DAVID BROOKS: Tiger Mom is a wimp (for once he's right)

[yurbud]

I hardly ever agree with this guy, but maybe his forte is parenting not politics.

What is really ironic is his criticism of Amy Chua's BATTLE HYMN OF THE TIGER MOTHER is that it is based on a progressive premise: we work better together than alone, so social skills are crucial to maximize achievement. The kid browbeaten to get straight A's and study piano for three hours a day may play Carnegie Hall or get a Nobel Prize in chemistry, but will have a hard time leading others or even making the best contribution as a follower.

It's too bad the so-called center and right don't apply this thinking to their ideas for education reform, which are based on competition and individual effort rather than cooperation and a team approach to improve education. I guess the profit motive (for charter school private contractors and the real estate moguls who provide the facilities) trumps any other analysis.

Her critics echoed the familiar themes. Her kids can’t possibly be happy or truly creative. They’ll grow up skilled and compliant but without the audacity to be great. She’s destroying their love for music. There’s a reason Asian-American women between the ages of 15 and 24 have such high suicide rates.

I have the opposite problem with Chua. I believe she’s coddling her children. She’s protecting them from the most intellectually demanding activities because she doesn’t understand what’s cognitively difficult and what isn’t.

Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls. Managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group — these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale.

Yet mastering these arduous skills is at the very essence of achievement. Most people work in groups. We do this because groups are much more efficient at solving problems than individuals (swimmers are often motivated to have their best times as part of relay teams, not in individual events). Moreover, the performance of a group does not correlate well with the average I.Q. of the group or even with the I.Q.’s of the smartest members.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/opinion/18brooks.html

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Tiger Moms are also ignoring the virtue in failure.

If we don't make mistakes, learn by those mistakes, and are humbled by our fallibility, how can we grow wise? Their children may have knowledge, but may lack that wisdom and judgment that goes with it.

[LibDemAlways]

4. In some families mistake = failure. My daughter is currently a

high school senior. She has a friend who was pressured by her parents to take all AP classes. She signed up for AP Calculus last year as a junior and simply couldn't do it. When she realized she would get a "C," which basically destroyed her chances of going to any top college, she dropped out of school, got a GED, and enrolled in three different community colleges to earn the credits necessary to transfer to somewhere prestigious ASAP.

As a result of the intense pressure her family put on her, and, I suspect, she put on herself, she's missing out on her senior year of high school and killing herself taking 21 college units. It is completely insane.

The colleges themselves are responsible for a lot of this. They are looking for freshmen with straight A's who've taken all AP classes while engaging in numerous extra-curricular activities. Failure of any sort - like earning a B or C- is not an option.

[yurbud]

7. that is the irony: community college gives you an easier backdoor to Ivys.

I teach community college and have had students transfer to Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia, and Harvard.

The kid who went to Harvard was a slacker in high school and smoked pot and delivered pizzas for a year before he got bored with that and came to the CC.

It's probably a lot easier to transfer in after some of the children of the Tiger Moms have burned out, so you can take their place.

The only downside I can see to coming in later is you usually bond the most with people your freshman year, and the primary benefit of the Ivys is networking when you graduate. I saw that in action in Hollywood. People with no writing experience got hired to write TV because of who they went to school with.

[LibDemAlways]

14. My cousin is married to a guy she met an Northwestern. He was an

English major whose parents own a shoe store. His roommate's dad was a tv producer in LA. The two of them moved out here when he graduated and the dad introduced him around. He's now writing and producing very successfully for tv. It certainly isn't always what you know. It's who you know - or happen to meet.

[wilt the stilt]

2. My sister in law is a Tiger Mom

So it is interesting in the dynamics of that family. They had two girls and they ended up very different. One did follow through. Got Straight A's and played in competitions and I believe was one of the best in Georgia. She was valedictorian of her class and is now a senior at MIT. The second one completely revolted. She had a very dificult time with her parents and now is in a boarding school. She "dropped" out of school for a period of time in 9tn or 10th grade. She is now back on track but she fought like crazy and it's been a very difficult relationship for the parents and child. It can work for some kids and it can be a disaster. It's just not simple.

[elleng]

3. NOTHING about education is simple.

:hi:

[yurbud]

9. sometimes I think it's a matter of making the ''track'' wider.

I have an aunt who has two very bright kids. One went to a prestigious local private college and became a teacher. The other is studying to be a fireman. She seems to be equally cool with both.

[Ilsa]

10. That is a near-disaster. Siblings are not clones of each other. Parenting

Requires adapting styles in order to achieve the desired goal of raising a happy, well-adjusted individual with the ability to take care of himself (herself).

[dkf]

5. By that rationale the best education is being in a street gang

[yurbud]

11. have you ever watched THE SHIELD? In some ways, it confirms your point

the best cop was half-drug lord too. His social skills made him the master of every domain.

[dkf]

12. I was talking to someone about the ability to cope with hardship

The irony is the worse you have had it the better your chance of having built up coping mechanisms.

[randr]

6. I like Brooks calling out the profit motive on the charter school model

This needs to be pointed out with regard to health care as well as all the areas of community activity the right want to privatize.
Privatizing equates to profits where no profit should be due.
As to this parenting issue. What I see is the assumption that "moms" are responsible for the development of children. Am I missing something?, does Chinese culture not acknowledge fathers as parents?, are we so quick to get defensive over this issue that we miss something that has been such a boon to American families over the last 3 or 4 decades. The return of the father in many family models. In my parents time the Dad went to work to earn an income and the Mom stayed home to raise the children. This model has been taken down and replaced by, in my opinion, a much more nurturing model. I, as a father and grandfather, relish the role I assumed and feel sorry for the generations of fathers who missed out on "rearing" their children.
We do not need "tiger mom" models. We need cohesively structured families where all responsibilities are shared.

[yurbud]

8. that was me not Brooks.

I wish it was him.

[randr]

13. Me too, I wish it were talked about alot.

[The Second Stone]

15. The author describes her own work as that of an unreliable narrator

who doesn't really do the things she is saying. Most people reading the book aren't going to understand that.

[yurbud]

16. that's a pretty big weaseling out. I heard her interviewed and she insisted it wasn't an advice book

I think she touched a nerve because a lot of non-Asian Americans see Asian kids academic success, they know roughly how their parents make them do it, but they don't want to adopt those methods themselves hence the resentment and outcry.