The Girl with the Dragon Mother
Scary mother: Piper Laurie in Brian De Palma’s Carrie.
Amy Chua, Yale Law professor, daughter of Filipino-Chinese immigrants, is generating a bit of controversy with her new book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Her book tackles the question, How do Chinese parents produce math wizards and music prodigies? The answer begins with a list of things Chinese mothers don’t allow their kids to do:
• attend a sleepover
• have a playdate
• be in a school play
• complain about not being in a school play
• watch TV or play computer games
• choose their own extracurricular activities
• get any grade less than an A
• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
• play any instrument other than the piano or violin
• not play the piano or violin.
Read Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior in WSJ.
“Some might think that the American sports parent is an analog to the Chinese mother. This is so wrong,” Chua writes. “Unlike your typical Western overscheduling soccer mom, the Chinese mother believes that (1) schoolwork always comes first; (2) an A-minus is a bad grade; (3) your children must be two years ahead of their classmates in math; (4) you must never compliment your children in public; (5) if your child ever disagrees with a teacher or coach, you must always take the side of the teacher or coach; (6) the only activities your children should be permitted to do are those in which they can eventually win a medal; and (7) that medal must be gold.”
David Brooks at the NYT replied with a column, Amy Chua Is A Wimp. I have not read Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother but its title (and the excerpt) leads me to suspect that Brooks is a little irony-challenged. The author has obviously cast herself as the super-villain of the piece.
Personally I think the over-emphasis on building a child’s self-esteem produces a lot of dimwits with an exaggerated sense of entitlement.
* * * * *
This reminds me of a poem by the great English poet (and librarian) Philip Larkin.
This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
January 21st, 2011 at 03:41
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/01/why_chinese_mothers_are_not_su.html
“Amy Chua thinks she’s raising her kids the Chinese way, but she is really raising them to be what the WSJ considers China to be: a pool of highly skilled labor that someone else will profit from. On second thought, that is the Chinese way.”
January 21st, 2011 at 06:13
i know exactly what amy chua is talking about.
i read amy tan’s joy luck club.
amy tan herself was raised to be a neuro-surgeon by profession and concert violinist by hobby. she ended up studying linguistics and worked with special kids. btw, amy tan’s mother suffered from some kind of mental condition. read all about it in amy tan’s musings-the opposite of fate.
January 21st, 2011 at 08:37
hi medy,
read your link. so far it’s the only reaction i’ve read so far that made the right call on Amy Chua. at least that’s how i feel. =)
January 21st, 2011 at 08:40
btw, jessica, i didn’t know she’s fil-chi. there’s one more on your world domination list. =)
January 21st, 2011 at 10:05
I cannot stop laughing. This is why I love PTCs. :))
January 21st, 2011 at 10:27
Well, my family is not Chinese but my elders were fans of the Chinese way of life. They tried those on us.Worked on my siblings(they were made to compete against each other) but not on me. Apparently, my innate deadma powers were strong enough to resist their maneuverings and, exasperated, they left me alone.
January 21st, 2011 at 10:29
after seeing splendide (featuring the world-renown grand china acrobatic circus) my first thought was: the chinese can do everything. of course, i wouldn’t know what went on before the girls perfected their awesome bicycle act but you saw the result and you were satisfied you got your money’s worth. yes, it must be the chinese way. the means may not be perfect, but the ends show otherwise. that’s why some countries are now very afraid of the dragon that has shown real firepower.
January 21st, 2011 at 13:22
“Personally I think the over-emphasis on building a child’s self-esteem produces a lot of dimwits with an exaggerated sense of entitlement.”
I totally agree with this. I used to believe in learner-centered education, until I noticed that kids get better technically each year but lack judgment and critical thinking.
January 21st, 2011 at 21:21
I remember my mother teaching me the alphabet when I was a kid. She kept giving me this “don’t-screw-it-up” look every time I sing my ABCs because I put S and M together (I get confused with the department store), and I always get a sigh of disappointment when I commit that mistake. As punishment, she would make me recite it backwards, from Z to A.
I was 2 and 1/2. Go figure.
January 22nd, 2011 at 00:56
Basing it from the article, I think Amy Chua is verbally abusive, and scarily proud of it.
Then again, I’m not a parent, so maybe calling kids garbage or fatties do make children better people in the end.
January 22nd, 2011 at 03:21
@sunflowii
it’s the only reaction i’ve read so far that made the right call on Amy Chua. at least that’s how i feel. =)
i agree.
i also feel that children raised the AmyChua-way grow up brilliant but soul-less.
January 22nd, 2011 at 05:28
2 billion people of Chinese descent in the world today but very few creative geniuses among them. I think the man writing for the NYT is correct. We evolved into big-brained apes because of society. Socializing made us smarter and it keeps making us smarter in a grander way through cultural exchange.
January 22nd, 2011 at 13:52
Just want to add because I realize I can mention it but David brooks writing for the Times cannot. Contrast Chinese-Americans with Jewish-Americans. Chinese Americans are over-protective (whimps). They push their kids to have good grades to protect them from the outside world, as good jobs insulate the individual fro the real world. Jewish kids are pushed to be great, not just in school and not just in activities where they are sure to succeed. I remember a Roth novel, or maybe it was another Jewish writer, wherein the narrator says his family wouldn’t feed him until he beats up his bully. And then he has to play the Cello, the piano and be good in math. He ended up being a great writer.
Chinese Americans have been pretty successful but do you know any *great* Chinese American?
January 22nd, 2011 at 20:10
A firsthand perspective from a psychologist raised by Chinese-Vietnamese parents.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/01/20/lac.su.tiger.mother.scars/index.html
January 22nd, 2011 at 21:39
*Jessica, please post this one instead. Thanks*
We only have a tiny portion of Amy’s upcoming book and I don’t wanna get into another extended debate about IQ on this site…lol…but she doesn’t seem to be putting into consideration the importance of pedigree. The inherent abilities of her kids must have come from somewhere. Her Jewish (remember Einstein, Marx?) husband also happens to share the same latin-honored degrees from the Ivy League with her. Duh. No amount of cajoling and disciplining can ever force an average and below kid to perform as well as hers – as they themselves – have done. But it is indeed just as important to hone the good genotype into great phenotype through study and practice, practice, practice…how to get to Carnegie Hall and all that, which the Chua-Rubenfelds seem to have taken to heart quite literally. LOL.
There is indeed a lesson to be learned from her given that Harvard has around 20% Asian students, which is more than 4x the corresponding proportion in the US national population, and that Asians are statistically more highly educated than even whites and certainly other racial groups —and consequently reap the benefits in higher income, socio-economic status, etc. — but David Brooks also raises some good points. I personally think it should be a mixture of the Eastern and Western styles tailor-suited to your own kids’ natural personalities, talents and abilities.
I must say that this was a brilliant marketing strategy by her publisher, though. I never heard of her before (this is already her 3rd book by the way) but watch this one skyrocket to the top of the NYT best-selling list when it’s released.
January 23rd, 2011 at 08:00
She cares more about how she is evaluated as a parent than the child’s well-being. It’s so great to see successful Chinese adults running around. All it seemed to cost them was their childhood, individuality, and free will.
Ask them if what they are is what they wanted to be when they were young. The most painful scars are the ones you can’t see.
January 24th, 2011 at 14:05
I stumbled upon this interview of Amy Chua at Berkeley when she was promoting her older book “World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability” in 2004. This woman is brilliant. I was entranced. I actually found myself grabbing some coke and popcorn from the kitchen in the middle of watching this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUrfo5cyeDA
She tells of how her former job on Wall Street dealing with the privatization of nationalized companies in developing countries and her own personal experiences as a Filipino-Chinese made her realize how the sudden free-marketization and democratization of the rest of the world following the fall of the Berlin Wall may not have brought about wealth redistribution, egalitarianism and peace as generally hoped for by the West. One particularly striking story was how her wealthy aunt in the Phils. was murdered by the driver and how it pushed her to form her counterintuitive thesis. Just watch the video. This book is fascinating and made all the hullabaloo about her newer one less interesting in comparison.
January 24th, 2011 at 15:51
You might be right, Jessica.
“Last month, the results of the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, tests were announced. It was the first time that Chinese students had participated, and children from Shanghai ranked first in every single area. Students from the United States, meanwhile, came in seventeenth in reading, twenty-third in science, and an especially demoralizing thirty-first in math.
“Why is this? How is it that the richest country in the world can’t teach kids to read or to multiply fractions? Taken as a parable, Chua’s cartoonish narrative about browbeating her daughters acquires a certain disquieting force. Americans have been told always to encourage their kids. This, the theory goes, will improve their self-esteem, and this, in turn, will help them learn.
After a generation or so of applying this theory, we have the results. Just about the only category in which American students outperform the competition is self-regard.”
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2011/01/31/110131crbo_books_kolbert#ixzz1Bw9JGhbk
January 24th, 2011 at 23:46
Feelgood. Listen to her. Hear how she implies racism in Ph. More than corruption in government, this is the most important question for our country.