Here is my wikileaks from
QUOTE
I have come acrosss some ABC or heard about those people in my previous working life. Straight A student, played varsity tennis, Ivy League school..then worked for Morgan Stanley or a similar I-bank. 'Incredibly smart' for anyone who has met him/her. But is this for real? For one thing, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to work in an i-bank. Besides, if they are so smart, then why they got into such a mess anyway in 2008? Doing well in an exam. doesn't mean you are smart. It only means you have (A) good study habits (B)
discipline. That makes you employable provided you also have some (C) EQ. But that doesn't mean you are 'smart'. Yes, some geniuses shine from a small age, like Francis Crick (1962 Nobel for the double helix in genes) but Einstein was not particularly sharp when he was a kid. But to achieve great things as those luminaries had, you must have great curiosity about this world. Exams don't mean much. In the context of Hong Kong, to say that exams are useless is nonsense. It is a necessary evil. There must be some sort of tests to evaluate students. That is from someone who always thinks of himself as a maverick. In my ideal world, a mix of the Chinese and American system is the best for the most 'gifted' students. For those who are, admittedly, less brilliant, some sort of discipline is needed. But for the smartest, the key is to stimulate them. Once they are stimulated, they can do it on their own, cruising along, so to speak. They may not do as well as Amy's children in public exams, but they will come through.
>
> 寄件者: [redacted]
> 日期: 2011/01/14 星期五 下午 02:39:48 HKT
> 收件者: [redacted]
> [redacted]
> [redacted]
> 主旨: Invitation
>
> I'd like you to read the following article from The Diplomat magazine:
>
> http://the-diplomat.com/china-power/2011/01/03/the-trouble-with-parents/
>
>
> And to compare and contrast with this one [Thanks be to [redacted] for
> drawing my attention to it]:
>
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html
>
>
> And the following is very illuminating and related to Amy Chua's book above:
>
> http://shanghaiist.com/2011/01/10/tales_of_a_chinese_daughter_on_the.php
>
>
> Especially the following from Shanghaiist's blog post above:
>
> "My big sister was what I used to jealously call "every Asian parents
> wet dream come true" (excuse the crassness, but it really does sum up
> the resentment I used to feel towards her). She got straight As.
> Skipped 5th grade. Perfect SAT score. Varsity swim team. Student
> council. Advanced level piano. Harvard early admission. An
> international post with the Boston Consulting Group in Hong Kong
> before returning to the U.S. for her Harvard MBA. Six figure salary.
> Oracle. Peoplesoft. Got engaged to a PhD. Bought a home. Got married.
>
> Her life summed up in one paragraph above.
>
> Her death summed up in one paragraph below.
>
> Committed suicide a month after her wedding at the age of 30 after
> hiding her depression for 2 years. She ran a plastic tube from the
> tailpipe of her car into the window. Sat there and died of carbon
> monoxide poisoning in the garage of her new home in San Francisco. Her
> husband found her after coming home from work. A post-it note stuck on
> the dashboard as her suicide note saying sorry and that she loved
> everyone.
>
> Mine is an extreme example of course. But 6 years since her passing, I
> can tell you that the notion of the "superior Chinese mother" that my
> mom carried with her also died with my sister on October 28, 2004. If
> you were to ask my mom today if this style of parenting worked for
> her, she'll point to a few boxes of report cards, trophies, piano
> books, photo albums and Harvard degrees and gladly trade it all to
> have my sister back." -- [Source: Christine Lu, CEO of Affinity
> China]
>
>
> It's really really scary and every parent's nightmare.
>
>
> 2011/1/14 [redacted]
>
> D won't her spent her or [redacted] 'valuable time' with my friends, she
> will insist [redacted] to do the supplementary exercises for IGCSE O Level
> Science and Math
>
> [redacted]
>
UNQUOTE
New Year's Greetings, LCL. Hope you've been keeping well in the last while and had a great holiday.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing the above. That was such a sad, sad story about the daughter who killed herself despite living the proverbial charmed life according to Chinese standards.
I read that unbelievable Amy Chua article as well. I complete agree with whoever's the redacted person behind your first quoted passage above. I also seriously take issue with the idea that play is necessarily the opposite of learning. One can learn an awful lot through playing around, not just social skills, but also intellectual ability when one is allowed to mess around with things, and for Chua to say that kids are slacking off if they are allowed to play rather than take lessons, that is just so untrue as well as being so sad.
On a more mundane professional level though, gosh, I am soooo embarrassed by her, even though I'm not a mother per se. She is not only misrepresenting modern Chinese mothers (or only representing the most stereotypical of those), but she is also misrepresenting Chinese academics. That she is a professor from Yale yet wrote such a biased non-evidence-based sensationalist account appealing to the lowest common denominator only serves to undermine those of us with Chinese background who work in academia. (But also, I feel vindicated finally that I wasn't only imagining things when I blogged previously about online intellectual exchanges among Chinese/HKers where they took institutional repute as the be-all and end-all of intellectual argument. But then I digress...)
I am OKAY and I am actually looking forward to the Chinese New Year.
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you again. It's been quite some time.
I think Chua purposely did it in a tongue in cheek manner. I don't believe for a second she does what she does without any adjustments. This is more really for entertainment purpose than anything else.