Measured Success

Recently, among my circle of friends and family, I found this little article circulating.  Today, a friend of mine (one who had linked to the article in her GChat status), linked to this response.  I suppose this is my take on it, though I don't know that I can fully put myself in that situation, as I can never be a Chinese mother, though I do have one myself.  I'm not going to go on and say who is right and who isn't, not going to go into the psychology of child-rearing, and I'm not going to tell anyone how to raise his/her children.  I'm not a parent myself, and perhaps I didn't have the most typical of Chinese parents, or at least according to Amy Chua, I didn't.  However, I just find it very interesting the scope of the article and all that.

I just noted that in the headline of the article it reads:

Can a regimen of no playdates, no TV, no computer games and hours of music practice create happy kids?

And then the first line of the article suddenly jumps into:

A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too.

Hm... I don't know, there seems to be something of a dichotomy here.  At least to me there is.  What is this dichotomy?  First, happiness and success.  Are they one and the same?  The second, math whizzes, music prodigies and success.  Same question.  Okay, so maybe dichotomy is a strong word, but I do find the immediate juxtaposition that Ms. Chua strings together within her article somewhat... well... hard to swallow.  Of course, who am I to say anything?  Relatively speaking, I'm hardly a typical "Chinese success story".  I didn't get straight As in school, I didn't go to an Ivy League university for undergraduate, I didn't go to a "West Coast Ivy" like Stanford or Cal Tech, I didn't even go to a top 5 state university in the nation.  Sure I played piano when I was younger, classically, my teacher lamented at my practice habits and called me her student with the most "unrealized potential", which essentially is an offhanded way of saying I could've been good if I tried or worked harder, so no, I never played in Carnegie Hall, or performed with some orchestra on tour.  Biggest thing I've done is play in a couple of local competition recitals, a couple of local piano teacher showcase recitals, a master class, and a personal recital when I graduated from high school, oh, and I got paid once to play for a Unitarian church service.  Now, I have a job, maybe I'll stay at it, maybe I won't.  For one, I'm not a doctor, nor a lawyer, nor an engineer.  By my schooling, I'm supposed to be an accountant (which I'm not right now vocationally), and I'm not even too sure I want to be that either.  Does this mean I have failed to succeed?  In other words, does this mean I'm a failure?

I have a job (in this economy), I feel I'm living a well adjusted life, full of loving friends and family, and I'm happy with where I am, I'm content.  Now, am I successful?  Hard to say.  It sort of begs the question: what is success?  Is it based on what I have?  If that's the case, then I'd say I'm moderately successful.  I mean, I have nice apartment, a car, a job, a computer, some decent pieces of musical equipment, a my fair share of toys and gadgets, a bachelor's and a master's, then again, I also have debt from school.  On that same note, there are a lot of things I don't have, a girlfriend, a house, lots of money, etc...  Still, then, the question of success eludes me.  I can only suggest that I am not unsuccessful.  This inclines me towards the notion that success then, is a subjective and relative term.  To me, success is measured by an end goal, therefore, the phrase "successful person" doesn't really hold much water.  Think about it, realistically, what is the end goal of a person?  I can say an experiment was either a success or failure by its results.  I can say that a basketball coach is successful or not by how his/her team plays, by the team's record, are they winning more games?  Are the players getting better?  Yet what is that measure in a person?  Wealth?  Acclaim?  Character?  I posit, that at best, we can simply point out those that are "not unsuccessful".  While the question is the same, the nature of what we measure is different with happiness.

I'm not here to say that it's bad to have/be a math whiz or musical prodigy, but I think everything needs to be put in an appropriate context, and ultimately that is the context of life.  Chinese parents will spend tens of thousands of dollars (I'm not kidding) and hours for the musical and academic enrichment of their children, and for what purpose?  As an aficionado of music, I'd be the first to tell you that I think children should all be given the opportunity to appreciate and make music, yet Ms. Hsu, in her response brings up the very legitimate point that Chinese (Asian) parents will often be displeased if music were to inspire their children to become a professional musician (or, as an ongoing joke, any profession not inclusive of doctors, lawyers, or engineers).  Contextually then, what is the purpose of learning a musical instrument?  Generally in the case of Chinese children, piano and/or violin.  While perhaps that is asking a lot of a child, I don't know that I would condone asking one to do something he/she cannot answer why he/she is doing it (even if the answer is as simple as, "I like it").  One thing I've noted about Chinese culture, is that it's all about appearances, but to me, it frankly is a horrible reason to do something because every other Asian child is doing it or so that you can brag to your friends about your child.  I'm sorry, but being able to play Rachmaninoff's Variations on Paganini at age 8 is hardly indicative to me of "good parenting", and yes, when you tell your friend how much your son/daughter studies/practices you're really saying, "Look at how well I discipline my children."  While I don't doubt that every single Chinese parent has a picture of who/what he/she would want his/her child to become, there remains an issue; is the child on board?  My personal experience, as well as my observations fellow 2nd generation Chinese children around me, has shown that generally, Chinese parenting is very short sighted.  Ms. Hsu points out a lack of drive in Chinese children growing up, and I attribute that to above-mentioned short-sightedness.  It's hard to get anyone really motivated about something if the driving reason behind doing it is being told by someone else to do it.  You ask the question "Why?" enough times and you'll quickly realize that a lot of things these kids do simply because their parents have programmed them to be like that.  Why get good grades?  To go to a good college.  Why go to a good college?  To get a good job.  Why get a good job?  To make money to support a family.  While none of these things are undesirable, I certainly don't see those as the purpose of existence.

Ms. Chua is to be commended for her perseverance in pushing her children to achieve, but again, we have to ask the question "to what end?"  Certainly I believe in a degree of regimen growing up teaches us responsibility, but to essentially obliterate any "frivolous" childhood activity?  Perhaps, I'll be accused of becoming "too American" but that hardly seems healthy.  The Atkins diet is good, but that doesn't mean that's all you do for the rest of your life.  We are to enjoy in the people, the places, and the things that God has placed around us, so living a life where what you "like" is irrelevant and "having a good time" is wasteful hardly seems like something God would want for us.  In the case of music, the children are often asked to "grow out of" whatever they spent all that time, sweat, and dollars getting this stuff hammered into them.  Isn't that frivolous?  Certainly there is something other than music that can teach discipline.  So, that begs the question, why have them learn music in the first place?  The grand scheme of things, ultimately, I believe is for your children to grow up into productive, well-adjusted adults.  How do painful hours of sitting in front of a piano either practicing, performing, or in lessons help?  I'm not ungrateful my mom had me learn piano, and sometimes I do wish she pushed me harder, on that same note though, it's because in retrospect, there are a lot of things I would enjoy doing now had I been a better pianist as a child, in other words, I'm still playing piano.  My father once told me after I graduated, "Now you can play well enough to play for praise in church, to me, that means the piano lessons were worth it."  Context.  Not that playing for church was the goal of my piano lessons, but, there needs to be something beyond that last recital if your child isn't going to become the next Lang Lang, even if it is the simple appreciation of music.  I'm not accusing Ms. Chua of ruining her children's childhoods, no, it sounds like her husband does take them out to fun stuff, movies, baseball games, etc...  Nonetheless, this no-nonsense style of raising her children is exactly that, a style, there's no basis for her to posit that hers is better than others, to do so is simply arrogance. 

I suppose what makes this article somewhat intriguing, is this concept of superiority, that one is better than the other.  Certainly, Ms. Chua brings up very good points in not allowing her children to give up, and I applaud her for her tenacity and her dedication, however, under what presumed authority can she say that what she is doing is "better" than the next parent who is perhaps by her standards more "lenient" on his/her child?  I would posit the following broad generality based on the sort of broad sweeping generality that Ms. Chua has illustrated in her article: while Chinese parents may know (or at least think they know) what is best for their children, they don't know their children all that well.  In her article, Ms. Chua all but writes off the concept of self-esteem, and sure, she's entitled to her opinions and her thoughts, and thus, she's very hard on her children when it comes to results.  I posit this though, and perhaps Ms. Chua is different, but most Chinese parents aren't aware of how hard their children are on themselves.  Going back to the music example, since that is one of the more understandable examples, "you played it wrong" is probably the most useless piece of feedback anyone can give/get.  While the parent has spent the money sending the child to music lessons, the child is the one who has spent the time and effort studying the music, so therefore, the child probably knows more about music, or at the very least more about whatever piece he/she is practicing than the parent does, and generally will know if/when it is played incorrectly.  It's kind of like telling someone who's parking he/she is close to the curb AFTER the car has run up on the sidewalk.  While it's nice of Ms. Chua to think that there are no natural limitations in regards to what her children can do (at least musically and academically), can she affirm that the way she does things works for both of her children exactly the same way?  No.  While the intention may be good, a lot of times the comparison of one child to another comes across to the "lesser" child as simply, "Why are you so dumb?" or "What's wrong with you?" rather than "You can do it too".  Calling your child "garbage" can be a learning implement, but as with all implements it must be properly used to be effective. 

The more I think about how I want to proceed with this, the more I realize how this can exponentially bubble into any number of long-debated topics, from positive versus negative reinforcement to nature versus nurture.  Now, I'm no psychologist, so I'm not going to get into all of this, so I suppose I've touched upon everything that really kind of irked me about this article.  Maybe a Chinese kid can score higher on a math test or play some remarkably difficult piece at a younger age, but is that really all there is to it?  If it is, then life is dumb.  I'm all for giving children opportunities, but they have lives too, at some point in time, they need to live it.