http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html?mod I agree with the ideas that long hours of practice are the best predictors of success and that the West has too much of “everyone is a winner” attitude, but she’s clearly in the extreme.
what you talkin bout Willis. This is a sensitive topic
Disgusting article. WSJ looks like a tabloid nowadays.
Hmmm… and I thought it was all because of the foot-binding.
So what happens in China, if all parents say that only an A (and not even an A-) is acceptable? Do all students get As, thus rendering A a meaningless grade? Or do some students not get As, and the 90% of students that are not necessarily the top 10% of the class (I’m assuming here that A means top 10%) therefore failures? That would imply that 90% of all Chinese are failures, which would seem to be inconsistent with why Chinese mothers are superior. How could superior mothers create a country 90% of which are failures? Self esteem clearly doesn’t matter, since only academic achievement counts; and that seems consistent with the relatively high student suicide rates in Korea, Japan, and (I believe) China. I would think that student self-esteem would matter at least a little, particularly in a country with a one-child policy. What happens to the parents of a one-child family when the kid hangs themselves for getting too many A minuses, or (Confucius forbid!) a B+. This must create enormous incentives for cheating. Or perhaps offer new opportunities for teachers to increase their pay. I’m glad I know from a registered WSJ authority why Chinese mothers are superior. I have some friends that say it’s because of the quality of their skin, and that sounded just strange to me.
Is it because they cheat mo?
bchadwick Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > That would imply that 90% of > all Chinese are failures, which would seem to be > inconsistent with why Chinese mothers are > superior. How could superior mothers create a > country 90% of which are failures? > > This must create enormous incentives for cheating. > Or perhaps offer new opportunities for teachers > to increase their pay. > Let’s not re-awaken the “chinese cheaters” debate. And the 90% that don’t get A’s doesn’t imply failure. If you took the bottom 90% of olympic skaters, are they failures at skating? When compared to the rest of the world, heck no If the 11th percentile Chinese student goes to the US and becomes top 1%, he’s not a failure and the mother would not be a failure.
Most Chinese parents, including the ones in America, do not push their children to the extremes that this author apparently does. Her examples are only about 25% Chinese parenting. 75% of her behavior is uptight anal parenting.
ohai Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Most Chinese parents, including the ones in > America, do not push their children to the > extremes that this author apparently does. Her > examples are only about 25% Chinese parenting. 75% > of her behavior is uptight anal parenting. Agree. It is also worth while to point out that because of differences in the Chinese and US educational systems, Chinese nationals are typically more focused on THE TEST…you are pretty well tracked after high school based on the its results.
ohai Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Her examples are only about 25% Chinese parenting. 75% > of her behavior is uptight anal parenting. i’m not Chinese, but i feel like it should be 5% - 95%. first off, those are western instruments so how is that deemed ‘Chinese’? second, why not a’s in gym or drama? i know a lot of girls whose mom’s kept them in good physical shape (though i’m not sure if they were ever called ‘fatty’) and were held to all a’s. seems more like a curriculum for a sociopath than a Chinese mom. also - can anyone shed some light what a “screaming, hair-tearing explosion” is?
Are Chinese all that smart in the US? Surprising. In China they are not. I would say on average they are less smart than Europeans, because of their study system which is just memorizing and writing the same scripts for hours. One child policy is not making them study more, it makes them fat and lazy as 4 grandparents (who suffered from hunger most of their lives) want to feed them non-stop all day. However some parents should be over-ambitious, like the author of the article. I read the news about increasing violence against family members among the students. One student who could not study and had to leave the university killed the whole family.
Russian mothers are better than Chinese mothers.
bchadwick Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Russian mothers are better than Chinese mothers. i think MILF Hunter could give the best advice on this one…
If their culture is so superior how come roughly 100% of all major technological inventions and advancements over the past ~150 years have come out of the west? Also, why is their per capita GDP roughly none existent?
http://www.wiretapmag.org/stories/44447/ Asian Americans’ Rising Suicide Rates ‘a studious Chinese student living in my dorm tried to jump from the Campanile, the tallest structure on campus. He wanted to kill himself because, according to the gossip, he had never gotten a B before’ ‘Asian Americans have excelled higher education in the last few decades. Less than 5 percent of the country’s population, Asian Americans typically make up 10 to 30 percent of the best colleges. What’s barely explored, sadly, is the darker narrative, that subterraneous stream that runs parallel to this shining path to academic success: stress, disappointment, depression, and, when failing to make the grade, a profound if not deadly identity crisis.’
Black Swan Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > If their culture is so superior how come roughly > 100% of all major technological inventions and > advancements over the past ~150 years have come > out of the west? Also, why is their per capita > GDP roughly none existent? are you retarded?
iteracom Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > bchadwick Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > That would imply that 90% of > > all Chinese are failures, which would seem to > be > > inconsistent with why Chinese mothers are > > superior. How could superior mothers create a > > country 90% of which are failures? > > > > And the 90% that don’t get A’s doesn’t imply > failure. If you took the bottom 90% of olympic > skaters, are they failures at skating? When > compared to the rest of the world, heck no > > If the 11th percentile Chinese student goes to the > US and becomes top 1%, he’s not a failure and the > mother would not be a failure. Makes sense, but according to the Chinese mother article, and the household rules described there, the 11th percentile is a failure. The mother is a failure. Shame has been brought on the whole family, and the kid is gahbage, just gahbage! The fact that the 11th percentile is top 1% in the US (which I don’t concede, but I’ll agree with for the point of this argument), then the reason the kids are good has to do with the school systems, and not the individual mothers. Both kids are top 1% in the US but one mother has succeeded and the other failed (by their own standards). Note that this is a “reducto ad absurdum” argument (or Fanhuí dào huangmiù, according to google translate) I’m making here, to show the shallow self-serving smugness of Madame Mao’s article. That said, I do think there are points where US or “western” parents should be more involved and strict with their kids. Although the “trophies for everyone for just participating” can get out of hand, I think there is some value to reminding people that winning isn’t the only thing, because you can’t win if you’re not in the game. If you only reward winners (when they’re children), then they will grow up thinking that if they can’t guarantee a win, then it’s not worth competing at all, which kills entrepreneurialism. Obviously in the real world, there are not trophies for those who didn’t win, but with kids, you are trying to develop attitudes towards competition and keep them striving to improve themselves even if they are not currently the best at something. That may mean rewarding them even if they haven’t gotten there yet. We just need to make sure that the rewards are bigger for winners. And that those who don’t try at all get nothing. Winners need to be recognized and their accomplishments not ignored, but with kids you also need to offer rewards for risk taking (to the extent that the risks are reasonable risks). You also need to teach kids how to cope with failures, which is 1) learning how to get up off the ground, hold your head high enough to get back in the game, and 2) learning how to learn from failures. This is a way you develop creativity and entrepreneurialism, and it is one of the reasons that the West has been exceptionally good at innovation - the West’s rise to global domination essentially began with the Renaissance and expanded with the Enlightenment, ultimately producing the Industrial revolution. All of this demanded creativity and the ability to think beyond the established dogma. China can get there, and with 2x the population of the US+Europe can probably end up kicking our butts, but not by the parenting techniques described in the article. Personally, my explanation is that the if you take the top 30 million Chinese and the top 30 million Americans, you will find that the top 30 million Chinese comprise only the highest 3% of the country, whereas the top 30 million Americans are highest 10% of the country. The top percent of Chinese are much more likely to be able to get to the west for education, because they are more mobile, and because they and their families come from the top performing portions of the country. Therefore, if you encounter Americans and Chinese in equal numbers, you will find that the average Chinese is going to fall into a higher category, because of what is essentially selection bias. Given that about 5-8% of the population in the US is of Asian descent, and that those who have been “culturally westernized” have essentially been counted as “non Chinese” by the author, that means that we’re really asking ourselves why it is that the mean of the top 1% of Chinese society is higher the mean of the top 100% of US students. The answer should be obvious. However, the simple minded will simply say “it’s because they’re Chinese,” and not because you are looking at a rarefied sample of Chinese. When you use anecdotal evidence and even uncontrolled statistical evidence, you are implicitly saying that the top 10% of Chinese students here is the same as the top 10% of all Chinese students, and that just doesn’t hold up. There may be some aspects of Chinese culture that do help keep kids focused on academics and help keep parents involved, but you would still have to control for the segment of society that these kids come from.
BS, it seems like you got all your education from hollywood movies. Now, I understand America has saved the word numerous times (and not only from aliens) and we’re all very grateful for that but some of the stuff you say is idiotic.
Alucard, Are my statements incorrect? My only point is that the author equated the parenting style of Chinese mothers to success, starting with “A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids.” And later defining her argument as: “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.” I found this particularly interesting because she is claiming that mothers of Chinese ancestry born in the West have diluted parenting skills. Hence my questions, if this author is correct and Chinese mothers are better (measured by their children’s success) and assuming those children on aggregate form the nation of China, then my question (using the author’s criteria: success): If their culture is so superior how come roughly 100% of all major technological inventions and advancements over the past ~150 years have come out of the west? Also, why is their per capita GDP roughly none existent? China is only a world power based on sheer aggregate numbers (like India). Their growth is built on cheap labor and low cost environmental standards (they haven’t revolutionized anything on the world stage) and their per capita GDP still lags the developed world. So I find her argument using her own success criteria to be fallacious when you aggregate the effects and look at it country by country. My lone assumption here is that the majority of Chinese have mothers. Is that what you were calling retarded?
perhaps because the author is Chinese?