And why not.
Many parents themselves have struggled with the same fear for themselves, not the least due to their own job being outsourced and offshored to another lower-cost country like India and Eastern Europe (for high tech jobs), and China (for manufacturing, of course). The parents themselves have been unable to stem this tide of job loss, and hope their kids would not suffer the same fate (not to mention, excel in this global rat race).
Americans used to have big ego, and rightfully so. The whole world seems to gravitate around them. US is the single largest economy (and consumers) in the world. It has high paying jobs. It has the deepest and most liquid financial markets. USD is global currency. Everyone has to learn English in order to keep up with it. Americans are kings and princelings.
How time has changed. The Great Recession that was brought on by the subprime mortgage mess starting in 2008 has brought the greatest economy to its knee, and no one has any freaking clue how to fix it. Washington (White House and Congress alike) is paralyzed on how best to handle it. Meanwhile, the debt ceiling is nigh, and all we hear is the bickering on whether and how to increase the debt ceiling so that US government (and Americans) can continue borrowing. No matter that credit agency threatens the same treatment to US treasury (ie. downgrade) as the Greek sovereign debts have suffered. All these must have brought on an incredible amount of self-doubt and soul-searching among alot of Americans, even though politicians are unable or unwilling to do so.
Add to that is the rise of Dragon in the East - that great big middle kingdom that only a few centuries ago, had the same belief that it too was the center of the universe (hence, the name middle kingdom). Indeed, the more than meteoric rise to economic power in just a few short decades since Deng Xiaoping opened its door to the outside world, is nothing to snort about. No matter that China can and has borrowed hugely from the lessons learnt by the western world in the hard way, and can take/borrow/coerce the technological know-how from the West to perfect its industries (including manufacturing and financial).
And then there is the so-called Tiger Mom book that claims to have found the exact recipe to rearing the perfect student ripe for Ivy League. It matters little, that it's the mother who was doing all the choosing ("kid, you are doing violin") and pushing (how about 4 hours violin practice every night) and thinking (you're going to apply to Harvard). No doubt it'll churn out technocrats. Afterall, just looking at the huge number of university graduates with technical degrees in China and India is enough to give any American parents shudder, if not an outright cold.
Equally ironic is the almost action-and-reaction kind of New Yorker column of JT Tran on the bamboo ceiling. The hard question to ask, and the cold reality to face, is, what happens to the straight-A, Ivy League kiddo graduates from parental wings, to reeeeally compete in this globalized world. While some people don't want to admit it, or acknowledge that he has hit on an equally raw nerve of Asian Americans, even second and subsequent generations, that there's this unseen, untalked of, bamboo ceiling that they have to break through. No violin lesson, or Ivy League diploma, is going to give cover to sonny for too long. Afterall, there's only one Yo Yo Ma. (No, Lang Lang is more a loud performer than a true pianist.) Can the kids really think for themselves? Can the Amy Chua kids do that?
These days too, it's fashionable to get johnnys or marys Mandarin-speaking nanny. Full immersion. Kids have to learn Mandarin to succeed in this global world! Much as learning Japanese was fashionable, 30 years before. And why not, Japan was on its way to overtake America in every conceivable ways. If you don't learn Japanese, you can't compete. It's not cheap doing all these full immersion thing of course, but parents have to make do.
For those who have even more resources, you have to relocate your butts to the East. Full immersion to the language is not enough. Full immersion to the culture is the key, as we're told.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I always look at all these with mild amusement. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for quite a number of the propositions. Learning a second language is always a good thing. Knowing different cultures is even better. I, too, have two young kids who would one day join this global rat race. I would be lying if I say I don't give a damn. I certainly do; but with my own flavor.
I grew up in a highly homogeneous society in Asia. We learn English early on, but learning a language without understanding the culture is like perfecting the skills of reciting A-Z, without knowing how to use that to make meaningful words with the letters. My parents are not highly educated. While they have high expectations for us the kids to do well in school, they never push us to do any extracurricular activities. I master my English because I find the language interesting, and it's a medium that I went on to master other more interesting stuffs (watching sitcoms - ha!). But it wasn't until I started schooling in a western country (on my own initiative) that I was forced to learn more of the actual culture, not just the manufactured ones from Hollywood or MTV. I went on to work in four different continents in high tech jobs for the past 20 years. I won't say I'm successful in mastering this globalized world, but I'd say, I'm fairly comfortable going from one country (and culture) to another with ease.
My parents never push me to do any of these. I follow my interests, and life takes interesting turn. The closest description to that, is the connecting the dots comments by Steve Job's immensely insightful and inspiring commencement speech at Stanford. As he so precisely nailed it, you can't connect the dots looking forward (as the Amy Chua types would want to have you believe that she can). It's when you look back that you can connect the dots. I know exactly what Jobs meant by that, because looking back, it's as if by God's providence, that I would do this and that in my life. In fact, I too had taken a couple of years of sojourn working different jobs before going back to college to study computer science. While it might feel as if I've lost (and wasted) those couple of years in career building, I feel that those early years of work have allowed me to see things differently, an almost different perspective on the highly organized things of 0's and 1's binary facts in computer science. I was much more grounded. And I was able to build my later life and work, leveraging on those early years too.
The difficulty (and a life challenge, no less) of child rearing is that, you can't tell the kids what to love and not love. I find it almost sad, that parents would pave an exacting path for their kids to follow. In the Asian world of childrearing, particularly in this competitive globalized world, Asian parents (I should say, parents in Asia) do not allow any margin of errors. I understand the tug and pull, and the inherent contradictions of that, because looking at my extended families in Asia now, with nephews around the same age as my young kids, I can see how much more pressure that they're under. Homework and practice for 4-6 hours every night (excluding dinner time) are not uncommon. That's what it takes to have a robo-serial standardized test buster. Kids are taught not to think, not even feel, but just do. That's what it takes to solve as many equations within a 5 minutes cramp. It drills into you.
When I look back at articles like this one, that talks about immersing kids in the culture. I sometimes secretly wonder, what kind of identity would the kid has of him/herself. It goes back to my own experience, and the self-doubt and searching of one's own identity in shifting cultures. I can tell you that, if I have not had those few years of sojourn, I would not have been as sure of myself, of who I am. Sometimes blending in - the more clinical term for it, is assimilation into a society and culture - is good; it's even necessary. But if you're not sure of yourself; if you don't even know who you are or what you're made of, you'll become another drifter.
From time to time, I wish I could teach the kids the kind of experience that I've immersed in, to learn different cultures, to experience life, while at the same time, pursuing a fruitful career. But I don't want to choose for them. I've made a conscientious decision, that I would allow them exposure to as many activities as they fancy, and let them choose. After that, it's their life they have to decide; it's their life they need to lead.
It's sad that, so many have been taken in by the Amy Chua style parenting, as if it's gospel. It's equally sad for others to rebuff her in a knee-jerk reaction, saying they'll let their kids do whatever they want. Therein lies the issue. As parents, we're not supposed to just let kids do whatever. But neither should we restrict them so much that there's no room for them to choose, let alone think for themselves.
It's a fine balance that each parent has to find, in order to get to that nirvana of controlled chaos. I'm still learning that with my kids, and each day is a bright new day (as my son puts it).
4 comments:
After 3 years of bilingual immersion Chinese English education in Hong Kong, we decided against the Nanyang's of this world and Singapore for our move there.
It's about more than language. One has to deal with cultural aspects of education and a child's ability to not only cope with that but also accept things that may not be within the family value system. Like belittling children. Like ranking them. Like behaving like academic success is all that matters.
Life is too short and my children too precious. There must be a middle way.
That's so true, about the almost unavoidable and unintended consequence of the not-so-glorious aspects of a culture that kids would have to immerse in. It's one thing to be open-minded, but when kids are young (even when they get to their teens), they are still constantly searching for their own identity. My kids are born in US. Their school has quite a diverse student body. I remember when my daughter was in kindergarten, one day she came back and told me "I wish I were Japanese." It's all because they're quite a number of Japanese students in her class that she's befriended, and she wanted to fit in. And that's what I meant in my blogs on thoughts of the danger of kids becoming drifter when they never know what their true identity is (let alone appreciating their heritage). I wonder if those parents who do full immersion of the culture for the kids have ever consider this aspect.
My daughter was born in HK and until recently was quite adamant that she was Chinese. when she was younger she was quite upset at her absence of black hair and eyes, despite having beautiful blonde hair and blue eyes.
I think as parents you need to ground your children in your family and your beliefs and values in the absence of a dominant cultural identity around them.
and you need to be quite adamant about it sometimes, even to the point of fighting for what you believe, (and blogging about it ad nauseum to your readers!)
I can perfectly understand that. It's a stroke of luck that shortly after my daughter's "I wish I were Japanese" comments, her kindergarten teacher asked me if I would do a presentation to the class about the culture of Chinese New Year. (Perhaps it's my fault that I don't actually pay much attention to traditions like that at home, so that my kids don't actually get exposed to heritage as much as one would have hoped.) I did a one-hour session with her class, bringing treats and read packets etc to the class, telling them what this and that means, and do chinese calligraphy for them. The kids and teachers alike were fascinated. (They loved the gold-coin chocolate.) The foreign language teachers (in Japanese) in the next classroom heard about it, and even came over to ask me to write a chinese calligraphy on red paper for good luck. My daughter was so proud of it (that there are cool stuffs of the chinese culture that others would love), that she would now proudly says she's chinese. As kids grow, they would confront that sort of identity crisis all the time. Full immersion in a culture has more dimension than one. As you rightly mentioned, the family (and parents) have to reinforced that to the kids all the time.
Post a Comment