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

[i]Thoughts anyone?PS-I think I'll get this book today (on the Kindle).

Which is exactly what that article was for, to get you to buy her book.

Yeah, but you have to admire the nicely pulled publicity stunt, especially given that those who have read the book say that the book actually doesn't make the claims of the WSJ article. See: throw out a controversy (or in some Asian parents' mind, an insult), then if you want to know what I really think, buy the book!

Watching the interview with her on the 'Today Show', she seemed to back-pedal from some of her more controversial statements made in the article. She said her book was really more 'anecdotal' and not necessarily telling parents that her way of raising kids was better.

But then, as she started to explain some of her concerns with 'American' style parenting (some of which I do agree with her), she got cut off because time had run out for the interview.

Yet another example taken from 99.99999% of the percentile, as are those that went on to win the Nobel Prize.

No, My main point is that had Einstein followed his parents wishes, his contributions to physics might have been lost.

You have no point here, because Einstein thing is not applicable to most normal human being. You need to use an example that applicable to most normal people.

Stanza could argue: "if only more people disobeyed their parents and followed their own dreams, we would have more Einsteins in our society and then, these Einsteins wouldn't be such a rare breed anymore". You wouldn't be able to disprove this hypothesis, nor would Stanza be able to prove it (that this approach would produce more Einsteins), neither person really has a point.

Do bullies have low self-esteem or high self-esteem? If "American parenting" focus on self-esteem, why there are so many bullies in schools?

Contrary to popular belief, aggressive tendencies overall are associated with higher levels of self-esteem (see recent reviews by Roy Baumeister).

The point Stanza was trying to make (I think) is that love of learning vs. the do it my way or else philosophy is what made the difference in Einstein's case.

He loved physics and that love (and an amazing imagination) allowed him to go far. Very, very far.

What you don't hear too much from many Asian parents (I think) is the 'I support you if you follow your dreams.' What you do hear (the stereotype) is, 'pursue a career that will make good money and make me proud.'

Two highly divergent viewpoints and roads that lead to very different destinations.

I'd like to know from our Asian teachers and students.... is this how you learned piano? Is this what you experienced as a child (no play dates, no dating, etc...)?

I would look up those reviews if only my graduate program's workload let me. However, being a graduate student in Psychology, I'm wary of such findings that claim "correlations" or "associations". There's always some other variable that people haven't controlled for. There's always a statistical issue at hand, whose philosophical implications if thought through, might show that such analyses are not conclusive in the least. Then of course the issue of individual differences. Most people average data over subjects hoping that all that they haven't controlled for would get "averaged out" as noise (which is obviously false because those uncontrolled variables are not random variables). So I have my reservations about this type of finding, that pervades all(most) of the social psych literature right now.

As a piano teacher who has students constantly playing in festivals and competitions in the area, I will say that when my students make it to the Winner Recitals, they do tend to be the 'token white student,' but they all seem to be having fun, no matter what their race.