The whole thing is actually written in a Charlie Chan accent…
Okay, this is not cool:
Like most Asian immigrants, the parents of sibling authors Dr. Soo Kim Abboud and Jane Kim (a doctor and a lawyer), came to America with only two hundred dollars in their pockets. They didn’t arrive with a lot of money, but what these parents carried with them was far more powerful than money when it came to raising successful children. They carried an extremely strong value system and well-thought parenting techniques. OK, so maybe in this drama obsessed culture of ours, the rags to riches tale is a bit stale, and nobody enjoys being told how to raise their children. Here’s what we think about that. Get Over It!
As television commercials tell us that it’s valid to avoid reading to your child by tricking him with cool DVR features, and as food companies push microwavable dinners because parents just don’t have time to cook for their children, it is wonderfully refreshing to read that some parents still ask and answer issues such as, “How family wealth can sometimes hurt a child’s education instead of helping,” and “How to instill a love for learning.” Notice the “love for learning.” Doesn’t it seem like most Americans are taught to view learning and education as a chore, or simply a responsibility. These two issues, among many more, are why Asians and Asian-Americans make up only 4% of the U.S. population, but 20% of the Ivy League, not to mention 42% of Berkeley and 24% of Stanford.
Wow. Just wow. Way to mobilize the “model minority” ethnic stereotype to make a buck. Soo, Jane: you are horrible people.
Now, I spent some time at Berkeley, and I noticed the predominance of Asian students there (really 42.8%, but who’s counting?). I also noticed the fact that some of my friends were being run ragged by their parents, and shuffled off into “useful” fields of study which would make them “successful.” They hated their time at Berkeley, and they were driven more by a fear of failure than by anything resembling “a love for learning.” This was a laid-back crowd, too; you haven’t seen the depths this can hit until you’ve seen some poor kid hyperventilating over an intro English paper because all they can see is their admittance to an Ivy League grad school sliding down the drain. Flop sweat is not an indicator of “a love for learning.” It’s an indicator of family dysfunction.
When all you see of your child is his or her income in five years, you are a bad parent. Full stop.
I want my children to do what they want, not what I want. I don’t want to try to drill my idea of success, based on my personal failings, into my children’s heads, and make my love for them conditional on their authority-validated achievements. I want them to be good people, and I think they have to figure out for themselves what that means.
Repeat after me: your children are people in their own right. They will bury you and everyone you know. You have one chance to make sure they bury you out of love, not out of a sense of duty.
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