The Real Wimps are revealed in the Amy Chua, Tiger Mother Debate

January 19, 2011

David Brooks, an Op-Ed Columnist for the New York Times, wrote an interesting opinion piece titled Amy Chua is a Wimp.

Brooks was wrong of course, and one of the comments to his opinion left by Leon Breaux shows why

Brooks was wrong just as most American parents are also wrong in the way they raise children to have an inflated and false sense of self-esteem.

Amy Chua as a Tiger Mother may be an example of the other extreme but her children will be much better prepared to survive in the world than children that grew up learning social survival skills in lieu of a real education.

I taught in the US public schools for thirty years, so I agree with Leon Breaux and have copied his comment below with the above link to the New York Times so readers may read what Brooks has to say as flawed as his self-centered, biased opinion is. 

I suspect Brooks is just defending his own parenting methods. It’s difficult for most people to admit they are wrong.

In fact, Leon Breaux suggests, “It’s the middle way between the two that’s going to do the trick,” which is the method my wife and I used to raise our daughter who has great social skills but also earned straight A’s in public school to graduate last year with a 4.65 GPA, and she was accepted to Stanford.

My wife and I are proud to say we are Middle Way Tiger Parents who did not support the soft self-esteem inflated method of parenting that has been so popular in the US for far too long.


 

Leon Breaux’s comment to the New York Times Op-Ed piece
Beijing
January 18th, 2011
11:14 a

 I’ve taught for quite a few years at the high school and junior high level in three states in the US and in three Asian countries, including China.

This piece frankly strikes me as an insight into what is wrong with education today in the US. Here’s an intelligent, accomplished man comparing structured intellectual activity and training to socializing and proclaiming socializing the winner.

My question is this: If you don’t know anything, what good is your socializing?

Most Asian parents push their children hard. They want them to succeed and they do it the best way they know how. I haven’t read Professor Chua’s book, but from what I’ve read of it, she takes an ironic tone concerning her own harsh methods. At any rate, just because she pushed her extreme of discipline too far, does not mean her point concerning American parenting’s lack of discipline is any less valid.

There is a middle way between these two extremes.

American students and parents are self-absorbed. Americans in general are so self-absorbed they find it difficult to understand anything outside their own immediate interests. No, this is not normal. Ironic, isn’t it that the type of thinking Mr. Brooks advises is supposed to increase social ability but in fact seems to only create that ability among those narrowly defined as your status peers.

Not that Mr. Brook’s fundamental point isn’t correct. The best predictor for primate brain size is the size of the species’ social group. The larger the group, the larger the brain. Obviously, the demands of knowing the thoughts and actions of other similarly equipped creatures as yourself in competitive situations are staggering. But that’s not the point. Close as we may be, we are not, actually, primates in social groups. We have fallen from that state of grace, so to speak. We are now compelled to make our own choices, and the wrong choices may mean our demise. We must master objective knowledge because that is the world in which we have put ourselves.

The true nature of objective education, where facts are facts and knowledge actually has some meaning and use in its own right, that destroyer of prejudice and racism and class and many other potentially harmful divisions between us, has largely been left behind. No one’s looking much outside themselves in the US. So while these socially adroit students may be quite good at doing whatever they do with each other in terms of their interactions, which probably isn’t anything too impressive in a larger sense, my original point remains: they don’t know anything.

Knowing something takes learning. Learning is generally hard work. Children often don’t want to do it. Trying to brush this away as something inconsequential and not as important as socialization or achievement of status is a great recipe for stagnation or worse.

You know, Americans admire Asian educational systems, but Asians admire American. And Western women want to look tanned, and do all sorts of things including cancerous tanning beds and lying in the sun to achieve it, while Asian women see extreme whiteness as the best shade and use all sorts of treatments, including cancerous creams, to achieve whiteness and wouldn’t be caught dead lying in the sun.

Point is, forget about Asian and Western. They’re different, hot dog. Question is, what’s best for educating our young people, worldwide. Clearly, a steady diet of day care without the pursuit of actual, objective knowledge isn’t the best route. Clearly, isolation into enforced study isn’t the best either. It’s the middle way between the two that’s going to do the trick.

I haven’t read Professor Chua’s book, but I’ll hazard a guess that’s where she comes out in the end.

A note from this Blog’s host: If you believe that Chinese Tiger Mothers are churning out robotic drones that have no social skills, you are wrong.

Unlike many idealistic Americans today with the fixation that everyone has to be equal even if we have to create government entitlement programs while working overtime to boost self-esteem in children raising generations of selfish narcissists, in China people have no choice but to compete to get into colleges and/or start private businesses.

The losers get little or no help from the government.

Even government owned industries in China were required in the 1980s to become profitable or go out of business and many did.

The losers just work harder for less to survive or don’t work at all and become homeless or turn to the family for a place to live and food to eat.

However, do not expect that nonworker to stay out of work for long. The rest of the family will put immense pressure on him or her to get out there and do anything to earn money even if it is pennies a day.  Doing nothing is unacceptable.

If China’s government does provide financial support, it is usually barely enough to eat a simple diet.  Since most Chinese work very hard for what little they earn, most wouldn’t condone the type of entitlement programs that exist in America that allows millions to not work or improve him or herself.

In China, meritocracy is the rule and has been for more than two thousand years.  If you cannot measure up, you are a failure. It’s that simple.

However, the Chinese also have a system that requires social skills to build networks of trust between individuals, businessmen and families and it is called Guanxi.  To be included in one of those social groups is not easy. To achieve Guanxi means earning the trust of others and not just being cute in a social setting.

What most Americans are missing in this debate is the fact that the Confucian, Taoist culture that developed and survived in China created a regional super power that lasted for more than two thousand years while the social self-esteem soft parenting approach popular in America to raise children was launched in the 1960s about six decades ago and has resulted in more than 14 trillion dollars in debt, a very divisive militant political atmosphere and economic crimes that have created global suffering for tens of millions of hard working people with 64 trillion dollars lost.

In fact, Chinese students in Shanghai ranked number one of 65 nations in the 2009 international PISA test, which doesn’t test the ability to memorize facts but tests the ability to work cooperatively with others to solve problems.

US students placed 23rd in that test. So much for learning social skills the soft American way. Self-esteemism, which pressured teachers to inflate grades while dumbing down the textbooks to make learning less of a challenge for children, has been a dismal failure.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

4 Comments | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, Confucianism, cultural differences, education, family values, parenting | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Mark Zuckerberg Discovers China through Love

January 16, 2011

Near the end of December Mark Zuckerberg and his girlfriend/fiancé, Priscilla Chan, went to China on vacation.

There’s a saying, “You can take the Chinese out of China but you can’t take China out of the Chinese.” Priscilla is Chinese-American from the Boston suburbs — a Braintree native, who graduated from Quincy High School in 2003.

Most Chinese, even in America, stay close to their roots, which is Chinese culture. It’s easy to measure how close. From the evidence, Priscilla Chan, even if she doesn’t know it, is still very close to China’s culture. The clues are the fact that she speaks Cantonese along with English and Spanish.

I’ve learned that Cantonese is taught in some US schools. However, in China, Cantonese is a minority language found only in Guangzhou (Canton) a major city in Guangdong Province and Hong Kong, which is about seventy miles from Guangzhou.

My 80-year-old father in law, who is from Shanghai, says most of the people in Guangdong province outside Guangzhou (Canton) speak a different language/dialect and cannot understand Cantonese.

I thought Cantonese was also spoken in Taiwan but my father in law said no. He says the language in Taiwan comes from a province north of Hong Kong and is different from Cantonese and what is spoken in the rest of Guangdong province.

The odds are strong that Chan learned her Cantonese at home in Massachusetts from her family.  You see, most Chinese in America are Cantonese since it was easier to reach America through Hong Kong than other ports in China during the 19th and 20th centuries. If you visit San Francisco, most Chinese-Americans living there speak Cantonese.

The second clue that Chan is still true to her Chinese roots is she hasn’t lost her respect for education.  Most races and ethnicities are absorbed into American culture by the third or fourth generation and by then have lost any respect the old country may have had regarding working hard to earn an education.

The Jewish and Chinese hold onto the belief that education is more important than following your heart and having fun.

Chan graduated from Harvard in 2007 with a BA in biology and is nearing the end of graduate school at the University of California, San Francisco where she is majoring in medicine. To make it to Harvard Chan had to compete in school and most Americans will not compete for good grades.

I should know. I taught in the American public schools for thirty years and my best students were usually Asians. The rest were mostly too busy avoiding reading and homework while chasing dreams of becoming rich and famous but seldom achieving that goal later in life.

In fact, all of Asia, which are collective cultures as is China, has been influenced by the value the Chinese place on gaining an education.

The relationship between Zuckerberg and Chan insures that Zuckerberg, who is Jewish, which is also a collective culture with deep roots, will be influenced by his love of Chan to learn more of China meaning he will leave the Sinophobe stereotypes that surrounded him while growing up in America in the dumpster and will see China with different eyes than most in the US.

Zuckerberg even spent most of a year learning Mandarin before the vacation to China with the woman he loves, which is another clue how important this relationship is to him.

The Huffington Post, along with other Blogs and media, focused on Zuckerberg’s lunch with Baidu’s founder and CEO Robin Li as if there might be a business deal in the works.

I suspect it was a lunch between friends and Zuckerberg had a chance to practice his Mandarin with someone he trusted.

The New Yorker reported that Zuckerberg drives a lot to relax and unwind, his friends say, and usually ends up at Chan’s apartment (before they moved in together). They spend most weekends together; they walk in the park, go rowing (he insists that they go in separate boats and race), play bocce or the board game the Settlers of Catan. Sundays are reserved for Asian cuisine. They usually take a two-week trip abroad in December.

Zuckerberg’s trip to China in December was a vacation and was about bonding and love—not business and for sure if this couple has children, those children will grow up with a high regard for earning an education. Chan will see to that.

Learn more of Deep Family Roots

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

2 Comments | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese women, cultural differences, family values | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

In Defense of Tiger Mothers Everywhere

January 13, 2011

Amy Chua, the author of the Wall Street Journal essay Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior recently released her memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Since publication, Chua has been under virtual attack by guilty parents and spoiled children around the globe.

Amy Chua claims Chinese mothers are superior, and any way you cut it, she is right.

The Chinese mother does make the difference in her child’s education and lifestyle choices, because she is willing to say “NO” and stick to that hated word.

I left a comment at Avitable.com and a few other Blogs and cited statistics in support of Tiger Mothers. The host said, “Did you know that 90% of people can make up statistics on the spot?”

Then Adam Health Avitable says, “I have a BA in East Asian Studies and a doctorate, so I’m not ignorant in any fashion.”

If you visit Adam’s Blog, you will soon discover that he also says he is a lawyer, a nude model, a humorist, a geek and is single.


US Book Cover

Hey Adam Avitable, about a year ago, Business Insider.com published, “It’s Official, Asian-American Students Work Way Harder to Become More Educated Than Everyone Else” then went on to say Asian-American students take far more Advanced Placement (AP) classes during high school than most other Americans.

In fact, information gathered at City Data.com supports Amy Chua and Tiger Mothers.

I used the Academic Performance Index (API) in California to rank and compare four high schools. Although Chinese are the largest Asian minority in the US, they are not listed separately but are included with five other Asian groups, which are Chinese, Filipino, Asian Indian, Vietnamese and Koreans.

Today there are about 12 million Asians in the US.  As a group, Asian-Americans outperform all other racial groups.

At Rowland Unified School District’s Nogales High School, 76% of the student population is listed as Hispanic and 11% as Filipino.  The Filipino/Asian students averaged 790 on the API while the Hispanic students averaged 627.


Who is Adam Avitable?

At Oakland High School, three ethnic groups are listed. African Americans make up 26% of the student population with an API average of 517; Asians are 53% of students with an API of 667 and Hispanics are 16% of the student population with an API of 519.

At Los Lomas High School, 74% of the student population is white with an API average of 851 while the 11% Asian population averages 861.

At Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California, 53% of the students are white with an API average of 895.  Asians make up 32% of students and average 921 on the API.

From the Asian American Alliance, I learned that the Asian population in the US has the highest marriage rate among all other ethnic groups at 60.2% compared to the national average of 54.4%.

Education.com says that Asian American students generally fare better than other racial minority groups in respect to grade point averages, standardized test scores, or even numbers of high school, bachelor, and advanced degrees obtained compared to other racial minorities (NationalCenter for Education Statistics, 2003; U.S. Census Bureau, 2003).

Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) says, “Contrary to popular belief, Asian-Americans very much experience racism in America, and are often lost in the “black and white” dichotomy that dominates racial issues in the U.S.  There is often resentment by both Caucasians and minority groups towards Asian-Americans because of their perceived “success” as minorities.”


UK Book Cover

Could the virtual outcry against Amy Chua as a Tiger Mother be part of this resentment?

In addition, NEIU reports that statistics for Asian-American with HIV/AIDS shows that Asians have the lowest case rate in America with 4 per 100,000 compared to 58.2 per 100,000 for African-Americans, 10 per 100,000 for Hispanics and 6.2 per 100,000 for whites.

The U.S. National Library of Medicine/National Institutes of Health reported that Chinese have the lowest ATOD (alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use) rates in the United States.

Last, the teenage birth rate per 1,000 women 15 to 19 was three for South Korea, four in Japan and five for China — the lowest teen pregnancy rates in the world.

In the United States, that teenage birth rate was 53 per 1000 women 15 to 19.

The facts say Asian Tiger Mothers are better.

Discover more of Amy Chua on Superior Chinese Mothers

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Mean Chinese Supermoms are Right while Positive Self-Esteemism is Wrong

January 13, 2011

Thanks to an old friend, I recently read Amy Chua’s excellent January 8, Saturday Essay in The Wall Street Journal of Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.

That essay activated the dendrites in my dyslexic, PTSD challenged brain, which started to buzz with ideas for this post.

Then I thought of my mother, who defied the early tide of Positive Self-Esteemism that started to wash America clean of common sense as early as the 1950s. I shudder to think of what might have happened to me if she hadn’t done that.

Most “isms” have something to offer. Capitalism offers that a few get filthy rich. Socialism offers protection for the working class from greedy capitalists so the workers at least have food and shelter.

However, Positive Self-Esteemism has nothing to offer. It is a cancer eating the young minds of the most powerful nation on the planet.

Amy Chua, a professor at the Yale Law School and author of the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, may be on a crusade to save American education by pointing out why Chinese mothers do a better job raising children that go on to do better in school.

Don’t you find it interesting that bad American teachers are blamed for the academic failure of many American students, while most Chinese-American students learned from those same teachers and go on to academic success anyway? Our daughter, who is Chinese-American, had bad teachers too but she also had mean parents, and she was accepted to Stanford University after graduating from high school with a 4.65 GPA.

Horror of horrors, as a child, our daughter had no telephone or TV in her room and no video games. Instead of watching TV nightly as most American kids do, she had to read. The TV was on only two hours a week to watch 20/20 and 60 Minutes.

In her Wall Street Journal essay, Chua says, “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.”


Amy Chu talks of her book, Day of Empire.

I despise Positive Self-Esteemism as much as or more than America’s Founding Fathers despised democracy.

I learned the hard way years ago how wrong Positive Self-Esteemism was. I taught for thirty years as a classroom teacher in the public schools and was in the trenches being shot at on an annual basis by the politically correct troops spreading this cancer.

In fact, we teachers were told to stop using the word “work” to describe the assignments we had our students doing because studies pointed out that American kids don’t like work. It was also suggested that we correct student work with green ink instead of red because red makes kids feel bad.

However, back in 1952, I was fortunate. For a brief time my mother defied Positive Self-Esteemism and taught me to read when educational experts decided I would never learn to read or write. A decade earlier, the same verdict had been made of my brother and he died illiterate at 64.

At 17, my brother Richard had already been in jail and was drinking booze and doing drugs. He was cutting school too. Why go when you cannot read?

Without knowing it, due to my older brother’s behavior, our mother learned the hard way that Positive Self-Esteemism was wrong. She didn’t blame bad teachers or the schools as many American parents are doing today.

After mother heard the verdict that her youngest son would also be illiterate, she drove home in tears. Both my mother and dad [due to the Great Depression they both dropped out of school at fourteen to work and never graduated from high school] loved to read. The thought of me not sharing a passion for the written word was too much to bear.

By the time we reached home, mother decided to teach me behind closed doors where none of the early shock troops of Positive Self-Esteemism could accuse her of being an abusive parent.

To motivate me, mother used a wire coat hanger and mean language. If I complained, mother hit me with the coat hanger and accused me of being stupid.

I learned to read and write.

When mother was 89 and near death, she asked my forgiveness for being mean to motivate me to read.  Mother said she had lived with guilt for what she had done for more than five decades.

I replied, “Mom, I wished you had told me this before. There is no reason to feel guilty or ask me for forgiveness for teaching me to read by being mean. If you hadn’t done that, I would have followed in Richard’s footsteps. Without being able to read, I may have gone to jail as he did. Thank you for using that coat hanger. Thank you for being mean and forcing me to learn.”

A few weeks later my mother died.

My brother spent fifteen years in jail, was an alcoholic and dabbled seriously in drugs. All those flaws didn’t matter to me. I still loved my brother.

He died having never read a book. In fact, if he were alive today, he wouldn’t be able to read Amy Chua’s work.

Learn more of how the Self-Esteem Movement Helps Cripple US Education System

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

2 Comments | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, cultural differences, education, family values, parenting | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Economist on China – Seriously – Part 4/4

January 13, 2011

Although I feel that some of the advice from The Economist (ET) of The dangers of a rising China is flawed, the most important advice for America is to abide by its own rules — and if it must break them, it should factor in the real cost of doing so.

I say that the problem here is the fact that every few years, the leadership of America changes and the new leadership (depending on political agendas and promises made to win votes) often does not respect agreements made by previous administrations.

However, China’s central government tends to be much more stable than that of the US. This may help.

Since the US has a history of breaking rules (and treaties), The Economist (TE) does offer valuable advice but I doubt if the US government will listen. The nature of US politics and much ignorance of China among many American voters increases the risk of making a costly mistake.

In fact, there are political factions in the US that do not care how many die or suffer to achieve their political/religious goals.

TE also offers important advice for the Chinese Communist Party to stop using censors… and to draw less on historic grievances.

I suspect that as long as life in China continues to improve, the majority of Chinese could care less about the censored topics.

However, what TE means by historic grievances is more important and a larger challenge for the Chinese to overcome. There are 19th century invasions of China by Western powers that led to the Opium Wars; the devastation of the Taiping Rebellion caused by a Christian convert; the results of the Boxer Rebellion and what happened in World War II when Japan invaded China slaughtering millions of innocent people.

In the 18th and 19th century, China wanted to avoid contact with the West but the West due to its politics and religious beliefs refused and forced China to open its doors to trade resulting in much suffering in China.

Forgetting those grievances, which smashed China’s “collective” pride, may be difficult for many Chinese to do now that the pride that was lost has been found again.

In fact, do not forget that many in China feel a serious connection to the ancestors who suffered at the hands of Western countries and Japan between the Opium Wars and the conclusion of World War II.

It may be difficult and even impossible for people in an “individualist” culture such as the US to understand why many Chinese may have difficulty letting go of these historic grievances.

After all, in America, it is easy to forget about the ancestors, the past and history. Many even believe it is a waste of time to learn of history.

Return to The Economist on China – Seriously – Part 3

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

4 Comments | America, China, cultural differences, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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