Chinese education thread:

[kyli]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/wo...nghai.html?hpw

Shanghai Schools’ Approach Pushes Students to Top of Tests
Ryan Pyle for The New York Times

Discipline issues are rare at the middle school linked to the Jing’An Teachers’ College in Shanghai. The city is thought to have China’s best schools.
By DAVID BARBOZA
Published: December 29, 2010
SHANGHAI — In Li Zhen’s ninth-grade mathematics class here last week, the morning drill was geometry. Students at the middle school affiliated with Jing’An Teachers’ College were asked to explain the relative size of geometric shapes by using Euclid’s theorem of parallelograms.
Enlarge This Image
Ryan Pyle for The New York Times

A teacher instructed students in class at the middle school associated with Jing’An Teachers’ College in central Shanghai.

“Who in this class can tell me how to demonstrate two lines are parallel without using a proportional segment?” Ms. Li called out to about 40 students seated in a cramped classroom.

One by one, a series of students at this medium-size public school raised their hands. When Ms. Li called on them, they each stood politely by their desks and usually answered correctly. They returned to their seats only when she told them to sit down.

Educators say this disciplined approach helps explain the announcement this month that 5,100 15-year-olds in Shanghai outperformed students from about 65 countries on an international standardized test that measured math, science and reading competency.

American students came in between 15th and 31st place in the three categories. France and Britain also fared poorly.

Experts said comparing scores from countries and cities of different sizes is complicated. They also said that the Shanghai scores were not representative of China, since this fast-growing city of 20 million is relatively affluent. Still, they were impressed by the high scores from students in Shanghai.

The results were seen as another sign of China’s growing competitiveness. The United States rankings are a “wake-up call,” said Arne Duncan, the secretary of education.

Although it was the first time China had taken part in the test, which was administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, based in Paris, the results bolstered this country’s reputation for producing students with strong math and science skills.

Many educators were also surprised by the city’s strong reading scores, which measured students’ proficiency in their native Chinese.

The Shanghai students performed well, experts say, for the same reason students from other parts of Asia — including South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong — do: Their education systems are steeped in discipline, rote learning and obsessive test preparation.

Public school students in Shanghai often remain at school until 4 p.m., watch very little television and are restricted by Chinese law from working before the age of 16.

“Very rarely do children in other countries receive academic training as intensive as our children do,” said Sun Baohong, an authority on education at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. “So if the test is on math and science, there’s no doubt Chinese students will win the competition.”

But many educators say China’s strength in education is also a weakness. The nation’s education system is too test-oriented, schools here stifle creativity and parental pressures often deprive children of the joys of childhood, they say.

“These are two sides of the same coin: Chinese schools are very good at preparing their students for standardized tests,” Jiang Xueqin, a deputy principal at Peking University High School in Beijing, wrote in an opinion article published in The Wall Street Journal shortly after the test results were announced. “For that reason, they fail to prepare them for higher education and the knowledge economy.”

In an interview, Mr. Jiang said Chinese schools emphasized testing too much, and produced students who lacked curiosity and the ability to think critically or independently.

“It creates very narrow-minded students,” he said. “But what China needs now is entrepreneurs and innovators.”

This is a common complaint in China. Educators say an emphasis on standardized tests is partly to blame for the shortage of innovative start-ups in China. And executives at global companies operating here say they have difficulty finding middle managers who can think creatively and solve problems.

In many ways, the system is a reflection of China’s Confucianist past. Children are expected to honor and respect their parents and teachers.

“Discipline is rarely a problem,” said Ding Yi, vice principal at the middle school affiliated with Jing’An Teachers’ College. “The biggest challenge is a student who chronically fails to do his homework.”

While the quality of schools varies greatly in China (rural schools often lack sufficient money, and dropout rates can be high), schools in major cities typically produce students with strong math and science skills.

Shanghai is believed to have the nation’s best school system, and many students here gain admission to America’s most selective colleges and universities.

In Shanghai, teachers are required to have a teaching certificate and to undergo a minimum of 240 hours of training; higher-level teachers can be required to have up to 540 hours of training. There is a system of incentives and merit pay, just like the systems in some parts of the United States.

“Within a teacher’s salary package, 70 percent is basic salary,” said Xiong Bingqi, a professor of education at Shanghai Jiaotong University. “The other 30 percent is called performance salary.”

Still, teacher salaries are modest, about $750 a month before bonuses and allowances — far less than what accountants, lawyers or other professionals earn.

While Shanghai schools are renowned for their test preparation skills, administrators here are trying to broaden the curriculums and extend more freedom to local districts. The Jing’An school, one of about 150 schools in Shanghai that took part in the international test, was created 12 years ago to raise standards in an area known for failing schools.

The principal, Zhang Renli, created an experimental school that put less emphasis on math and allows children more free time to play and experiment. The school holds a weekly talent show, for example.

The five-story school building, which houses Grades eight and nine in a central district of Shanghai, is rather nondescript. Students wear rumpled school uniforms, classrooms are crowded and lunch is bused in every afternoon. But the school, which operates from 8:20 a.m. to 4 p.m. on most days, is considered one of the city’s best middle schools.

In Shanghai, most students begin studying English in first grade. Many middle school students attend extra-credit courses after school or on Saturdays. A student at Jing’An, Zhou Han, 14, said she entered writing and speech-making competitions and studied the erhu, a Chinese classical instrument. She also has a math tutor.

“I’m not really good at math,” she said. “At first, my parents wanted me to take it, but now I want to do it.”

[xinhui]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/op...gewanted=print

January 8, 2011
China Rises, and Checkmates
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

BEIJING

If there’s a human face on Rising China, it belongs not to some Politburo chief, not to an Internet tycoon, but to a quiet, mild-mannered teenage girl named Hou Yifan.

Ms. Hou (whose name is pronounced Ho Ee-fahn) is an astonishing phenomenon: at 16, she is the new women’s world chess champion, the youngest person, male or female, ever to win a world championship. And she reflects the way China — by investing heavily in education and human capital, particularly in young women — is increasingly having an outsize impact on every aspect of the world.

Napoleon is famously said to have declared, “When China wakes, it will shake the world.” That is becoming true even in spheres that China historically has had little connection with, like chess, basketball, rare earth minerals, cyber warfare, space exploration and nuclear research.

This is a process that Miss Hou exemplifies. Only about 1 percent of Chinese play chess, and China has never been a chess power. But since 1991, China has produced four women’s world chess champions, and Ms. Hou is the one with by far the most promise.

At this point, I have to put my sensitive male ego aside. You see, Ms. Hou gamely agreed to play me after I interviewed her. She had just flown into Beijing after winning the world championship, and she was exhausted — and she shredded me in 21 moves.

Most dispiriting, when I was teetering at the abyss near the end of the game, her coach nudged her and suggested mischievously that we should switch sides. Ms. Hou would inherit my impossible position — and the gleam in her coach’s eye suggested that she would still win.

I protested that I could survive being beaten on the chess board by a schoolgirl. But to be toyed with, like a mouse by a cat — that would be too much. Ms. Hou nodded compassionately and checkmated me a few moves later.

At 14 she became the youngest female grandmaster ever. She’s still so young that it’s unclear just how remarkable she will become.

Women in general haven’t been nearly as good at chess as men, and the world’s top women are mostly ranked well below the top men — but Ms. Hou could be an exception. She is the only female chess player today considered to have a shot at becoming one of the top few players in the world, male or female.

Cynics sometimes suggest that China’s rise as a world power is largely a matter of government manipulation of currency rates and trade rules, and there’s no doubt that there’s plenty of rigging or cheating going on in every sphere. But China has also done an extraordinarily good job of investing in its people and in spreading opportunity across the country. Moreover, perhaps as a legacy of Confucianism, its citizens have shown a passion for education and self-improvement — along with remarkable capacity for discipline and hard work, what the Chinese call “chi ku,” or “eating bitterness.”

Ms. Hou dined on plenty of bitterness in working her way up to champion. She grew up in the boondocks, in a county town in Jiangsu Province, and her parents did not play chess. But they lavished attention on her and spoiled her, as parents of only children (“little emperors”) routinely do in China.

China used to be one of the most sexist societies in the world — with female infanticide, foot binding, and concubinage — but it turned a corner and now is remarkably good at giving opportunities to girls as well as boys. When Ms. Hou’s parents noticed her interest in a chess board at a store, they promptly bought her a chess set — and then hired a chess tutor for her.

Ye Jiangchuan, the chief coach of the national men’s and women’s teams, told me that he played Ms. Hou when she was 9 years old — and was stunned. “I saw that this kid was special,” he told me, and he invited her to move to Beijing to play with the national teams. Three years later she was the youngest girl ever to compete in the world chess championships.

It will be many, many decades before China can challenge the United States as the overall “No. 1” in the world, for we have a huge lead and China still must show that it can transition to a more open and democratic society. But already in discrete areas — its automobile market, carbon emissions and now women’s chess — China is emerging as No. 1 here and there, and that process will continue.

There’s a lesson for us as well. China’s national commitment to education, opportunity and eating bitterness — those are qualities that we in the West might emulate as well. As you know after you’ve been checkmated by Hou Yifan.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.

[astralis]

Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior - WSJ.com

THE SATURDAY ESSAY

JANUARY 8, 2011
Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior


By AMY CHUA

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.


When it comes to parenting, the Chinese seem to produce children who display academic excellence, musical mastery and professional success - or so the stereotype goes. WSJ's Christina Tsuei speaks to two moms raised by Chinese immigrants who share what it was like growing up and how they hope to raise their children.

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.

Chinese parents can get away with things that Western parents can't. Once when I was young—maybe more than once—when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn't damage my self-esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn't actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage.

As an adult, I once did the same thing to Sophia, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectfully toward me. When I mentioned that I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized. One guest named Marcy got so upset she broke down in tears and had to leave early. My friend Susan, the host, tried to rehabilitate me with the remaining guests.

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.

Here's a story in favor of coercion, Chinese-style. Lulu was about 7, still playing two instruments, and working on a piano piece called "The Little White Donkey" by the French composer Jacques Ibert. The piece is really cute—you can just imagine a little donkey ambling along a country road with its master—but it's also incredibly difficult for young players because the two hands have to keep schizophrenically different rhythms.

Lulu couldn't do it. We worked on it nonstop for a week, drilling each of her hands separately, over and over. But whenever we tried putting the hands together, one always morphed into the other, and everything fell apart. Finally, the day before her lesson, Lulu announced in exasperation that she was giving up and stomped off.

"Get back to the piano now," I ordered.

"You can't make me."

"Oh yes, I can."

Back at the piano, Lulu made me pay. She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu's dollhouse to the car and told her I'd donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn't have "The Little White Donkey" perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, "I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?" I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn't do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.

Jed took me aside. He told me to stop insulting Lulu—which I wasn't even doing, I was just motivating her—and that he didn't think threatening Lulu was helpful. Also, he said, maybe Lulu really just couldn't do the technique—perhaps she didn't have the coordination yet—had I considered that possibility?

"You just don't believe in her," I accused.

"That's ridiculous," Jed said scornfully. "Of course I do."

"Sophia could play the piece when she was this age."

"But Lulu and Sophia are different people," Jed pointed out.

"Oh no, not this," I said, rolling my eyes. "Everyone is special in their special own way," I mimicked sarcastically. "Even losers are special in their own special way. Well don't worry, you don't have to lift a finger. I'm willing to put in as long as it takes, and I'm happy to be the one hated. And you can be the one they adore because you make them pancakes and take them to Yankees games."

I rolled up my sleeves and went back to Lulu. I used every weapon and tactic I could think of. We worked right through dinner into the night, and I wouldn't let Lulu get up, not for water, not even to go to the bathroom. The house became a war zone, and I lost my voice yelling, but still there seemed to be only negative progress, and even I began to have doubts.

Then, out of the blue, Lulu did it. Her hands suddenly came together—her right and left hands each doing their own imperturbable thing—just like that.

Read More

In China, Not All Practice Tough Love
The Juggle: Are U.S. Parents Too Soft?
Lulu realized it the same time I did. I held my breath. She tried it tentatively again. Then she played it more confidently and faster, and still the rhythm held. A moment later, she was beaming.

"Mommy, look—it's easy!" After that, she wanted to play the piece over and over and wouldn't leave the piano. That night, she came to sleep in my bed, and we snuggled and hugged, cracking each other up. When she performed "The Little White Donkey" at a recital a few weeks later, parents came up to me and said, "What a perfect piece for Lulu—it's so spunky and so her."

Even Jed gave me credit for that one. Western parents worry a lot about their children's self-esteem. But as a parent, one of the worst things you can do for your child's self-esteem is to let them give up. On the flip side, there's nothing better for building confidence than learning you can do something you thought you couldn't.

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.

—Amy Chua is a professor at Yale Law School and author of "Day of Empire" and "World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability." This essay is excerpted from "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua, to be published Tuesday by the Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright © 2011 by Amy Chua.

[xinhui]

AMY CHUA!

Oh yeah, I am a big fan.

[Tarek Morgen]

• 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.

so..the chinese secret to raising a kid is.... not allowing it to be a kid?

[xinhui]

Yup, and that is something I will never do.

[Tarek Morgen]

Glad to hear, I was assuming your other post was sarcastic, but was not competly sure.

Pushing your child is one thing, but taking away pretty much the whole childhood...I really feel sorry for her kids.

[xinhui]

agree 100% . In fact, my second son refuses to take piano lessons, I am totally cool with that.

As long they tried, that is all I ask.

[cdude]

There are 1247 comments on WSJ.com as of now.

The first comment I read is "I am sorry to be politically incorrect, but the esteemed professor is an idiot."


I cannot agree more. I bet this Amy Chua (who grew up in Berkeley in the 80's) doesn't know what life is like in Oakland Chinatown. The title should be "why first generation immigrant Chinese mothers with Ph.D degrees are smarter than working class native people". Her father is none other than Leon Chua, a famous Berkeley professor.

Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior - WSJ.com

THE SATURDAY ESSAY

JANUARY 8, 2011
Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior


By AMY CHUA

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:

—Amy Chua is a professor at Yale Law School and author of "Day of Empire" and "World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability." This essay is excerpted from "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua, to be published Tuesday by the Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright © 2011 by Amy Chua.

[USSWisconsin]

I rolled up my sleeves and went back to Lulu. I used every weapon and tactic I could think of. We worked right through dinner into the night, and I wouldn't let Lulu get up, not for water, not even to go to the bathroom.

Why not caning and a tiger cage? She could use a cattle prod, that would get results... I bet that is a real happy, imaginative kid. I wouldn't doubt that Mommy Dearest - Dr Amy gets put in an old folks home with no windows when Ms Lulu is calling the shots.

[astralis]

her ideas re: the strength of kids, not coddling them with continual praise and self-esteem boosters is on target, but she takes this to absolutely insane levels. it's definitely par for course in places like taiwan, though. after class, kids get sent to cram school until 7 or 8 pm (sometimes later), with half days on weekends.

my mother was similar-- not quite as bad, but close. growing up, anything lower than a 85% on a test would result in corporal punishment; one hit for every point below 85. and she thought herself generous in this regard, as her parents had their cutoff at 95% (!).

piano time was an hour and a half every day and if you did not do well during piano lessons (also headed by a chinese mother) it meant two hours of piano and a long scolding.

sometimes made for a pretty unhappy childhood. what sucked was that growing up in the bay area, all the asian kids were pretty much going through the same thing.

[HKDan]

Wow,

As an educator, that Amy Chua article had my blood pressure pretty high for a little while. Now that I have taken the opportunity to cool off perhaps I can respond in a more measured way. The parenting that she advocates and describes would be considered by myself and most professional educators to be abusive. Frankly, she is a terrible parent and contradicts a lot of the newer scientific research that has been done on how learning is accomplished. However, she does have one strong point. Any teacher will tell you that high standards get results. There is a problem in many developed nations with parents and schools having low expectations for children and finding excuses for lack of performance. Parents, of any culture, who are involved in the education of their children and have the expectation that their children will achieve will more likely than not see their children get results. Other than that one idea, the whole article is garbage.

[xinhui]

Amy is a great Law / Poli-sci professor, to see her writing a book on motherhood and Chinese women is somewhat of a surprise. (She was hotter back in the days)


* Arts & Culture

Amy Chua
The key to the rise of the Romans, the Mongols—and the U.S.? Ethnic diversity, Chua says in a new book

* By Jess Blumberg
* Smithsonian magazine, February 2008


Read more: Amy Chua | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine



You say your book, Day of Empire, is a warning. How so?
I'm suggesting that, ironically, the secret to becoming a world "hyperpower" is tolerance. If you look at history, you see great powers being very tolerant in their rise to global dominance. So there is a sort of warning for today's hyperpower—the United States. The secret to our success for over 200 years has been our ability to attract the best and the brightest from all over the world. We can't just let every immigrant in. But it's important to not take a turn toward xenophobia and want to shut down the borders or root out certain groups, because history shows that that's always been the trigger of backlash and decline.

You give several examples of the rise of hyperpowers—nations that are unsurpassed militarily and economically— including the Roman Empire, the Tang dynasty and the Dutch Republic. But not everyone thinks of the Roman Empire as tolerant.
I'm not talking about tolerance in the modern human-rights sense. Rome had massive amounts of slavery; women had no rights. People were shredded at gladiator games. But the Romans were tolerant in the sense that they were indifferent to skin color and religious, ethnic or linguistic background. People of different ethnicities and religions were accepted into the Roman army and were able to become Roman citizens. The Romans thought of themselves as the chosen people, yet they built the greatest army on earth by recruiting warriors from any background.

But didn't the notion of tolerance change?
Of course. Once you get to the Enlightenment, the way that powers get to be hyperpowers isn't just by conquest. It's through commerce and innovation. Societies like the Dutch Republic and the United States used tolerance to become a magnet for enterprising immigrants.

You say modern America has a lot in common with the Mongol Empire. What about the United States would Genghis Khan endorse?
Genghis Khan decreed religious tolerance for all of his conquered peoples. So I think he definitely would approve of our constitutional protections of freedom of religion. I think he would also approve of the way the U.S. has been able to attract talented people from all over the world. The Mongols themselves had little technology, not even enough to bake bread. The only way they were able to conquer the great cities of Eastern Europe and the Middle East was by using Chinese engineers who knew how to build great siege machines. The parallel is that the U.S. was able to win the race for the atomic bomb because it was a haven for persecuted scientists from Nazi Europe.

How did you get interested in global issues?
My own family is Chinese, but from the Philippines. My parents immigrated here. My mother was Catholic, two grandparents were Buddhist and Protestant, and my husband is Jewish. I'm a product of globalization.

What are your criteria for a “hyperpower”?
I did come up with a very specific set of conditions. The core idea is that it has to be a power that clearly surpasses all of its rivals, so the U.S. during the Cold War was not a hyperpower. Even though we were a super power, we had a rival that was about roughly as strong. The other criteria is that a power can’t be clearly inferior economically or militarily to any other power on the planet, even if it doesn’t know about it. This should take care of the empires of antiquity. For me, a starting point was that Rome had to be a hyperpower because, if it wasn’t, then there’s no such thing. And, finally, the idea is that a hyperpower is a society that really projects its power globally, not just regionally or locally.

How did you avoid over-generalizing and concealing huge differences between societies?
I try really hard to always point out differences across the societies. I have lots of warnings saying, ‘Look, I tried to be over-inclusive rather than under-inclusive.’ So some of these powers, like the Dutch Republic, are more contestable cases whereas the great Mongol empire was, hands down, a hyperpower. Also, it’s the differences across these hyperpowers that really interest me. For example, I say that the role that tolerance has played has really changed over time. In that sense, I’m pointing out a difference.

Explain your version of the term “tolerance.”
By tolerance I don’t mean equality, or even respect. As I use the term, tolerance means letting very different kinds of people live, work, participate and rise in your society regardless of their ethnic or religious backgrounds.

Why do you include Nazi Germany and imperial Japan in your discussion of power?
I included them as examples of incredibly intolerant societies that rose to frightening heights of power but never, I argue, remotely came close to global domination. While you can get very powerful through intolerance – the Germans really mobilized negative and hateful energy by calling for the extermination of inferior peoples – I say that no intolerant society can become a hyperpower because it’s just too inefficient to be enslaving, exterminating and persecuting people. You waste so many resources, which sounds sort of callous to say. But from a strategic point of view, intolerance has inherent limits. A lot of people say that the only reason the U.S. is a hyperpower is because it’s imperialistic and it exploits other countries, and I actually say that the real secret to U.S. global domination is its tolerance. Intolerance just can never yield the same amount of success and global power.

How did 9/11 change the way America was defined as a hyperpower?
In the late 1990s after the Soviet Union fell, an unusual set of circumstances came over the world. We had one hyperpower, the U.S., and everybody felt like with communism discredited and the U.S. as a leader, markets and democracy were just going to spread over the world, turn everybody into competitors and we were going to get rid of backwardness and ethnic conflict. The idea was that here we were a hyperpower and nobody was afraid that we were going to be invading other countries.

After 9/11, of course, there was the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War and right at that point everything changed. Suddenly, all over the world we were not just viewed as a passive, pro-market beneficent hyperpower. Suddenly, everyone all over the world saw the U.S. as a unilateralist, aggressively militaristic hyperpower. At this moment, Americans are really struggling with that question, which is ‘What kind of hyperpower should we be? Do we even want to be a hyperpower?’

What does being a hyperpower mean for the U.S.?
We are history’s first democratic hyperpower. This is a fabulous thing on the one hand and possibly a reason we continue to be a hyperpower. On the other hand, being a democratic hyperpower also sets limits on the U.S. Even if we wanted to, we can’t just go conquer other territories and take all their resources. We champion democracy. We can’t just annex territories. So when we invaded Iraq, it was never a possibility that once we liberated Iraq, all the Iraqis could then vote in the next U.S. presidential election. The U.S. is in sort of a strange box: it can promote democracy, but it can’t make the people it dominates a part of the American democracy. I think this is partly why there is so much resentment against the U.S. Lots of people want to be Americans. They want to live like Americans. They admire America. They would love to come and be citizens of America. But we can’t do that. There’s a kind of schizophrenic love-hate relationship where we’re telling the world that we want to bring democracy and free markets and wealth to them, and yet we just can’t let them all into this country. We have to admit that we can’t let the rest of the world become citizens, but we need to find new 21st century ways of having more of a connection with the rest of the world.

What 21st century options could work?
Of course, there have to be limits, but I think we have to continue with our very open-feeling immigration policy so at least we’ll continue to hold out the possibility that some people can become Americans regardless of ethnicity or religion.

U.S. multi-nationalists, interestingly, can serve a positive role, for example, in the extent that U.S. multi-nationals and U.S. corporations abroad actually train executives and managers from other countries. Ukrainian or Filipino or Nigerian executives will start to have American values. They’ll be gaining from the profits of these American corporations that they belong to and so, in a way, it’s a way of participating in America’s prosperity. Co-opting these elites or encouraging the development of pro-American elites is at least the beginning of having more connection to the rest of the world.

We should be the leaders of multi-national, international initiatives for problems that are really of global magnitude. This way, people can look and see that we are all connected in a certain way and that the U.S. is going to work to bring benefits to not just Americans but the rest of the world as well

Read more: Amy Chua | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine

[Skywatcher]

her ideas re: the strength of kids, not coddling them with continual praise and self-esteem boosters is on target, but she takes this to absolutely insane levels. it's definitely par for course in places like taiwan, though. after class, kids get sent to cram school until 7 or 8 pm (sometimes later), with half days on weekends.

my mother was similar-- not quite as bad, but close. growing up, anything lower than a 85% on a test would result in corporal punishment; one hit for every point below 85. and she thought herself generous in this regard, as her parents had their cutoff at 95% (!).

piano time was an hour and a half every day and if you did not do well during piano lessons (also headed by a chinese mother) it meant two hours of piano and a long scolding.

sometimes made for a pretty unhappy childhood. what sucked was that growing up in the bay area, all the asian kids were pretty much going through the same thing.

My parents finally gave up on me when we moved to Taiwan during my high school years and my mom finally figured out that there was no way I would be a doctor or electrical engineer like dear old dad. Sometimes its just a matter of the kid's staying power (of course, my parents were five to seven years older on average compared to those of my peers').

[kyli]

His criticism of Amy Chua has merits, and America definitely is way ahead in higher education. However, education is not always about fun or easy. Students must do the hard work of educating themselves, and memorization sometime is necessary to laid the foundation.

U.S. Schools Are Still Ahead—Way Ahead - BusinessWeek
U.S. Schools Are Still Ahead—Way Ahead
America's alarm about international rankings of students overlooks some critical components of our education system, Vivek Wadhwa says

By Vivek Wadhwa
Technology

America has an inferiority complex about its education system. You hear the sirens every year, when the OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) releases its annual test results. Finland, South Korea, and Singapore usually come out on top; we start blaming our K-12 teachers for not teaching enough mathematics and science; we begin worrying about the millions of engineers and scientists China and India graduate.

This year the big surprise was that Shanghai garnered first place in the PISA rankings. Then The Wall Street Journal ran a story on the home page of its website titled "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior." The Journal article claimed that Chinese (and Korean, Indian, etc.) parents raise "stereotypically successful kids"—math whizzes and music prodigies. They do this by not allowing their children to attend sleepovers; 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. The article went on to recount as typical a series of acts that would be considered child abuse in the U.S. (and aren't the norm in India and China).

The Journal article was simply bizarre, yet it is true that education in China and India is very challenging and fiercely competitive. Children are brought up to believe that education is everything, that it will make the difference between success and starvation. So from their early years they work long and hard. Most of their childhood is spent memorizing books on advanced subjects.
American Stereotypes

Meanwhile, the perception is that American children live a relatively easy life and coast their way through school. They don't do any more homework than they have to; they spend an extraordinary amount of time playing games, socializing on the Internet, text-messaging each other; they work part time to pay for their schooling and social habits. And they party. A lot. These stereotypes worry many Americans. They believe the American education system puts the country at a great disadvantage. But this is far from true.

The independence and social skills American children develop give them a huge advantage when they join the workforce. They learn to experiment, challenge norms, and take risks. They can think for themselves, and they can innovate. This is why America remains the world leader in innovation; why Chinese and Indians invest their life savings to send their children to expensive U.S. schools when they can. India and China are changing, and as the next generations of students become like American ones, they too are beginning to innovate. So far, their education systems have held them back.

My research team at Duke looked in depth at the engineering education of China and India. We documented that these countries now graduate four to seven times as many engineers as does the U.S.The quality of these engineers, however, is so poor that most are not fit to work as engineers; their system of rote learning handicaps those who do get jobs, so it takes two to three years for them to achieve the same productivity as fresh American graduates.As a result, significant proportions of China's engineering graduates end up working on factory floors and Indian industry has to spend large sums of money retraining its employees. After four or five years in the workforce, Indians do become innovative and produce, overall, at the same quality as Americans, but they lose a valuable two to three years in their retraining.