Battle Hymn of the Anti-Tiger Mother

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Absolutely appaling!

Race to Nowhere

By the end of this school year, about half a million people will have watched the documentary Race to Nowhere. This stealth juggernaut can't be seen on TV, in any multiplex, or on DVD. But since the fall of last year, it's been shown almost 2,000 times in school auditoriums and community centers across the country—mostly to parents beset with the fear that they're blowing the raising of their kids. The emotional discussions following the screenings—part catharsis, part call to action, part finger-pointing—are excellent introductions to the contentious debate about what we want from our kids and from the people who educate them.

First-time filmmaker Vicki Abeles, 49, a Northern California lawyer and mother of three, was moved to pick up a camera when her children started suffering from school-related headaches, stomachaches, and panic attacks. What she produced is a wide-ranging polemic against our current education system that is artless, occasionally overwrought, and undeniably powerful. It confirms—and stokes—the unease many parents have about how miserable much of childhood seems today. It also sets up Abeles as the anti-Amy Chua. In Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Chua's thesis is that if you let up, your kid will become a coddled American slacker. Abeles offers the antithesis. She argues that part of America's greatness is born of our misfits and dreamers, that our gift to our children is time to engage in "aimless" play.

Read the rest on Slate, you lazy gits.

Can't say much more than I agree completely with Ms. Abeles' concerns and objectives here.  I went through high school late enough to see the first parts of this trend get bad, but fortunately I didn't have the severe external pressure to hit certain levels.  Yet another reason my non-existent kids would be going to a carefully-chosen private school.

[Razgovory]

I forgot which one I refuse to read.  Slate or Salon.  Better not chance it.

[CountDeMoney]

Yet another reason my non-existent kids would be going to a carefully-chosen private school.

Where they can suffer even more competitive- and performance-induced headaches, stomachaches, and panic attacks?

[Razgovory]

Yet another reason my non-existent kids would be going to a carefully-chosen private school.

Where they can suffer even more competitive- and performance-induced headaches, stomachaches, and panic attacks?

My mother almost sent me to a military school.  It probably would have done me some good.

[Pat]

Reminds me of Houellebecq and his Extension du domain de la lutte (i.e. broadening of the field of struggle - poorly translated to both English and Swedish); i.e. not just economic competition but competition in everything nowadays (largely stemming from sexual competition which then leads to competition in looking good, being smart, being funny, having a nice car, etc, etc, etc, you name it, the list goes on to include almost everything)... His book (translated into English as Whatever) is the best portrait of modern life I've yet encountered anywhere. There is also a german film based on one of his books that is actually so good it's actually even better than the book (and I liked the book), it's called Elementarteicheln (i.e. The elementary particles - the thesis is that each individual is now alone and an elementary particle, the smallest of components). He's the only writer I know who writes realistically about every day modern life in a way that's not idealistic and petit-bourgoise á la Ian McEwan (15 pages or something describing the intricasies of a squash game wtf...).

And yes she's right modern schools are artless - paradoxically, even when they include art: what I mean and what I think she means is that it represents values of the left hemisphere rather than the right (á la Master and his Emissary by McGilchrist).

edit: stupid typo

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Yet another reason my non-existent kids would be going to a carefully-chosen private school.

Where they can suffer even more competitive- and performance-induced headaches, stomachaches, and panic attacks?

Hence the "carefully-chosen".  Fortunately, I won't actually have to make that decision.

[Ed Anger]

Yet another reason my non-existent kids would be going to a carefully-chosen private school.

Where they can suffer even more competitive- and performance-induced headaches, stomachaches, and panic attacks?

Hence the "carefully-chosen".  Fortunately, I won't actually have to make that decision.

You don't want crotchfruit?

Anywhoo, I'm planning on mixing public and private school. Go to a public K thru2, then decide to either stay in public elementary before yanking them out of Jr. High.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

You don't want crotchfruit?

No, neither of us do.

[Habbaku]

I prefer the Irish Setter Dad :

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/irish-setter-dad_555534.html

What's all this bother about Chinese Tiger Moms? Amy Chua, author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, has America's female parents in a swivet. You'd have to take Sarah Palin to a NOW convention to see so many ladies mad at a fellow woman. Practically a third of the Atlantic's April issue is taken up with Caitlin Flanagan and Sandra Tsing Loh giving Amy Chua the dickens in terms strong enough for Hillary Clinton's private thoughts on Monica Lewinsky. My wife put it more succinctly: "This person is factory farming her kids."

I gather Ms. Chua is a total bitch with her children, making them finish homework before it's assigned, practice violin and piano 25 hours a day, maintain a grade point average higher than Obama budget numbers, and forbidding them from doing anything they might enjoy, such as exhale.

But being a male parent with a typical dad-like involvement in my children's lives​—​I know all of their names​—​I thought Battle Hymn was great. That is, I thought it made me look great. Not that I read the dreadful book, but I did buy each of my children a copy and inscribed it, "So you think you've got it bad?" What with three editions lying around because my kids would rather fool with the Wii than read, I admit I gave in to the temptation to skim.

Here are some of the things that "unlike your typical Western overscheduling soccer mom, the Chinese mother believes." (By the way, Amy Chua isn't Chinese. Her parents are Filipinos of Chinese extraction and she was born in the United States and grew up in Indiana.)

    • an A-minus is a bad grade

    • your children must be two years ahead of their classmates in math

    • if your child ever disagrees with a teacher or coach, you must always take the side of the teacher or coach

    • the only activities your child should be permitted to do are those in which they can eventually win a medal

    • that medal must be gold

You might think that Amy Chua is a fascist pig. She wrote a previous book, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability, so she is. She also possesses the most unpleasant personality I've ever seen projected into print, and I've read Earth in the Balance. Some Amy Chua personality snippets:

"Sophia excelled in nursery school."

"Sophia's first three piano teachers were not good fits."

"According to Sophia, here are three things I actually said to her at the piano as I supervised her practicing:

"1. Oh my God, you're just getting worse and worse.

"2. I'm going to count to three then I want musicality!

"3. If the next time's not PERFECT, I'm going to TAKE ALL YOUR STUFFED ANIMALS AND BURN THEM!"

Sophia is Amy Chua's older daughter, the obedient child, the one with whom she has a good relationship. Lulu is Chua's younger daughter, the rebellious child, the one with whom she has a relationship that's not so good. Here is an exchange between Amy and Lulu on vacation in Russia:

    "We're in Russia and you refuse to try caviar! You're like a barbarian. And in case you think you're a big rebel, you are completely ordinary. There is nothing more typical, more predictable, more common and low, than an American teenager who won't try things. You're boring, Lulu​—​boring."

    "Shut up," said Lulu angrily.

    "Don't you dare say shut up to me. I'm your mother .  .  . "

    "I hate you! I HATE YOU. .  .  . I hate the violin. I HATE my life. I HATE you, and I HATE this family!"

You'd have to have a heart of stone not to be feeling better about yourself as a parent after that.

I loved Battle Hymn. Of course I couldn't bear much of it. The prose, like the author, belongs in hell. But what I did read really put the Freud in my schadenfreude, so to speak. Especially loathsome fun was Chua's notorious Tiger Mother List, currently making the rounds on the Internet and getting more outraged hits than a YouTube video of a Justin Bieber head shave:

    Here are some of the things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:

    • attend a sleepover

    • have a playdate

    • be in a school play

    • complain about not being in a school play

    • watch TV or play computer games

    • choose their own extracurricular activities

    • get any grades less than an A

    • not be the #1 student in every subject except gym and drama

    • play any instrument other than the piano or violin

    • not play the piano or violin

I just wasn't cut out to be a Chinese Tiger Mom. I'm more of an Irish Setter Dad. Here are some of the things my daughters, Muffin and Poppet, and my son, Buster, were never allowed to do:

• go to Mass naked

• attend a sleepover at Charlie Sheen's house

• mix Daddy a martini using sweet vermouth

• play the violin within earshot of me

Have you ever heard a kid learning to play the violin? A cat in the microwave is nothing to it. And let me add an addendum to the things my children were never allowed to do​—​put a cat in the microwave. I'm not saying it didn't happen; I'm just saying they weren't allowed to do it.

Whose children are going to succeed in life, Amy Chua's or mine? Her Lulu has that violin going for her​—​there's hardly a Silicon Valley billionaire, Wall Street plutocrat, senator, four-star general, or pope who isn't a violin virtuoso. And Sophia, who tickles the ivories, can always say, "Don't tell Mom I work for Goldman Sachs, she thinks I play piano in a house of ill repute." But my kids practice too, hour after hour every day. They practice being jerks. And since almost every boss I've ever had was a jerk, this gives them a leg up. Plus there's the cat in the microwave. That shows an inquisitive, experimental turn of mind. You can see how electronic cat-zapping could lead directly to the invention of something like Facebook.

On the other hand, what with all the A-pluses and never being allowed to disagree with teachers, Chua's kids are headed straight to the Ivy League. The more so since Chua is a Yale law professor. (Oooh, maybe she's a Nazi and a Commie, making Battle Hymn the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of parenting advice.) The Ivy League is supposed to be good for success. Barack Obama went to an Ivy League school, not that he's doing very well in his career at the moment. Let's check on the most successful people in America. Sarah Palin went to the University of Idaho. Warren Buffet went to Nebraska. John Boehner went to Xavier. Glenn Beck didn't go to college at all. And I'm not sure whether Justin Bieber's mother even finished high school. Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates did go to Harvard but​—​doubtless this is somewhere on the "never allowed to do" list​—​they dropped out.

My kids fit the success profile. I'll bet Muffin and Poppet are accepted at the University of Idaho, assuming Wii is a Title IX thing. And Buster will be waving goodbye to Harvard while he's still in junior high.

Amy Chua, I've got bad news. "A" students work for "B" students. Or not even. A businessman friend of mine corrected me. "No, P. J.," he said, " 'B' students work for 'C' students. 'A' students teach." Teaching in the Ivy League gives you a lot of time off, Amy​—​enough to write a crap book, worse than Yale prof Erich Segal's Love Story. Maybe when you get some time off again you should come to rural New Hampshire and meet the Irish Setter Dad children.

Buster, age 7, is a master of passive resistance who can turn staying up past his bedtime into Tahrir Square. He could hire himself out as a civil disobedience coach to Mahatma -Gandhi and Martin Luther King, if they weren't dead. Poppet, 10, is a persuasive saleswoman, not to say charming con artist, who can hand you a sheet of black construction paper with a hole in it and convince you it's a science project on collapsed super-novas. And Muffin, 13, has her own .410 shotgun and knows how to use it.

Try your Chinese Tiger Mom stuff on my kids.

P. J. O'Rourke is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

P. J. O'Rourke is awesome.

[jimmy olsen]

Awesome article!

[CountDeMoney]

That was fantastic.