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<p>Nah. If we can’t debate the pros and cons of every minutiae, then what is the point of spending time on this website? That is what we do here, and it is really fun.</p>
<p>“The law of constant contradiction” - Ferguson is right.</p>
<p>The beauty of this website is the wide range of view points expressed by so many educated people. I don’t guess their motives or their background, racial or whatever. I only consider their point of view. Freedom of expression is far better than any suppression. If xiggi says he/she is an Asian, I won’t be surprised nor care. I do value her/his contribution.</p>
<p>LOL, I really do get what you’re saying about debating pros and cons of minutiae and you’re right that it is fun. It’s just that the posts dealing with whether or not the Chua girls’ playing at Carnegie Hall is really an “accomplishment” seem to be unusually mean-spirited.</p>
<p>Several of the parents posting seem to have a very thinly veiled desire to see these girls “fail” in some way. It’s pretty nasty and small-minded, IMO. I mean, pick on the mom by all means; she’s fair game but quit wishing ill upon the kids.</p>
<p>Anyone ever hear of karma?</p>
<p>xiggi - I thought better of you. Enough said, and that include every poster who decided to take a swing at the tee. It is petty.</p>
<p>I see no reason not to wish Sophie Chua well. Whether she was pushed or not, she certainly worked to her capacity and then some.</p>
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<p>Fwiw, I can return the compliment, and for good reasons. Although I might not always agree with your opinions, I do respect them regardless of the differences. However, one difference is that I try to remain objective, and make the necessary effort to read what people actually write, not what I think they wrote. </p>
<p>In the exchange above, I have been accused of being mean or petty. And now twice, when adding your post. And this despite not having expressed a single negative word about the Chua children. Unless you consider this is a pejorative statement:</p>
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<p>My point was and is that Mrs. Chua should have used better judgment when deciding to showcase her children in the book, and that she has to bear the full responsibilities of that decision. This is very different from writing that observers to attack the children … something I did not DO nor recommended. </p>
<p>I answered directly to this line, *“How would you feel if your child has done well in music and people anonymously panned her multiple times online.” * and suggested she should have thought about it BEFORE writing the book. </p>
<p>While I cannot expect you to know my positions on similar stories, allow me to state that I have been very consistent in criticizing parents who decided to place their children in the middle of a storm, or simply succumb to the temptation of seeing their name in print.</p>
<p>No, you took a swing at Sophia (maybe that would make it more personal). We could all disagree on someone’s parenting style, but as a parent, I think it is crossing the line to discount a child’s accomplishment (and I don’t care who it is, and it includes Sarah Palin’s kids). We will never know if Sophia got into Yale and Harvard on her own, just like so many kids who were so fortunate to have gotten into their dream schools. But those kids are not having some strangers out there questioning their personal effort.</p>
<p>Ms. Chua put herself out there, but her daughters didn’t, just like her husband. </p>
<p>Xiggi is not a parent (I am assuming that), but anyone who is a parent should understand how hurtful it would be to have their kid openly criticized, especially when it’s over WWW.</p>
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<p>Really? How disingenuous of you! So much for asking you to read critically.</p>
<p>xiggi - I can read perfectly well. Really, that’s the best you could say? I guess other posters had problem reading too. Don’t take your status too seriously.</p>
<p>As I said I thought better of you. It seems you prefer to cling to complete fabrications. </p>
<p>Seriously!</p>
<p>The Chua method, and the varying degrees of it that exist in the Asian community, does not merely exist in a vacuum such that we can all just be “happy with our own kids’ level of accomplishment.” This behavior affects other people: specifically, bright kids with reasonable parents who don’t deprive their children of childhood joys or bathroom breaks, or threaten to burn their stuffed animals if they don’t perform as expected. In the last 10 years I’ve seen this extreme philosphy transform our school district from one in which having above-average aptitude and dligence were sufficient to ensure access to an above-average education, to a district in which children have to dedicate their summers and leisure time to extra classes and tutoring simply to have a chance of placing into the lowest rung of the advanced academic track in middle school, so eventually they will have a shot of making it into some honors and AP classes in high school. The bar has been set so high so early that the rest of us have to choose between following suit with hyper-scheduling and hyper-academic focus, or seeing our very bright children relegated to the boring regular math and science classes. This method also hurts the late bloomers, who aren’t already mini Einsteins in 4th grade because they wanted to go to sleepovers and play a villager in the school play, but by freshman year of high school could handle Algebra II, except that they blew their shot back when they were 9.</p>
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<p>You would have a point except:</p>
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<li><p>Amy Chua all but bragged about her parenting techniques and linked them to her daughters’ accomplishments in snippets of her “Tiger Mom” book and in mass media promotions for it. This wasn’t the press wrongly portraying her, but Chua herself in various interviews on television and established online newsmedia. In the process, she has opened herself and her daughters to public scrutiny and she has no one to blame for this part except herself. </p></li>
<li><p>Sophia herself wrote a defense of her mother’s parenting techniques and the book in a daily news op-ed piece. Whether this was completely voluntary on her part or a product of strong parental inducement, she has now placed herself in the public eye to be scrutinized for better or worse. </p></li>
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<p>In short, if one wants to use the mass media to promote a controversial book in a self-aggrandizing manner…especially when it makes implicit criticisms of a sizable chunk of the public…he/she IMHO has no right to complain when the greater public voices dissenting opinions and criticisms…even if they may seem quite harsh. </p>
<p>Like Sarah Palin, if Amy Chua wants to promote a controversial book/ideas in a self-aggrandizing manner which could be inflammatory to some, that is her right under the First Amendment of the US Constitution. </p>
<p>Likewise, it is also her critics’ right under the same amendment to respond by voice dissenting opinions and criticisms…even if they are harsh.</p>
<p>I agree with The GFG. I would also be quite concerned about people attempting to follow Chua’s lead, but with children who were not as capable. The limitations don’t have to be intellectual–for example, I have very short stubby fingers, and no amount of brow-beating would have made me into a pianist.</p>
<p>What kind of kids wouldn’t have defended their parents? For parents who have actually read the book, do you think Sophia could have been forced into defending her mother if she didn’t want to? </p>
<p>If people have been posting against Chua’s parenting style just to prevent other parents from following Chua’s lead, then we are not giving enough credit to people’s intelligence.</p>
<p>but Cobrat, I don’t see any need for the rest of the world (including other parents) to magnify Amy Chua’s possibly (in my mind definitely) poor decisions and poor taste in the exposure and level of (continued) publicity. Yes, she “asked for it.” Her daughters did not, i.m.h.o.</p>
<p>As an aspect of such gratuitous exploitation, to distort a child’s musical accomplishment because perhaps her mother misnamed that, exaggerated that, shorthanded it, seems to me to extend that poor taste, against the child – not against the mother. Newsflash, guys: One does not need to be an invited solo headliner at Carnegie, for Heaven’s Sake, to be admitted to HYP as a non-celebrity on one’s own merits – academics & e.c.'s combined. Just because there are such things as true celebrity admits (Natalie Portman, the Hughes sisters) does not mean that the Elites disdain anything in artistic achievement which is less than an Olympic medal, or a Hollywood name, or an adolescent admit to an adult professional orchestra. </p>
<p>Consistent (and progressive) musical, dramatic, dance, writing, film, studio art achievement has integrity in itself, no matter who the mother is, no matter what the name of the competition is. I think not to recognize that is, yes, petty. (Someone else said that.) And be careful of thinking you know the meaning of competition names. Both of my d’s were in several that were misnamed in that they were international in participation & difficulty, but not called that. I’ve heard of other artistic fields that similarly, an outsider would not know the meaning of having reached that level of competition. (An admission committee might, through exposure, or through the student explaining it.)</p>
<p>The GFG, you seem to be confirming the point made in the article in The Atlantic (linked several pages back).</p>
<p>“The bar has been set so high so early that the rest of us have to choose between following suit with hyper-scheduling and hyper-academic focus, or seeing our very bright children relegated to the boring regular math and science classes.”</p>
<p>Are you really saying that because the children of “Tiger Mothers” set the bar so high, the other parents have to follow suit or doom their children to a life of mediocrity? If the Tiger Kids consistently out-perform the children whose parents have taken a more relaxed approach, then the problem is with the families of the top performers?</p>
<p>We all have the choice (as the writer of “The Ivy Delusion” points out) of opting out of “The Race to Nowhere”. I really think that this article has nailed the reason that Chua’s book has gotten the firestorm of criticism it’s attracted.</p>
<p>“they are angry because her harshness is going to rob their own children of something they fiercely want for them. They want the situation to change in their favor, but in fact the trend is against them. One of the reasons that Western, white parents of today remember an easier admissions environment at the top schools is that in their era, the schools held a dismissive attitude toward Asian students.”</p>
<p>Not anymore…</p>
<p>Many of our kids have gotten into top schools because of various hooks (legacy, first generation, URM…), and most parents would be up in arms if anyone should imply their kids got into those schools other than of their own merit. Meanwhile, it is ok for some people to dismiss Sophia’s performance at the Carnegie Hall (even though people don’t really know under what circumstance she played there), or her college acceptance to Yale and Harvard. </p>
<p>I have read so many posts on how Ms. Chua’s book had hurt Asian’s chance in getting into colleges this year, but for some reason it was a hook for Sophia for getting into 2 top schools. In my view, it would have been easier for Harvard to reject Sophia in order to make a statement. But H accepted Sophia despite of all the bad presse against her mother, the reason maybe her stats were so good that she was admitted even with all the adversity.</p>
<p>oldfort, I don’t know that the book had any effect on Sophia’s chances–she had already been accepted to Yale, before the book came out. But I do think that it probably did a disservice to other Asian applicants. They fell under the suspicion that their accomplishments were heavily influenced by Tiger-Momism and they had no way to counter that. Nor did they have any opportunity to present the “full story” at book length to an admissions committee. I suppose one could tell whether there was an effect by looking at Asian-American admits and also admit rates at the “top” schools.</p>
<p>Joblue, The GFG was just writing about having children placed in “the lowest rung of the advanced academic track in middle school,” not about elite college admissions. I don’t believe that one has to go to a top university to have an outstanding education. On the other hand, I think that a student who is subjected to the “regular” level of American academics really is being short-changed. Perhaps over time, the schools will adjust and re-normalize the expectations for the advanced academic track. But it takes time for them to respond, and to offer normal-bright students the same academic challenges they would have had 10 years ago.</p>
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<p>QM - Actually, from what I understand, you could be quite good at piano. For short fingers, they roll their hands to reach notes in time or something like that. Learning an instrument is such a difficult job that having a right physiology helps only minutely. Likewise, not having one is not a big handicap if I understand correctly. My D had a teacher whose fingers were only half as long as hers. Hearing the guy play you wouldn’t know which of the two had long fingers.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t agree with claims that jealousy is the prevailing tone here. Some naturally but it’s mostly the fear expressed by TheGFG imo. I am not sure if we can leave Chua’s daughters out if we are discussing her parenting method. Can you ever skip how kids turn out when discussing pros and cons of a parenting method?</p>
<p>Really, Iglooo, if you can’t span an octave on the piano, there is a work-around for that?</p>