Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior

Dr. Heywood R. Floyd Friday 4 Mar 2011

Ancient Chinese Secret...hmmm?

So, the Chinks are making their kids do their homework, chores, and practice a musical instrument? Sounds like 25 percent of the guys I grew up with (and if you leave out the musical instrument, more like 98 percent). Do (White) American and Anglo-Canadian parents today not tell their kids to do their freakin' homework, and to take out the trash and wash the dishes?

Ash Monday 21 Mar 2011

A new response at the Atlantic:

The Ivy Delusion: The real reason the good mothers are so rattled by Amy Chua
By Caitlin Flanagan

The money quotes:

But we were talking about the mothers—the good mothers . The good mothers went to Brown, and they read The Drama of the Gifted Child, and they feel things very deeply, and they love their children in a way that is both complicated and primal, and they will make any sacrifice for them. They know that it takes a lot of time to nurture and guide a child—and also that time is fleeting, and that the bliss of having your kids at home is painfully short-lived—and so most of them have cut back on their professional aspirations in significant ways. The good mothers have certain ideas about how success in life is achieved, and these ideas have been sizzled into their brains by popularizers such as Joseph Campbell and Oprah Winfrey, and they boil down to this: everyone has at least one natural talent (the good mothers call it a “passion”), and creativity, effortless success, and beaucoup dinero flow not from banging your head against the closed door of, say, organic chemistry if you’re not that excited by it, but from dwelling deeply and ecstatically inside the thing that gives you the most pleasure. But you shouldn’t necessarily—or under any circumstances, actually—follow your bliss in a way that keeps you out of Yale. Because Yale is important, too! So important. The good mothers believe that their children should be able to follow their passions all the way to New Haven, Connecticut , and this obdurate belief of theirs is the reason so many of them (Obama voters, Rosa Parks diorama co-creators, gay-rights supporters, champions, in every conceivable way, of racial diversity and tolerance) are suddenly ready to demand restoration of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Because Amy Chua has revealed, in so many blunt and horrifying words, why the good mothers are getting spanked, and why it’s only going to get worse.

Chua has accepted, in a way that the good mothers will not, that most children today can’t have it both ways: they can’t have a fun, low-stress childhood and also an Ivy League education. She understood early on—as the good mothers are about to learn, when the heartbreaking e-mails and letters from the top colleges go out this month—that life is a series of choices, each with its own rewards and consequences. In a sense, that is the most unpalatable message of her book, the one that has caused all the anguish: it’s an unwelcome reminder (how can we keep forgetting this?) that the world really doesn’t lie before us like a land of dreams. At best—at the very best—it can only offer us choices between two good things, and as we grasp at one, we lose the other forever.

anunnaki Thursday 24 Mar 2011

If you have to be horsewhipped into learning something then you're not very smart to begin with.

Niccolo and Donkey Friday 1 Apr 2011

Looks like her strategy is paying off:

Tiger Mom Triumphant: Her Cub Is Harvard-Bound! (Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld got into, and is going to, Harvard.)

Yale law professor Amy Chua , author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother , has received a great deal of criticism — and, to be fair, book royalties — since her controversial parenting memoir’s publication in January. Many observers criticized her harsh, so-called “Chinese” parenting style as excessive, even abusive.

You can criticize all you want, but you can’t argue with success. Above the Law has confirmed that Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld , the oldest daughter of Amy Chua and fellow YLS professor Jed Rubenfeld , received her Harvard acceptance earlier this week. Sophia has already made up her mind that Harvard is where she’ll attend college. (Can you blame her for wanting to trade New Haven for Cambridge?)

continued at link.......

Angocachi Friday 1 Apr 2011

I feel that Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld will benefit far more from her Rubenfeld than her Chua.

BTW, Nic, getting into Harvard doesn't indicate her strategy is paying off. I can look into that girls face and see there's not an independent thought in her brain. She's going to need a boss and a husband to tell her what to do for the rest of her life, once her professors finish, anyway.

anunnaki Wednesday 27 Apr 2011

Plenty of people with not one innovative thought in their heads make it to top universities. And one cannot help but wonder how much the publicity surrounding her mother's book helped her get into Harvard.

Yellow and Jew, what a terrifying combination. One has no soul and the other will eat yours.

And who changed my avatar? Niggolo, I'm looking in your direction.

anunnaki Wednesday 27 Apr 2011

There, changed it. Much better.

Niccolo and Donkey Wednesday 27 Apr 2011

Okay, okay, you got me! I thought it suited you!

Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior

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