http://berlinfang.blog.163.com/blog/static/1166707162011102610309632/
Thomas Friedman wrote in his column, "How about better parents?" (The New York Times, Nov 19), that parent involvement is key to student success.
Fed up with the status quo of American education, and desperate for an
alternative model, some readers peppered the word "Asian" throughout the
comments section for Friedman's article. One reader wrote: " the
question among the coaches was the usual, why were so many of our top
students are Asian. I asked when was the last time they had an Asian
parent complain about too much homework."
This statement,
however, proves nothing except the theory of relativity in human
opinions. Asian parents in the United States rarely complain about
children's homework because it is a picnic compared to what we had to go
through in our younger days in our home country. But in Asian
countries, like any other, complaints abound. In China, I constantly
hear parents complain that their children cannot go to bed till 11 pm
because they have too many assignments.
Active involvement of
Chinese parents is at best a myth, and the myth is running wild in the
media. After discussions on the "Tiger Mom" (Yale Professor Amy Chua,
author of Battle Hymns of the Tiger Mom), the Chinese media recently
brought to light a certain "wolf dad", Hong Kong-based businessman Xiao
Baiyou, who used chicken feather dusters to spank three of his children
into Peking University, one of China's top institutions of higher
learning.
First tigers and now wolves, I suppose we'll get the
entire animal kingdom covered pretty soon. Such reports of Spartan
parenting instill fear among Western parents and complacency among their
Chinese counterparts, none of which is healthy or justifiable.
Generally speaking, Chinese parents lag far behind their American peers
in participating in the education of their children. In the Chinese
countryside, many parents leave home to earn a living as migrant
workers. Their children thus live with grandparents, who often have
little or no education. Pre-school is either unavailable or expensive.
Many such children, often called "left-behind children", grow up without
either proper parenting or school education.
Though children in
middle class families live with parents, real involvement is far from
desirable. Many Chinese families in towns and cities are dual-income
families, some by necessity, others by choice. Some American moms quit
their jobs after childbirth to take care of their children. Chinese moms
often quit their children to take care of their jobs. While parents are
busy with their jobs or careers, many children are brought up to a
large extent by grandparents, or "outsourced" to private tutors or even
nannies.
In either situation, a predominantly materialistic
worldview drives parents to spend their time and energy making money to
"guarantee" their children's future. Most spend money generously on
children's education, buying them good things and sending them to
private classes. Money can buy some relief from the guilt of staying on
the margins of their children's development, but children do not get
what they really need from parents: their time, for instance.
Friedman quotes a report by the Program for International Student
Assessment (PISA) that parent-child reading time correlates to student
achievement in PISA tests. When was the last time you saw a Chinese
parent returning with bags of entertainment reading from libraries or
bookstores as American parents do? How often does a Chinese parent
actually read a book together with his/her child?
Many parents
even forbid their children from reading "useless" books such as novels,
fairy tales or poems for fear that such reading will distract students
from preparing for exams.
The wrong focus on exams frees parents
from participating in their children's education. Apart from not
reading, parents don't work with children on school projects, because
much of homework is exam-related which children are supposed to work on
individually.
Parents' role is thus reduced to that of an alarm
clock - to prompt children to do this or that at certain hours of the
day. No wonder, nannies can do substitute parenting. Fortunately, even
an alarm clock has its virtues. Chinese parents do a fairly good job of
ensuring their children spend adequate time studying. Such increased
time on educational tasks partially explains why they excel in
international benchmarking tests. That being said, involvement can be
deeper and richer in a child's path of growth. Chinese parents should
spend more time with their children, rather than keeping time for them
like a clock. Parents should work with children as a developing person,
not just a test-taker. Parents ought to meet the kinetic, artistic,
mental, social, psychological and spiritual needs of their children.
Remember that children are human beings in stages of development. So
why not forget about tiger moms and wolf dads, and focus on being human
parents instead?
The author is a US-based instructional designer, literary translator and columnist writing on cross-cultural issues.
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