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COMMENTARY: The Chinay Tiger Mother
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COMMENTARY: The Chinay Tiger Mother
ANN - Sunday, January 30
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California (Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN) - The most hated author in America is set to appear on the front cover of next week's Time Magazine. It's not Sarah Palin but Amy Chua, the daughter of Chinese Filipino immigrants who unleashed a firestorm of controversy with the publication of her book, "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," about how she raised her kids.
New York Times columnist David Brooks entitled his January 17, 2011 column "Amy Chua is a Wimp" announcing that "a large slice of educated America decided that Amy Chua is a menace to society (for writing) a bracing critique of what she considers the weak, cuddling American parenting style."
Brooks accused Chua of delivering a "broadside against American parenting even as she mocks herself for her own extreme 'Chinese' style. She says American parents lack authority and produce entitled children who aren't forced to live up to their abilities."
The whole Chua brouhaha broke out on January 8, 2011 when the Wall Street Journal published Amy Chua's essay "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior" where she describes the "Chinese" way she raised her two daughters, Sophia and Louisa.
In her article, Chua unapologetically declares that she did not allow her children to "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, not play any instrument other than piano and violin."
Chua describes the cultural difference in this way: "Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say, "You're lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you." By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they're not disappointed about how their kids turned out."
Chua observed three fundamental differences in the outlook of Chinese and Western parents. First, "Western parents are extremely anxious about their children's self-esteem... concerned about their children's psyches. Chinese parents aren't. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently."
"Second, Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything...By contrast, I don't think most Westerners have the same view of children being permanently indebted to their parents," describing her Jewish-American husband's view that "kids don't owe their parents anything. Their duty will be to their own kids."
Third, "Western parents try to respect their children's individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions, supporting their choices, and providing positive reinforcement and a nurturing environment. By contrast, the Chinese believe that the best way to protect their children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they're capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits, and inner confidence that no one can ever take away."
Chua's Battle Hymn book was published a week after her Wall Street Journal article appeared and the controversy catapulted her book to # 6 on the Amazon book list earning for Chua every cent of the reported "high six-figure advance" she received from Penguin Books. (She is currently in the San Francisco Bay Area as part of a national book promotional tour.)
But the downside of the publicity is that Chua has received death threats and thousands of hate emails since her article appeared. The Wall Street Journal article alone generated more than 5,000 comments on the newspaper's website with most calling her "nuts" and a few complimenting her for being a "very savvy provocateur."
Chua's parents immigrated to the US from the Philippines in 1961 before Amy was born. She graduated from Harvard University and Harvard Law School, where she was executive editor of the Harvard Law Review (like Barack Obama before her). After passing the bar, she worked as a corporate law associate, taught at Duke Law School, and currently is a distinguished professor of law at Yale Law School.
In his New York Times column, Brooks explained that his problem with Chua is basically that by demanding that her kids spend four hours practicing the piano or violin instead of going out on sleepovers, "she's coddling her children. She's protecting them from the most intellectually demanding activities because she doesn't understand what's cognitively difficult and what isn't."
"Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls. Managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group--these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale," Brooks asserts.
But Leon Breaux, an American teacher in Beijing who taught high school in three US states and in three Asian countries, wrote the New York Times to dispute Brooks's critique: "Here's an intelligent, accomplished man comparing structured intellectual activity and training to socializing, and proclaiming socializing the winner. My question is this: If you don't know anything, what good is your socializing?"
"Knowing something takes learning. Learning is generally hard work. Children often don't want to do it. Trying to brush this away as something inconsequential and not as important as socialization or achievement of status is a great recipe for stagnation or worse," Breaux argued.
The fierce debate rages on.
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