I guess this post started with a comment I made @ Cactus Kate. The prickly (Kate is quite right wing and blunt, well worth a read) pear had been praising Amy Chua. The part of the argument I like was based on Kate’s experience in living in Hong Kong and reflects my experience being married into a Chinese Family
Chua’s raising daughters. This is also a little different because the Chinese female also has only recently realised that she can beat the male. Chinese history has not been kind on women, Chua herself would know that women have to try harder. In China the male, no matter how thick, is more important than the female and this bias still is ingrained. Ironically the Mainland one-child policy has helped Chinese women in many ways with parents heaping all attention without a male who is preferred.
New Zealand women have an excellent record in the past generation of smashing their male counterparts in achievement as children. All my younger female friends and acquaintances are the smartest, largest independent achievers in their family. Regardless of the measure. All have parents who have tried to keep up the egos of other lesser siblings with a large cuddle and words that they were winners too.
Such Westernised coddling of a smashed up achievement ego of losers continues into unhealthy ages. Welfare Within Families is as rife in New Zealand as government whereby often the least successful and motivated members are given assistance over others.
In Chinese culture the sibling, especially if male, would have simply been locked in his room until he wasn’t so pathetic and scolded by his father that he couldn’t let a girl beat him as it was embarrassing the family.
Now Chua’s managed to offend a fair number of Americans who think that the kids have not had enough freedom. Ferdinand — who is good to read after Kate because he is staunchly anti-feminist — comments.
Making your kids “be the No. 1 student” in every subject doesn’t actually make them number one, any more than all the kids in Lake Wobegon could be above average, but it DOES train them to jump through hoops like a seal. That’s the Asian way – train people to become brainless, unthinking automatons incapable of thinking outside of the box.
I responded quite emotionally to this. My ex is Chinese. Two of my kids — both boys are half Chinese. In New Zealand, girls are praised to the skies, and boys are told that they are not as good… the curriculum is taught by women, tailored to women, and alienates a large number of young men. The families — that as a solo Dad — I’m modelling what I do on are those who seem functional (for many spoil their kids and insulate them from responsibility). I replied to her
Kate, you are only half right. You miss the other part of the equation. Chua is bright. Fracking bright. She is married to a Jewish bloke, who is also fracking bright. And she is in the US. Kids with the potential hers have can cruise and get “A”s from a US school. It is the equivelant of “merit” from NCEA. And my boys are told — at school and by me — that you get acheived in NCEA from the weetbix packet. That’s a FAIL. Acheived is a B. Excellent is an A.
Accepting failure is the mark of the non elite.
After reading both of these posts — from people I regularly read — I’m left with some questions. The first is… what is success and failure? Life is a marathon, but education is at best a middle distance race. It is not the full measure one should use. There are plenty of educated morons. There are people who have done very well — but cannot handle success. And there are people who think feeling good is success. Where Chua is correct is that self esteem is bad for you. One needs to be careful in looking at papers about low self esteem because chaotic and abusive family backgrounds are associated with this.
Within the upper middle class, one’s credentials generally are not used for status. Everyone has them. Your competence within your field is what matters. And that requires more than rote learning.
But where Ferd is wrong is that rote learning is necessary to allow for interpretation. In music, playing scales and arpeggios is something you have to do every day so you don’t have to think about intonation and can think about interpretation. You can’t create without knowing structure. You don’t get mastery until you have done years of practice. So the Tiger Mum’s emphasis on practice and training is appropriate. Good Jazz players (who generally write the rock songs — while part of the backup band) practice just as hard as classical musicians and then improvise.
The second question that has to asked is put bluntly by Ferd: what is abuse? Chua would argue that she is not abusive, even when making a child struggle with a piece, using emotions, and calling them a failure. A New Zealander will call a parent neglectful if they are not within ten steps of a child in a playground… in this generation. (I was told to go out and play… and did. In polluted creeks. In treehuts twenty feet off the ground. With wooden swords and bows and arrows. In non steerable trolleys. We had more freedom and developed more confidence in the outdoors — at the cost of more scars and broken bones).
In the case of the Chuas, when you have bright kids who would rather be at the mall or with their friends, pressure can help. The kids are not unresilent. They can respond. (And if the average High School in the USA is like the ones in almost every movie and sitcom from “Happy Days” to “Cheers”, this ex head librarian would consider the schools to be abusive. It might be better to refrain from using that term — which now has legal implications — unless the children are battered.
And with kids who are talented…. to whom much is given, much should be required. Struggle is good for you. Cheap praise, is in the end, worthless. But Chua needs to consider if the reasons her kids are successful is that they have inherited great talents from their talented parents.
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