"People should be allowed to make decisions for themselves, even if they are bad decisions" was the agree/disagree writing topic in the 8th-grade humanities class where I subbed yesterday. These students were studying forms of government and also reading Lois Lowry's The Giver, a dystopian novel which my daughters also were assigned to read in middle school. The book describes a healthy, peaceful, smooth-functioning society. The problem is that it's attained through strict rules about behavior and through the sacrifice of personal freedoms for the good of the community.
I scanned the essays that the students handed in. The most eloquent writer didn't mention forms of government at all, but instead focused on personal freedom, which is of great relevance to most 8th graders in the U.S. This student said that freedom to decide depended on the age of the person: teenagers basically aren't capable of making responsible decisions, so their parents need to make them. This is not a response that I'd expect from a typical American 14 year old. But the writer isn't American, she's from South Korea.
About the student body at this American international school: there are actually very few American kids at this school. 15 years ago there were, but at present, over half the student body is from South Korea. The next largest group is from Hong Kong. As I understand it, kids from the People's Republic of China are not allowed to attend an international school after they turn 7 or 8 years old; Chinese kids at the school have to have a passport issued outside the PRC, often Hong Kong. (Easy to see why the PRC doesn't want Chinese kids attending the school, just looking at a couple of the topics in this particular class this week: "How much should the government be able to control your individual rights for the benefit of society?" and "What makes an ideal society?")
The parents-should-decide student essay brought to mind a Wall Street Journal essay that Terry forwarded to me last week, "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior". It's excerpted from Amy Chua's newly-published book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Chua is a Chinese-American law professor at Yale, who seems to want to sell lots of her books, given the provocative nature and timing of her essay.
In this essay, Chua boldly uses cultural stereotypes. She describes her own strict "Chinese-style" parenting of her 2 daughters, now nearly grown-up: no TV or video games, no playdates or sleepovers; she demanded not just A's but top place in every academic subject, she chose all of their extracurricular activities, and she chose the piano and violin for them and closely supervised several hours of daily practice. She says that a skill or academic pursuit only becomes fun when you're really good at it, and the only way to become good is through endless practice and rote repetition. Kids don't naturally want to work hard, so it's a parent's job to make them.
Chua says American parents are far too concerned about their kids' self-esteem, whereas Chinese parents assume that they know what's best for their kids and that their kids are capable and resilient, so they can use words and methods to make them work hard that would strike many American parents as being abusive. Chinese parents are willing to sacrifice mightily to make their kids grow up to be successful, and kids then owe a debt of gratitude to their parents, paid back by showing lifelong obedience and respect.
Chua's essay has drawn lots of commentary, both affirmative and critical. (I just looked at today's Minneapolis Star Tribune online and noticed two op-ed pieces about it.) As for me, I think she leaves Western parents with some good food for thought. However, this matter of closely controlling others' behavior seems to conflict with my own northern European, Protestant heritage: independent-minded ancestors who left families and familiar ways behind in Sweden and Germany for new opportunities in the U.S. in the 19th century; independent-minded Protestants who didn't want to be told what to do by the Catholic hierarchy. I would not be comfortable parenting in the controlling way she describes. Although authoritarian parenting may be an appropriate way to prepare people to live in certain environments, I don't think that it would adequately prepare most children to live satisfying lives as productive, responsible citizens of the present-day U.S., where we live with freedoms and choices that are unimaginable in many parts of the world. How exactly does a person learn to make good decisions without practicing?
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