In comparison, "Western parenting", which places an unreasonable emphasis on the child's emotions and feelings wanting them to be happy, results in lazy, unsuccessful children who never reach their full potential. The Western parent doesn't want to see their child suffer, so if their child faces a difficult challenge, they let them give up. The Chinese mother believes that her child is strong while the Western parent assumes that their child is fragile.
There's something a little fishy about this argument and my first thought was: Meh, the author sounds like a closet sociopath defending a twisted form of child rearing Stockholm syndrome to produce soulless automatons.
However, taking a little more time to think about it, she's definitely a nutcase. One quote from her article is "What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. I think that quote speaks volumes about her priorities.
Some more developed thoughts I wrote later:
This was probably the most arrogant article that I've read in some time, even if it is (hopefully) mostly tongue in cheek. There are many, many things wrong with it, although I suspect that the WSJ intended to publish such a provocative piece to generate more page hits (which is what passes for journalism these days).I think this article unusually bothered me because, although I am Chinese, I was raised with "Western parenting" and am happy as a result. Moreover, I see this style of parenting around me all the time. The Asian families at work place a ridiculous amount of pressure on their kids, trot them out for bragging rights, and suffer dysfunctional family relationships. Plus, working with such apparently "perfect" coworkers is often an exercise in frustration.
The problem with this method of "breaking them down and building them up" is that it raises children that are dependent on external support. It really is like Stockholm syndrome. You get beat down focused on the negative and are only considered adequate if you do what someone tells you to and you get an A. And once you aren't able to get that A, you are not mentally or emotionally equipped to deal with that "failure". It's teaching from fear rather than love. How is that preparing your child for the future? Of course, it's better to not let the child give up and encourage them to get good grades, but that is just a means to an end, not the end itself. Her argument that Western parenting assumes "fragility rather than strength" is a straw man---you have to have the right definition of strength and success. I can easily flip her argument completely and say that Eastern parenting assumes fragility since it presumes the child's success is nothing without external approval. This is consistent with a culture that values "face" over all else, how you look over what you are, superficiality over substance. Notice in her article that her proud moment was when other parents came and marveled over her daughter.
Of course, with a large enough distribution, you can always cherry pick enough outliers to make your point like she has. But instead of relying on just personal anectdote like the author, the empirical data shows that Eastern parenting has been correlated with an increased rate of depression and suicide (interesting how she eschews real statistics with glib superiority comments). But if we want to use personal anectdote, for every Carnegie Hall peformer, I've seen orders of magnitude more flame-outs.
But beyond the psychological/sociologoical issues, I just don't think this type of teaching really works in the long run. Indeed, having worked with and taught arguably the best students from this culture, I'm not impressed. Rote memorization will only get you so far. I've taught students who could get a perfect GRE score and have straight A's but had no understanding of the material. It's like someone having memorized the route that a GPS has given them without really understanding where they're going. They can always get you that specific place without fail but will never be able to do more than that. The problem that many people make is that at the highest levels science and math, similar to music, are not rote memorization but require leaps of creativity that this method does not and cannot instill. Grades are not the goal, understanding is. Moreover, another aspect is that success in the real world is often dependent more on social skills than just good grades, and locking your children at home will not develop that.
Finally, this article was written at least a decade too late if not more to be topical. In fact, current Eastern parenting is completely opposite. Due to the large transfer of wealth in recent years and the one child policy, many Chinese families are now suffering from "the little emperor" syndrome where the power dynamic has shifted to the spoiled child.
Of course the best parenting walks a middle road, and it's not the false binary model she wants it to be. That's not to say that the current "Western" anti-responsibility/anti-intellectualism climate is anything but tragic itself, but I would say the author's advocation of this extreme is far more harmful than the other. Incidentally, this was *not* how I was raised. I was raised to motivate myself to excel. As a result, I don't need approval from other people to feel successful. As much as she scoffs at it, I was raised to find learning inherently interesting and fun, and I'm not afraid to try new things and fail.
I'm not the only one who's reacted strongly to this piece. Some other dissenting opinions: Is Amy Chua Right When She Explains Why Chinese Mothers are Superior?
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