Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior
Thursday, 10 February 2011
Firstly, the article cab be found at:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html
This article is a piece of recent new that has been actively discussed, most commonly referred to as 'Chinese tiger mom', by both the western and chinese community. But who else better to comment on this issue of chinese and western education methods then Amy Chua is a professor at Yale Law School, the author of this article, an except from her full essay. For a chinese professor teacher law, a respected degree, in what is the second best university in the whole world, she has the ability and respect to make such comments. In this posts, i will discuss my parental situation, the western and the chinese education policy.
Let me first start off with my parental situation, when i first read the article, my immediate reaction was that, it sounded very similar to my parents. Too similar. Yes, i am allowed to have sleepovers seldomly, i am allowed to join a school play, i do not play the piano or the violin, however, academically, it somewhat indifferent. Since young, i was never allowed to satisfy with anything less than full marks, even being top in class barely meant anything, but just another excuse for not getting full marks. On the occasion i got full marks, if i was ever foolish enough to think i would get rewarded with a game or a game console, i was hoping for miracles. Nothing more than "you had better keep that up' would come out. This was all while i was young and innocent in Primary School, and while my friends were contended with As and A*s. Such basic chinese principals was carved into me starting from weekly spelling. I remember, getting back spelling test results used to be a torture. Every week, my mom would sacrifice at least 3 hours to revise my spelling words with me, before testing me time and again, making sure i was prepared for this 'test'. It seemed really stupid then, foolish now, but it laid the fundamentals of the mentality going into a test.
Never expect to get anything less than full marks
In this article, a key theme is the Chinese vs Western education. Firstly, i would like to clarify that Chinese and Western is not the correct term to use considering its a over-generalization, knowing many of my parent's who adopt the 'western' educational method. Basically a common thing within the two educational methods are that, we must recognise that both parents do love their child and only want to best for their child. The 'chinese' thinks that, as children, they need guidance, and they are the ones responsible to lead their child the right way, down to the right path in order to be successful. They believe that they are doing it for the child's benefits and when the child grows up, he/she will recognise the parent's efforts and thank them tremendously. The westerner's believe in independent learning. That the child knows its interest and what is best for them, they believe the child is good enough to cope and choose its choices wisely without the unwanted interference of adults. Also, 'chinese' tends to be more blunt and straightforward, getting to the point, the point is to embarrass and teach. While the 'westerns' prefer to beat around the bush and express their criticism subtly. Essentially, from a chinese education. It is way too idealistic, its like enforcing children to be successful, and to be lawyers and doctors like every successful person. It does not allow change, it is too rigid. And there is bound to evoke a sense of rebellion in the child, assuming the child was to totally disobey you, what could a real parent do without hurting him or her. Barely anything, likely just empty threats. However, the 'western' idea too is idealistic, at such tender age, would the child really know what is best for him, would not he need guidance from parents as reference?
Personally, i think that the main difference is in the culture. As 'chinese' parents are likely to be less educated and more likely from poor backgrounds, this evokes a sense of wanting the best for their children, thus kiasu, which is hokkien for being scared to lose. 'Western" parents however, believe in democracy alot, and thus they feel that being so strict is not respecting freedom and human rights, thus the over-reaction to this article recent. But, it is not the truth that we cannot incorporate both ideas. As singaporean, it is fair to say that we are mostly halfway in between, which is a good mix of east and west. As such,parent-child relationships can be maintained at a healthy level.