Yale professor and author Amy Chua
On January 8, Yale professor and writer Amy Chua published an article entitled “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” in The Wall Street Journal. It caused what has been called “a firestorm of controversy“.
Chua’s article has brought an important issue to light, though I haven’t seen it mentioned in any of the scathing comments I’ve read so far. I haven’t read all of them (3397 comments at the writing of this).
The important issue is: What’s the point of all this achievement anyways?
In my shifting through standardized test data during my doctoral years, I noticed pretty consistently that Asian Americans tended to outscore their peers. This is even true when they’re compared to White students, who they either score close to or higher than. Apparently, this trend continues as seen in College Board’s Total Group Profile Report for the 2009 SATs. (To be fair, it should be taken into account that API make up only 5% of the nation, so there’s naturally a smaller sample size.) I’m not familiar with classical music performance statistics of Asian Americans compared to their peers, but I wouldn’t be surprised if similar results were found. Although I attended high school in a very diverse neighborhood, with almost equal amounts of Hispanic, White, and Asian students, the most advanced classes were always filled with Asian Americans. I think we had eight valedictorians in my graduating high school class, all of Asian heritage. I think it is evidence such as these, both statistical and anecdotal, that have lead people like Chua to think that Chinese American parents or Asian American parents in general are “better parents” since they produce more “successful children”.
The obvious problem is that “success” is a very subjective and culturally/personally defined concept. Success to one guy may mean getting a job that pays six figures, buying a house, and raising a family. Success to another guy may be becoming a world renowned rock musician who is able to mobilize the support of a massive international fan base to help tsunami relief victims. To guy number two standards, guy number one is a total and utter failure, and vice versa.
So, given some of the evidence discussed and to respond to some of Chua’s comments, let’s say it can be generally concluded that Asian Americans are, as a group and on average, 1) extremely good at taking tests, 2) getting good grades, and 3) playing classical piano and violin. Basically, the model minority stereotype. Of course, there is great diversity in the category of Asian Pacific American that don’t fall into these characteristics, but we’re speaking in terms of the general average of the overall group.
Let’s take each of these achievements and consider for a moment what they are worth.
1) Asian Americans are excellent at taking tests.
As a public school teacher, I was asked by one of my Hispanic American students “Why are Asians so smart? How do they do it?”
What a great question. Well, here’s what I think. At around AD 605, an Imperial Examination system was established in China in which people in China could study to pass a test and get promoted to a higher standing in society as a government official. The higher your test scores, the better your social standing and career projections. Clearly, much of China’s culture and knowledge were spread all over the Asian continent in major exchanges. Such Imperial Examination systems were established elsewhere such as Vietnam and Japan. It seems that Asians have been taking standardized tests for almost 1,500 years. That’s a lot of practice.
All this testing and getting a better job sounds great, like America, right? All you have to do is study hard and you can climb the socioeconomic ladder to a better future for you and your family. Unfortunately, there’s more. I quote from Iris Chang’s book “The Chinese in America”:
“But the most effective weapon in the Manchu arsenal was the imperial examination systems, which used civil service tests as a mechanism of social order, forcing all aspiring officials to write essays on ancient Chinese literature and philosophy…These tests created the illusion of meritocracy, of a system in which power and prestige were achieved not through lineage but through individual hard work and the rigors of learning…the examination system had the nefarious result of creating a society in which the Han constantly competed against each other for favor with their rulers.” (p. 7-8)
So, while the kids of other American ethnic groups are writing books, painting great works of art, making films, creating powerful social networks, learning about life in the real world, and gathering in political activism, Asian American kids are communally if not individually pushed to spend entire summers strapped to a chair trying to master the art of the multiple choice question and, worse, feeling pretty smug about scoring higher on a standardized test score than everyone else.
2) Asian Americans are great at getting perfect grades.
I’d like to answer this with a personal anecdote. In my AP Calculus class in high school, we had this horribly incompetent teacher who one day decided that since she liked to see kids dressed up formally, we could get a perfect score on the next day’s quiz without taking it if we come to class dressed up. Basically put on a tie or some heels, and you get a 20/20 perfect score automatically. Many of my mostly Asian American classmates (this is AP Calc after all) complained about how stupid that was and how they weren’t going to play her little game. Following the crowd, I too defiantly stated that I wouldn’t be her monkey. The next day, I went to school in my normal t-shirt, sweatpants, and sneakers, and what did I see? Practically everyone from that class had dressed up, even the ones who had said they were going to be defiant and not play her game. Upset that I was almost alone in my little demonstration of defiance (one other girl out of a class of 32 didn’t dress up either), I took the test and scored 16/20, a B-. I was horrified and wanted to cry. Afterwards, one of my Asian American peers said to me “You’re so stupid. Why didn’t you dress up? It’s an easy A!” Luckily a friend of mine defended me with “At least she knows she earned her grade for real!” or else I would have burst into tears there and then.
While being trained as an educational researcher, I found out that no respectable researcher wants to use student grades in their research. Teacher grading is just too variable and unpredictable to be a reliable measure of student abilities.
So, this leaves us with the question, is the straight A student a genius or just a really highly functioning monkey? (Hint: The answer’s not a simple one.)
3) Asian Americans are great at playing classical piano and violin.
When I was studying Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan during my college summers, I often saw posters of young boys wearing black tuxes or girls in white flowing dresses holding a violin or poised at a piano. Clearly there was a market for people wanting to see prodigy musicians.
When I watched the newest “Karate Kid” movie with Jaden Smith, his Chinese girl love interest was also an expert musician…at a western instrument.
This phenomenon has of course leaked over to Asian Americans, many of whom were forced to learn violin or piano.
“Asian Americans are great at playing classical piano and violin” can be easily restated to say “Asian Americans are only good at imitating music written by Western composers with Western instruments.”
Now, I don’t want any Asian Americans who are really talented with and passionate about a Western instrument or musical style to think I’m attacking them personally, nor do I take lightly the skill it takes to play Mozart or Beethoven. But as a group phenomenon, the fact that most Asian Americans and Asians put so much value on being able to play Für Elise instead of High Mountain and Running River (one of the oldest songs in the history of the world) to me is evidence that as a group, we are not valuing our musical heritage at all.
Conclusion:
What am I advocating? Should Asian Americans start failing tests and dropping out of school? Should we all be ashamed to pick up an electric guitar or violin instead of a guqin or shamisen? Absolutely not. What I advocate is what Lisa Delpit inspired me to understand in her book “Other People’s Children,” that there is culture and politics in education. When we take the standardized test or receive grades, we should take them not with the mindset to gain personal glory or advancement. We should have the understanding that tests and grades are political tools used to sort and control us, that until this blockade is removed, we should beat it in any way we can, whether it is by scoring so high that nobody will have an excuse to close a door of opportunity on us or by encouraging views of alternative forms of “success” or by writing your first book before your 19, an accomplishment no one can deny you once you’ve done it. Instead of blindly pushing our kids to master Western classical music on Western instruments, maybe we can ask them if they might want to try the pipa or kulingtang. Maybe we can encourage them to create a musical style that is uniquely Asian American the way hip hop, jazz, rock, and latin music are credited to their respective ethnic origins. Maybe they can become composers of new and brilliant music.
For all our high test scores and record breaking GPAs and award-winning classical music performances, politically we fall behind all the other American ethnic groups and are the last in line for the presidency.
There are many reasons why we are in this situation, but at the very least, we shouldn’t be the ones making chumps of ourselves.
So whether or not you agree with Amy Chua’s style of parenting (a style my Taiwanese Chinese American mom did not use with me), the important question for the Asian American is what sort of future are we really taking our children towards? Are we truly empowering them to be agents of freedom and change for themselves and their communities or are we only helping them learn how to enslave themselves further in systems of control?
“Arrogance diminishes wisdom.” – Arabian Proverb
hey nice job, Asian test scores used to lag because of low english scores, but composite scores are now as high or higher than whites in just about every test since the mid 1990s. Asian are still dominant in classical music, but at least in Seattle seems the White parents are back in the game as Asians don’t seem to be any MORE dominant than they were in the 80s. Pop music wise, search for any song on Youtube and you’ll find many extremely talented Asians who have no future because White Americans Do Not / May Not Ever Buy Music by Asian Artists. Compare this to African Americans where whites are their largest export market. Politically you are right on the money, we seem to be happy to surrender our political fate to other ethnic groups while we subject our kids to Chinese Music Practice Torture.
my latest take is this:
1/13/2011: My thoughts today, only a few of the many internet replies seem to be timid defences and weak admiration. The ones that stand in a sea of “OMG, she’s not kdding” are “she may well be nuts”, “f**k you Amy Chua for making ASians look like monsters”, “is it too late to call Child Protective Services”, “when taken to that extreme, it’s child abuse”, Jewish mother “how could you marry such a heartless shicksa”. Kind of ironic she’s the same law professor who we heard about warning about the worldwide persecution of the “Market dominant minority” (go ahead and google that and see who turns up) after her relatives in the Phillipines who gave out real diamonds as birthday party favors (OK, I stretched a bit) were murdered by their ungrateful servants who lived in cardboard shacks. As if this new log on the “Why I hate Asians / hate to be an Asian” fire is going to help the popularity of the Model Minority.
Sheesh, if she think she’s going to marry her daughters off to a prince, what prince is going to dare ask them out after they google the prospective mother in law from hell? He’s going find Madam Chiang Dowager Empress who used Chinese Music Practice Torture as boot camp training for the College Board Long March whose motto may well be an Al Queda-esque “We value Ivy League diplomas more than you love a happy life”. This woman could clearly bring U.S. Marine Corps Gunnery Sgt. R. Lee Ermey of recent Geico commerical fame to tears if he were unfortunate enough to have her as his mother. Man I’d love to see that Death Match. Maybe we’ll see Chua as a Geico spokesman someday.
I think Asian Americans can ultimately thank Amy Chua for bringing the nightmare of “Crazy Asian Mother sees B+” out of the shadows of the ethnic inside Youtube joke and “Sorry I can’t, my parents are Asian” facebook group into a feature-length book. Malcolm X was best remembered for scaring the hell out of white folks, but what most people miss is his condemnation of the “predatory” culture of crime and irresponsibility that had taken over African Americans. Similarly Asians perhaps suffer from the opposite sickness of placing the false god of material success above basic happiness and getting along with others in the face of ethnic cleansing in places like South Philadelphia High School where the restless masses are taught to believe success lies in using “any means neccesary” against “The Man”, or in this case the “China Man”. It’s about time Asians Americans noticed, stopped just joking about it and decide “My God, we need to stop treating our kids this way”
this is dumb, my dad is German and my mom is Chinese(born in China you fake chinese)
I was accepted at Harvard and Yale when I graduated high school but instead I joined the army and now I am in Duke University for medical school
My parents never did anything the so called “super asian mom” did and yet I have done more than her kids
Asian parents just make their kids do well in school because they pressure them and are strict
dumb
Hey Kurt, so you sound like a big deal too, OOOOOOOHHHHHHHHH Harvard, Duke, medical school, and best of all, no super asian mom, and be sure the world know you did better than her kids. So, the fact is your arrogance top Amy Chua 100 times. True, you mama did you good, never did anything to you, neither good manner. Seems that I am seeing a Duke med doc (or mad dog) to be out soon barking other people “strict dumb.” That’s the best temperament you have? Your mama didn’t do it good.
You’re a troll as I don’t know any medical student that types like such a moron.
Besdies, People who are half Asian are NOT Asian. They are halfties and should be recognized as such.
- ednote, I don’t agree with tone of this comment but it’s notable enough I’ll let it through. Be nice though and avoid negative comments towards anybody, even “halfties” (I think “hapa” is acceptable)
Sorry, Zhang, you do sound a bit arrogant, troll or no troll, hapa or no hapa
And you should follow your own advice about avoiding negative comments
Oops, sorry, I meant Kurt
The article in WSJ is not really reflective of what Amy Chua says. It’s a poorly put together excerpt of her book, stringing the most controversial for a good headline. AKA yellow journalism, and it worked for WSJ…
Check out this investigation into the matters by Jeff Yang at the SFGate.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fg%2Fa%2F2011%2F01%2F13%2Fapop011311.DTL&ao=all
Also, I can’t even begin to talk about how out of context everything this post in AsianWeek is, either.
First of all, the assumption is made, like the majority of “Americans” that Asian Americans = Asians. That is not the case. “Mainstream society” groups us together because of the color of our skin and because it is xenophobic. Yes, we go through a lot of the same struggles, but it’s because they view us as a homogeneous culture, when we are not. Even within China, there are tons of cultural differences and language barriers.
All this is to set up the observation of “Why Asian (Americans) do better in school?/are more successful?”
First we must look at the demographics of what is Asian American? We think Chinese, Japanese, Korean, maybe Indian… but one of the largest Asian American groups are Filipinos. And then we have Hmong, Burmese, and such Southeast Asians. When you break it apart like that and how socioeconomics, politics, and immigration policies affect these groups. You’ll see a more sensible picture than oh, they have been taking tests for thousands of years.
By the logic of the thousand year practice, China’s entire population should be supremely educated, and every one of them should have gotten into college and have their phds. But, a huge part of China is still rural. There are still large populations of undereducated. Of my own cousins, in their twenties, the majority of them have only finished high school on time. Some went back to college later on in their lives.
The “smart” Asians are in the U.S. because of the brain drain and because of socioeconomically biased immigration policies. And it’s not insensible. The U.S. wants those to come who can contribute, financially or intellectually. As a result, the Asians and Asian Americans who do well in school tend to come from families who had the resources to get them to the U.S. in the first place. That already places them in a class above the majority of Asians in Asia. They are not smart because of some super crazy mom gene. It’s because we only allow the smart ones to come/stay/be successful and heard. That’s why WSJ edited the article that way, because that’s what they think America wants to hear.
And all this creates a glass ceiling for Asian Americans who are high achievers. At equivalent educational attainment, Asian Americans earn less than whites for the same job.
Rick,
I’m sorry there’s a misunderstanding that I am equating Asian American with Asians. I’ve been discriminated against enough times in Asia to know that I am most definitely an American even if I’m often not treated as such here in my own country. I simply made the reference to the proliferation of Western music in Asia to show that it’s not just an Asian American phenomenon. Unfortunately, it’s something we inherited from our colonized Asian heritage.
Also, I thought the reference to Vietnam (cultural exchange goes both ways) and the largely South East Asian kulingtang (one of my top favorite percussion instruments) may have shown that I definitely am sensitive to the multifaceted definitions of “Asian” and “Asian Pacific American”. I’m very sorry for that misunderstanding, but I did decide not to go into it because I was afraid it would detract from my main points. Also, I’m not for sure on this, but it’s highly possible that Filipinos and many South East Asian groups are grouped in with “Asian” in a lot of standardized test data. Here is the link to the data report I referenced in my article above:
http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/cbs-2009-national-TOTAL-GROUP.pdf
We’d probably have to check with College Board to confirm exactly how they group their data.
Regarding the test taking and the national examination, I’m definitely not positing that all Asians have been taking tests and getting more educated all the time. It’s just that historically, the standardized test is a generally a more ingrained part of people’s culture and psyche on the Asian continent than others, so generally as a group, we’ve had the “practice” to achieve a higher average on such tests.
Average means there’s a range of scores, from high to low.
It’s also a little scary to me that the Chinese have a deity for testing.
I’m also sorry this was not clear in my article, but I definitely DO NOT think standardized tests make us smarter or more educated. On the contrary, it was my point to show that scoring high on standardized tests should not be such a measure of intelligence and success. In fact, I think it REDUCES critical thinking skills because it inherently forces us to NOT THINK and just pick the right answer that was pre-chosen by the test-maker. If we want a country of Ph.D.s, we need to teach kids to really think and not just parrot.
Further, I think using the “Brain Drain” as a reasoning behind the “higher test scores” undermines the idea that the standardized test shouldn’t be so heavily depended on as a measure of intelligence. That is why I didn’t use it as my reasoning in this article, especially because I often come across Asian Americans that are so proud of that statistic. I like the national examinations argument better because I think it pushes us to think beyond the standardized testing box.
When that Hispanic American student asked me that question about Asians being so smart, I actually answered with the “Brain Drain” reasoning, and I regret it to this very day. I keep beating myself up over it because how stupid she must have felt when I told her that “Oh, you’re just being compared to the Smart Asians. The Dumb Asians are all back in Asia.” I might as well have said, “You just feel dumber than you actually are since you’re an Average Hispanic being compared with Smart Asians.” How insulting of me. God forgive me for giving such an insensitive answer to such a beautiful young girl who clearly had the intelligence and the courage to ask such a critical socioeconomic, cultural historical question of her Asian heritage authority figure (me). Atoning for this one ignorant act is a major part of why I’m sort of on a personal mission to spread this lesson about “Asian American Smarts”. Let’s really evaluate ourselves and our “achievements”. Are we high achieving cogs in a wheel that someone else owns?
If we cannot overcome our own hubris, then how can we hope to shatter the Model Minority chains that bind us?
You make a good point but I honestly hope you do not believe that the “dumb” Asians are in Asia. Asian Americans are in no way the cream of the crop. If anything, we’re the idiots. The difference is that we’re not stuck with the industrial education model, which contrary to popular belief creates worse test scores.
If we want to be free of being “cogs” that someone else owns, we need to seriously think about banding together and rejecting whiteness wholesale, not talking ourselves down and making even more concessions to other races.
Yea,. I think Amy’s from Philippines.
Dear Ms. Chua,
Like you, I am a Chinese mother, born in Manila from Chinese parents like your parents, but unlike you, I vowed to be a different Chinese mother, and encouraged my daughter to enjoy all the activities you prohibited. And still, she scored 2340 on the SAT, 60 points off perfect, and got accepted by Harvard, Princeton and Yale.
It will be interesting to see if your methods can produce the same results.
Good Chinese Mother
http://www.thegoodchinesemother.wordpress.com
I am not in defense of Amy Chua. But seems you are pretty confident to challenge Amy if she could raise a daughter on par with yours, “she scored 2340 on the SAT, 60 points off perfect, and got accepted by Harvard, Princeton and Yale.” And just on this, your tone and your over confidence show you as much a “proud” woman as Amy. Well, at least Amy is a Harvard law professor herself. So, if not Amy herself is right per se, at least her mom beat your mom. Amy and a person like you just show the world what a Chinese mom is and why they hate it, regardless, just want to brag about her children in term of grades. All I am seeing of Chinese mothers are the one bragging, bragging, and bragging. That’s what you are.
No, I am not bragging. I am merely demonstrating that if you define your child’s success in terms of test scores and college admissions, and want the results Chua had with her daughters, there is another way to achieve them.
I did not push. I encouraged in very creative way, as my blog will show you…
And I loved unconditionally.
My goal was to raise a decent human being. Her test scores and college admissions are bonuses.
BTW, unlike Chua who is a Yale law school professor, I am just a mom.
Good Chinese Mother
http://www.thegoodchinesemother.wordpress.com
LOL .. all parents BRAG. it’s not a big deal.. they should if they can. It depends on the kids on how to raise them,. but you can just show off the results.
I am a Chinese born in Manila as well that now resides in the US. Kids are fine and resilient. Asian kids especially…. You can do it your way and produced great results,.some kids need to be grilled to the bone and hanged up to dry to become good kids. Im sure there are some poor parents out there has kids so dumb that either way the results the same. I wouldn’t discount Mrs Chua’s way of parenting, but most likely her way produces great results to most of the umm..”normal” kids. ..Those that needs to be prod and coax and beat up. Some kids are just born smart great and doesnt need drastic parenting,. like yours.
The unspoken fact is the dad is expected to provide for the family and not much more. It is the “Tiger Mom” who becomes the matriarch and runs the family. It is a form of female dictatorship in many ways. Most every child I know and every Tiger Mom’s children I know has emotional problems in some way or another. Some are friends and others are Tiger Moms I spent time with while our kids were in school. Even at that time, I considered them emotionally disturbed. It is not unusual to see physical and emotional child abuse being passed off as discipline in the eyes of a Chinese Tiger Mom. The root problem with Amy and other Tiger Moms is balance and understanding that the Confucius Chinese way has it’s problems and limitations. This is not to say Western European or American parenting is ideal, they have their share of problems too. Ideal parenting is a balance of all above focused towards supporting your child’s real needs and become who they really are devoid of parental and social, cultural expectations. They need to know and understand they are a member of the human family, have a deep sense of compassion, wisdom and a balanced sense of their needs from society and themselves.
What a racist outlook!!
There are people that excell in all races and lazy slackers as well.
Grow up and drop the attitude.
I posted this in a response on 8asians.com to the Jeff Tang article, so since it was mentioned here as well, I’m reposting it here:
I just bumped Wall Street Journal down to “tabloid” status. How nice it must be for some anonymous “editor” or “publisher” sitting back and watching the dough roll in as a result of all of this while taking minimal heat. I won’t be happy until someone’s head rolls at the Wall Street Journal for publishing such an irresponsible article. Making a profit by escalating the already tense relationship between Americans, Chinese Americans, and China? I call that BLOOD MONEY.
And that’s not a metaphor. I am dead serious. If the first shot is ever fired for WWIII (and every day I look into the faces of children and pray to God that it never ever will be), Penguin Press, Wall Street Journal, and even Amy Chua definitely take part of the responsibility for taking us there.
The sad thing is the insights of the book just don’t seem worth the price we have paid.
I’m not at all interested in picking it up to read it. I think I’m just too upset that it was propelled to fame and fortune through so much blood shed, and from what I’ve heard so far from the Jeff Tang article and CNN interview of Amy Chua, I don’t think the “insights” in it are really valuable to be worth people’s time. Permissive vs. authoritarian? Come on, that’s been the discussion of basic parenting articles for like the past half century. OF COURSE a balanced, adaptive approach to raising every unique child is better than either extreme. Can with move on now to something new? I’d like to learn something NEW please.
Maybe this really highlights the need for making basic parenting classes a requirement, apparently even at Yale University .
Besides, I’d rather spend my valuable time reading this book:
http://mymomisafob.com
I completely agree especially about the part where you advocated learning music in a way that will facilitate the creation of unique Asian American music.
Nice points being raised here. Amy Chua and I both have parents that came from the Philippines. In the Philippines , the private high schools and universities are a mirror of the socioeconomic ladder. You’ll get in generally to the private university or high school of your choice as long as you can pay the tuition. Hence Amy Chua’s Tiger Leaping Gorge methods of raising children won’t work in the Philippines. Even if private universities claim that they admit students only on the basis of an exam, a student with outstanding grades won’t apply to a private school there like La Salle if he or she cannot pay the tuition. The high school that I attended in the Philippines featured every kind of student from the slackers, the ne’er do well, the bullies, the diligent ones etc. You really wonder as to what kind of parenting styles their parents got. My mother never told me as to what university to apply to. The only reason I attended the university where I eventually ended up going into was because a senior in the graduating class of my high school ( I was a junior then ) prodded me into applying for that particular university. He jokingly said that ” he would rather see me dead than see me apply to the Jesuit-run Ateneo de Loyola. I would not have applied anyway to that school because I cannot afford their expensive tuition.Indeed , I was far happier at that university than the high school that I attended. I am still thankful to that person today.Also Ms. Chua’s Tiger Leaping Gorge methods is unlikely to even work here , if she is aspiring to get her kids admitted to private schools like Harvard or Yale. Private schools like Harvard or Stanford admit students based on their usefulness to the survival of the university. That is why the Ivies has a vast system of preferences with regards to admitting students. Preferences of every kind from preferences for alumni legacies, the children of the wealthy and famous , preferences for the children of faculty and administrators etc. exists in the Ivies. If grades and SAT scores were the sole basis of admission to Harvard, then 60-70% of the current freshman class at Harvard will vanish into thin air. Harvard has a freshman class of about 1600 How many students apply to the frosh class at Harvard per year? 28k? 30K? it does not really matter….. Harvard has already admitted on record that more than half of applicants with perfect scores in the SAT(2400) are denied admission. If there are 400-500 applicants at Harvard with a SAT score of 800 in the Math portion of the SAT, then about 250 of them had already been denied admission. By the time you possess a Math score of 780 in the SAT ( the mean of 2340), then at least 900 applicants who possess the same attribute or scores greater than 780 have already have been denied admission to Harvard. And if an applicant with a score of 760 in the Math portion of the SAT applied to Harvard, then there are at least 1400 applicants who possess the same attribute or have higher Math scores were denied admission at Harvard right? So even if one of Miss Chua’s daughters got a score of 800 in the Math portion of the SAT, there is still a great possibility that her daughter will be denied admission to Harvard. The reasoning behind the denial being she was not useful to the survival of Harvard. I think all of you get the idea. Finally ,what is the point of a college degree for Asian Americans and blacks ?. Studies have repeatedly shown that black college graduates still earn less than white college grads. Even Asian males who are college grads born and educated in this country earn less than their white counterparts according to a recent study by a U-Kansas and a U-Austin prof.There was a commentary here about art by Mr. Hu. I too had seen the Pilipino and Korean rappers on cable and You Tube and they are indeed great. Art is a very subjective matter, one cannot say that Da Vinci’s ” Last Supper ” or “Mona Lisa ” is better than the well known scroll painting in Chinese culture titled ” Riverside Scene at the Qingming Festival ( The Festival of Pure Brightness} “. That is also true when comparing Indian tabla music and the ” Hammerklavier ” of Beethoven. You cannot say that the works of Picasso are better than African face masks. Art appreciation is really a matter of one’s sensibilities ,culture and environment.
Full disclosure: I was once a lousy student at the University of the Philippines – Diliman
We are not Asian but we send our kids to Chinese school and have Chinese tutors and make them learn some characters every day… Rather than music and math, language and culture seems very important. How does the Asian community value the study of Chinese itself? Some in our community value the Talmud above all subjects believing that everything else is transitory.
This is a very sly way to boost the sales of the book. But everyone sees that the methods described and promoted by her can only have a damaging impact on children’s development since the right approach is the one that balances the parent’s aspirations with the needs of their children.
Debunking “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” by looking at fundamentals. For years, I’ve been fascinated by Lisa VanDamme’s thoroughgoing innovative approach to education. The Amy Chua article in the WSJ has incensed VanDamme and she’s posted two YouTube videos in response. The first video–posted two days ago–is “Lisa VanDamme Responds to WSJ Article ‘Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior’.” The second–posted today–is “Part 2 of Lisa VanDamme’s Response to ‘Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior’.” VanDamme takes up two main fundamental issues: Chua’s concept of “success” and Chua’s false dichotomy in educational approaches. VanDamme sketches her alternatives to both of Chua’s claims. These videos are at the top of (link) VanDamme’s YouTube channel.
Tell our US Congress that they must save our economy and moral standing, and that they must stop the massive importing from; China, Japan, the rest of Asia, OPEC, and Mexico !!!
Lets start producing our own goods and products that we need for ourselves as we used to do before alot of big greedy; manufacturing, importing, shipping, and retail corporations,
decided to sell the USA down the river, so that they could make huge massive profits and become even more super-super wealthy, at the unsustainable expense of the rest-vast-majority of the American people, the citizens,
bringing bankruptcy, doom, devastation, and utter destruction, which will follow through to its completion shortly, if we don’t stop and reverse this whole; massively-imbalanced, unneeded, non-profitable, disasterous,
anti-American wide-open, out of control, foreign-free-trade, importation of goods and products, from; China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Asia, OPEC, India, and Mexico, policy !!!
The time is now to tell the US Congress, No More !!!
Save the USA’s economy and moral standing, stop importing from China, Japan, and the rest of Asia too !!!
Lets start producing our own goods and products that we need for ourselves just the way we used to do !!!
I have no problem with Chinese or Asian people who are kind to animals and who are also greatly offended by,
the massive amounts and high level of barbaric animal cruelty going on in; China, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Phillipines, and other Asain countries too !!!
Lets hope that when they come to the USA that they leave those; bizarre, barbaric, cruel, sadistic, animal, abuse, cruelty, torture, murder; behavior, practices, activities, crimes !!!
And to leave behind Asias; weird, bizzare, strange, and immoral-unethical food choices !!!
“You just feel dumber than you actually are since you’re an Average Hispanic being compared with Smart Asians.”
Well, that’s some more evidence* that not all the dumb asians are back in asia! Too bad you couldn’t produce the above synopsis in real time right before you said whatever to the poor kid.
*Especially if you actually buy it that Chua had no say over the title of her WSJ auto book review. Not surprising that a “tiger mom” would be a liar.
That’s exactly my point! I was totally being a Dumb Asian that day. And I said that 13 years ago when I was a 20 year old teacher fresh out of college, and yet, as you can see, the use of the “Brain Drain” or the “Asians value education more” or the “Chinese Moms are superior” (rolls eyes) concepts are still widespread in the API community.
The problem is if Asians are really that smart and the “Asians are good at math” stereotype holds some kind of truth, then why don’t API Americans see the glaring problems with determining a child’s intelligence and value as an individual based on artificial, de-contextualized, numerical test scores?
Stats is math, but it’s the interpretations that are the hard part. If we just stick to the math, then we really are being Dumb Asians.
I am Chinese, and I am a mother. And that makes me a Chinese mother. Probably the reason why I got an invitation to join the local chapter of the Tiger Mother Club which is well-known for being an exclusive club for Chinese mothers.
Not really knowing much about the club, I was curious and decided to attend one of their coffee mornings. Well, aside from the the Chinese, there were Koreans, Japanese, Indians, and a lot of other mothers from Asia. And much to my surprise, I met many non-Asians, too. The blond and blue-eyed mothers.
The small talk reminded me too much of the things I did not like about my childhood, and I left early.
Guess I was not meant to be a member of the striped club.
Besides, although my daughter played The Carpenters beautifully on the piano, she could barely read music notes. There was no hope ever of her playing Chopin at Carnegie Hall. And having a daughter who did, was one of the requirements for membership.
Oh, well, I do like Karen and Richard very much.
BTW, my daughter also has near-perfect SAT scores, and offers from HYP, but please do not tell the tiger mothers. They might invite me again.
http://www.thegoodchinesemother.wordpress.com
this book is bad, DO NOT BUY IT
It’s a wonderful and well written book. Amy Chua is a loving mother who is raising her children the way she chooses based on her own experiences. If she did not care so much about those s’ future, she would not be putting in that effort. It is exhausting! I see too many kids in charge of the household in subtle and overt ways. Why is it okay for kids to play “Call of Duty” or watch R -rated movies at the age of 11. Our children need some hard guidance and strict rules in order to develop into s who have a strong foundation on which they actually can have dreams to follow.
I also relate to Ms. Chua’s internal dialogue. As a mother of two, I have strong views and dreams for my kids but that questioning of self is constant. All I know is that I love my children more than my life itself and that came across in Ms. Chua’s novel too.
Congratulations for not giving in to societal peer pressure!
After reading much of the replies, I stopped, as the impression is so repetitive, Basically, everyone who posted a reply is only trying to say “I am better than you/My keyboard is bigger than your keyboard etcetera etcetera etcetera.
What is so important of who’s banana is more curved ? We’ll all be dead sooner or later, no one can escape the Reaper and in Time all will be forgotten,
Be happy and enjoy your life.
Hi Tina,
I liked your article. I’m a little fuzzy on how the Imperial Exams translate into modern day test taking but as a statistician even a cursory look at the College Board data kind of says to me that White students (who I assume Amy Chua is referring to as Western) are getting about the same scores as Asians. The differences are -12 for CR, +51 for Math, +3 for Writing. Considering that the SD in all six cases is no lower than 116 and that we haven’t adjusted for biases like socioeconomic class. I have a hard time believing that these differences are all that meaningful.
Of course we are assuming that all Asians in that group apply the essentials of the Ms. Chua method. He case gets stronger the fewer Asians apply it of course – so somewhat ironically the evidence supports her the less Asian her parenting method.
Hi Kim,
Thanks. I appreciate your thoughtful comments. I think what I mean about the Imperial Exams translating into modern day standardized testing is the somewhat regurgitation-like similarities between the two and primarily the social-cultural community and family habits that support such a test score system. For example, during the national exams in Taiwan, I saw entire families sitting outside while the child is testing, and during breaks, the kids come out and get fanned by grandma and served tea and snacks by mom with dad asking how it was going. That’s intense. I caught a ride with a friend to my local SATs and forgot to bring a snack or water bottle with me.
Here’s an interesting related article about China worrying that they’re wasting away the potential of a generation of kids with too much emphasis on standardized testing:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/13/world/la-fg-china-education-20110113
Thanks for the stats analysis! I’m pretty solid on basic stats, if a little rusty, but boy did multivariate statistics fly over my head. I totally agree. I think the differences are really not that big, and then there’s the fact that we’re comparing 5% of America (Asian Pacific Islanders) to 75% of America (Caucasian Americans). Not very even sampling.
As a psychologist and educational researcher, I think the SAT is a very well crafted cognitive test with all sorts of safeguards for reliability and validity and all that good stuff. I think this is pretty true of most of our standardized tests in this country. My main issue is with the societal and professional interpretations of those test scores as they reflect on student abilities. I asked my doctoral stats prof what he thought of standardized test scores and he also told me the problem is in the interpretation. The way the test is set up is more to measure populations, and to draw individual conclusions based on a measurement tool that is meant more for populations is just not logically sound.
I think standardized tests do tell us some valuable information about how our students are doing, but when we make school districts and schools “accountable” for the test scores, suddenly it translates into crafting the whole school curriculum and all individual teaching to hit that test score instead of focusing on real ability gains.
As an Asian Pacific Islander American who works often with API students and API communities, I’m just tired at how easily and gleefully we are willing to jump and dance to someone else’s tune when it comes to standardized tests.
Ironic Asia is trying to move away from standardized testing and we’re moving ourselves towards it.
Ah ok I get what you’re saying. That testing might be more….culturally central in Asian communities. Whereas in post-Piaget America perhaps one might postulate that say relationship building might be considered of greater focus. Yes and that brings your point about crafting curriculum around a test to the table. IIRC There was a highly anecdotal but nonetheless interesting book by Oppenheimer (not *that* one) called “The Flickering Mind” which criticized the use of computers in education. As early computers were really only good for like drilling children on simple math. Some of the evidence suggested that this like some-SAT and other standardized testing prep courses provide a small, statistically significant but essentially one-time increase in testing scores. Which as I think we agree is more likely to be indicative of “learning to test” than learning about the subject. So perhaps Amy Chua’s militarized diligence works that way too – the SAT scores could easily be reflective of that.
I agree about the sampling method. A case -control study would be much better suited for this kind of determination. That said, the last time someone in my country did intellectual comparisons on race I think they nearly ran him out of town.
Also you can tell your stats prof that I love him.
Yes, while I totally agree that there are useful things about standardized tests that get us away from crazy stuff we do with grades like…oh I don’t know….averaging ordinal data! It’s still ordinal data and although it is entirely reasonable to assume that between 0 and 2400 there is an obvious difference in ability. It’s hard to say that there’s a difference between a 500 and a 501 or where the difference starts to make a difference. Without of course picking an external outcome and doing regression – which I figure is what universities do (including my own) but as an end in itself SAT’s have an unknown degree of ambiguity.
Thanks for the article. It’s interesting to read that about Shanghai’s disappointment despite high PISA scores. It sounds like there’s some school-level streaming which is interesting and might skew the results. Also I’ve been attempting to go over the PISA data in my spare time. So far I’ve noticed that they are heavily weighted on graph reading – which is kind of arguable in it’s value in math and science. Also the sampling method is incredibly complex so it’s really hard to determine what meaningful differences are.
Kim
“as a statistician even a cursory look at the College Board data kind of says to me that White students (who I assume Amy Chua is referring to as Western) are getting about the same scores as Asians”
“Asians” are overrepresented as test-takers. 10% of test takers as opposed to 4-5% of the population. Whites are 65-70% of the population and 61% of test takers. The lowest performing whites do not even show up to take the test. This is the same reason why women supposedly score substantially lower- the vast majority of women take the test, the worst performing men do not.
And that’s not even counting diversity within the “Asian” population, where Indians, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese score highest, Filipinos do well, and some disadvantaged groups may struggle.
@Truth Speaker – Ok if I’m understanding your position here the consequence is that you would get a wider variety of Asians than Whites taking the test therefore the score for Asians is lower than it’s “true” score if everyone was tested. While that might be the case it isn’t – by these figures – very much the case.
The problem with talking about the diversity within Asian groups is you have simply replaced one assumption with another one. Do Laotians score worse than Chinese? Where would we go for data like that? Is there any meaning to it or are we just creating a sharpshooter fallacy?
Kim, it’s in fact the reverse- minority scores are more accurate. Scores for whites on the other hand are higher than they would be because the test takers are far less representative. This is why states such as Montana and Alabama score higher than expected- 5-10% of students take the test, whereas 50% in California take it.
There are many SES indicators that differ greatly between Laotians and Chinese, and even within the “Chinese” box we have a wide variety of people. Recent immigrants from the mainland as well as Southeast Asians of Chinese descent struggle with many SES indicators.
Generally speaking we can imply a lower score for Laotians (and Hmong, Cambodians, etc) based on their SES indicators. There are few studies that segregate by subgroup, but Chinese speakers outperform everyone on the SAT- including those who profess Hinduism or Judaism as their religion.
The figure I’ve seen on my index site show that census figures show very low incomes for some high-poverty southeast Asian and Pacific Islander groups. SAT scores are broken out by first language, and Asians who speak english as 1st language scores slightly better than white, while the foreign speakers score even better on math (though that didn’t help my boys get anywhere near the 99th percentile on either score) Most Indians come already with a very good grasp of english (though it’s not American english), among religions Hindu is the highest as they excel in both english and math. However the few studies done of the Indian masses in Asia indicates the general population would rank far, far below African Americans, and I suspect the same is true of the non-Shanghai Chinese rural masses who are lucky to continue schooling beyond elementary school, especially for women.
As much as activists want to stereotype African Americans as desperately poor as possible, the AVERAGE African American no longer lives in poverty and is qualified for a mid-level white collar or blue-collar job, and today at least TAKES basic algebra and has a decent chance of entering or graduating from some sort of college. On the same hand, even in places like Seattle and San Francisco, there are pockets of Asian neighorhoods with ghetto level poverty comparable to low-income black neighborhoods.
“Americans” have until recently treated rank-order test scores as simply a guide to find out the level of your student to pick the most appropriate path – should they go into college at all, to a state university, or perhaps a Harvard if they score extremely high. “Asian” parents stereotypically believe that anything less than a very high score constitutes “failure”, but the SAT has NO passing point, that simply depends on each college. Minority activists believe that lower average tests scores disproportionately excludes minority kids who are entitled to their quota of every score level, and oppose “tracking”, but this is self-defeating to take kids at the 50th perdentile and try to make them compete at the top 1% just to fill a quota as a civil “right”. It is just as racist to assume you are unequal simply because of your race as to assume you are equal just because of your race.
“minority scores are more accurate. Scores for whites on the other hand are higher than they would be because the test takers are far less representative.”
That’s what I’m saying you’re saying. However if such effect exists it doesn’t bias the values very much. Since that would cause the STDM to significantly between the two groups. It doesn’t here. So while you may be correct in some more general sense in this particular case you don’t appear to be.
Can you point me to a study correlating the particular SES indicators you’re talking about and SAT performance.
Kim, I don’t know any statistics on scores for each group beyond the average and then the ratio of test-takers vs. the general population of HS students in the United States.
One thing is that “Asians” (incl. Pacific Islanders) are vastly overrepresented as test takers while whites are significantly underrepresented.
As for the SES indicators, here is homeownership or starters: http://www.fcs.utah.edu/~yu/pdf/areuea2002.pdf
I will dig around my bookmarks for more.
“One thing is that “Asians” (incl. Pacific Islanders) are vastly overrepresented as test takers while whites are significantly underrepresented.”
The important thing to understand is that representation only matters when it matters. A sample of 2 can perfectly represent some arbitrarily large group if the conditions are right.
In other words if it doesn’t skew the scores then representation doesn’t matter. If the scores were skewed in the way you seem to describe the SD would be significantly larger between groups. It’s not (it’s between 2 and 20 points), so it’s not being skewed in that fashion.
Ok I’ve been looking at the SES data the problem I see with what I think you’re trying to tease out of the data is essentially what I called the “sharpshooter fallacy”. Sure economic indicators will have a reasonable to strong effect on various educational metrics (SATs included). However that has nothing to do with being Chinese or raised Chinese (whatever those two things mean). In fact, were I to guess – if somewhere someone did a proper case-control study here I’d guess that upbringing would be overshadowed by wealth (to some point).
So the problem with filtering based on socioeconomic indicators is that you will end up measuring socioeconomic factors not being Chinese or raised Chinese.
What are the SDs for SAT? I remember that on ACT, TIMSS, 2006 PISA and even LSATs the “Asian” bracket had (by far) the largest standard deviations simply because it’s such a diverse group.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this were also true for the SATs. Generally speaking the least educated and least ambitious students do not take the SATs. Drop outs of course would also not take the SATs. There is a selective bias against the worst performing students; the best students have no reason not to take the SAT/ACT, and it’s practically mandatory in reality.
Likewise, as far as wealth goes poor Asians (low income) outscore middle class whites and high income blacks.
After a quick search here is what I found on SDs:
http://www.ccsu.edu/uploaded/departments/AdministrativeDepartments/Institutional_Research_and_Assessment/Research/20090320.pdf
Critical Reading, 523 +/- 129 SD for Asian, 529 +/- 102 for white.
Math, 586 +/- 127 SD for Asian, 533 +/- 107 for white.
In other words, one SD above the mean, “Asians” scored 652 on reading while an elite subset of whites (the best among one of the most educated states) scored 631; even though many Asians are 2nd gen or immigrants. On math, nearly 15% of Asian test takers got around 713, whereas whites scored 640.
This is a huge, huge difference. Since 2009 of course, “Asian” scores have increased significantly. *Today* 3.5% of CN is Asian and 85% is white.
In other words, *13%* of a mixed “South, Southeast, East Asian and Polynesian” group scored 1400 and above. Only 5% of elite whites did.
Once you get to the Ivy League levels (760+ on each subtest) the disparity is even greater.
My name is Turi I live in England with an African upbringing. I am in total agreement in what you’ve
written and I think it is best to let the kids know that there is a lot of room ‘up there’; but for you get up to that free room you need to work hard to get there. So what that room implies that you need need to have proper upbringing which is again the African/Asian ways of bringing up children. As a parent you always act in the best interest of your child/children. I totally support your opinion with bringing up kids in a disciplined way.
The author had the right abstract ideas in criticism of Amy Chua’s “feline methods”; however, this article itself remains somewhat misplaced in Chinese cultural/historical context.
1. For starters, the Civil Examinations that began in the Sui Dynasty and well into the late Qing Dynasty was only accessible to one who could afford it. This implies that only a minority of the agrarian Chinese populace (nobles, gentry, and merchants) were able to raise the revenue to attend courses and pay for exams.
Let’s put it this way, my response to Chua would’ve been if the Chinese were truly so “culturally inclined” towards educations, then they wouldn’t have stopped advancing under the Ming Dynasty; nor would the Opium Wars been so humiliating. Chua’s take on “Chinese mothering” is highly misguided and I warn other Chinese Americans to be wary of this misconception.
2. For this point, I can only support it with my high school experience which was similar to this article’s author. Whether it be dressing up for “nerd day” for extra credit or a sudden flux of Asian American students wanting to sell knives for a pyramid scheme. They tend to be very desperately gullible when it comes to filling the resume.
3. Actually the trend towards classical music among Chinese Americans at least, came with the international success of Yo Yo Ma as a child prodigy. Mothers subsequently gained a notion that sending kids to classical musical classes will reduce the chances of them “going bad”.
But let’s not observe the trend among Caucasian Americans or the general suburban American middle class. I have observed that this is quite common, however not so vigorously enforced like Amy Chua.
Maybe one can suggest that that poor lady has some self confidence and emotional issues, which may have been the cause to address her daughter as “garbage”.
“He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.”
, Confucius
Speaking of which,
I like to add that my impression of my Chinese grandparents seemed that they were spoiled. Emotional outbursts and demands for attention and pampering were not present in my Dutch grandparents.
One may automatically gravitate towards Confucian demands and the old “Asians/Chinese are taught to respect their elders” rubbish. If one has viewed the Analects itself(not including the myriad of various literature pertaining to Confucius lost and changed over the centuries), they would find that strict obedience to elders and superiors are somewhat misplaced and, at times, in contradiction with Confucius’ intentions. The Master also preached equality and reciprocity within his Main Relationships.
So why do parents like Chua defame their children? Why do literature from Amy Tan depict extended family members spitting in their children’s faces and other behavior of the sorts reminiscent of underdeveloped adolescents?
Why is the art of music required to endure the ill-informed antics of such inartistic imbeciles as Amy Chua? Her lust for fame as an old-fashioned stage mother of either a famous violinist (yet another mechanical Sarah Chang?) or a famous pianist (yet another mechanical Lang Lang?) shines through what she perceives as devotion to the cultivation of the cultural sensitivities of her two unfortunate daughters.
Daughter Lulu at age 7 is unable to play compound rhythms from Jacques Ibert with both hands coordinated? Leonard Bernstein couldn’t conduct this at age 50! And he isn’t the only musician of achievement with this-or-that shortcoming. We all have our closets with doors that are not always fully opened.
And why all this Chinese obsession unthinkingly dumped on violin and piano? What do the parents with such insistence know of violin and piano repertoire? Further, what do they know of the great body of literature for flute? For French horn? For organ? For trumpet? Usually, nothing!
For pressure-driven (not professionally-driven!) parents like Amy Chua their children, with few exceptions, will remain little more than mechanical sidebars to the core of classical music as it’s practiced by musicians with a humanistic foundation.
Professor Chua better be socking away a hefty psychoreserve fund in preparation for the care and feeding of her two little lambs once it becomes clear to them both just how empty and ill-defined with pseudo-thorough grounding their emphasis has been on so-called achievement.
Read more about this widespread, continuing problem in Forbidden Childhood (N.Y., 1957) by Ruth Slenczynska.
______________________
André M. Smith, Bach Mus, Mas Sci (Juilliard)
Formerly Bass Trombonist
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra of New York,
Leopold Stokowski’s American Symphony Orchestra (Carnegie Hall),
The Juilliard Orchestra, Aspen Festival Orchestra, etc.
Further on Chua as a Chinese surname . . .
My wife, a gyn surgeon, hails from a family of intellectuals and professionals in Shanghai. She has four sisters and three brothers. Among those eight are six of their children between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-six. Chua as a Chinese surname is unknown to them all.
Bilingual speakers at the consulates in New York for Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia all have told me the word chùa – with a grave – (= temple) is Vietnamese. A trilingual speaker at the City Campus Mahayana Temple at 133 Canal St in Manhattan has told me that the word chùa is common in Buddhist use but is not Chinese. In the illustration of the attachment hereto, the word for “temple” emblazoned is transliterated into pinyin as si or shu. http://www.mahayana.us/ But, again, I have it on the authority of my Chinese family that “chua” – at least as it’s pronounced in the nations subjoined to China and in English – is definitely not a Chinese word or name.
Perhaps Chinese speakers of languages other than Wu or Mandarin, from elsewhere on the Mainland, may have an informed knowledge on this point of nomenclature countering what I’ve sent to you here.
The faces of both father Leon Chua http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~chua/ and daughter Amy Chua http://www.leighbureau.com/speaker.asp?id=268 are textured similarly to reflect a family origin, at least within the previous handful of Chua generations as likely more south than Mainland China; although within fluid populations, this is speculative. Honestly, though, that part of the world is such a mixed bag of all its ingredients that . . .
_______________
André M. Smith, Bach Mus, Mas Sci (Juilliard)
Diploma (Lenox Hill Hospital School of Respiratory Therapy)
Postgraduate studies in Human and Comparative Anatomy (Columbia University)
Formerly Bass Trombonist
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra of New York,
Leopold Stokowski’s American Symphony Orchestra (Carnegie Hall),
The Juilliard Orchestra, Aspen Festival Orchestra, etc.
There is a recurring theme without solid core that continues to recycle on the question of Amy Chua and her style as a mother. J.G. (unfortunately anonymous, as are most of the endorsements of Professor Chua) has written
I think it’s easy to take cheap shots at Chua, but it’s hard to argue that the average American child needs less discipline, less direction or less respect for others.
It might seem amusing to mock her (her “cushy job” and “hottie husband”), but harder to actually consider the points being made in a non-defensive way, without trying to paint yourself as the “cool mom” who prefers three martini playdates?
p.s. It seems ironic that an Asian-American female who went to Williams (fulfilling a fantasy of Chinese parents everywhere) would paint her parents as laissez-faire and herself as moderately motivated.
Posted by: J.G. | January 18, 2011 at 02:31 PM http://thecareerist.typepad.com/thecareerist/2011/01/chinese-moms.html
I, for one, have no interest whatsoever in her “cushy job” and “hottie husband.” Nor do I have any objection to her having become a millionaire from the sales of her book and that she will be well on her way to becoming a multimillionare once the planned translations of it into thirteen of the world’s languages have been completed. My uncompromising objections to Professor Chua are two-fold: her abuses of young children pursued to further her own narcissistic urgencies and her deep commitment of abuse of the art of music – of which she seemingly has no knowledge whatsoever – for reasons having nothing to do with that art. My shots at her are far from what J.G. calls “cheap shots.” They do in fact go to the heart of the problems with her that remain my chief concerns.
J.G. and most of his fellow travelers in their tepid defenses of Professor Chua continue to focus on her inherited emphasis of the sorry state of public education in The United States. What else is new?
As with most of the ringing endorsements of Amy Chua, those from J.G. are clearly from a mind not wholly engaged. He has written ” it’s hard to argue that the average American child needs less discipline, less direction or less respect for others. In his tangled syntax I’m quite sure he means – at least I’m hoping he means – it’s hard to argue that the average American child does not need more discipline, more direction or more respect for others.
J.G. has written further, “p.s. It seems ironic that an Asian-American female who went to Williams (fulfilling a fantasy of Chinese parents everywhere) . . . “ Again, but this time TWO thoughts from nowhere! What has Williams College to do with Amy Chua (Harvard, A.B. ’84)? And since when has Williams even been on the “fantasy” palate “of Chinese parents everywhere?”
Professor Chua usually receives the quality of defense she deserves.
____________________________
André M. Smith, Bach Mus, Mas Sci (Juilliard)
Diploma (Lenox Hill Hospital School of Respiratory Therapy)
Postgraduate studies in Human and Comparative Anatomy (Columbia University)
Formerly Bass Trombonist
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra of New York,
Leopold Stokowski’s American Symphony Orchestra (Carnegie Hall),
The Juilliard Orchestra, Aspen Festival Orchestra, etc.
I checked Asian. I had heard it was harder to apply as an Asian, so as a point of pride, I had to say I was Asian. http://jadeluckclub.com/true-picture-asian-americans/
In almost every list, pride (Latin, superbia), or hubris (Greek), is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and the source of the others. It is identified as a desire to be more important or attractive than others, failing to acknowledge the good work of others, and excessive love of self (especially holding self out of proper position toward God). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins#Pride
1) Tiger Sophia, you may have checked Asian which does have a “tax,” however you also got big bonus points for being a legacy many times over. The upshot is that you had help getting in unlike these Asian Americans below who live at the poverty line and don’t have Ivy League parents with deep pockets.
2) By checking Asian when, actually, you are of mixed race, you have taken a spot away from those who don’t have the benefit of applying to a less competitive race slot. Thanks to you, someone who[se] life could be completely changed did not get a spot. http://jadeluckclub.com/true-picture-asian-americans/
For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. Matthew 25:29
Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld, the daughter of a mother of mixed Asian ethnicity of no known religious involvement and a secular — whatever that means — American Jewish father ostensibly has been raised as a Jewess in an atheistic family positing itself as . . . ? When she applied for admission to Harvard she descended into a pride of Asianness to avail herself of an ethnic quota advantage.
This duplicitous young woman is, indeed, her mother’s daughter! http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=230907266920263&set=o.134679449938486&type=1&theater
__________________________
André M. Smith, Bach Mus, Mas Sci (Juilliard)
Diploma (Lenox Hill Hospital School of Respiratory Therapy)
Postgraduate studies in Human and Comparative Anatomy (Columbia University)
Formerly Bass Trombonist
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra of New York,
Leopold Stokowski’s American Symphony Orchestra (Carnegie Hall),
The Juilliard Orchestra, Aspen Festival Orchestra, etc.