Posted on 01/10/2011 8:40:44 AM PST by SeekAndFind
An article in the Wall Street Journal called "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" has American mothers (and others) in a furor.
It's written by Amy Chua, a Yale Law professor, whose daughters Louisa and Sophia are clearly, well, superior--presumably due to the parenting methods that Chua describes (methods that would appall many American parents).
Are Chinese mothers superior? Read Amy's article (excerpt below) and you be the judge.
If the goal is efficiency, excellence, and success, it would seem that this Chinese mother, at least, has most American mothers beat. And it's not hard to extrapolate that superiority toward a future world in which China wins and Americans dream of glory days when we were hungry, committed, and self-disciplined, too.
(Of course, Amy Chua is an American mother, and her kids are Americans, but leave that aside for a moment...)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Well, just ask the millions of Chinese orphans out there out about their mothers (and fathers) who left them in a market or a field or on a train. Or ask the baby girls that get thrown in the river because of their gender.
Yep, chinese parenting is vastly superior.....
Emphasis is the simple difference:
education and social responsibility
versus
video toys and an educational system which most values playing children’s games with various types of balls.
It’s no mystery.
WSJ=BS
If Chinese parenting is so good, why has China been a backwater for centuries?
That kind of rigid, no-fun approach makes very efficient workers, but leaves zero room for creativity. And creativity is the key to wealth creation. I’m all for m ore discipline in parenting, and we could learn SOME things from the Chinese model. But aping it would just create a generation of very efficient kids that were very good and making sterile copies of other people’s work. What’s the last original thing the Chinese created? Hmm?
Just dayum.
Everyone was saying the same things about the Japanese and the Germans until we came in a kicked their sorry asses! Same will be true of the “superior” chinamen.
Sure to get panties in a bunch. Very interesting one-sided article.
Well I don’t think China is all that. Although I loved visiting it during 2004, I don’t think killing children until you have a son and then stop having children was brilliant. In fact, right now they are having big issues with not having enough women for the men.....dah!
She is a nutcase.
I had strict parents and grandparents. She it a wackjob.
Because they don’t watch Oprah?
Why is bigotry acceptable when it’s practiced by some groups and not by others? OK, let’s play: the US has it all over China as measured by infant mortality rate, life expectancy, per-capita income, literacy rate and several other measures (according to the CIA Factbook). Mao Tse Tung had a Chinese mom.
This article is sure to get some panties in a bunch.
With the sunset of the greatest generation, we have become a country full of quitters.
Nonsense! My children have been raised by a strict following of Dr. Spock! All of them are retired. Never worked a day in their lives. Watch TV all day long and into the night. Play video games, have fun.
Me? I’ll work till the day I die keeping them fed, clothed, housed and entertained. It’s the American way.
RE: I’ll work till the day I die keeping them fed, clothed, housed and entertained. It’s the American way.
Who are they going to depend on when you die :) Ohh, I forgot that would be me ( and other tax payers ) :)
There is some truth in this article. And one of those truths is that the Chinese style of parenting fits in very well with the K-12 educational system that we imported from Prussia.
Of course neither of those things produced a George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, a Thomas Edison, etc.
Can any system produce an army of Abraham Lincolns anywhere in the world? This man was one of a kind IMHO.
The closest to this are the Home Schoolers in America whose children are routinely kicking the butts of those who go to public schools.
True story, when our son was 10 we spent a couple months in China (husband was on work assignment and we went along.)
So one day we’re at an outdoor skating rink and a teenage girl comes over and asks if she can practice her English by talking to me. This happened quite often, so I agreed.
At some point, my 10 year old wipes out, big time, on his skates and falls down on the concrete. He looks my way, shows me his skinned up palms and I yell, “You’re okay, just get up.” (typical parental response to falls in our family, LOL.)
The Chinese girl then goes on and on about how a Chinese mother would have rushed out on the rink and checked on her child. She thought it was better the American way (which she assumed was how I reacted) because she thought the Chinese way made kids soft.
I thought about that afterwards and maybe in physical situations she was right, but it is just the opposite in educational scenarios. Many Americans coddle their kids through school, and make excuses for them, or blame the teacher if little Johnny doesn’t do well.
IMO, the lady went a little berserk over the piano piece, LOL, it wouldn’t be worth my energy or nerves to have my kid master a particular piece. Each parent “picks their battles” and a piano piece wouldn’t have been one of mine, but each to his own, I guess.
Actually, for most of its history China was intensely creative, with many if not most inventions originating there. Gunpowder, compass, crossbow, stirrups (debated), windmills, paper, paper money, printing (block), rockets, a great many irrigation methods, etc., etc., etc. It's a very, very long list, though not quite as long as some sinophiles claim.
Then sometime between 1600 and 1800 China just stopped being inventive, with very rare exceptions, even dropped many of the technologies they'd already developed.
Why this is the case has a long history of debate, with no real agreement reached. It's known as "Needham's Question" for those who are interested in looking into it.
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