<p>I have no interest in this book. What’s the point?</p>
<p>
Agreed. people who start early die early. I saw two of my family friends looking exceptionally self motivated and super smart in middle school and high school, topped everything. In grad. school they basically completely collapsed. one had to be put in an institution. very scary. both are chinese. My mom was scared and said she hoped I wouldn’t be like them. My mom is normally very pushy. But every time she sees these two, she came back to be very nice to me. lol</p>
<p>"Not to mention Mozart. No lack of creativity there. "</p>
<p>That raises an interesting question, about pushing and creativity and such. Mozart was pushed, and so was Beethoven (his father makes Amy Chua look like an angel in comparison, he screwed Beethoven up in a lot of ways), but it is hard to make the point that the pushing created them, while in many cases pushing can be demonstrated to be a negative. Beethoven pushed his nephew Karl, whom he pretty much stole from his widowed sister in law, to be a pianist, but Karl not only didn’t play piano, he ended up as a really sad story. </p>
<p>The fact is that Beethoven and Mozart both had the gifts and the passion to write music, there is no doubt about that. Their parents did push them in music, Mozart was trained from an early age, was a piano (and probably violin) prodigy, and Leopold ruthlessly promoted him. With Mozart, though, people make a big mistake, we hear about how he was composing at 4 or 5, etc, but the reality of Mozart is quite complex. Mozart did not start writing music that was of any account until he was in his late teens, the same is true of Beethoven, and at this point it was driven by themselves demonstrably, they found the passion, and while the training they had endured from an early age did help them, it didn’t create the people they became (read musical bios written by musicology types if you are curious). I also will add that both men had some bitterness over the way they were raised, Beethoven had a lot of choice things to say about how stupid his father was.</p>
<p>In many cases, what Mozart and Beethoven’s fathers decided was contrary to what they needed, because their pushing also involved control and it can be argued that they didn’t become the people they became until they broke from their father (in Mozart’s case, physically moving away from his father, I think Beethovens father died). Yo Yo Ma had a traditional Chinese father, and he had quite a break from him when he was a teenager, and has said if he had followed the path his father wanted him to take, he never would have made it as a cellist. </p>
<p>With the methods we are talking about, the problem isn’t just the kids being pushed, but being totally controlled in doing so. For example, in music, many parents in their push to have their kids excel think the way to musical greatness is pushing their kids to be ‘prodigies’, they find teachers as ignorant as themselves, who are eager to make a name for themselves, and they rush the kids into high level repertoire early to get them out on stage as ‘prodigies’, and while their can be a measure of fame, doing talk shows, etc, these kids often end up falling by the wayside when they get older.</p>
<p>First of all, they in many cases haven’t learned to play the instrument in the way other students have, by working scales and etudes, they have learned to play high level pieces using inate instincts, that crash when they hit puberty most of the time. Secondly, what was fantastic when they were 8 or 9 becomes routine at 14 or 15, other kids who do it the regular way surpass them (note, not all parents go the prodigy route, this is only one example). And I have seen pathetic examples of what the parents do, they then do everything they can to make their child look as young as possible, you see 14 year olds dressed like they are 8 or 9, to maintain the ‘prodigy’ image (Joshua Bell, who was not a prodigy per se, laughs when he says that he was listed at 14 until he was almost 19 on concert promotions, to give you an idea of that world). By their pushing, their parents end up destroying what they claim to be doing, making their kid into a great musician.</p>
<p>Likewise, many parents in the music world push their kids into instruments, into incredible practice regimes, very early, and they tend to control the whole process. It isn 't just about forcing the kid to practice long hours, it also is a continuous process, the parents sit in on every lesson, often haranging the teacher (don’t believe me? Ask high level violin and piano teachers about that), they videotape everything, and when the parent has musical knowledge they often ‘teach’ their kids to do things, which in turn drives more then a few teachers nuts…</p>
<p>This goes on long after the basic level, you see kids well into their teens whose parents still do this. Parents, focused on ‘success’ and ‘being the best’, in turn enter these kids into every kind of competition they can find…the problem with that focus is that music is an art form, and that kind of competition doesn’t really measure anything, except the kid won the competition (there are some competitions that have meaning, some of the big international ones can bring opportunities like recording contracts and performance opportunities, but that is a different level). Why is that a problem? Because to win competitions, you have a repeat of the prodigy phenomenon, instead of working on repertory and building their strength as musicians and artists, learning to interpret the music and express it, they learn how to play it to win the competion, usually by being told exactly what to play…the parents believe they know best, but they apply a false approach because it has what they want, ‘being #1’ i.e winning competitions, but they don’t know best. Plus more importantly, the kid never really learns self discipline, to do it for their sake, and even assuming their parents would let them pursue music, they would have a tough time when on their own, I have heard quite a few tales of this from people who went to conservatory. </p>
<p>Put it this way, in the world of music, most of the major musicians did very few competitions. Yo Yo Ma laughs that he lost every competition he entered, Perlman won only one competition, the Leventritt, when he was starting out as a young professional (that being one of the competitions that gives performance awards and such), same for many others. The international competitions are loaded with talented young Asian musicans, many from Korea and China, who end up placing highly or winning, and then disappear, many to become teachers harking their greatness at winning some competition…</p>
<p>The problem is not just the pushing, it is the control, it is assuming that all it takes is incredible pushing to be successful or creative. Pushing someone into something they aren’t necessarily good at, or have talent at, while ignoring where they can excel doesn’t always or often lead to success, which is something this kind of method has problems with IME as well.</p>
<p>I’ll give another example of problems with this approach. To many of these parents, music is about 'being #1, and they focus even where they want the kid to go into music, on being a soloist. As a result, they disdain things like chamber music and orchestra (which many view as the fallback for those who ‘lost’), and when it comes to music theory and music history and ear training they want their kid to do as little of this as possible, the bare minimum, because to them these are ‘unimportant’ as compared to learning pieces to play in competitions and solo with…and it kills many of these kids as musicians. </p>
<p>Most music is done collaboratively, the fact is that most music is done by ensembles. More importantly, music isn’t a series of notes and chords on a page, it has structure behind it, meaning, expression that comes out of the kind of training I am talking about…many of these kids, if they can play mozart correctly, do so because they have been taught to play the notes in a certain way. Want to know a dirty little secret? Put a piece of music in front of a lot of these kids they have never seen before, and ask them to sight read it, and they can’t do it…the methods that made them a high level player at an early age denied them some fundamental knowledge, like how to read a piece of music and figure out what the composer was saying, the structure of it and what it means and so forth. </p>
<p>Recently, there was a piece on the Strad magazine I believe about members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln center going to Asia on a road trip, to places like Korea and Taiwan, and being awed by the technical level these kids were playing at but also astounded by the lack of basic musical understanding these kids had, or how little they seemed to know about playing in a chamber group (a chamber group is not 4 soloists playing together). They had kids playing Beethoven the same as Haydn for example, and were almost totally ignorant of the music they were playing in the context of the composer. </p>
<p>Another problem with the music students is because of the emphasis on competitions, everything becomes a competition to be won over ‘competitors’ or in some eyes ‘the enemy’. They see other musicians on their instrument as ‘competitors’ not ‘colleagues’. Problem with that is the violin or piano is not a competitive sport, that people playing other instruments are not ‘lesser’, and that many of the people they see as ‘the enemy’ will someday be colleagues in ensemble and orchestra playing, and believe me, a lot of these kids run into a brick wall because of this, I have gotten this from working musicians who talk about the arrogance that many of these kids have, who think because they got into Juilliard, won X competitions, that the world is going to throw itself at them, and it doesn’t despite what their parents believed. A lot of work in music comes through connections, and even in orchestra playing or even as a soloist the ability to work with others as colleagues is critical. There is one young Asian violin soloist I heard of recently who is incredibly skilled and has started to attract attention, but because he has the reputation of being an arrogant snot he is finding bookings hard to get, because he has spent his whole time being told that he is “#1” and is finding out treating people as #2 doesn’t sit well. </p>
<p>More importantly, what about the road not traveled? What about all those worlds the kid doesn’t get to explore, even though they aren’t ‘the best’ at it? My son, who is a top level music student, played little league baseball, and while he wasn’t the best athlete by any means, he learned from it and in some ways sports are a part of who he is as a person. He probably won’t go the academic track in college, yet he is interested in history and world events and politics and spends time reading about them because he is curious about them, rather then because they are points on a test and loves to talk and debate about them…do Ms. Chua’s daughters ever do this with the things they have read? Do they actually care about what they read, or do it only to get their mom off their backs?</p>
<p>From my own perspective, the problem with this style of parenting is it leaves little room for flexibility, it leaves little room for anything but a rigidly proscribed path. It is one thing to demand high standards from a child, it is another to decide entirely a)what path that is and b)what those standards are to be. I realize that this kind of parenting returns high level results on tests, grades, getting into high level colleges, etc, but what are its results? One of the things I would love to see is a study that tracks kids like Ms. Chua’s, that looks at what happens to them down the road and sees the end result. </p>
<p>What I would love to see is a long term study that tracks how kids raised like this end up doing in the ‘real world’…do they end up happy people? Does Ms. Chua’s daughter, who plays the piano, end up playing it as an adult? Do they end up, after the ivy league school, doing something that they really seem to enjoy, or do they end up unhappy with their life path? Did they end up following the path their parents made for them, or did they end up rebelling and finding their own path? And what do they end up doing with their own children? These are real questions that I think need to be raised, about how well a ‘superior’ method of parenting works in the end, or how ‘bad’ it ends up working for people who don’t follow it. Does the kid who excelled on the violin, won competitions galore, got into the high level conservatory program, end up being a working musician, and on what level? And where do these kids end up, do they end up being entrepreneurs who create new businesses, do they end up in high level jobs running companies, product designers and the like? Or do they end up in jobs that basically track the same as kids raised by other methods, do they same percentages end up really succeeding, doing well, etc as others, or is it really that much better? Before claiming ‘success’ for a method of parenting, in other words, we should see the results, not all kinds of generalized statements about people ‘succeeding’.</p>
<p>From my own perspective, I think there are problems with “american parenting” (or rather, the various styles out there), but I think the ‘pushy’ parenting or ‘non pushy’ misses the point. The real problem is parental involvement and support, something that the style Ms. Chua writes about is obviously full off (maybe too much). The real issue to me is ‘detached’ parenting versus ‘involved parenting’, and in that I think there is a real issue. Too many parents IMO have gone overboard the other way with their kids, they have so pulled back, either because they want to be their kids friends, or they are too tired and caught up in their own issues to be willing to confront their kids. I see it all the time, parents getting into a power struggle with a young kid, and that is ridiculous, in the end, we are parents and we do have things we need to do, even if the kid doesn’t like it. </p>
<p>Parental involvement and support is what is needed, and parents setting boundaries. While I don’t agree with Ms. Chua’s methods or the rigid control that kind of methodology uses, the fact is that along with that comes support. A friend of mine who is from China, has a son that fences, and like the music parents I see, he supports the kid, takes him to tournaments, pays for lessons and so forth. With so called “asian parenting” the parents put their all into raising their kids (I use " " around Asian, because it isn’t limited to them), they make sacrifices in many cases other parents won’t do (note, among serious music students of any race or ethnic group, this is de rigeur, you simply can’t do without it). You know how many parents I have heard tell a kid “why should you take an instrument? You won’t be any good at it, I am not going to waste money on it” , or when a kid wants to try something, says “You are not doing that, it takes too much time and effort”, and that is as bad to me as saying “You will play the violin or piano, you will read War and Peace in 5th grade” (personally I think anyone who forces anyone to read that should be charged with abuse). </p>
<p>More importantly, the keyword to me is attention, and that is where too many parents fail. They leave things like education to the schools, for a variety of reasons, or assume ‘it will just happen’. I realize that in some cases, because of economic circumstances and such this is really hard, but this is true even among middle and upper income people I see around me. They aren’t involved, they aren’t curious about what the kid is doing, they don’t ask the kid if he /she has homework, have they done it, they don’t check the homework or ask if the kid has problems, and in many cases they aren’t even actively involved in what the kid is doing at school…and then complain about the results. My dad used to say that people expect things to happen by osmosis, and they don’t, things happen because you make them happen, in that I don’t disagree with the ‘pushy parents’. </p>
<p>There was a famous study done in organizational behavior, years ago, I believe it was called the Hawthorn Gas works (this was late 19th century I seem to recall), where they tried all kinds of things to improve productivity. They re-arranged the work flow, they dimmed the lights, they raised the lighting level, they had the windows half shaded, they had them full shaded, they kept it cool, they kept it warm, and every time they did something, productivity improved…and someone finally figured out that what caused the increase in productivity was that the workers in the plant realized that someone cared about what they were doing to make deliberate changes, and that involvement led to them working better. Likewise, when you have high expectations for the people working for you, they tend to rise to the occasion. </p>
<p>I also think this approach tends to temper as the generations go along. Recently, I was talking to another music parent, and she related a story a friend of hers told her. The friend is Korean American (born here) and her daughter is a top not flautist (flutist?), and the friend was laughing when she told her that other Korean parents were amazed that she would let their daughter play the flute rather then piano or violin, and these parents for the most part were fairly recent immigrants (the woman’s parents whose daughter this was immigrated 30 some odd years ago), so that plays a role in it.</p>
<p>There is no magic in success, it takes parental involvement, it takes support and caring, and it also does take discipline to achieve success, but IMO it is far better to install self discipline in the kid rather then forcing it on them extrinsically. I would much rather my son excel in music for his own sake, rather then to please me, I would rather he does well in his classes because he wants to do well. One thing has been proven out over time, and that is that self discipline and self drive is worth a lot more then external drive, that doing something because it is important to you generally drives better results in the end then doing it for someone else.</p>
<p>There are some parts of what Chua says that are at some level right, but not at her extreme level, such as the part about something only being fun unless you are good at it.</p>
<p>At some level, this is true. So if you want to play tennis, and you keep hitting the ball into the net most of the time, a tennis game isn’t going to be very fun. But you can get competent enough so that the ball goes over the net most of the time and then have fun at your tennis game. You don’t need to be Rafa Nadal to have fun at a tennis game, or even the best in your city, or school, age group, etc.</p>
<p>And the point made in that Yale piece (a fantastic article and such a great writer for a first-year student) about enjoying the camraderie also rings true. Most of my buddies play golf and while they are all competent, no one is going pro soon. But they all enjoy the challenge of the game, but most importantly, the socializing.</p>
<p>I also like the point about failure in that Yale piece. When my oldest, who was always very bright and athletic, was in second grade, his teacher (a Dominican sister) looked at me and said that at some point, he will fall flat on his face and his challenge will be how he responds and how he picks himself up.</p>
<p>It seems to me that Chua is trying to make sure that her children fail at nothing. It’s the same critique made against the stereotypical helicopter parent–these parents are so worried that if they leave it up to the kid, then the kid may make a mistake and that mistake will be costly for (insert competitive program here). So they are constantly hovering around making sure the kid doesn’t fall. </p>
<p>How much of parenting is letting kids learn from their own mistakes, and how much of parenting is making sure the kids don’t make those mistakes to begin with?</p>
<p>To be fair I have not read the book, but the excerpts and discussion points on TV have been enough to boycott the book. I will not help this woman make one more penny from the abuse of her children.</p>
<p>I have known Chinese grandparents who used negative comments to “motivate” their grandchildren (and the Chinese parents of these same kids sought to nullify what they saw as old fashioned and abusive) but I have never seen anything as pervasively abusive and controlling as the brand of parenting Ms. Chua is trying to sell under the label “Chinese”.</p>
<p>Honestly, from what I’ve heard of her parenting methods, if this woman were less educated and lacking her employment credentials, no one would have given her book a second - or even a first - glance; but someone might have taken the initiative to call child protective services to keep an eye on the Chua house.</p>
<p>I’ve known parents that were on strict and controlling side and they are not, by any measure, exclusively Chinese, or Asian, or Jewish. Over the top controlling parents do all seem to subscribe to some form of self-identification as a subset of society to which they attribute the necessity to parent as they do, whether it be ethnicity or religion, it never seems to occur to them that others of their ethnicity or religion don’t all feel the need to treat their children in similar fashion - their proud banner of “XXXX parent” is simply their excuse for bad parenting and sometimes outright abuse.</p>
<p>I find it appalling that any parent would tell their child they always have to be #1 in all that they do. Everyone has weaknesses - and Amy Chua has just written a book illustrating hers. Go Lulu!</p>
<p>“The idea of having my 13 yo be sooo smart in math that he needs to go take college classes otherwise he’ll be bored really isn’t all that appealing to me. I’m plenty happy with normal-bright kids. I think there are a lot fewer social issues with normal-bright kids than with genius-kids.”</p>
<p>But then we get what we get when it comes to our children, be they super advanced or cognitively delayed. Whether we find it appealing or not has nothing to do with it.</p>
<p>Social issues are not caused by extreme intelligence, nor are they nonexistent in those with average intelligence. How we raise each particular child to fit into his or her world - whatever that may be - directly factors into the degree of social issues they will face.</p>
<p>Perhaps one problem with the Chua method is the lack of a regular evaluation about the activity and a willingness to make adjustments accordingly. It seems that once a goal has been set for the child, there’s simply no changing it come hell or high water. It reminds me of my S’s Chinese friend I mentioned earlier. One summer she decided she would earn X number of dollars working. When an opportunity arose for her to travel abroad in late August, she was reluctant to take advantage of it because traveling would preclude her from earning that sum she had planned to earn. My son asked her if there was something particular she needed to buy that required that sum of money. She said no. He then asked if there was a reason she selected that particular dollar amount. She admitted that no. So then S suggested that since the goal was completely arbitrary, and totally self-determined, then perhaps she could just set a new arbitrary amount that would be achievable without working the last two weeks of August. Oddly enough, she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. In the end, her mother had to pay her her wages for two weeks so that she’d agree to go on the trip. That seemed to me very, very odd. </p>
<p>I think pushing parents should occasionally stop and ask themselves the following:</p>
<p>How is this EC working for my child? (the schedule, the travel or location, the training level, etc.)
Is s/he doing well and progressing?
Is s/he enjoying it?
Has s/he made friends through it?
Is this EC taking too much time away from something that should be of a higher priority?
Is the potential return on this EC still worth the time, effort, and expense?</p>
<p>For a while, many kids will willingly go along with their parents’ plan for them. Then, once they start to doubt the plan or cease enjoying the EC, they still continue out of fear. They don’t know or can’t imagine what they’d do without this EC in their life. So while they say they still want to continue, they are actually not making a truly free choice. They’re kind of like the prisoner who commits a crime to go back to jail because he’s been encarcerated so long that he can’t handle the sudden freedom.</p>
<p>
I totally get it, but I also get the other side. For a while my son played competitive chess. He was one of the two best players in his elementary school, did well in various scholastic tournaments and clearly had the ability if he pushed himself to be a top level player. But at some point he got more interested in programming computers than studying chess moves. I’m too lazy to be pushy (and my kids are stubborn), I spent most of their childhood being pulled by them. I didn’t teach this same son to read at 2, he spent every waking moment asking me what everything said until he figured out the rules. At any rate it did make me sad when my dreams of him being a chess champion had to be put aside. And they were my dreams not his. A terrific book about this push and pull a parent feels when they recognize talent in their child btw is Searching for Bobby Fisher. The author goes a little overboard at times, (and he knows it), but it’s a fascinating read.</p>
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<p>If they are enforced by arbitrary, last-minute punishments, name-calling and belittlement, yes.</p>
<p>In and of themselves, denying a water-break or two is not abusive, no. But treating someone like a performing animal and not a person with rights, and basic human feeling, yes, that is abuse.</p>
<p>@musicprnt: Your whole post was just great, pointing out all the fallacies in the whole music=intelligence argument. I especially liked:</p>
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<p>I think s/he was talking about this kind of coaching that ends up with great disparities in ability and knowledge, not innate talent or a child-driven process. Some parents DO have a choice, and s/he’s saying, she wouldn’t choose the genius level for her child, especially not if it took ridiculous lengths to get there. I understand that.</p>
<p>Obviously there’s not much you can do if you do have one of those natural prodigies but support your child.</p>
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<p>I think you can’t make that generalization about all kids in elite-level sports just as you can’t make generalizations about all kids with Asian mothers. I had a kid who ranked (at twice yearly national competitions)–from 2nd to 8th in the United States for the three years she was on the national team in her sport. Her coach was a Russian version of Amy. Unlike Amy, most of the elite coaches in this sport recognize that there are limits to how far they can push a kid. These coaches realize that at some point you can’t make a kid go beyond what her body/spirit allows. In my D’s sport, most of the elite coaches believed that negative reinforcement was definitely the way to motivate kids. Some kids couldn’t handle it and quit; others developed a tough skin and continued to compete, but realized that there was more to life than the sport. From my experience, the elite kids in my D’s sport who were pushed the most (and IMO always seemed unhappy and miserable) were kids whose parents were tougher on them than their coaches. I once watched a mother scream in anger at her daughter (who ranked #1) when the daughter flubbed a routine. In my mind, this type of behavior is akin to Amy’s–both assume that urging a kid to strive for excellence should include heavy doses of negative reinforcement.</p>
<p>The entire Tiger Mother thing is just rediculous to the extent that I created a CC account and make this post. I has been a passive reader of this forum for about 6 months because my son is now a 7th grader and I thought it will be useful for me to educate myself about the college application process through reading your posts.</p>
<p>I am a Chinese, was raised in Asia, and am now a college professor in the U.S. Prof. Chua’s behaviors would be regarded as child abuse even in some Asian countries. Since the WSJ arrticle was published, the Chinese community in the U.S. was largely horrified by this event. Many of my Chinese friends in the U.S. expressed that “that is not the way that we raise our kids.” They are largely angry with Prof. Chua’s publicity because it may profit the Chua family but it is in the expense of Chinese stereotype. </p>
<p>I am the academic mentor of many Chinese students at my institution (a Research I university). I would not characterize my Chinese students to be superior than my U.S. students at all. I do not see a clear linkage between Chinese value and academic performance either. For one thing, if indeed Chinese value promotes academic excellence, you would expect the universities in China to be more competitive than those in the U.S.</p>
<p>“The idea of having my 13 yo be sooo smart in math that he needs to go take college classes otherwise he’ll be bored really isn’t all that appealing to me”</p>
<p>There is a fundamental assumption here I am not sure is true. There are kids because of parents pushing them who at 13 are ready to take college level math, you can get through the various levels of typical school and high school math simply by grinding through it fast, and it doesn’t necessarily mean the kid involved is smart. You don’t make someone smart by rushing through math courses, any more then you make them brilliant musicians by rushing them through the repertoire, it isn’t the same thing.</p>
<p>Many parents confuse the two, I have seen more then a few parents who push their kids in this way clamor for their kids to take college level classes, because they have passed through the math curricula fast, but most of these kids are not gifted. In the context of the original poster, many of these parents might believe their kids, because accelerated, are geniuses ready for college but they could very well not be, they could be kids of above average intelligence who have been rushed through.</p>
<p>With gifted kids it is an entirely different issue, and i have heard tales from other parents about what they call “pushy parents” whose kids are high achieving academically getting their noses bent out of joint because their kid isn’t in the G and T program (usually these require scoring about a certain level on any number of IQ or similar tests). The parents assume getting good grades means smart or gifted, and it doesn’t.</p>
<p>The problem with a 13 year old gifted student isn’t so much they are ready for college level math, it is that the way their mind works, the kind of education most schools give simply doesn’t work any more, on any level…and that brings its own problems with it, it isn’t an easy decision to make. Ironically, a truly gifted kid could very well do poorly with this ‘push’ methodology, since it focuses so much on rote learning of material in a regimented way and doing things ‘the standard way’, which goes against the grain of what many gifted kids are like (among other things, gifted kids don’t just comprehend things faster, or grasp detailed concepts easier, they also tend to work things out differently. </p>
<p>And if you put a gifted kid through this kind of regimentation, it will often drive the very things giftedness brings, like creativity and innovation, out the window. When you regiment someone this bright, it often leaves you will a shell, the failure rate for high iq people is pretty high.</p>
<p>musicprnt: it’s good to read your viewpoint. What comforts me as a mom is your idea that rushing and shortcuts partially explain away some prodigies and exceptionally advanced students. We parents who sometimes feel insecure about our parenting and the achievements of our kids, can feel especially inadequate when we hear/read about these seemingly superhuman children who accomplish so much, and not only in one arena either. We wonder how it is possible, because we think our kids are pretty smart and pretty talented, and yet we see no way they’d be able to maintain the type of academic and extra-curricular schedule that must be necessary. Even assuming brilliance, how do these kids manage such high levels of accomplishments in more than one field? Wouldn’t achieving mastery in just one endeavor take up all of your free time? What happened to the jack of all trades master of none principle?</p>
<p>I think you’ve given one answer to this question.</p>
<p>This week I received a belated holiday letter, replete with details about my friend’s children. I don’t know her to be a liar, but how is it possible that her D is:</p>
<p>Training for a half-marathon
Applying to med school and going on interviews for the same
Organizing a service trip to another country for a group of pre-med students
Doing original research at an elite research institute near campus and
writing a paper on it for publication
Working as a tutor
Playing her instrument
Hiking
Hunting
Cooking/entertaining friends with her roommates
And all while carrying a full course load and presumably having to get a good GPA for med school.</p>
<p>GFG, I think that list is possible but remember, friend isnt lying, she’s merely remembering what her D told her. I’m sure she went hiking and hunting last year, and i’m sure she played her instrument and has friends. She probably does research as good undergrads do (probably for course credit), and volunteer work. </p>
<p>What is often missing from paper, is the depth and detail. My next door neighbor at work has 25 papers under review at journals, and he plays basketball in the afternoons. How possible! Then I see the limited role he plays on each. I have found over time that those with impressive resumes that are long on activiteis, often require lighteness on invovlement. And one isn’t doing everything every week but over the course of a year. I often feel like I ‘do nothing’ (spend way too much time on CC, lol!), but when I put together my faculty activity report and such I’m like “wow, I did all that!” I just hope my Dean agrees :)</p>
<p>My kids’ resumes were very short compared to a lot of the uber-resumes you read on CC (they weren’t doing research / curing cancer / winning state championships in athletics), yet somehow they did the trick.</p>
<p>pizaa, what were their stats and what did they end up doing, outof curiousity?</p>
<p>also, not sure if this was ref’d earlier, but I just saw the NYT’s David Brooks weigh in on the Chua book with is essay, ‘Amy Chua Is a Wimp’. Makes a good point about the importance of collaborative learning, a type of learning that will correlate to success in the world. musicprnt touched on this in the music world, too (pointing out that most music is done with ensembles). </p>
<p>Brooks’ point also brings up the notion of different kinds of ‘IQ’ or skills that are immensely important in life - working with your hands/mechanics, visualizing things in 3-d, empathy (for counselors, eg), cooking, pretending / acting - for plays and movies/entertainment AND politicians such as President and gov’nor, etc. Declamation skills are something that you carry with you EVERYWHERE when you meet ANYone.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/opinion/18brooks.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/opinion/18brooks.html</a></p>
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<p>That’s a very good point. Just imagine if one of the Chua children really wanted to be a painter, or a photographer, or (shudder) a mechanic or plumber. The level of scorn that would have been heaped upon them would have been immense, and they would have been shamed out of it.</p>
<p>(I"m being tongue in cheek with the shudder, gang.)</p>
<p>Loved David Brooks’ response to Amy Chua’s over-hyped overmothering (“Amy Chua is a Wimp”). One point is it is just as important to learn to survive the cafeteria as it is to excel in the classroom. Learning to negotiate relationships in complex social interactions is a big part of high school. I’ve always wondered how homeschooled kids whose primary relationship is with their parents learn to handle relationships with peers in settings outside home or church. These social skills are essential in the workplace. It is wimpy to shelter your kids and make them think their superiority and excellence (so they can get into Harvard) is all that matters to you (or them).</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I worried about S2’s short resume, as well, esp. since I knew up-close what one of those mega-resumes looked like (and that kid was deep, not wide, too). S2 had a few activities, but they were really deep and representative of who he is, and he pulled them into his essays in a wonderful way.</p>
<p>I have been and still am being raised by a strict Asian mother. As much as I disagree with this kind of upbringing for a child, once you’ve experienced this it is understandable to SOME extent.
But to see this mother trying to earn money through this is a little disturbing. Shows that she isn’t just a pushy mother who does this to want the best for her children; but she thinks she’s king-**** and wants fame…
I’ve seen all kinds of these mothers in the musical field and they disgust me.
You’ve had your life, you haven’t had much luck doing well yourself- but DON’T push your children in order to get pre-death fame!</p>