Chinese mothers

Well, it's all over the news, Amy Chua's controversial book on the superiority of Chinese way of education. Since there is no way to avoid it in education blog-sphere, I might just give my two cents on this.

Being the only child growing up in a traditional Chinese family, I have to say that Amy's account is overly exaggerating. Or, we have to analyze each family case by case. In my scenario, my Mom was never the "Tiger Mom" who always demanded top performance. Although, there is certain expectation that I should strive for the best I could be, she never yelled at me if I get an A-, instead of A. But on the other hand, I still got the pressure from my peers who always got the perfect score on everything, maybe their Moms are more in line with Amy Chua? Who knows...

Going back to the Chinese v. Western way of education, there has long been a debate over how to merge the two extreme ways of educating kids. Chinese parents are overly protective and demanding, who discourage young kids to think on their own and thus produce the so-called excellent mediocrity: Chinese children tend to grow up with the perfect scores, but with very low self esteem and lack of character of their own. On the other hand, westerners are too lenient in a way that eventually causes irresponsible acts in youth such as drug use and premarital sex. So is there a middle ground here? Is there a perfect way to educate our kids so that the parents know when to let them go and when to rein them in?

I think this is a very important topic that should not be taken lightly. Therefore, I am planning to use this site to record my study on this matter, and hopefully will have a more clarified answer for you soon!