And here I am, worried about whether I'm going to scrape past 50% on one of my subjects.
A STUDENT at an elite Sydney private school who scored a uni admissions rank of 99.95 out of 100 in 2008 has lost an appeal alleging discrimination stopped her getting full marks. Abbotsleigh student Sarah Hui Xin Wong’s mother Eileen complained to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal that the Board of Studies had unlawfully discriminated against Sarah because they didn't provide her with adequate special provisions to help her write her exam essays. Ms Wong, 21, has hyper joint mobility of the wrist. She received some rest breaks during the exam. The family told the tribunal that Ms Wong would've got much higher marks if she had access to a computer or extra rest time during exams. Ms Wong's marks won her a place in a medicine degree at Sydney University and she came fifth in the state in chemistry. She was offered a writer to dictate her essays to but chose not to do that. [Source]
It's great to strive for excellence and all that, but sometimes you need to be happy with what you have. Particularly when a student has got one of the highest marks possible, all while dealing with a disability. And has got into the course she wanted at one of Australia's best universities. It's one thing to want recognition for a great achievements, but now that Sarah Wong has become the butt of jokes, the extreme personification of the Asian-overachiever stereotype, let this be a warning to all those Asian mothers out there with Tigerish tendencies.
Caught Phi and Me Too at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival last night, which triumphed over the sauna-like conditions (due to some heating malfunction at the venue, Hairy Little Sista) to easily win over the sweaty audience with a tour-de-force of ethnic humour.
The brainchild of Fiona Chau (playing geeky teenage boy Phi Nguyen) and Diana Nguyen (as his very tiger-ish mother Kim), the 1 hour comedic play centres around the theme of growing up Vietnamese in Australia, and a Vietnamese mother's particularly gruelling brand of matriarchal love. The pair are assisted by Steve McPhail playing a variety of characters; I'm told he was originally their high school drama teacher.
All three give good performances (seeing McPhail play a Vietnamese auntie is hilariously surreal), but the star turn undeniably comes from Diana Nguyen - her expressive face, stage energy and over-the-top Vietnamese accent make the larger-than-life Kim an unforgettable character, yet one that all the Asians in the audience found instantly recognisable.
Personally I love this kind of fobby humour, although I understand it's not for everyone. But anyone with even a mild familiarity with Asian parents - or even "ethnic" parents for that matter - will get a kick out of this. For those who have never experienced tiger parenting, it's still a very enjoyable peek into that world. There were occasionally jokes that my Vietnamese friends found hilarious that went completely over my head, but for the most part, it was easily relateable.
Phi and Me Too is on until Sunday the 8th of April.
I was somewhat oblivious to Mindy Kaling until I saw this interview from last week. Now, I can officially declare that she is totes cool. Nice back-and-forth between her and Jon Stewart.
Note: You probably can't watch this if you are in Australia, due to Comedy Central's deal with the devil (the Fox corporation). I'm able to watch this from Australia, but I have magical powers.
A "WHITE flight" from elite selective high schools is entrenching ethnic segregation in Australia's education system, according to a social researcher. In a study of student language backgrounds in schools, Dr Christina Ho, of the University of Technology Sydney, found a clear pattern of cultural polarisation, with few Anglo-Australians in high-achieving selective entry government schools. Students from migrant families — mostly from Chinese, Indian and other Asian backgrounds — dominate the enrolments of the schools. In Melbourne, 93 per cent of students at Mac.Robertson Girls High School and 88 per cent of pupils at Melbourne High School and Nossal High School are from language backgrounds other than English (LBOTE), a category that also includes those from non-Asian backgrounds. In Sydney, nine out of the top 10 highest performing selective schools have similar high percentages of LBOTE pupils, mainly from Asian backgrounds. People who speak an Asian language at home make up 8 per cent of Australia's population, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Dr Ho said it was understandable why so many migrant families, put off by high fees in private secondary schools, flocked to public selective schools because of their outstanding academic results. "Anglo-Australians' shunning of public selective schools is less explicable, particularly among those families with talented children who might achieve the required standard on the selective schools [entry] test," said Dr Ho, whose findings are published in the journal Australian Review of Public Affairs. "The 'white flight' from these schools must partly reflect an unwillingness to send children to schools dominated by migrant-background children, which simply further entrenches this domination. "If current trends continue, we risk creating highly unbalanced school communities that, rather than reflecting the full diversity of Australian society, instead constitute unhealthy and unnatural bubbles of segregation and isolation." Dr Ho's study examined enrolment data given by all schools and education authorities to the My School website. The LBOTE data measures cultural diversity and, unlike birthplace, identifies second and subsequent migrant generations not born overseas but who are members of a cultural minority. The principal of Melbourne High School, Jeremy Ludowyke, rejected suggestions that the school was not culturally diverse. "We don't see a white flight expressed in the pattern of applications to the school," Mr Ludowyke said. About 60 per cent of his pupils have a parent born overseas. "Melbourne High and Mac.Rob have played a pivotal role in providing opportunities for newly arrived migrant communities. They're part of the success story of multiculturalism in Melbourne," he said. [Source]
This is not the first "white flight" article that the Fairfax media has run in recent years; this one in 2008 reported that white students in Sydney were flocking to the independent school system to avoid certain public schools with large Muslim populations, while rural students were doing the same thing from schools with high proportions of Aboriginal students.
The Asianization of Melbourne's selective state schools has been going on for a while - my largely Asian social circle is rife with selective school graduates. I have to say I'm a bit sceptical about whether this "white flight" is a real phenomenon. Are the parents of white students actively rejecting these schools because of their predominantly Asian population, or are they simply being out-competed by Asian students for entry places?
Another article in the same paper this week points to the culture of private tutoring amongst many Asian pupils as a potential cause, which implies that if this "white flight" is really taking place, it is perhaps less about the Asians themselves than about the stress-inducing methods increasingly deemed necessary to remain competitive in an Asian-dominated environment.
So is this a cause for concern, or not?
Yes and no. (Regular readers will know that's my standard answer for most things.)
I've written previously about the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" attitude towards immigrants in this country; minorities are either condemned for not performing and fitting in well enough, or feared for performing too well. It's hard to escape that feeling when reading articles such as these.
Australians tend to have a somewhat laid-back approach to life; it's a part of our national character which has contibuted to this country being a highly sought-after place to live. Undoubtedly some see the Asian approach to education as incompatible with this aspect of Australian life. Yet in a competitive global marketplace, perhaps we have a lot to learn from Asians, and it is hard to argue that cultures that place an extremely high value on education would not be a positive influence.
The question is, how far do we take that? An overwhelming focus on education at the exclusion of sporting and other leisure pursuits can have very negative side effects; in the US, suicide and depression rates amongst young Asian-American women are alarmingly high, for example.
Something else to think about: does the selective school system merely favour the hardworking, the gifted, or both? A lot of evidence shows that many naturally gifted students are wasting away in our public schools, either hiding their intelligence to avoid being ostracised and bullied, or dropping out because they quickly grow bored with the limited curriculum. For these students, the selective system would seem to be a godsend. Yet does an increasingly Asian Australia mean that diligence becomes far more important than natural ability when it comes to academic success?
And if so, is there anything wrong with that? Obviously we are not talking about a dichotomy of gifted versus hardworking students; most of our highest achievers have both qualities in spades, and a student gaining entry to a selective school would undoubtedly need to be of at least average intelligence anyway. But "Asian parenting" (a problematic stereotype, but let's accept it for now) means that Asian students who may not have great natural intelligence can still outperform many who are. As customers, employers and consumers, we expect hard work and commitment from our workforce, and probably value them more than brainiacs who lack work ethic. Is it only right that we reward hard work, rather than those vague concepts of giftedness and intelligence?
Again, the concern is that as a society we are criminally under-utilising some of our sharpest minds, those students who have great intellectual capacity but don't easily fit into a highly regimented culture that relies mostly on extreme diligence as a path to achievement.
The most obvious solution is to have more selective schools, and it's one that the Victorian government has belatedly begun to address.
But multiculturalism is a two-way street, and I think we may eventually see things working out for the best. I like to think that just as the influence of Asian students will be beneficial for the broader Australian schooling culture, Asian students will become more Australianized as well. As Amy Chua laments in Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, the second and third generations of migrants tend not to have the same fierce aspirational mentality. Let's hope that means a perfect study-life-balance that allows students to reach high levels without becoming stressed-out robots in the process.
(Reuters) - Children whose mothers smoked while pregnant were more likely to end up on medications such as antidepressants, stimulants and drugs for addiction, according to a study from Finland that hints at smoking's affect on a baby's developing brain.
While the findings don't prove that cigarette smoking during pregnancy causes changes in children's brains or behavior, they offer one more piece of evidence that should encourage women not to smoke while pregnant, the researchers wrote in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
One in 11 children was prescribed a psychiatric medication at some point during that period, including anti-anxiety drugs, antipsychotics, antidepressants, stimulants and drugs for addiction.
Of children and teens whose mothers didn't smoke during pregnancy, 8 percent were on at least one of those drugs during the study period. That compared to 11 percent of those whose mothers smoked fewer than 10 cigarettes per day, and close to 14 percent whose mothers had lit up more than 10 times a day.
This is pretty obvious, the only surprise is that it wasn't higher.
But it raises an interesting question for me. Does it actually prove that smoking while pregnant is the cause of the higher rate of medication?
Not really. I'm passionately anti-smoking and certainly believe that smoking while pregnant is a repugnant thing to do. But I wonder how much of this issue is actually correlative rather than causative.
Here's the thing: if you are the kind of person who smokes while pregnant, you are more likely than average to be a stupid, shitty parent. If you smoke more than 10 times a day while pregnant, you are even more likely to be so. Someone who is has a poor grasp of decent parenting, whether they smoke or not, is far more likely to raise a child with depression, anxiety and addiction problems.
I certainly think smoking while pregnant is physically damaging to the unborn child. But studies like this don't necessarily indicate it. It could just be that smoking is not the cause of dysfunction, but rather a reflection of it. So if you are smoking while you are pregnant, the chances are definitely higher that you will raise a problem child, but it may well be you, rather than the ciggies that did it.
Taking Tiger Mom tactics to radical new heights, these parents are packing up the family for a total Far East Immersion.
Happy Rogers, age 8, stands among her classmates in the schoolyard at dismissal time, immune, it seems, to the cacophonous din. Her parents and baby sister are waiting outside, but still she lingers, engrossed in conversation. A poised and precocious blonde, Hilton Augusta Parker Rogers, nicknamed Happy, would be at home in the schoolyard of any affluent American suburb or big-city private school. But here, at the elite, bilingual Nanyang Primary School in Singapore, Happy is in the minority, her Dakota Fanning hair shimmering in a sea of darker heads. This is what her parents have traveled halfway around the world for. While her American peers are feasting on the idiocies fed to them by junk TV and summer movies, Happy is navigating her friendships and doing her homework entirely in Mandarin.
Despite relatively high salaries and an outsized share of Ivy League degrees, Asian-Americans are underrepresented in executive suites, according to a study released Monday.
One-quarter of Asian respondents said they face workplace discrimination, while only 4% of Caucasians believe Asians are treated unfairly on the job. According to the report, Asian-American workers are also more likely than other minority workers to work less or consider quitting because of bias."In Asia, there's a saying that the loudest duck gets shot; in America it's: the squeaky wheel gets the grease," said Ms. Hyun. "These things are totally different and at odds with each other."
Ironically, the relative success of Asian workers may be exacerbating the problem. To date, few companies have had career development programs for Asian employees, because they are seen as a "model minority," according to the report.
Ripa Rashid, a coauthor of the report, said that the survey reveals something that she hears often from workers and managers: Asian-American employees are culturally uncomfortable with the type of swagger and self-promotion that often spells success in U.S. firms.
The study also showed that Asian employees may be less comfortable sharing their personal lives with coworkers and less likely to enlist more senior coworkers as mentors or sponsors.
"They just put their heads down and work and believe that's all it takes to get to the top," Ms. Rashid said.
Tiger mothering might seem to be a useful counterbalance to such permissiveness, but both extremes leave something out. Chua’s focus is unrelentingly on solitary activities in the home, with no encouragement of group activities, or of concern for others, either in school or in the wider community. Thus, she appears to view school plays as a waste of time that could be better spent studying or practicing music.
But to take part in a school play is to contribute to a community good. If talented children stay away, the quality of the production will suffer, to the detriment of the others who take part (and of the audience that will watch it). And all children whose parents bar them from such activities miss the opportunity to develop social skills that are just as important and rewarding – and just as demanding to master – as those that monopolize Chua’s attention.
We should aim for our children to be good people, and to live ethical lives that manifest concern for others as well as for themselves. This approach to child-rearing is not unrelated to happiness: there is abundant evidence that those who are generous and kind are more content with their lives than those who are not. But it is also an important goal in its own right.
Given that Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother came out in January, this post is not exactly topical, but I figured it was better late than never. Plus I did have a bit to say about Chua and her book at the time (here, here, here and here), without actually having read it, so perhaps this will complete the circle.
Amy Chua is a woman who has garnered an enormous amount of hatred in the last few months. The problem is this: the vast majority of the people directing the hatred at her have not actually read her book.
Instead, what most people base their Tiger-Mom-expertise on is the Wall Street Journal article which rocketed Chua to fame. Thing is, that article takes bits and pieces of her book out of context, slaps a provocative title on it (Why Chinese Mothers are Superior) and garners both fame, dollars and death threats for Amy Chua. The WSJ piece comes across as simultaneously an assault on the alleged moral laziness of "Western" parenting, and an unabashed glorification of sadistically hardass Asian parenting, the kind that presumably leads to straight-As in math, a place at a prestigious university, and possibly a stress-related burnout and therapy by age 24. But that's not really the entire story of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.
Chua complained about being taken out of context, and she's right. And for anyone who actually wants to dig even a centimetre below the surface of this issue, it's not too hard to see why. Firstly, check the front cover, underneath the title. It reads:
This is a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs. This was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones. But instead, it's about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how I was humbled by a thirteen-year-old.
So straight away, it's apparent that there's more to this than "Chinese mothers rule, Western mothers suck."
Secondly, anyone with basic levels of comprehension should be able to discern that there is a cheekily humorous streak that runs through the excerpts in the WSJ article, in passages like this:
Third, Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children's own desires and preferences. That's why Chinese daughters can't have boyfriends in high school and why Chinese kids can't go to sleepaway camp. It's also why no Chinese kid would ever dare say to their mother, "I got a part in the school play! I'm Villager Number Six. I'll have to stay after school for rehearsal every day from 3:00 to 7:00, and I'll also need a ride on weekends." God help any Chinese kid who tried that one.
So my assumption from day one was that what to some came across as cruel arrogance in that article was at least partly Chua exaggerating for effect. Which is why I was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt, and defended her on a few other blogs where commenters tore into her for all kinds of things, either real or imagined. (Those things include being married to a white guy, and being born in the Philippines and thus being insufficiently Chinese.) I just figured that it's best not to rush to judge something you haven't actually read yet.
The book itself is very easy to read, while occasionally causing great discomfort at the extremes Chua describes going to in order to bend her rebellious younger daughter to her will. She seems to be often brutally honest about this, and in writing it was almost certainly aware of how horrible it sometimes makes her sound. Indeed, much of it is obviously self-parody. But most of all, understand that this is a warts-and-all story of a journey through parenting, in which Chua gradually comes to the realisation that Chinese parenting (or at least her idea of it) is far from perfect.
That's a key point. This book is not a parenting manual. It is a memoir, which details both ups and downs, and which ends up questioning many of the assumptions that are stated at the beginning of the book.
I certainly didn't finish the book thinking Chua was a great parent, or deciding that this kind of Chinese parenting model would be the right one for me. But it did make me think a lot about what kind of parent I'm going to be in the future, and what kind of discipline and encouragement I will apply to my offspring. Particular for me as a person whose social circle contains a large number of Asian high-achievers, but whose own more relaxed upbringing has led me down a path that is rather less orthodox, yet just as rewarding in different ways.
Any artist or writer needs to be mindful of how their work will be interpreted by the public. And it is true that Amy Chua's work has stirred up a heap of anxieties from Asian-Americans worried about the perpetuation of the model minority stereotypes, and from traumatised survivors of Tiger parenting. As well as a fair share of racists looking to vent their resentments towards Asians and their academic achievements. My main gripe with Chua is that she has made Chinese parenting synonymous with Amy Chua parenting. And while there are many Chinese (and other ethnicity) kids who identify with the hardassed-ness Chua describes, that quality may have manifested itself only in certain ways, to a less extreme extent. In a sense, it may also serve to devalue the intelligence of Chinese youngsters in the public perception, promulgating the view that rather than being smart or creative, they are merely super-efficient products of some kind of parenting sweatshop.
But by the same token, virtually any person whose writings appear in the public domain would agree that you can't control how others take you out of context. And it's not Amy Chua's fault that a lot of people only know how to interpret things in the worst way possible.
I enjoyed reading the book very much, but I'm not in any rush to be a Tiger Parent. And personally, I'm very glad that my own mother was and is nothing like Amy Chua. But those of you who are looking for a villain in this story would be better off pointing fingers at the Wall Street Journal, which presented Chua's story in the most controversial and sensationalist light possible.
Having just spent a couple of weeks doing teaching placement at a Jewish school, I by chance happened to meet the father of one of the students. Nothing unusual there, except that he was Asian - as far as I could tell, an immigrant from China - and as far as I could tell, not one of the Chosen People. His son was one of a couple of students of apparent Chinese background who I had noticed at this school. I asked this parent, in as tactful a way as possible, about the Jewish connection. There was none, he happily said, but he figured that it was a good school and that was good enough for him. His son, as far as I could tell, is content and accepted as the rare Asian face amongst a student body that is overwhelmingly made up of Ashkenazi Jews. The school is fairly secular, but is nonetheless very proud of its Jewishness and connections to Israel; it's culturally rather than religiously Jewish.
In any case, it's still an unusual choice for a non-Jewish Chinese student. Yet my Hong Kong-born friend Helen did her high schooling at a Jewish school in Melbourne as well. She was the only Asian student there. Like the Chinese parent I met recently, Helen's parents presumably figured that the Jewish emphasis on high academic achievement bode well for their daughter.
I've spent time in a lot of schools, and come across Hindu and Sikh students in Christian schools, which I assume is due to those schools being the best in a particular district.
I guess it's not altogether surprising, really. Certain Asian cultures are obsessed with their children's academic achievements. So some Asian parents have reasoned that having their child immersed in someone else's religion or culture is a small price to pay for a top-class education. Indeed, they may even regard the exposure to a different religious tradition as beneficial to that education.
So there are some shared values between Jews and Asians in regard to the primacy of education. But do they value the same type of education?
Coincidentally, BigWOWO has a good post up about Jewish culture valuing the humanities as a core aspect of education in a way that Asians typically do not. I happen to agree. At the Jewish school I observed a explicit push in the curriculum to teach students to think critically and philosophically from a very early age. I think it's fantastic.
Asian parenting tends to have a different focus though. Amy Chua, who put Chinese-style parenting (or at least a version of it) in the headlines with her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, makes it quite clear in the opening pages what the priorities are in her children's education. Maths is big. Piano and/or violin are essential. Drama and sport, not so much. Other instruments, not so much. Indeed, I had to do a double take the first time I met a young woman of Chinese background who had not learned either piano or violin, but instead was learning to play the djembe. You don't see many Chinese parents clamoring for their kids to learn African drums. Chua ironically has a Jewish husband, and daughters who are raised to see themselves as Jewish, yet her approach to education is thoroughly Chinese.
As someone whose circle of friends is dominated by South and East Asians, it almost goes without saying that virtually everyone I hang with either has a university degree or is studying for it, and got grades in high school that put me to shame.
But particularly among East Asians, I notice plenty of business-brains and math-brains and IT-brains, but very few humanities-brains. Which is fine; it's not hard to see the greater perks of a degree in medicine or pharmacy as opposed to say, a Masters in philosophy. But I fear that Asian culture is so obsessed with churning out children who grow up to have only traditionally-valued careers, that we will lose something in the way of imagination and innovation. Or even just the ability to be interesting in conversation.
As is pointed out in BigWOWO's article, and returning to the theme with which I began this one, there is perhaps something Asians can learn from the Jewish approach to education. In the US, ethnic Indians, Japanese and Jews are amongst the very highest-performing groups in terms of wealth and education, yet notably Jews have achieved their success in a broader range of fields, from hard sciences to the entertainment industry. To my mind, that suggests that their community is maximising the diverse range of talents contained within it, rather than trying to turn everyone into a doctor.
Finally picked up a copy of Amy Chua's "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother", so I'll let you know what I think soon. Of course, I'm already reading-but-not-really-reading a few other books simultaneously, so I'm not sure when I'll get that done.
The Asian blogosphere is still buzzing about Yale law professor and author Amy Chua following her controversial article in the Wall Street Journal which appeared to boast of the superiority of Chinese parenting. My previous blog post about it is here.
She appeared last night on The Colbert Report to discuss her book, as well as the way its intent has been misinterpreted. (The WSJ article consisted of excerpts of her book Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother, stitched together by the paper's editors without context, seemingly in order to generate controversy.)
(As an aside, Chua is also a great advertisement for Asian genes. She's 49 years old!)
I've recently been having an occasionally heated discussion over at another blog about Chua. Now I haven't read her book (although I'll be seeking it out), and have no personal interest in defending her, but I've been less than impressed by a rush by some people across the Asian-American blogosphere to label her a bitch, a sellout or a fraud. Again, I don't know her so it's possible she could be all of those things. But I would prefer to give her the benefit of the doubt, since those accusations seem to be based on spurious reasoning. And I tend to believe that people don't always fit neatly into the categories that others wish to define for them.
For example, much of the criticism of Chua and her parenting style appears to be based on how the WSJ article has presented her, rather than the more nuanced content of the book, which is apparently a memoir of a journey into and then away from the uber-strict Chinese parenting style which the WSJ article seems to celebrate. Here are a couple of other complaints that have come up:
"Chua talks about Chinese parenting, yet she's not even Chinese - she's Filipino." and "Chua talks about Chinese parenting, yet she married a white Jewish guy. Her kids are being raised Jewish. So clearly she's not really very Chinese at all."
Firstly, she is born in the US, to ethnic Chinese parents who were from the Philippines. To say that she is not culturally Chinese is akin to saying that only people born in China are culturally Chinese.
To the second point; is culture carried by genes? Because personally I fail to see how the ethnicity of her husband impacts on Chua's own ethno-cultural identity. Raising her kids Jewish was apparently a deal made with her husband - the trade-off was that they would become fluent in Chinese. And remember that Jewishness is a religious identity as well as a cultural identity; if Chua herself is not overtly religious, which seems likely, then it makes sense to raise her daughters according to the religious tradition of her partner.
We all make judgments about others, let's not deny it. But it's important to make those judgements based on reality, rather than erroneous interpretations, lazy assumptions and stereotypes.
Causing a stir this week has been Amy Chua's piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled Why Chinese mothers are superior. A provocative title, to be sure, and the article itself is seems designed to engender a reaction. Chua is a law professor at Yale and a mother of two daughters, and has a new book out called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Here are some excerpts:
A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed 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.
I'm using the term "Chinese mother" loosely. I know some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish and Ghanaian parents who qualify too. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I'm also using the term "Western parents" loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.
All the same, even when Western parents think they're being strict, they usually don't come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough.
Despite our squeamishness about cultural stereotypes, there are tons of studies out there showing marked and quantifiable differences between Chinese and Westerners when it comes to parenting. In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mothers said either that "stressing academic success is not good for children" or that "parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun." By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead, the vast majority of the Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be "the best" students, that "academic achievement reflects successful parenting," and that if children did not excel at school then there was "a problem" and parents "were not doing their job." Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams.
What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something—whether it's math, piano, pitching or ballet—he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.
...
The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable—even legally actionable—to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, "Hey fatty—lose some weight." By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of "health" and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image. (I also once heard a Western father toast his adult daughter by calling her "beautiful and incredibly competent." She later told me that made her feel like garbage.)
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.
I've thought long and hard about how Chinese parents can get away with what they do. I think there are three big differences between the Chinese and Western parental mind-sets.
First, I've noticed that Western parents are extremely anxious about their children's self-esteem. They worry about how their children will feel if they fail at something, and they constantly try to reassure their children about how good they are notwithstanding a mediocre performance on a test or at a recital. In other words, Western parents are concerned about their children's psyches. Chinese parents aren't. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.
For example, if a child comes home with an A-minus on a test, a Western parent will most likely praise the child. The Chinese mother will gasp in horror and ask what went wrong. If the child comes home with a B on the test, some Western parents will still praise the child. Other Western parents will sit their child down and express disapproval, but they will be careful not to make their child feel inadequate or insecure, and they will not call their child "stupid," "worthless" or "a disgrace." Privately, the Western parents may worry that their child does not test well or have aptitude in the subject or that there is something wrong with the curriculum and possibly the whole school. If the child's grades do not improve, they may eventually schedule a meeting with the school principal to challenge the way the subject is being taught or to call into question the teacher's credentials.
If a Chinese child gets a B—which would never happen—there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion. The devastated Chinese mother would then get dozens, maybe hundreds of practice tests and work through them with her child for as long as it takes to get the grade up to an A.
Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them. If their child doesn't get them, the Chinese parent assumes it's because the child didn't work hard enough. That's why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it. (And when Chinese kids do excel, there is plenty of ego-inflating parental praise lavished in the privacy of the home.)
Second, Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything. The reason for this is a little unclear, but it's probably a combination of Confucian filial piety and the fact that the parents have sacrificed and done so much for their children. (And it's true that Chinese mothers get in the trenches, putting in long grueling hours personally tutoring, training, interrogating and spying on their kids.) Anyway, the understanding is that Chinese children must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud.
By contrast, I don't think most Westerners have the same view of children being permanently indebted to their parents. My husband, Jed, actually has the opposite view. "Children don't choose their parents," he once said to me. "They don't even choose to be born. It's parents who foist life on their kids, so it's the parents' responsibility to provide for them. Kids don't owe their parents anything. Their duty will be to their own kids." This strikes me as a terrible deal for the Western parent.
Third, Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children's own desires and preferences. That's why Chinese daughters can't have boyfriends in high school and why Chinese kids can't go to sleepaway camp. It's also why no Chinese kid would ever dare say to their mother, "I got a part in the school play! I'm Villager Number Six. I'll have to stay after school for rehearsal every day from 3:00 to 7:00, and I'll also need a ride on weekends." God help any Chinese kid who tried that one.
Don't get me wrong: It's not that Chinese parents don't care about their children. Just the opposite. They would give up anything for their children. It's just an entirely different parenting model.
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There are all these new books out there portraying Asian mothers as scheming, callous, overdriven people indifferent to their kids' true interests. For their part, many Chinese secretly believe that they care more about their children and are willing to sacrifice much more for them than Westerners, who seem perfectly content to let their children turn out badly. I think it's a misunderstanding on both sides. All decent parents want to do what's best for their children. The Chinese just have a totally different idea of how to do that.
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.
The article elicited a whopping 6400 comments from web readers. Many agreed with much of it, but obviously a lot of folks weren't too happy with Chua for one reason or another.
Some commenters thought she sounded like a cruel and heartless mother. Others disliked the way she perpetuated the model minority stereotype, not to mention the cold-and-exacting-Asian-parent stereotype. Some found it racist against white Americans. Some found it racist against Asians. Some Asian readers lauded how their similar upbringing had brought them success in life, while other Asian readers complained of how it had damaged their self-confidence and brought them undue stress growing up.
... Chua is pressing her finger on a very sensitive point: could it be that much of the laissez-faire parenting of the modern West uses the idea of enlightened liberality to give an intellectual justification for what is actually a form of laziness?
While I'm guessing that this blogger at Resist Racism didn't like Chua's article quite so much.
So f*ck you, Amy Chua, for reinforcing that tired old model minority stereotype. For speaking for an entire group of people and ascribing your abusive parenting to your culture.
.... F*ck you for the abuse kids get because their parents don’t know any better.
F*ck you for the kids who are made to feel like idiots because they are not geniuses. Or musical prodigies. Or the kids who are told that our people don’t speak out, don’t protest, aren’t politically active, aren’t activists. F*ck you for making us think our parents aren’t proud of us. F*ck you for perpetuating racism. And f*ck the Wall Street Journal for promoting your majority view voice.
Upon reading the WSJ article, I wasn't quite so sure how to take it. If you take it as a serious opinion piece, Chua does certainly sound like a bit of an evil mother from hell. But I found the article quite amusing and wondered how seriously it was meant to be taken. Its self-congratulatory tone is so over-the-top that I thought Chua was only being partly serious - she's obviously smart enough to be aware of how such a piece would make her come across.
It turns out that Chua feels she was misrepresented. The WSJ piece was a selectively edited excerpt from her book, which is not a how-to manual, but a memoir.
"I was very surprised. The Journal basically strung together the most controversial sections of the book. And I had no idea they'd put that kind of a title on it. But the worst thing was, they didn't even hint that the book is about a journey, and that the person at beginning of the book is different from the person at the end -- that I get my comeuppance and retreat from this very strict Chinese parenting model."
This is a recurring problem of news coverage as a whole these days. It's very difficult for anyone in the public eye to say anything of nuance that is not 100% one thing or the other. That doesn't make good publicity. So news outlets edit quotes and articles to highlight the bits that are bound to engender the greatest reaction. And even when they don't, plenty of readers react only to the most incendiary bits and ignore the other sections that might balance it out. And we wonder why politicians, sports stars and other public figures seem to repeat the same old meaningless platitudes ad nauseum. Say something more interesting or complex, and it will be taken out of context and used as a stick to beat them with.
That said, despite Chua's misgivings about how she's been misrepresented, she'll surely be smiling at the publicity and resulting jump in book sales that the WSJ article has precipitated.
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So is there a benefit to "Chinese-style parenting", the way Chua describes it?
Of course there is, and of course there are downsides too.
I'll extend this discussion to talk about "Asian parenting", because it's something that many other Asian kids will have grown up with; particularly Indians, Koreans and Japanese. There are a number of cultural reasons for the emphasis on discipline in education. Some of it has to do with the Confucian ideals that are deeply embedded in NE Asian society. Some of it has to do with the eager "keeping up with the Joneses" mentality of so many Asian cultures; although in this case it is more like keeping up with the Singhs or the Wongs.
Let me say from the start that I did not have such an upbringing. Mine was much more Western. Maybe because my father is an Aussie. Perhaps because my Asian side comes from Indonesia, a culture which does not have quite the same level of obsession with achievement-through-education as some other Asian cultures. Perhaps it's because both my parents are very liberal-minded. But at the same time, one is a medical doctor and the other has a PhD, so it was always expected that I would get a university degree. It's just that their approach, for better or for worse, was more hands-off. I guess they figured that I was smart enough to find my own way to where they wanted me to go. My social circle in high school was pretty white and not very Asian, but this reversed when I reached university.
The Good: I haven't been schooled in Asia, but it strikes me that one of the most debilitating characteristics of Western education is the classroom culture in which being smart equates to social death. There's a hierarchy of cool in Western schools, and the brainy kids are most often down near the bottom of a ladder that tends to place athletes, hot babes, tough guys and class clowns at the top. So many kids learn to keep their heads down and stay under the radar at a time when their creativity and intellect should be encouraged to blossom.
Sure, this social order does change after graduation, with the the meat-heads discovering that their best days are behind them. But I nonetheless think that the culture that is formed at school doesn't just reflect society as a whole, it also shapes it. An environment which encourages achievement will naturally have lower levels of mindless thuggery.
While some studies suggest East Asians achieve more because they are genetically more intelligent on average, I'm not all that convinced by that. I'm not surprised that Asians do well on IQ tests and examinations though; it's reflective of upbringing that placed great emphasis on academic success. It also helps those kids who are not blessed with great natural brainpower; the emphasis on rote learning and diligence in study does allow some students to get the best out of what they have, often better than smarter students who didn't put the effort in.
When I began to make more and more Asian friends post-high school, I discovered that compared to most of my white friends, the Asians on the whole had much less experience with drugs and alcohol, and had become sexually active somewhat later. This obviously doesn't hold true for everyone, but I think that's reflective of a broader pattern. Partly it's because migrants tend to have more traditional (and therefore conservative) values than Western parents, who are more likely to have lived through the sexual revolution and counter culture days. But it's also because Asian parents tend to be far more restrictive of their child's extracurricular activities, so often there just isn't the opportunity for some of these things to happen. And personally I think if we could delay teens from drinking, toking and screwing until they were at least 18, our world would be a better place.
The Bad: Asian parenting is more likely to lead to what you might call "stereotypical high achievement". But does it create well-rounded individuals?
When kids turn out to be doctors, dentists, corporate accountants and entrepreneurs, that's great. But that's not everyone's destiny. Pushing kids towards stereotypical career paths isn't necessarily a recipe for happiness. I once told the (Indian) mother of a former girlfriend that I was studying community development (which, years later, has led to me helping countless people and having immense career satisfaction). Her scowling response: "There's no money in that."
Sporting and athletic ability is one area which often takes a back seat to academics in Asian culture. Certainly, many would say that Western countries place too high an emphasis on sport. But nonetheless it still is extremely valuable in terms of social engagement, hand-eye-coordination and physical fitness.
A common criticism I hear of Asian international students who attend Australian universities is that for all their diligence and willingness to study, they struggle to think creatively. Education in Asia is heavy on rote learning, yet does less to equip students to think outside the box. I wonder if this is a consequence of Asia's many authoritarian systems of government... or perhaps part of the cause?
And then there is stress. For all the Asian kids who turn out just as their hard-coaching parents had hoped, how many buckle under the pressure to achieve? How many rebel by turning to the sorts of behaviours their conservative parents try to keep them away from? It is surely no coincidence that the suicide rate amongst Asian American women aged 15-24 is the highest of any ethnic category in the US.
So surely there is a middle ground to straddle somehow. Westerners could learn much from the Asian mentality of aspiration; there is more than a hint of truth in the idea of the "model minority". But I'm sure many survivors of Asian parenting would agree that it's also important for parents to know when to chill the f*ck out.
When you are a person of mixed-race, being not quite one thing or the other, there is a good possibility that you don't look much like one of both of your parents.
Take me for example. This is my mother:
While this is my father:
And this is of course my good self:
See what I mean? You can kind of see some resemblance to both, but it ain't like it jumps straight out at you.
Now I know this is not restricted to mixed-race kids; there are also plenty of you out there who are NOT mixed and who don't look much like your parents either, in which case you probably more closely resemble the milkman. But what I'm talking about here is the extra level of difference due to race.
In a multiracial society, interracial relationships are becoming more and more common, so nowadays if you're an white man carrying a small child with dark skin, onlookers might give you the benefit of the doubt rather than assuming you are some sort of sex offender.
But in a place with less racial diversity this can sometimes lead to confusion.
For example:
My Uncle Djoko is Indonesian, with brown skin, a slight build and is not overly tall. He married an Australian woman, and his adult sons Paul, John and Adam are all well-built fellows around 6ft tall, who are like me in that they don't look particularly Asian (in a stereotypical sense).
On holiday in Bali, Uncle Djoko accompanied his three sons as they went shopping. At one particular shop they made a few purchases of clothes. As they were leaving the shop, the manager unexpectedly handed him a small amount of cash.
It dawned on Uncle Djoko what was happening and he shook his head, handing it back. "No, no. These are my sons."
The manager had assumed from the start that he was in fact a tour guide. It is common practice in Indonesia for businesses to give a tip to guides or drivers who bring tourists into their shop. So seeing an Indonesian man with 3 young men who did not look Indonesian, it was an easy mistake to make.
My cousin Nesa has had a similar experience. During a brief stay in the town of Bogor, I was keen to check out the renowned botanical gardens. Nesa was less enthused, preferring the more common Indonesian activity of sitting around smoking cigarettes. After I wandered through the gate and he parked the car, one of the nearby food stall operators asked him, "So, you are a chauffeur for a bule (white person)?"
