Let's hear it for the Tiger Mum! I have one. Sure I was a whiny, lazy little brat. What kid isn't? She worked so many extra hours to scrape up enough money to send me to a decent school. (Apparently the public one in our neighborhood was crap. Poor immigrant family and all, couldn't afford a house in the posh neighborhoods with the well-funded schools.) She stayed firm no matter how much I whined about doing extra homework exercises or Chinese school. Nobody likes Chinese school. Who wants to get up and go to school and take another language quiz on Saturday morning when everyone else is sleeping or watching cartoons? But it sure is easier learning a language as a kid. But living Vancouver, I would have felt the need sooner or later, but if I had given up and waited until I was grown up, it would have been harder. If nothing else, she forced me to learn discipline. I don't think I would have made it as well through uni or med school without that discipline. Frankly, I don't think I would have made it INTO med school without her support. I'm a little bit clever, but I'm not THAT clever, so once you hit a certain point, you need the hard work to go the rest of the distance.
I was arguing with a friend about this when the article first came out. Why do Asian parents all want their kids to become doctors or lawyers? They should be happy even if their kid is a starving artist as long as the kid is happy. Well, it just doesn't work that way, for them. It's as simple as no Asian parent wants to see their kid STARVE. If you are starving, it's impossible to be happy. They would rather see you successful and unhappy than unsuccessful and unhappy. Because if you are successful, the logic follows that sooner or later, happiness will come when other necessary pieces fall into place. BTW, there is no such thing as unsuccessful and happy. That's crazy talk, as far as most Asians are concerned. Besides, a lot of them come from places where social programs/welfare is almost nil, so if you are very unsuccessful, you might end up on the street and starve for real. So you gotta get your act together and figure out what you are going to do in your life to make sure you get yourself fed somehow. And it's the parents' job to make sure you do. It is no accident that a colloquial term in Cantonese for "work" literally translates to "searching for food." Now, what I've also realized since that conversation is there is another piece to this. For over 1000 years, the way into the upper classes was by imperial examination. They were open to anyone. You could theoretically be a dirt poor farmer's son, study hard, sit the exams, become a magistrate, and thereby elevate yourself and your future offspring to the elite class. Let's be real. Being elite class sure beats being a dirt poor farmer. Of course, in practice, to score well on the exams, you needed a really good education. Only rich people could afford to hire tutors good enough to pass a high level exam. Nevertheless, to put it in Western terms, the message was that you could elevate yourself from a serf to a lord if you were smart enough, hard-working enough, and educated enough. While I was going to school or the library as a small child, my Canadian teachers would tell stories about princes and princesses that lived happily ever after by doing something brave. Killing dragons or something. That's all well and good. Being brave and strong is cool. I kid you not but my mother was telling me children's stories at home about this or that grave-digger's/farmer's/widow's son who somehow learned his lesson about the value of hard work, studied hard, and eventually grew up to pass the civil service exams or become a famous poet (classical Chinese culture practically idolizes poets) and live happily ever after. And took his mother to live with him on his new estate and made sure she never had to starve another day ever again, because he was such a respectful son and she sacrificed so much for his education. When you put it into that kind of a cultural context, can you see how after a thousand years of that people might put that much value on education? These days, there's not much money in the civil service, but a profession such as doctoring and lawyering is a close enough modern day equivalent, so that's what they chase.
Anyway, a little tangential to the topic, but I see a lot more kids from Mainland China over here than I used to. Since the whole country opened up, we've been able to see more what it looks like on the inside. The competition is fierce. The rich-poor disparity is way more than what anything we in Canada are used to seeing and the population is so big there's not enough resources for everyone. I don't think even the Hong Kong kids of my generation were this stressed. Getting that university spot is literally the difference between a life of obscurity and poverty and a life of riches and prosperity. There is no in-between for them. Success or die trying. My mother is a teacher and she says she's had kids in her class where the whole village pooled their money to send the kid to school in Canada because they thought he would be smart enough to make something of himself. The amount of pressure they must be under makes me want to cry.
This post has been edited by Una: 06 March 2012 - 06:01 AM
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