Chinese Mothers and discipline in the classroom
When I was in Denver, a couple of weeks, I had breakfast on Saturday with Wall Street journal that put me in the door of the room. For a second I thought it was a gift from Jesus, who was there. The best item in the section of society was called why Chinese mothers are higher? The author, Amy Chua, a professor of law at Yale University, and in a few paragraphs summarizing the main points of a recently published book ( Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother ). In essence is that academic success of Chinese children is not much mystery. These children work and they do, largely because their parents are determined to do so.
In case you are like me and do not read newspapers much, unless you meet them by chance at the door of your hotel, or someone to give him, I'll translate some parts of the article.
"In a study with 50 American mothers of Western origin and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, nearly 70% of mothers said that Western 'emphasis on academic success is bad for children' or that "parents have to instill the idea that learning is fun." In contrast approximately 0% of Chinese mothers felt that. Instead, the vast majority of Chinese mothers said they believed their children could be 'best' students, that 'academic achievements reflect a successful parenting "and that if children were not succeeding in school was' a problem 'and parents' were not doing their job. " Other studies indicate that compared with Western parents, Chinese parents spend about 10 times more time working on academics with their children. "
The principle the following paragraph is also interesting. "What the Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. And to be good you have to work, and the guys never want their own work, and it is therefore crucial to go beyond their preferences. "
Chua says there are three major differences between western and eastern parents," the Western parents are worried about the psyche of their children. Chinese parents are not. They represent strength, not weakness, and as a result behave very differently ... Chinese parents require perfect scores because they believe their children can have them. If your child does not, Chinese parents assume it is because the child did not work hard enough. "
" Secondly, Chinese parents believe their children will be everything. The reason for this is a bit confusing, but it's probably a combination of Confucian filial piety and the fact that parents have sacrificed and done so much for their children. ... Anyway, the understanding is that Chinese children should spend their lives paying its obeying parents and making them proud. "
" Thirdly, Chinese parents believe they know what is best for their children and so they can go over your wishes and preferences. Chinese child ... no one would ever to tell his mother, 'I have a role in the school play, I'm Villager Number Six and I have to stay after school to rehearse every day from 16:00 to 19: 00, and also have to take by car on weekends. " God help any Chinese child to try something. "
Fortunately, this not only happens in China or Japan. Here parents and children are also exemplary. Let me tell you a story told to me by a friend from high school. My friend was a good player, good enough to participate in youth championships in Spain. Those championships were won by Emilio Sanchez Vicario. In my friend, Emilio was not obviously better than most of them. What made him special is that it was on the track at 8 in the morning practice and spent twice as much time there others that did not go out at night, not drinking and had a very strict diet. In other words, it was by far the most disciplined of all the young athletes of the merger. The rest is, as they say, history.
I want to stay in the anecdotes. Let me get back to the last week we gave away Florentino Felgueroso, Luis Garicano and Sergi Jiménez. The most significant that entry for me was the figure 3, I go back to play here.
Chart is a very important difference between Spain and other countries is the proportion of children who are disturbed in their learning and discipline problems. Someone tell me that because Spain has a very similar average PISA to other countries, this factor can not explain what happens here. I thoroughly disagree. I think my colleagues may have found a key to our unique problem, the lack of excellence.
In other countries there are also very problematic schools. Surely the older remember Sir, with Love and almost all will seen a movie in which a heroic and idealistic teacher is able to change the lives of students in the ghetto at the beginning of the movie were at least school objectors often juveniles. What they discover the statistics to analyze my colleagues is that in Spain the misconduct is more widespread. My daughter attends a school that is in the top 5% of community colleges in Madrid for his note on standardized tests. And despite the efforts of management and discipline of teachers, the class is often interrupted by the uncivil behavior of other peers, they treat teachers with the same lack of respect, I suspect, with the their parents to stop treating them. This does not happen in many other countries. The best schools have fewer behavior problems in the classroom (and in some countries, almost all, look if not the surprise with which journalists describe what happens in a classroom Finnish). In college
also suffer the problem. My foreign colleagues, both in Barcelona than in Madrid, was surprised at the bad behavior of our university. A typical quote: "There was a guy who never stopped talking. I stopped the class, I began to look at it and kept talking. In Germany this would not have happened. " And this is because the worst performing students, who make the average of other countries is so different from ours, do not go to university.
In summary, I believe that the West has a serious problem of permissiveness with children and adolescents, and that Spain is a particularly serious problem. The Community of Madrid has launched a campaign calling for respect for teachers, and has provided some additional legal means to improve discipline in the classroom. I would like him to go considerably further, as I stated once: to a penalty points school. The parent whose children do not behave you are removing points and, ultimately, school subsidies (via a fine or tax increases). The economic logic of this measure is overwhelming: the child creates an externality, and legal responsibility should take care of it. The polluter must pay.
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Carl Edward Sagan (Brooklyn, USA, November 9, 1934 - Seattle, USA, December 20, 1996) was an astronomer and popular science writer from the United States, a pioneer in the fields of exobiology and promoter of the SETI project ( Search