"Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" lol

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read#articleTabs=article

related articles http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2011/01/07/are-us-parents-too-soft/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059720804985228.html

I find it funny given that was apparently on the front page of the wall street journal website and how she wrote "World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability".

HAHAHA :p

I'm reminded of posts by Filipino and Taiwanese people on this forum talking about their shitty parents...

Also funny as that sort of parenting is not something that has always been with 'chinese culture' - e.g. opposition ideologies to Confucianism and anarchist strains in ancient china....

edited 9th Jan '11 7:18:59 PM by BalloonFleet

**reads articles**

***eye twitches***

edited 9th Jan '11 7:05:23 PM by SandJosieph

U MAD? Don't feel bad as I had a sinking feeling of anger coming up.....also the comments defending that sort of shit is sickening...then I got used to it. That right-wing troll in the comments section especially...

I've got my own theory as to "why chinese mothers are superior".

There are a lot of them. Throw in all of far eastern asia and you have a lot of candidates to find a talented human being. You can also probably find more shitty asian violinists than people of irish descent. Does China have good orchestras? Probably less than it could except for the fact that everyone plays the gorram violin. Is there any actual reason to only play the violin? No except everyone else wants it. By this formula, "Chinese mothers" would only be good at producing stereotypical chinese children. A stereotype that includes being quite fat but that makes sense if you discourage gym class.

edited 9th Jan '11 7:23:57 PM by SomeSortOfTroper

Yeah, I think normal people can search for a healthy median between article #1 and article #2.

Also, the graphic on #2 interests me. We always talk about what is being done right in East Asia, but the Finns are clearly doing something right too! WHAT'S THEIR SECRET!?!

American (private) education isn't honestly that bad. Your average private school in America is probably better than your average school in East Asia, as far as I've seen.

edited 9th Jan '11 7:25:02 PM by Tsukubus

>>Also, the graphic on #2 interests me. We always talk about what is being done right in East Asia, but the Finns are clearly doing something right too! WHAT'S THEIR SECRET!?!

They focus on 'slow learners' and don't give up on them resulting in a higher average instead of massive outliers. I remember people complaining that that doesnt give the talented a chance to 'outshine'...but that was a discussion on 4chan /int/ So Yeah........

edited 9th Jan '11 7:38:52 PM by BalloonFleet

While I understand the discouraging of art, I'm curious as to why violin is on there.

Because too many Asians think violin will get them into college.

Well they're wrong! They should be taking up trombone!

/TromBonesieph

So, Chinese mothers are superior because they relentlessly pressure their children into repeating tasks until they can do them right, which leads to academic excellence, musical mastery and other such things.

Western parents are inferior because they focus on building up their children's self-esteem and self-image, to the detriment of their academic excellence and musical ability.

Am I reading this right?

edited 9th Jan '11 7:52:01 PM by Wicked223

That...makes me angry, too. To me, that woman seems like a terrible parent, yet she appears totally confident that she's in the right.

Yes, yes you are. That's her belief. Is she even Chinese? Racially, she is Asian, and she was probably born in China. But she teaches at Yale. I have a bad feeling that she's assigned herself a nationality she doesn't belong to.

edited 9th Jan '11 8:05:04 PM by Ultrayellow

I do think too many western schools focus on "self confidence" too much at the expense of other things.

What an awful parent. And I thought that forcing your kids to spend every Saturday in Chinese/Japanese/Korean school was bad enough. She's practically torturing her kids.

edited 9th Jan '11 8:26:11 PM by storyyeller

Well, being Chinese myself, I was raised to believe in almost everything in the first article. My parents don't believe in being that extreme. Also, my parents were a little less patient. They don't go too far with discipline, they just try to kick me out. I was shocked when I found out that Western children were not raised this way because of how hard it had been hammered into me.

All in all, I think being raised on the middle ground is the best. Parents shouldn't be as strict or cruel as the writer of this article, but Western parents should learn to get to the point and be blunt, and try to push them a little harder. And stop letting them be slutty.

edited 10th Jan '11 7:21:21 PM by snowfoxofdeath

^^No, see, that's the point the article is making (I think): She's only a bad parent by Western standards, the same standards that lead to Western kids being lazy in school, image-obsessed, and bad at playing the violin.

edited 9th Jan '11 8:33:15 PM by Wicked223

My mother is Guyanese (Caribbean, btw) and she believes a lot of that stuff in the first article. I wasn't allowed to go to sleepovers, am technically not allowed to have grades below a B, started piano lessons at age 4 and my grandmother read to me from birth essentially. But she's not as strict as that woman, mainly because she doesn't have the time. My only beef with that article is her sense of superiority, like "All of your children are failures but because I'm Chinese, my children aren't!". I think that parents should do whatever works for them. Also, in my experience, children raised in that kind of environment end up being unhappy and/or rebelling. I knew a girl whose parents were like that, and she was crazy once her parents dropped her off at school. She always had a boyfriend, and they always were very "affectionate"(for lack of a better term).

edited 9th Jan '11 8:40:01 PM by wuggles

>>While I understand the discouraging of art

why are you on this forum then

Well, the objective is to have kids that don't die in poverty and become contributing members of society, hence chasing them away from art. Consuming art isn't a problem that way.

..art majors are self-selecting just so you know =P

You don't need to 'chase' them out of them....if people want easy majors they go into communications!

/joke

edited 9th Jan '11 8:56:51 PM by BalloonFleet

You know, this is very slightly off-topic, but is it true that Chinese, as a language, fosters a mindset that's better at logic, but less creative? I've heard this, but haven't found any good studies. Of course, this may be impossible to study, since language is mixed up with culture.

Sapir-Whorf is quite off-topic, yes, though my default answer is that it's bullshit.

regarding the 'language affects how you think'....from my experience with learning Japanese, i'd say no......then again I haven't learned the characters in full detail maybe the characters are treated as lego blocks by some people.....on the other hand hiragana would seem more fluid and artisty given it's used for sounds and it's so curvyyyy........

I used japanese as an example because their characters are built off stolen han chaacters.

EDIT: link posted

>>the "weak hypothesis" (that language influences thought) is quite arguably true at least in some situations, and there is significant debate over the extent of how true it is and in what situations it is true.

English language in the USA takes a lot of war analogies, e.g. 'war on drugs/etc' and using 'front lines' in reference from shit like relationships to job hunting.....whether that's a part of american culture and its' violence or not, well i leave it up to you....

edited 9th Jan '11 9:01:03 PM by BalloonFleet

For the language stuff I've heard it's more that the simplified syntax for numbers(«two tens» instead of «twenty» and such) makes it easier to learn math and the tonality means more kids with perfect pitch but that's it.

As for the article itself: it's a troll. Its main purpose is to sell more copies of her book. I also get the feeling that her marriage isn't that great, considering the «NO SCHOOL PLAYS» and the bizarre implication that being in a school play is slacking off combined with the fact that her husband studied theater at fucking Julliard.

edited 9th Jan '11 9:07:05 PM by Ponicalica

^Reminds me of the differing rates of dyslexia for other languages, as they are less confusing to learn than say English (because English goes and jacks up words and concepts from other languages like a frankenstein)

Okay, don't derail too much.