Before you imagine a chinese mother with a whip in one hand and a stack of math books and music score on the other, standing behind a frighten little child playing a piano. Here is the truth :
My son is born in the beginning of 2011, about a month before rabbit year begun, so his chinese zodiac is tiger, hence I am the real Tiger mom.
Well, regardless the all pun intended title joke, there is something in my mind that I just gotta share with the world.
I was reading in Wall Street Journal about this book, and the controversies it has caused. So when my husband was in Singapore, I asked him to get me one copy. First impression, this book is a bit over priced, especially judging by the size and the page count. Moving on.......as I read the book, I must say I am not all surprise by Amy's approach on educating her girls. Just like her, I also come from a chinese immigrant family, my paternal grandparent came from Fujian province and maternal grandparent came from Guangdong province, China. Sharing the almost the same background, I totally understand her fear about her girls losing the good values of being chinese. My parent, especially my dad, always tries to instill us with the values of Confusius and what it means to be a chinese. He always told us that be respectful to older people, especially your parent and teachers, and most importantly don't forget that whatever you have now is because everybody else before you, e.g. your parent, grandparents and ancestors worked hard, so if you want to maintain and even increase what you have you must also work hard to get it. That will always stuck in my head.
The big difference between her family and mine, hers came from a scholarly background, mine is thru and thru merchant bloodline, so far none of my uncles, aunts, cousins and siblings are scholars. Although, my family always emphasize the importance of education, and require us to get at least a bachelor degree in any major of our choosing (getting a master degree will be better) but in the end they always push us to establish our own business.
As I said in the beginning, I'm not all surprise with her way of teaching, my family kind of does the same only without the big drama. My family also uses the shame technique in teaching us about everything, from school homework to social interaction. "Aren't you ashamed that you only got 80% in you math quiz?" my mom asked this questions many times when I was in school, It didn't matter how hard I studied to get that points or that the fact only 5 of us in the class got more than 75% right. Did that hurt my feeling? Hell yeah....Did it shattered me as a human? Nope.....Did I try harder next time? Sometimes......Yes, I must admit in my household I'm more like Amy's second child, shaming me don't always work. I have more of carefree attitude toward life, and my parent eventually got that and stop using shame method on me.
My point is that Amy's education style maybe a big shocker in US or even most of the western countries, but if you talk to most asian moms especially the chinese descendant moms, they probably not only agree with Amy, they might even applauded her for her strength and tenacity in teaching her girls the chinese way.
My son is born in the beginning of 2011, about a month before rabbit year begun, so his chinese zodiac is tiger, hence I am the real Tiger mom.
Well, regardless the all pun intended title joke, there is something in my mind that I just gotta share with the world.
I was reading in Wall Street Journal about this book, and the controversies it has caused. So when my husband was in Singapore, I asked him to get me one copy. First impression, this book is a bit over priced, especially judging by the size and the page count. Moving on.......as I read the book, I must say I am not all surprise by Amy's approach on educating her girls. Just like her, I also come from a chinese immigrant family, my paternal grandparent came from Fujian province and maternal grandparent came from Guangdong province, China. Sharing the almost the same background, I totally understand her fear about her girls losing the good values of being chinese. My parent, especially my dad, always tries to instill us with the values of Confusius and what it means to be a chinese. He always told us that be respectful to older people, especially your parent and teachers, and most importantly don't forget that whatever you have now is because everybody else before you, e.g. your parent, grandparents and ancestors worked hard, so if you want to maintain and even increase what you have you must also work hard to get it. That will always stuck in my head.
The big difference between her family and mine, hers came from a scholarly background, mine is thru and thru merchant bloodline, so far none of my uncles, aunts, cousins and siblings are scholars. Although, my family always emphasize the importance of education, and require us to get at least a bachelor degree in any major of our choosing (getting a master degree will be better) but in the end they always push us to establish our own business.
As I said in the beginning, I'm not all surprise with her way of teaching, my family kind of does the same only without the big drama. My family also uses the shame technique in teaching us about everything, from school homework to social interaction. "Aren't you ashamed that you only got 80% in you math quiz?" my mom asked this questions many times when I was in school, It didn't matter how hard I studied to get that points or that the fact only 5 of us in the class got more than 75% right. Did that hurt my feeling? Hell yeah....Did it shattered me as a human? Nope.....Did I try harder next time? Sometimes......Yes, I must admit in my household I'm more like Amy's second child, shaming me don't always work. I have more of carefree attitude toward life, and my parent eventually got that and stop using shame method on me.
My point is that Amy's education style maybe a big shocker in US or even most of the western countries, but if you talk to most asian moms especially the chinese descendant moms, they probably not only agree with Amy, they might even applauded her for her strength and tenacity in teaching her girls the chinese way.
No comments:
Post a Comment