Bronnie @maidinaustralia is a former journalist and a twitter friend of mine who says on her blog that she loves animals, hates housework, and makes a mean lasagne. I’m honoured to receive Bronnie’s first ever guest post anywhere, and more excited because it’s a solid follow up to my Tiger Mother post Why Chinese Mothers Have to Feel Superior. Bronnie posted No Chopsticks Required as an introduction to her guest post and to set the modern historical context which surrounded the author. Mighty fine work, Bronnie. Please help me welcome Bronwyn Marquardt warmly to SuperParents.
Tiger Mummies by Bronwyn Marquardt
Up shot her eyebrows. I knew what was coming next. I’d already been to four different kindergartens and had received a similar reaction each time.
‘We haven’t actually been asked that before,’ the principal said.
‘What you want is quite unusual and no, we don’t do that at all.
Three year olds in China go to kindergarten the whole week and the whole day’.
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| Katrina Beikoff |
Katrina, an award-winning journalist, and her partner Gary Smart, moved their young family to China after accepting temporary contracts to work at The Shanghai Daily.
As Katrina struggles to cope with natural disasters, smog, uprisings, and the battle to find ‘real’ bread, milk and eggs, No Chopsticks Required also tackles the controversial subject of the Chinese education system.
Largely driven by social and cultural expectations and enforced by so-called ‘Tiger Mummies’, the Chinese method of child-rearing is making waves, due to Yale Law School professor Amy Chua’s book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and the WSJ’s online article ‘Why Chinese Mothers are Superior.’.
For Katrina, the issue was all too real as she tried to find a part-time kindy for her daughter Milly, then three.
Every kindy she approached rigidly operated between 9am and 4pm, five days a week – longer than school hours in Australia!
The idea of three days a week, or going home with Mum at lunchtime, was, pardon the pun, foreign to principals who frowned at the idea that Milly would miss out on lessons.
In China, kindy is a world where desperate Mums compile baby CVs for their tots, detailing academic and extra-curricular activities, language skills (both Chinese and English), and including examples of their writing and art.
Apparently, the pressure to get children into the right kindy impacts on their chances of getting into a good primary school, and therefore their entire academic careers.
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| No Chopticks Required shows "mixed thoughts about the whole 'tiger mummy' phenomenon" |
Eventually, a principal was willing to bend the rules to allow Milly to attend three half-days a week until she got settled. There, Milly learned English, Mandarin, maths, computing and more.
While Amy Chua writes passionately and quite convincingly on the benefits of early education and tough love, as an expat living in China Katrina was uniquely placed to experience the realities of such a system.
She talks of friends whose kids attended school from 8 pm to 5 pm, and then hit the books again after dinner until 10 pm. Weekends were taken up with extra lessons.
While many parents were worried for their kids, they felt if they didn’t keep up with the work, other children would, and their own would be left behind.
While Amy Chua extols the virtues of maths whizzes and music protégés, Katrina talks of a country where kids suffer anxiety, sleep-deprivation, and take their own lives rather than go home with bad grades or face being held back due to poor academic work.
“From what I saw, I was extremely thankful that my kids were not going to be battling their entire schooling career to stand out in the Chinese education system,” she says.
“But I also think it would be hard not to have been caught up in the competitiveness had we stayed in China, given the cost of private schools for expat kids and the inevitable comparisons of results to those being achieved by Chinese students.”
Now back at her Gold Coast home, Katrina has mixed thoughts about the whole ‘tiger mummy’ phenomenon, but agrees that Amy Chua’s attitude is spot on regarding the dominant thinking about raising kids in China.
“We were the odds ones out,” she admits. “I didn’t ascribe to this kind of thinking. I felt I had pretty strong views on what I wanted for my kids – primarily for them to be relaxed and happy – but it’s funny how influenced you are by the culture/society in which you are living.
“I soon found myself thinking that perhaps the Chinese had it right and that my kids would forever be left struggling and get left behind because of their late start (at ages 3 and 1) into strict and formal education.
“I realised my views had been shaped by my Australian ideas and experiences, but we weren’t in Australia any more. Because it was different in China, it didn’t necessarily mean it was wrong.”
While Katrina didn’t wholly embrace the Chinese way, she and her partner did put the children into more academic and organised pursuits than they would have at home. There were music and singing lessons for Nelson, ballet for Milly, and art classes for both. Katrina points out the classes were much stricter and organised than similar programs in Australia.
“What I actually find outstanding about the Amy Chua tale is that she doesn’t live in China,” Katrina says.
“So rather than being strongly influenced by the society in which she has raised her kids, as I was, she’s stuck to her guns and done things her way. I like to think I found a happy middle ground.”
And despite her initial shock at the high expectations of academic achievement by babies and kids in China, Katrina admits her children have benefitted from the experience. Her daughter Milly even qualified as an early entrant into the Queensland education system because of her Chinese experience.
“One of the things that has happened as a result of the Chinese experience, is that I’ve come back to Australia with a view that the kids can probably cope with more than I thought,” Katrina says.
“They now do lessons in swimming, gymnastics, dancing, nippers and Chinese language; and we’re deciding whether we can fit in soccer because they’re both in school now and will need to do homework.
“Before China, I would have deemed this schedule too much extra-curricular organised activity. So I’ve gone a bit Chinese about doing activities well and practising, but am very mindful – and Australian – that there is a point where it becomes too much.
“Sometimes kids need to do nothing or to be able to make up their own games or play for hours with a stick, or dig for crabs at the beach, just because they feel like it.”
And it seems there is no time for that for the children of China.
Links
- The Best in the World Does Not Cater Children's Meals
- The Problem with France
- Do Parents Need to be Cruel to be Kind?
- Testing is Just a Learning Opportunity
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