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Would be karma, wouldn’t it? But I don’t know - I just googled them and Facebook hits came up. </p>
<p>I believe the oldest is a hs senior. Maybe her mom is a CCer!</p>
<p>I think a lot of this is tied to history: in China you had to excel just to survive. In the US even a high school grad with no college education could live a comfortable life.</p>
<p>For those who are interested in the topic: The other tread link is here.
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1064027-battle-hymn-tiger-mother-new-book-about-chinese-parenting.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1064027-battle-hymn-tiger-mother-new-book-about-chinese-parenting.html</a></p>
<p>After reading the article, I thought about the Swedes, whose educational system and accomplishments also seem to be at the top of everyones’ lists. I’d love to see a comparative analysis of the two.</p>
<p>From my relatives residing in Sweden, the Swedish parenting style seems the polar opposite of the stereotypical “Chinese mother.” Their culture is very child-centered: Extremely permissive, corporal punishment is outlawed, and all punishment discouraged, rather focus is on positive praise, and children are largely permitted to make their own decisions about most things.</p>
<p>And how many kids of these so called “Chinese” mothers commit suicide every year because they brought home an A-. How many of these kids resort to cheating to keep from getting abused at home. I don’t think she’s giving her Jewish husband enough credit for his moderating influence. It’s also not clear where these kids learn the social skills needed to lead and where they get freedom of thought to learn how to create. </p>
<p>No I prefer the Jewish approach of celebrating their education in all things, teaching them to love learning at a young age so that it’s something they WANT to do their whole life anyway, teaching them that it’s their world and that they have a responsibility and obligation to make it better, telling them they are adults at age 13, responsible for their actions, but praising them for being ready for that responsibility, and finally trusting their judgment in how they choose to lead their lives, heaping praise whenever possible and providing gentle loving guidance when necessary. </p>
<p>Sorry, I’ll take our traditions any day - and it’s not such a bad deal for what she calls the Western parent.</p>
<p>Is there anyone out there foolish enough to believe that this is the “standard” Chinese mother rather than an exceptionally strict one? Grades are one thing, but thinking the average Chinese-American hasn’t ever watched TV or played a computer game… </p>
<p>The article is a joke, and any legitimate news source should be condemned for running such a ridiculous article. This seems more like something I’d see on The Onion than on WSJ. It’s simply a list of gross exaggerations.</p>
<p>The thread started on Parents Cafe earlier today is now merged with the longer-standing thread on Parents Forum. Both threads respond to Amy Chua’s new book. The “WSJ article” was, in its entirety, an excerpt from the same book. All CC members’ posts have been preserved.</p>
<p>Let me show you what a society would look like when the children raised in the mold of Amy Chu dominate the upper echelon. </p>
<p>I worked for a while for an Asian company in the league of global fortune 100. It is a high tech company. Though that company is doing fantastically well, they are ALWAYS a follower when it comes to the newest technology and newest high tech consumer trend. Since they consistently missed to be a trail blazer like Google and Apple, they made up their “johnny come late” by literally working their young engineers to death (LITERALLY) with 18 hour work days, 6.5 half days a week (though officially it’s a five day work week, executives frequently did a “spot check” to see which employees were dedicated enough to show up at the office on weekends, and rated the employees accordingly). </p>
<p>The on going concern of the executives at the highest level was lack of innovative spirit among their employees. Of course, the executives themselves were veritable sour crushers. So, in order to increase innovation, they started to “institutionalize” innovation. Hence, “innovation” posters all over the wall in every single building, every single floor. yet, any young employees who challenged the authority of the executives were sent to the goulag. So, you can imagine how well this top end driven innovation scheme worked.</p>
<p>But then again, even if the soul crushing executives had mended their ways, the employees would NOT have been ready to be innovative. They spent 22 years before they finally won the fierce competition to land a job in this company - the most prestigious in the country- in an educational and home environment very similar to the one Amy Chu instituted in her house (albeit NOT as extreme as this woman’s practice by wide margin). By the time they went through all that, there was not much of ANY INNOVATIVE SPIRIT LEFT in their psych. The real tragedy is, among the employees in this company, there is NO quality of life to speak of, though they make top dollars. Of course, these top dollars are all spent to give $2000/month private tutoring to their kids so that they emerge competitive to repeat the whole cycle again.</p>
<p>Please note that even with all this high tech sweeping the globe, the Asian companies are mostly excelling because of their manufacturing practice: they are superb hardware engineers. By the way I am not talking about low tech manufacturing. I am talking about highly technical, highly sophisticated manufacturing. Hence the requirement for superb hardware engineers. Yet, when it comes to software, they are hopefully lost. Note that the legend of Google, Facebook, and Apple are all built on the software development and this skill, my friend, takes a lot more “imagination and innovation” going way beyond the requirements of hardware engineering.</p>
<p>So, what would the regions of young people raised a la Amy Chu’s protocol be like, the kind who were only allowed to play piano and violin but not allowed to join the drama club. No playdate and no nothing. Certainly NOT allowed to think for themselves. You get the answer above. </p>
<p>Oh, by the way, did you notice that there are a lot of Asian prodigies in the classical music scene, but NOT in the art scene? Is it too much to speculate that the reason is, unlike classical music where 18 hours/day spent practicing the perfect technique goes a LONG way, in addition to the so called sensitivity and soul searching maturity or even compensating for the lack of true musicality, but in the art world, you can’t become a Picasso or Van Gogh by practicing the same brush stroke thousands of times over and over again day in and day out under a watchful supervision of a tiger mother?</p>
<p>There is a reason why Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Apple are all here and NOT found in any of the Asian countries. I know the answer first hand since I worked for the aforementioned Asian company as a senior executive. </p>
<p>American media is such a shameless h#$%^ when it comes to sensational headlines. We don’t want the children of thousand Amy Chu’s to be spit out into our economy with their rigid and obedient thinking and lack of creativity and innovation. </p>
<p>What we need is a hybrid approach. American youth should stop putting SO MUCH emphasis on sports and such and pay more attention to the rigor of the academics and intellectual pursuits. After all, when did you see American super athletes bringing in mega revenues from the GLOBAL consumers? The sports obsessions in this country, I believe, is a net negative on the total scale of America’s global competitiveness. Not only in an immediate sense, but also because it plays the part of trivializing intellectual pursuit of our young people and warping their value system on the average (of course, outside of this rarified CC community). Please understand I am not dissing sports and athletics in general. They do have a wonderful role to play in character building and other amazing benefits. But the fact that at some universities, coaches make more money than the president of the universities is a total farce. What’s the institutional goal of our universities?</p>
<p>We also need to lose the anti-intellectual bias in this country. It amazes me that some politicians wear their ignorance like a badge of honor and the voters rewards these idiots with “they are just like us” praise. Yeah, right. Would you like someone just like “us” to operate on your brain? what make you think that our top national leaders dealing with incredibly complex global and domestic policy issues require any less intellect than the brain surgeon?</p>
<p>So, my humble 2 cents? No Amy Chu, period! But more balanced approach that emphasizes creative and innovative development of our young people with more emphasis on intellectual pursuit.</p>
<p>Well said hyeonjlee, especially the part about ignorance becoming a badge of honor.</p>
<p>Nicely stated hyeonjlee. Thank you for posting that.</p>
<p>I think what I most disagreed with was the concept that :nothing is fun until you’re good at it. Good, in this context, seems to mean ‘better than everybody else, and having worked at an extreme level’. And, this is just not true. I enjoy things I’m not good at. Also, this sets up the mindset that the only way to enjoy something is by ‘being good at it’ . So, if you are ‘only’ a second rate poet, musician, actor, runner or whatever, should you stop? That’s absurd.</p>
<p>From post #60 by Pizzagirl:</p>
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<p>Although both are creative arts, mastery of music is looked upon more highly in Chinese culture. Back in historic times, a true gentleman was supposed to know the following skills: Rites, Music, Archery, Charioteering, Calligraphy, and Mathematics.</p>
<p>[Six</a> Arts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Arts]Six”>Six Arts - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Acting was not highly valued, and I would say an actor would rank lower than a gentleman in traditional Chinese society in the old days.</p>
<p>Hope this is helpful.</p>
<p>Of course this book is full of exaggerations, it is intended to shock and awe…and entertain.</p>
<p>It is an interesting statement that children are expected to choose either piano or violin- and never any other instrument. I am sure this is also an exaggeration- I bet if you can play the cello like YoYoMa you are forgiven by your Chinese parents in the same way that Jewish parents might give you a pass if you become a dentist instead of a doctor. </p>
<p>Still, the strong preference for piano and violin suggests to me that these are the instruments for which there are measurable, universally accepted markers of progress within the Chinese parent community. This makes it easy for everyone- especially other Chinese parents- to evaluate exactly how good your child is at some point in time. “Mrs X’s child can play the same piece flawlessly at age 8 that Mrs. Y’s child could only play flawlessly at age 10”. </p>
<p>The absence of such markers must make it just very hard for a Chinese mother to allow a child to pursue music composition or acting or painting or poetry. How in the world would you be able to prove to the rest of the world that your child was in fact the best?</p>
<p>Terrific posts, hyeonjlee and vicariousparent.</p>
<p>I remain unimpressed. If the culture was sooooo wonderful … why is it AMERICA that they all seek (often at great personal cost to those who immigrate, leaving loved ones behind) and AMERICAN society that they wish to be successful in navigating?</p>
<p>Answer: We have more opportunities. Because we have more creativity. And jumping off hyeonjlee’s point above, I’m not impressed by those who cannot figure out that “success” in the US doesn’t merely involve filling in little bubbles and coming up with the correct answer a la school, but in coming up with new answers to complex problems. I’m not impressed by those who come over here and can’t even observe that duh, there are more top universities in the land than HYPSM and that attending one of them is not a “failure” on the parent of the child that has led to shame. Failing to open one’s eyes and see what is around one is not “smart” - I don’t care what your SAT’s are.</p>
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<p>Same here!</p>
<p>I wonder what parents who follow these methods make of those students who do as well or better but have much, much more liberal parents?</p>
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<p>Nobody needs to be dragged to go bowling; nobody needs to be forced to sing in the car when they hear a song they like.</p>
<p>People often do need to be pushed to succeed academically, and in most academic subjects you need to learn a certain amount before you find the material interesting/enjoyable. For instance, Math is to a large extent a quest to find patterns and relationships in numbers or shapes. It’s also an attempt to model and solve real problems in a logical way. But if you’re not good at math it’s hard to see patterns or recognize its power in real applications. The same goes for seeing history as more than just a loose collection of facts or literature as more than just a bunch of boring stories. It also takes a certain level of technical proficiency on a musical instrument and musical knowledge to be able to play a wide range of music and experiment (Piano is a bit of an exception here).</p>
<p>I think lack of “passion” is too often used to excuse lack of effort/achievement. People seem to feel free to dismiss something as uninteresting before they know anything about it. This obviously doesn’t excuse abusive behavior when effort doesn’t lead to success or when standards for success become absurdly high. I don’t see anything wrong with aiming for success in everything you do though.</p>
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<p>I think you could also say that a lady in traditional European society that had learned to play the piano was more highly valued than an actress.</p>
<p>Regarding the acting vs playing violin/piano, there’s also the strong desire to incorporate what is commonly perceived of as markers of conformist upper-middle class Western culture in many Asian-American immigrant families to show they’re “civilized” not only among themselves, but also implicitly for “White Americans”. </p>
<p>A form of perverse performance for cultural acceptance I’ve noticed from observing wealthier older cousins’ families and many many high school classmates at my then slight majority Asian-American NYC urban public magnet high school. Quite sickening, especially back when I was an extremely rebellious adolescent. :p</p>
<p>Though Chua’s instrumental choices are unusually restrictive, she’s certainly not going to allow her daughters to start playing punk rock and/or <em>horrors</em> hip-hop. However, I’d be more than happy to introduce her daughters to those wonderfully liberating genres of music and especially to practice them in front of their parents…even if it means I never ever attend YLS(Will only happen when pigs fly…and at Mach 3.0). :D</p>
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<p>There’s a level system in music basically for any music instrument. I’m not entirely familiar with the system, but piano and violin aren’t the only instruments where there would be clear markers.</p>
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<p>People come to America for economic opportunities. They wish to successfully navigate American society for economic gain.</p>
<p>I think political stability has played a much bigger role in providing that than “creativity.”</p>
<p>Asian kids should start playing drums and guitars</p>
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<p>And, nobody needs to play that particular two-handed song that Ms Chua recounts torturing her daughter with. </p>
<p>BTW, I completely understand why adcoms are bored with the stereotypical tennis-and-violin, math-competition kids. If I were an adcom and saw a steady stream of them, I’d be bored and I’d only admit so many before I went in search of something fresh, interesting and novel, even if their SAT’s or GPA’s were a tidge lower.</p>