Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum Article: Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior to Western Mothers

Here is an interesting article from the Wall Street Journal.

Your thoughts?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...13528698754.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

Superior? Interesting word choice. This from the article...

"What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences."

Nothing is fun until you're good at it? Huh?

That explains everything.

The Little White Donkey by age 7? They must be really talented.

I realize we "western parents" aren't as strict as we should be sometimes but what this woman did to her daughter because of a little piano piece not going well absolutely disgusts me. I'm very curious what this "chinese mother" would do with a disabled child?

.... and lots of people around here think "I" was a hard @ss.

A whole bunch of nonsense, really.

Richard Feynman wouldn't be Feynman if his Father had been such a Chinese parent. Watch some interviews of the man, how he talks about how his father influenced him to develop Scientific thinking by making it fun. I'm sure there are numerous examples from the music world too. That coercion works in a lot of cases, shouldn't be a case made for "Coercion is the only way to do it". Nobody coerced me to take up the piano. I'm nowhere as good as a Chinese pianist at my age but that's because there is not a single good piano conservatory in my country. I had to make do with whatever teachers I could find in the area. I practiced 2-3 hours every day as a kid, on my own accord. There was occasions when I was less motivated and my teacher would push me. I've practiced 7-8 hours a day during my summer breaks and those were some of the most enjoyable days of my life. My teacher, who was a priest in a Church, would take me to his "house" for lunch. They had great cooks and we had fabulous meals there. We would then go see the cows in the farms and then would head back to the music academy where I'd continue practicing. No Chinese parent (by the definition given in that article) can ever give this to their kids.

I know a ton of children of "Chinese Mothers."

I also know how many of them hate the piano, art, and school in general - not to mention their parents.

"If a Chinese child gets a B—which would never happen—there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion."

I actually snorted hard enough to hurt myself at that one.

I read that article last night and was going to write a thread about it here, but you beat me to it, dumdumdiddle.

My reactions were this:

1.) The author clearly intended to be provocative (and succeeded... there were over 900 comments on it at the time I read it!). I also think that there was more than a little bit of tongue-in-cheek things going on here.

2.) A couple of years ago I would've concluded that the approach described in it was overly exaggerated just to get a rise out of people. However, my daughter started a Math-Science-Technology magnet program, which is heavily Asian in demographics (she jokes that she is the token white girl in the entire program, which is pretty close to the truth), and her closest friends are Asian. They report many of the same parenting techniques and rules (no sleepovers, no non-academic extracurriculars, insistence on straight As, no dating/boyfriends, etc.). In fact, my daughter has teased me on more than one occasion that she "should have had an Asian mother" who would push her more than I do and not let her procrastinate; apparently I am too lax in such things, LOL.

3.) Like most things, I believe that the optimal approach is probably somewhere between the parenting described by Ms. Chua and the prototypical "just try your best" and "you are special no matter what grades you get" American style.

4.) The psychological literature has shown that many Asian students actually suffer a dip in achievement in the first couple of years of college. The most likely explanation is that they have not developed the independent studying and time management skills to allow them to do well on their own, because their parents have been overly involved in their school work. By the end of college, they have caught up, but the adjustment takes a while.

5.) The teachers here may be especially interested in a response to that article posted by a piano teacher:

A piano teacher's response to the Chinese Mother article

That response article is great!

Here's a graphic I'm going to use for my new article..
"Where are the Chinese Nobel Winners?"



Where are they? Oh, that's right. Too busy having fun.

I'm Asian (not Chinese) but I think you have a point! I'm more American/European in my philosophical views on things and would like to bring up my kids giving them freedom to experiment and learn on their own. I will however make sure that I embed them in a favorable environment.

The latter half of that article was hard to read. It is naive to think that bullying a child and coercing them to achieve a goal that is entirely willed by the parent and for days on end, is acceptable in the name of anything.. The fact that the child snuggled with her mom afterwards is presented as a subtle suggestion that the child "forgave" the hardship and is now co-celebrating "success" with her "loving" mom. Pathetic scene and interpretation. Has Amy Chua heard of the Stockholm syndrome?
The child has no choice but to try and believe that her mother still loves her despite her slowness at playing the little white donkey!! AT 7, children are anxious and need the security of a loving home and parent.
Nowhere in the article did we hear whether little ms. Chua is interested in piano or music. What is the goal then other than CV building and parental ego inflation??? there is no attempt at identifying the child's interests or talents. Eventually you need self-motivation to drive children. Otherwise, rebellion is right around the corner, once they reach their early teens and are less interested in pleasing their parents.

I don't have a problem with insisting on some discipline and higher goals, but Chua takes things to ridiculous extremes. Her lack of empathy and understanding of child development are really abhorrent. I can only hope that she is exaggerating for the sake of article "ratings".

It is perhaps relevant to note that suicide rates among young people exceed 20 per 100,000 (35 per 100,000 in Japanese males), double that of the US. Certainly suicides are not all related to poor parenting but there is much evidence in support of the negative role of "shaming" young people into achievement.

Also, its a prevalent notion amongst people of my country too that children owe everything to their parents. I think everybody is selfish and does things that make them happy. Even these so called "sacrifices" are really means to one's own ends. These parents want to boast about their kids when they go to parties, etc. Its high priority for them, which is why they put in the hours to get their kids to achieve what they (the parents) want. So these "sacrifices" are really not sacrifices in the strict sense of the word. Then when the child grows up, the parents even decide for the kids what they want to choose for a career. In my country, its mostly doctors and engineers. High rates of suicides amongst engineering students in my country might be indicative of the fact that this is not what the kids want. Its a vicious cycle. These kids then go on to live their dreams through their kids. Its extremely unhealthy. Its part of the reason why these countries don't produce nobel prize winners. The education business caters to the market for these engineers and doctors. Research facilities are poor, and don't have any money invested in them. What schools are designed to do is produce "engineers" who then go on to get business degrees and then go on to get high pay packets in some MNC. So you wouldn't see too many Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi, Nobel Prize winners in that list.

I think the missing element is that the parental style is merely an overlay upon the huge influence of the deeply embedded culture.

It is simplistic to think that a child's development is the product of his/her own genetic legacy plus some parental interaction. What I've been reading lately has slowly been convincing me that the real cultural and peer influences far outweigh those. (just a small snippet: children raised in bad neighborhoods by great parents do much much worse than those raised in great neighborhoods by lousy parents)

There is a long section in Gladwell's "Outliers" on the work ethic and practice approaches of people from rice farming cultures, even generations later. Worth reading, I think.

Of course on the other hand, the article illustrates another point: that you can develop superb technical skill at the piano without the slightest internal interest.

So, what's the Chinese Mom's favorite blood type? A+ of course!

That deserves a real rim shot..



Just kidding around of course.

Chinese mothers are only a few generations away from foot binding. Forcing kids to practice piano obsessively seems mild by comparison.

I had a piano teacher who was like this. He got very good results and was able to take kids to highly advanced levels after 2 years of study if their parents were on board with putting on the pressure at home. I totally didn't fit into his studio because my parents don't agree with that style of parenting. On the other hand, it's not just the Chinese who are strict with kids. One of my teachers here in Canada talked about it used to be common to whip students at the beginning of his career. Are rates of depression and suicide dropping or going up?

I'm sure that it is entirely unintentional on the part of the posters, but I'm as uncomfortable with some of the racist generalizations appearing on this thread as I am with the sick description of a mother's ill-treatment of her child to produce a performance of little donkey.
The child abuse described in the original article and racist generalizations submitted in response are both more appropriate to the ethos of a Nazi concentration camp than the promotion of the civilized art of piano playing.
I fully understand that Ms Chua herself has ignited this fire - why not try substituting Aryan and Jewish in the title of her article? "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior to Western Mothers".
I am disappointed some people seem to have swallowed Ms Chuas bait so readily.