Amy Chua's Tiger Mother Parenting Curriculum

Amy Chua is a Yale Law professor and celebrated author of World on Fire and Day of Empire. More recently, Amy has written Battle Hym of the Tiger Mother, a look at her attempt to raise her American children by traditional Chinese methods.

Chua was raised by Chinese parents in the US -- her father Leon Chua is a UC Berkeley professor of Electrical Engineering and originator of many important concepts in non-linear electronics. Leon was raised in Manila, a member of an elite Chinese Filipino family. He rebelled against the traditional Chinese family business and tradition, in order to come to America and make his own way.

Amy Chua is married to a Jewish Yale Law professor -- not a traditional Chinese choice -- but appears intent on raising her daughters in the traditional Chinese manner. Here is a description of Chua's book:

All decent parents want to do what's best for their children. What Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother reveals is that the Chinese just have a totally different idea of how to do that. Western parents try to respect their children's individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions and providing a nurturing environment. The Chinese believe that the best way to protect your children is by preparing them for the future and arming them with skills, strong work habits, and inner confidence. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother chronicles Chua's iron-willed decision to raise her daughters, Sophia and Lulu, her way-the Chinese way-and the remarkable results her choice inspires.

Here are some things Amy Chua would never allow her daughters to do:

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• not be the #1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin

The truth is Lulu and Sophia would never have had time for a playdate. They were too busy practicing their instruments (two to three hours a day and double sessions on the weekend) and perfecting their Mandarin.

Of course no one is perfect, including Chua herself. Witness this scene:

"According to Sophia, here are three things I actually said to her at the piano as I supervised her practicing:

1. Oh my God, you're just getting worse and worse.

2. I'm going to count to three, then I want musicality.

3. If the next time's not PERFECT, I'm going to take all your stuffed animals and burn them!"

But Chua demands as much of herself as she does of her daughters. And in her sacrifices-the exacting attention spent studying her daughters' performances, the office hours lost shuttling the girls to lessons-the depth of her love for her children becomes clear. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is an eye-opening exploration of the differences in Eastern and Western parenting- and the lessons parents and children everywhere teach one another. _GoogleBooks

This brief description is likely to apply to many East Asian traditions of child-raising, not only the Phillipines Chinese branch as represented by the Chua family. As you can see, it is a highly disciplined approach, oriented toward extracting the maximum possible achievement out of the child, in the areas that are emphasised.

If you look at other alternative parenting methods or alternative educational curricula which achieve above-the-ordinary results, you will likely find a similar undercurrent of high expectation and a guiding away from popular methods of time-wasting and peer dysfunction that leads a lot of affluent children into a rudderless adolescence and adulthood.

Amy Chua directed her children toward music -- specifically piano and violin. Does anyone doubt that Chua's daughters are likely to be highly proficient in these instruments, and probably other areas of interest? World-class mastery is another matter, and for that the child herself would need to have the fire inside her. But proficiency is very likely in the context of the Chua household as described.

Who would deserve the credit for high achievement by the girls? Chua's disciplined approach? Chinese tradition? The genetic giftedness bestowed on daughters of a Chinese law professor mother and a Jewish law professor father? Inherited drive and executive function?

Wait and see how things turn out first. Parenthetically, I wonder how often it happens that high-achieving East Asians marry and have children with high-achieving Jewish partners? This natural experimental joining of the genes of the two highest IQ test-scoring demographic populations known should provide researchers in the field of human intelligence with some genetic fodder, as gene sequencing and bioinformatics becomes cheaper and more sophisticated. Certainly the gene alleles which combined to give Ashkenazi Jews an average IQ of 110-115 are not likely to be the same exact gene variants which combined to give East Asians average IQs of 105-110. What will the combination yield?

Certainly Amy Chua herself, in World on Fire -- which looked at market dominant minorities around the world -- studiously avoided any discussion of differences in IQ between population groups. And yet, when choosing a mate for herself, there is no question that she took that quality into consideration. Still, for a good Chinese girl to marry outside the Han group suggests a bit of rebelliousness, which is a good sign in an intelligent, accomplished adult.

Children crave guidance, which is all too often denied them by parents whose time demands may stretch them to the breaking point. Child-raising trends in general are not encouraging, but there are rare foci of rationality, which may provide something of a nucleus for re-building afterward.

More about Amy Chua's background from Day of Empire's preface:

We were required to speak Chinese at home—the punishment was one whack of the chopsticks for every English word accidentally ut­tered. We drilled math and piano every afternoon, and we were never allowed to sleep over at our friends' houses. Every evening when my father came home from work, I took off his shoes and brought him his slippers. Our report cards had to be perfect; while our friends were rewarded for Bs, for us getting an A-minus was unthinkable.