It's Still Racism: WSJ's "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior"

Yes I understand the facts and am aware of them, but I don't think it has much relevance to the fact that China the country is economically gaining ground fast on America the country.

I think what roslolian was discussing is how greater economic power results in greater innovation from a country. If the top 2% of China is doing what the top 4% of America is doing, then they will be generating more inventions than America. So the fact that wealth disparity is greater in China won't matter much, though it would obviously be nice to have, and more easily achieved given the resulting economic development within China.

Anyway, not my discussion, was just commenting on what I thought/think roslolian means. I could be way off.

 

True the parents of those people don't know at a young age whether they will succeed or not but at the same time but if they had driven them into something else they may not ever have succeeded the way they did. There is obviously risk here and the nature of entrepreneurship is risk. You can play the probabilities and play it safe but that guarantees to stunt progress.

To a certain extent I can speak to this directly as having being both an entrepreneur and also having first hand experience in Asia. During my masters thesis research I spent a semester at Singapore at the National University. At the time they were engaged in a national project to try to increase the creativity of Singapore and I was interviewed by some of the people working on that and also had some candid conversations with them. Singapore is an economic miracle that has followed a strictly regimented model of upbringing and education. This has produced fabulous results but as the Singaporeans themselves noted a not very creative society. On another level a society where while the people are very hard working tend to lack initiative and are cautious about risk. What the Singaporeans themselves have come to understand was that a creative society is one that isn't so strictly regimented and allows for greater individuality. The Singaporeans have been putting that in practice and it will be interesting to see what happens in the next 10 to 20 years.

I agree and as I said before there are some good things about a strict upbringing but that doesn't mean that individuality and allowing a child to find their own way should be ignored. The Tiger Mom model while strengthening development in many ways will stunt them in other ways. The key is to find the right balance as Singapore is attempting to do.

It went up as partly as a function of inflation but also to deal with things like integration, ADA and other things. Also school funding across the US is very uneven. Finally to say that the US schools were performing great prior to the 1960's ignores the fact that prior to the 1960's a huge swath of US education was on par with the Third World due to segregation. Again to say that when the US education was stricter it was better and the individualism of the 1960's ruined that ignores a whole host of other issues that has affected US society since then.

True these were very motivated people from good backgrounds but at the same time they made the critical decision to veer from their paths and take a true risk. I doubt a Tiger mother would be OK with her son dropping out of Harvard to go start Facebook or even a software company in the late '70's. Also from what I have read about some of these people their upbringing wasn't the tiger mother style upbringing but they had parents that allowed and encouraged their own intellectual exploration.

I will repeat again. The key is finding a balance. The problem with the Tiger Mom model is that it doesn't have a balance and from listening to Amy Chua's own comments even she understands that.

 

None of the "modern" things you mentioned happened after 1900.

My post was more about the Chinese educational system and the parenting methods rather than the amount of financial power the country has. UAE isn't exactly poor either, but it doesn't say anything about the amount of contribution the country's doing to the science and technology fields.

Sure, the way to raise your kids according to the article might produce a straight A student that's proficient in 3 musical instruments, but from my experience, that's a short-term gain which sacrifices creative thinking, self-esteem, and social skills in adulthood to some extent.

I'm not saying either the "eastern" or "western" way is superior, but you generally get two different types of people from two different cultures.

P.S. I wouldn't say all Asian parents are like that. Mine was pretty loose with me, let me decide on most of the stuff with only some recommendations (extracurricular activities, college majors, etc). Maybe that's why I turned out to be a slacker

 

I've already addressed the issue of creativity several posts ago. As I've mentioned, it's very convenient and quite frankly, self-reassuring to claim one certain type of education (in this case, the post 60's western one) as being more creative. Bottom line, Asia was far behind. When you're far behind you're not exactly gonna lead the charge in innovation. This gets mistakenly labeled as "lacking in creativity."

The other thing is, due to the increased chances of China to focus on mathematics, science and engineering tracks, it leads to a lot of repetition of work (hey, practice makes perfect). If you have figured out how to increase your technical abilities without repeated practice, I'd love to hear it. Likewise, if you've found a replacement to hard work to maximize then chance of career success, let's have a talk.

And one of the most interest things is that the Chinese education system, for example, gets labeled nothing more than rote memorization when in practice, other than the Chinese language class (obvious reasons), this isn't true. There is a very high degree of focus on problem solving (especially math, engineering and natural science based) and logic. Usually that gets white-washed into the background. Whereas on the other hand, western style education systems gets over-credited with creativity (I'll cite an example below).

Lastly but certainly not the least, suppose you have the most creative mind in the word, but no technical abilities, what exactly do you plan to do with all that creativity. A creative mind without the means to fulfill them is a daydreamer. Is it any wonder why the architect and the engineer are almost always a different person? The difference, the architect can't do anything without the engineer whereas as the engineer can do just fine without the architect.

I remember a certain professor from Wharton. Chinese. It's been a while, but what's the first thing they teach you in an investment class? CAPM? A typical such class would start with OK here's the formula, you memorize what the beta stand for, what the Rf is, etc etc etc and apply the formula mindlessly over minor variations of the same damn problem. Creative? I hardly think so.

Any ways, third week into the class he started teaching Black-Scholes. Now if you're in that field, you'll know Black-Scholes like the back of your hand long before you graduate. It was gonna be one of those lectures. But instead, this Chinese professor divided the lecture into three parts. The first part was of course, the usage. However, the second part was the difference. He actually derived the formulations and why they make sense.

It was one of those "woh, where did that come from moments." Then he went even further in the third part and explained how you might make money with this. Quite inspirational actually. At the end of the semester, I felt compelled to shake his hand.

Most of the class got nothing out of it though. For the majority of the class, by the time the second portion came around, their eyes glazed over. And you can forget about the third part, the meat of the lecture. The sad thing is, compared to what mathematicians do, I don't think the math was that difficult. So quite expectedly, he got a lousy teacher evaluation, where among other things, the students made fun of his English, which wasn't even that bad, though heavily accented.

That's the bottom line. The education system in America does not promote the building of the fundamental knowledge to promote higher learning and understanding. There's a reason why the elite academic institutions, especially at the higher level, are increasingly populated by immigrants. 30 years ago, the average American would have said that's because the dumb immigrant lacked the creativity and employment options (presumably due to his lack of social skills) and as a result had to pursue where the Americans see as pointless academia. Well, with the unemployment rate at 9.6%, that bullsh1t ain't gonna fly. Come and think of it, it didn't fly 30 years ago either.

 

If Chinese mothers are superior - then why does Taiwan continue to flaunt its independence right off the coast of the mainland?

 

Hey rocketsjudoka, would you consider Japan a "creative" country? Do female robots count?

Just wanted to add that, Sg's problem with creativity goes much further than the education system (I don't think that's the problem at all). Parenting is part of it, but it's also the entire culture, way of life, environment and more... which I don't feel comfortable writing about on a public message board

 

Another typical idiotic post from KingCheetah. If South Korea is so superior - then why does North Korea continue to flaunt its independence right across a fence from the South?

 

Probably for the same reason the ROC is ROCk'ing it a few miles away from the PRC:

Spoiler

Magnets.

 

SamFisher, perhaps the author was speaking of Taiwanese mothers who are in fact superior to Chinese mothers living on the mainland.

 

The Taiwanese mothering superiority may be due to the Japanese influence on Formosa, including the dark arts of ninjitsu.

 

Troll derail is troll derail.

"In the late '70's" is an interesting qualifier. Does that mean a tiger mother would be OK today if their son dropped out for dot-com riches?

 

Ah, excellent point - I think we should also take into consideration the Americanization of the Nation of Taiwan, which at this point could be considered the 51st state of union or 52nd if you include Australia.

 

53, once the KTP is completed.

 

Except Amy Chua is not of Taiwanese ancestry, obviously nor her parents.

 

I know that I typically respond to morons such as yourself, but I still feel compelled. It's like watching a train wreck, or train wreck TV, like Jersey Shores, but either the joke's on you. And we're laughing at you.

Taiwanese mothers ARE Chinese mothers because they ARE Chinese. It's as simple as that. The Taiwanese system IS the Chinese system. Always has been. So are the Japanese, Korean, Singaporean, ethnic Chinese in Malaysia, Indonesia, etc systems. Has been for several centuries.

Not that I've sidetracked your moronic rants for too long, you may go back to it and continue to show that you are an imbecile. Somehow I don't get why that's something to be proud of though.

Chuckles. Or maybe because it's the KMT looting 95% of China's reserves in '49, benefiting a tiny population, then was used as a floating fortress off the mainland coast by the US?

And of course, Texas and Arizona are colonies of Mexico.

 

you're dead wrong. soccer moms don't beat their kids and call them worthless if they miss a shot on goal. they don't force their kids to practice 8 hours a day and criticize every missed note on the piano.

your level of understanding of this is rather insufficient to say anything about it.

 

There is some truth to that but again as Singaporeans themselves have admitted their model, which is very similar to the model that the PRC is following, is one that has hampered the creativity of their society.

Of course hard work improves your chances of career success but at the same time repetition doesn't exactly lead to innovative thinking. You are painting an absolute here as it either being the Tiger Mother upbringing or anything goes. As I have said a balance is needed.

Being someone who works in architecture and took several classes, came close to minoring, in structural engineer that isn't the case. Architectural thought emphasizes problem solving too in some ways similar to engineering while many upper level and graduate engineering programs emphasize creativity. In fact in my upper level steels course the professor used to frequently complain about the lack of creativity shown by many of the engineering students who although they could do equations well lacked creative problem solving abilities.

Having never taking an accounting class I will have to take your word for it.

The problem is that you are looking at this in an absolutist way. I agree the US education system has problems and one of those is the lack of basics which is why I say there needs to be a balance. This isn't an argument about whether it is be a Tiger Mother or let your children run free but about a balance. Also if you are going to take potshot at the current US economic woes keep in mind that most of PRC's profitability is made off of selling to the US and the huge economic boom of the PC and the Internet were all developed in the US. So both directly and indirectly the PRC's current development is largely based upon the success of the US. While perhaps the US had an advantage in regard to being more developed so Americans could create the Internet certainly things like Facebook and Google could've been developed in some other country yet they were developed here.

 

From what I know of Japan is that are going through a similar process as Singapore is in regard to reforming the rigid nature of their culture. It wasn't as directed as Singapore has done but more of a gradual evolution.

If you are Singaporean I would be curious to hear what you think the problems are but I can tell you from personal experience what Singaporeans, and these were people working on the creativity project (NUS faculty and students), told me.

 

The only reason I put that qualifier in was specifically referring to Bill Gates. I strongly doubt if Bill Gates mother was a Tiger Mother she would've been OK with him dropping out of Harvard then as much as I suspect that if Mark Zuckerberg's mother was a Tiger Mother would've been OK with him dropping out of Harvard to found Facebook.

 

actually taiwan has a major hard-on for japanese culture. of course, then again japan has a major hard-on for american culture...but is a bastardization of a bastardization the same thing?