Without any accountable information about teen suicides in China, or the percentage of geniuses per capita in Beijing, Amy Chua proposes that Chinese people are better than American people, especially parents.

I’m sure I can motivate my child by taking a whip to his bare back, but will that adequately propel him forward in life? How successful are the Chinese Super-strict methods, and would it even be legal to raise your child this way in America? Dubious, I started looking for data.

Sadly, there’s little data coming from China thanks to the enormously political and harsh treatment by US entities in dealing with Chinese issues. Our politics has essentially made it impossible to cooperate with China on a meaningful level, and there is simply no way to get the information I’d need to seriously compare the two nations. China has been there, done that, and they won’t play our game.

I can’t say as I blame them. But, with over a billion people, there should be a correspondingly large population of geniuses and prodigies coming out of China or evidenced in China. There is no such massive pool of talent. Chinese people are without a doubt, well educated when raised this way, but are they more successful? I see zero indication of this. American children are obviously far happier, if anyone has ever listened to Margaret Cho about how much her childhood stressed her life.

This might be a cultural back-shock for American-born Chinese kids with Chinese-born immigrant parents, or a sticking cultural feature that’s survived generations, but it doesn’t matter either way. There is no evidence that horse-whipping your kids and being a hardheaded bully will make them smarter or better than they are already capable of being.

America experienced its first wave of reverse-racism with the hype and promotion of civil rights in the sixties. Appropriate and helpful efforts to neutralize racial tensions resulted in a wave of “they’re better” sentiments, and also demonized the traditionally overt benefactor, the white male. America has lots of problems, but having illiterate or stupid children is more a function of our education system than our families.

The state dictates that we MUST send our kids to an approved school, or face incarceration. Thus, the state assumes authority, and therefore control over education, which is indeed mandatory. In this, we are no different than China. America has many mandates that we ignore or take for granted, like being 18 to vote, but 21 to drink, while you can join the military, shoot people, and get killed at 16.

Blaming the parents is an old illogical habit the school systems have for explaining away their failures as an institution. If the states really wanted our middle class to grow, and for people to be world-wide competitive in our education, we would not have sat on our coat-tails for 40+ years and done nothing as a nation to improve ourselves. America blithely assumed that we’d always be the best at everything. Most people who read my blog know full well I am not a cheerleader of America!

So, it is with that bias against America that I strongly state, No. Amy is full of it. What’s worse, she’s a hard core racist.

America, with our absolutely DISMAL state of education, still sprouts more millionaires, more artists, and more geniuses, than most other nations. How can a nation that is falling apart so rapidly, and has failed so utterly as a world power, continue to produce such wonderful child prodigies?

Parenting. Our lazy, squeamish, too-protective parents have actually taken quite good care of our offspring. As a result, intelligence levels in the United States remain quite high even after decades of neglect in education. Fortunately, a large percentage of Americans still go to college. College isn’t nearly as broken as the K-12 system is, although it too is in serious need of structural restoration.

Nations with the most graduates from college? United States of America ranks 6th worldwide. China isn’t even in the top 20. Tell me again how bad we suck, Amy?

Don’t try to shine the master of sandpaper. You don’t fool me. Amy Chua has an ulterior motive, the promotion and pride of her great nation. China has many wonderful and beautiful facets, and there is no need to exaggerate how great its families are by declaring American families to be inferior. It’s also a logically flawed tactic. You don’t make yourself look great by excreting upon those you dislike.

Furthermore, science has shown that stress reduces effective learning, and those children with memory problems are likely to simply be shunned, or even abused, by such a harsh parent. Does 3 hours a day make a better violin player than .5 hours a day? There’s no indication of this by examining the world’s best orchestras. Many of them picked up instruments later in life, some played as children, but few give any indication of having been chained involuntarily to the instrument. They willingly embraced it and loved playing. More than 50,000 youth play in orchestras in America, and half a million people work in the orchestra business. Those are large numbers for a nation that’s got less than a quarter of the population of China, but the real point is that only a tenth of the players are young.

Every word written by Amy goes against conventional science, and much of it hinges on racist dogma or cultural dogma. Simply put, she’s wrong. Chinese parents are in no way “better” than American parents. Our children continue to outperform the world. However, we have been slipping steadily as our population grows, and it would be helpful if this message from Amy caused our nation to renovate our education system.

Finally, an important note about age. Throughout history, all of the most remarkable people you can name, save but a handful such as Mozart and Bach, became rich, powerful, or famous much later in life. Even though life expectancy was in the low 40s in some centuries, those same centuries produced the overwhelming majority of historical personages towards the ends of their lives. Einstein made mistake after mistake, claimed he was inept in school, and did not form his most important works until he was gray-haired.

Most child prodigies burn out, and most child-stars have troubled lives. Statistically, the likelihood that all three of the child stars from Different Strokes would have criminal records would be astronomically implausible but for the fact that the stress and associated developmental problems that come with being a youthful star trend towards a problematic adult life. Mozart is perhaps the worlds most famous burn out, who worked himself to death out of guilt, shame, or insanity. I personally blew out after more than 6 years of college when I was 22, and simply walked away from it for almost 4 years. The stress pushed me too far, and that stress came from a competitive, ablative education system designed to weed out anyone who isn’t wealthy, doesn’t have a photographic memory, or isn’t privileged.

Speaking for accuracy, the last thing you’d actually want to do is force your child to become a superstar by the time they are 12 years old. The end results at the age of 40 are not often pretty, and few such children go on to do well later in life. Not to mention that I have to wonder how many hate their parents all their lives and refuse to raise their own children in that same manner. If you want to guarantee that your grandkids are also successful, instill useful values and be accessible, not a tyrant!

The most important fact of all is this: Nobody stops learning just because they turn 18. I’m 46 and in a Masters degree program. I have always been on the Deans Lists of top students in any school. As a teen I rarely broke above a 3.5 GPA. As an adult I more often accomplish a 4.0. But, this is just me. I’m talking about the human brain, and regardless of your brain being Chinese or American, it’s still Homo Sapiens. You can learn until shortly before you die. It really is never too late to get an education, change your life, or learn something new. There really is no reason to try to shove 22 years of education into a child’s mind before they turn 10. What’s the hurry? Do you really need to see them get a Nobel prize before you retire? Who is this for, the child, or you?

Sources

Amy’s Promotional Propaganda in the WSJ:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html

National Facts:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/22/countries-with-the-most-c_n_655393.html#s117395&title=undefined

Orchestras:

http://www.americanorchestras.org/knowledge_research_and_innovation/industry_statistics.html