff with statistics, look what happens when we predict how many “geniuses” each group will produce defined as 3 SD above the “white” median: “whites” 13/10,000; NE Asian 228/10,000; and Jews 808/10,000.</p>
<p>While Jews very much value education, I think we tend to have a broader view, including a high regard for the liberal arts & a love of intellectual debate, and are not as focused on external validation (all A’s, top SAT scores). Intellectualism is very highly valued – so a Jewish scholar is to be admired – but so is independence. So you aren’t generally going to see Jewish parents demanding a kid enter a particular profession if the kid professes an interest in something else, or focusing too heavily on individual grades. (Jewish parents want their kids to get A’s if possible, but no one sweats a B here and there - and if the kid wants to major in philosophy, no problem.)</p>
<p>I don’t think the high value Jews place on education is really connected historically and culturally to jobs & earnings (even though I agree with the statement about professional education above). I think it really stems from the tradition of studying the Torah and the high value placed on religious study. I also think that carries over into how Jews view the educational process. Grades aren’t really all that important, except as a means to an end. The process of learning is supposed to be participatory and dialectical, to involve an interchange of ideas and diverging viewpoints. </p>
<p>Jews historically were shut out of the regular stream of education (secular schools and colleges) in many parts of the world, – in many parts of the world the professions weren’t open to them even if they had wanted that – so as important as education is culturally, I think it is more valued for its own sake than as being necessarily tied to a successful career.</p>
<p>“I think we tend to have a broader view, including a high regard for the liberal arts & a love of intellectual debate, and are not as focused on external validation (all A’s, top SAT scores).”</p>
<p>Well, I can tell you that in my home my kids were taught that less than an ‘A’ was clear proof they have not grasped the topic, while an ‘A’ left open the possibility of competency although the odds were against it due to grade inflation. They did not appreciate hearing that every report card, and liked even less having to review with their parents test problems they erred solving.</p>
<p>^^ I am sure Asian parents are saying the same thing. "As a cutural group, East Asians emphasize education and hard work…’ Education goes back far in Asia. There were times with education one could overcome the low class one is born into. </p>
<p>It sounds that Jewish parents are not letting their kids do what they want, either. I doubt left alone most jewish kids would have chosen to be a doctor or a lawyer. If Amy Chua did what most mothers did a generation ago, being goal oriented, why is there so much criticism? Her method may be extreme, but her belief that kids needs to succeed is shared by many.</p>
<p>Erc, Are there demographic numbers available for college age? 80% white population probably includes many who are not young any more.</p>
<p>As I understand it, while there are still plenty of Jewish doctors and lawyers, the family pressure to go into those professions is much less than it used to be, and Jewish kids go into all sorts of fields. I think that’s because Jews have become significantly assimilated, and there is much less perception of anti-Semitism in the working world than there used to be. I think Marian was right upthread, that one reason those careers were chosen in the past was the fear that Jews wouldn’t be allowed to advance in large organizations. I also think they chose portable careers out of a family experience of having to move from one country to another. I don’t think either of those fears is nearly as strong in the U.S. now.</p>
<p>I expect a similar process to occur with Asian immigrants–indeed, I think it has already begun and can be seen in some of the previous posts in this thread.</p>
<p>Are you aware that Chinese have very high regard for scholars, not so much for professional or trade people? They have highest regard for teachers and professors, even if they don´t make as much money. I also don´t think high value Chinese
. The worst thing a Chinese could say about someone is “he is smell of money.” </p>
<p>Today, if you were to ask general population about Jews, most people would say they are very into money, everything they do is to make more of it. Based on calmom´s post, it doesn´t seem to be the case, and we should believe her. On the other hand, even with numerous posts from Chinese parents on this board to say Chua is not necessary the norm, we are still not believable.</p>