Hybrid tiger's lesson for tiger mom

Unfortunately, while discussing Chinese-Americans in Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and The Triple Package, Chua ignores the unavoidable, formative education that all Chinese-Americans receive from American schooling, American peers and American society as a whole.

In the US, traditional Chinese education has been infiltrated and remolded by various American cultural and educational influences, and because of this, Chinese-American parenting and education have proven better than either style alone.

A core tenet of Chinese-American family education/parenting is the "supremacy of education". In contrast, the central teaching of American school education and/or American social education is the cultivation of creativity, independent thinking and self-esteem.

What are the results of this hybrid model? It has the potential to be massively effective. To achieve more consistent academic success at primary and secondary grade levels, Americans should adopt some of the virtues inherent in Chinese culture. For instance, there is much that Americans can learn from Chinese discipline. And the Chinese have much to learn from American culture that teaches creativity and independent thinking.

While I have a separate disagreement with Chua's characterization of what constitutes traditional Chinese family education, the primary point I want to make is that we cannot ignore the "-American" in "Chinese-American". Doing so threatens to undervalue the indescribable importance of distinctly American education.

If Americans and Chinese are truly interested in adopting the best education practices, fixing their troubled systems, producing more Nobel Prize winners and scientific leaders, and fostering the best possible results for their children, they must look seriously at the vivid example of Chinese-American parenting and education already thriving within the US.

It is the confluence of the best parts of Chinese and American educational influences - the "hybrid tiger" - that has the potential to produce something truly unique. The Triple Package tells only a fragment of the real, complex story that is unfolding before us.

The author is director of Asian/Asian American Studies Program, Miami University.

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(China Daily 05/09/2014 page9)