Beyond the tiger mom : East-West parenting for the global age

211 Pages·2016·2.51 MB·English

by  Foelker

BEYOND
THE
TIGER
MOM
BEYOND
THE
TIGER
MOM
East-West Parenting
for the Global Age
Maya Thiagarajan
TUTTLE Publishing
Tokyo | Rutland, Vermont | Singapore
ABOUT TUTTLE
“Books to Span the East and West”
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has become a smaller place today and Asia’s economic, cultural and political influence has
expanded, yet the need for meaningful dialogue and information about this diverse region has
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For Rishi and Lekha
Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.
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Copyright © 2015 Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data in process.
ISBN 978-0-8048-4602-8; ISBN 978-1-4629-1841-6 (ebook)
19 18 17 16 15 5 4 3 2 1 1511CM
Printed in China
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION HOMECOMING
PART 1 ACADEMICS
Raising Strong Mathematicians, Passionate Readers,
and Knowledgeable Thinkers
CHAPTER 1: Why Are All the Asian Kids on the Math Team?
“And what do you do for math?”
Why do Asian kids excel at math?
What Asian moms say about math
Math in the twenty-first century
Building mathematical homes
Is early math important?
Teaching visual-spatial skills
Scripting math education
TIPS: How to build a math-rich home
CHAPTER 2: Raising Readers: Is West Really Best?
Let’s start with A-B-C
The reading wars
Vocabulary acquisition
Reading with my son
Reading in Asia
Exploring the roots of the reading issue
Reading magic
TIPS: How to build a language-rich home
CHAPTER 3: Memorization, Practice, Exams, and Other Things That Asians
Love
A history of memorization in education
From the oral tradition to print to a digital world
Memorization
Exam systems
TIPS: How to help your child memorize information
TIPS: How to encourage critical thinking skills
PART 2 ACHIEVING BALANCE
Making Time for Work and Time for Play,
and Supporting and Motivating Our Children
CHAPTER 4: Where Are All the Children?
Night-owl schedules
The tuition treadmill
Do students really need tuition?
Western trends in education
Why do schools and governments dislike tuitions?
What Asian mothers say about play
Finding a balance
The benefits of unstructured time
TIPS: How to supplement your child’s education
CHAPTER 5: Raising Resilient Children: How Do We Deal with Failure?
Sugary candy or healthy (sometimes bitter) vegetables?
“And what do you do when your child does badly on a test?”
What the kids say
Conflicted, stressed, and seeking balance
Failure and fear in the twenty-first century
Fixed mindsets versus growth mindsets
American parents and the rhetoric of victimization
Self-esteem and happiness
Paying the ultimate price
Achieving balance
TIPS: How to help your child develop a growth mindset
TIPS: How to know your child
PART 3 MYTH, MEDIA, AND METAPHOR
The Stories We Tell and the Language We Use
CHAPTER 6: Myth and Media: The Stories We Tell and the Scripts They Give
Us
A Bollywood moment
Auntie–uncle cultures in Asia
Roots and seatbelts
The parent-child relationship
The stories we tell and the scripts they give us
Secure families versus intellectual freedom
Twenty-first-century Asian families
Questions for twenty-first-century global parents
TIPS: How to create a supportive community for your children
TOP PICKS: Foundational stories from East and West
CHAPTER 7: Twenty-First-Century Challenges for East and West: The
Metaphors We Make, the Technology We Use, and the Purpose of
Education
Shared challenges in a globalized world
Leaving the Garden of Eden
Ready, set, go
Corporate metaphors and the purpose of education
Finding an alternative purpose
Do our metaphors matter?
How is technology changing our metaphors?
Educational metaphors
A culture of reverence, a culture of skepticism, and shared challenges
CONCLUSION LOOKING BACK AND LOOKING FORWARD
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND THANKS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INTRODUCTION
Homecoming
I
n early 2010, my husband, children, and I packed up all our stuff,
waved goodbye to our cramped apartment in Manhattan, and flew
across the world to Singapore. This wasn’t my first cross-continental
move: I was born and raised in India, but as a teenager, I moved to the
US for college, and then stayed on there for graduate school and work.
After fifteen years in the US, I found myself hungering for “home.” I
was yearning for tropical sun and heat, for the sounds of Tamil and
Hindi, for idli-dosa breakfasts, and for the color and chaos of India.
Since home—India—wasn’t really an option for my husband in terms
of his career, we settled on Singapore, a tropical island and a global
city that’s just a short flight from India. Sight unseen, my husband and
I, along with our two young children, arrived in Singapore right before
Chinese New Year. Amidst deafening drum-beats and colorful red and
yellow lion dances, we ushered in the Year of the Tiger and began a
new phase in our lives.
As an Indian in Singapore, I felt at home. It was as comfortable as a
soft couch, and like the smell of jasmine flowers and garam masala,
everything on the island felt familiar. Besides having the tropical heat
and color in common, Singaporean and Indian cultures, too, are very
much alike. Family and filial piety are of supreme importance; kids are
expected to obey and respect their elders; every older person is an
“auntie” or an “uncle”; and exams dominate the lives of young children
and their families.
Six months after I arrived in Singapore, I began teaching high-
school English at an elite international school on the island. My
students came from a wide range of backgrounds: a third of them were
East Asian, another third were South Asian (mostly Indian), and the
rest were Western (European, Australian, and American). At my first