Everyone has an interest in education,
especially who are already parents. In this context, Amy Chua’s article on Wall
Street Journal was like stone thrown to the pond and raised a big discussion on
family education. “Tiger Mom” turned to be a popular name entitled to parents
who nurture their children with strict disciplines and high academic
expectations. This article recalled a lot of my childhood memory since I came
from a stereotyped Chinese family. Many previous rules in my family were
similar to those applied to Amy’s daughters. Such as, I had very limited access
to TV and computer games and I was not allowed to take extracurricular drawing classes.
Instead I had to practice piano at least an hour everyday. In addition, my
summer break was the time to learn the textbooks that were two to three grades
in advance.
I cannot agree more with Amy Chua that Chinese
parents indeed “care about their children...They would give up anything for
their children”. The reason behind Chinese parents’ manipulation over their
Children’s life is that “they know what is best for their children”. Parents at
their age have experienced more, heard more and knew more about the competence
and cruelty of realistic world. They also have guideline or maxim concluded
from their own successes and failures. Thus, they are preparing their children
from a young age and use the most of their golden
study time by sacrificing the
playtime. I also support Amy Chau’s parenting
model from the perspective of children development theory. Children during age
6 to 11 years old have magnificent ability to understand the world and perceive
the world from their own eyes. Comparing a kid learning mathematics and playing music instrument, and
another kid watching TV, numbers
and music trained the former one to be more intelligent while the later one lost sharpness in his mind and might fall in love with fast food. Parents have the responsibility to help their children to
establish good learning habits, which will benefit their
whole life. Another important feature of children at this stage is the big
impact from progress and awards. When a
kid learns a new skill through hours of training, or gets an A in an exam, he
will feel superior among
the group and work more diligently to achieve higher.
“Ego-inflating parental praise” works in the same way too. That explains why,
after the fight between Lulu and “Tiger Mom”, Lulu was still willing to hug her
mother and exhibited great affection.
The article gave
many examples of words used by Chinese parents to blame their children, such as
“garbage”and “fatty”. I do not agree the use of insulting
words in children education,
especially in public. I don’t believe that any parent will inflict any
indignity on their children on purpose. Most of the time, a harsh word is
popped out from a parent in terrible mood, maybe from a bad day work or
impatience in tutoring the kid. Word hurts and causes a worse result on
children because they only understand the superficial meaning but do not
correlate it with the context. It is more apparent on Chinese parents, which is
understandable because “Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long
every day drilling academic activities with their children”. Kids need encouragement
and support from their caregivers to go through all kinds of predicaments along
with their growth.
Click here to see the original WSJ article
Click here to see the original WSJ article
