'Tiger Mom' comes to China

'Tiger Mom' comes to China

By Adrienne Mong

BEIJING—The school term may be

coming to a close for summer, but education remains a hot topic.

At least that’s the way the China Timessees it.

The Taiwan-based newspaper invited Amy Chua, author of the controversialBattle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, to Beijing for several public speaking engagements earlier this week.

“She uses the Chinese way to educate her kids, and it’s very successful,” said Shao Jian Biao, the deputy editor in chief atChina Times. “But parents here in China have been trying the western way, because they thought it was better. A lot of parents are confused.”

East or West?
Monday morning saw a small group of Chinese reporters—all of them female—turn up a hotel business center, eager to get Chua to expound on her views on raising children.

“I’m a mother, and I read her book very carefully,” said Shen Feng Li, Vice Director of Shanghai Morning Post. “In China, we pay a lot of attention to education.”

At a corporate gathering in another hotel, the audience was again largely female. “I have a little boy, and I read her book. I agreed with it,” said a stylishly-dressed executive who did not want to give her name.

For any parent who might have been living under a rock this year, Chua’s book was excerpted in theWall Street Journal in January with a headline that served as a wake-up call (of sorts) to Americans already anxious about a rising China: “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.”

As it turned out, her book isn’t really about how the Chinese make better parents. It’s a much more personal account of the challenges facing a mother wanting to the very best for her children.

“I actually wrote this book in a moment of crisis, when my younger daughter, Lulu, turned 13, became a teenager, and rebelled against my very strict parenting,” Chua explained.

In fact, Chua took great pains to set the record straight.

Boys may benefit from aggressive play

Bring it: Boys may benefit from aggressive play - Health - Kids and parenting - msnbc.com

"In her 30 years as a kindergarten teacher in Illinois and Massachusetts, Jane Katch has watched graham crackers, a pretzel, celery, tree bark and fingers all become transformed into imaginary guns and other weapons. And she has learned to work with, rather than against, the violent boyhood fantasies that accompany these transformations.

'When you try to ignore it, it doesn't go away. And when you try to oppress it, it comes out in sneaky ways,' Katch said.

Not every teacher agrees. Schools have become battlegrounds between the adults who are repelled by the play violence they see and the children — primarily boys — who are obsessed with pretending to fight, capture, rescue and kill.

While some educators prohibit this behavior, other educators and researchers claim that banishing violent play from classrooms can be harmful to boys. It's a debate entangled in gender issues, since nearly all early-childhood educators are women, and they may be less comfortable than their male counterparts with boys' impulses.

While this behavior has been around far longer than toy guns and superhero movies — boys appear to be hard-wired for more active and aggressive pursuits than girls — many adults see this aggressive play being fueled by the violence portrayed or reported in the media.

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Cursive writing is fading skill, but so what?

By msnbc.com (CLICK to read more)

"Charleston resident Kelli Davis was in for a surprise when her daughter brought home some routine paperwork at the start of school this fall. Davis signed the form and then handed it to her daughter for the eighth-grader's signature.

'I just assumed she knew how to do it, but I have a piece of paper with her signature on it and it looks like a little kid's signature,' Davis said.

Her daughter was apologetic, but explained that she hadn't been required to make the graceful loops and joined letters of cursive writing in years. That prompted a call to the school and another surprise."