Tyranny of parents' great expectations

There is a very powerful text by author Walter Benjamin, written when he was a young university student, in which he indicts the belief of 'elderly wisdom', a belief that is particularly dominant in Chinese culture.

This belief presupposes that wisdom, as a reservoir of experiential knowledge, is directly proportional to one's age - the older one is, the wiser. Wisdom, it proposes, is accumulated over time, so age is determinative of its depth. Hence the endless maxims parents tell their children, such as "I don't want you to repeat my mistakes" and "I've eaten more salt than you've eaten rice". There is an entire constellation of such declarations, each of which reinforces the hierarchical divisions between the old and young, mother and child, teacher and student.

Last year, The South China Morning Post in Hong Kong ran a brief interview with students on a mainland university campus about their opinions on social issues. The responses were cursory, but revealing, as the common denominator was: examinations are more frequent now; the competition for grades is more intense, how can we find the time to discuss social issues?

Tiger mother Amy Chua, who set off a global discourse on Chinese parenting when she publicized the strict way in which she brought up her children, would no doubt ask the same question.

It is a question that encapsulates our predicament. It points to the fact that choosing to be socially conscious and committed requires the luxury of time, which means not devoting every waking hour trying to get ahead, as to take one's time means falling behind in the rat race.

In today's society this amounts to nothing less than a forced choice and the domination of the reality principle - 'that's life'. For while abstract concepts such as equality, justice and happiness are desirable there are now greater tangible incentives to forcing one's way through the crowd on the treadmill.

Schools and families, for that matter - have thus become a rite of passage, an apprenticeship that instructs children in the application of techniques and skills that initiate them into the cabals of the professional world. To enter a university these days is to submit to a mandate, one that requires students to live in fidelity to a choice. This choice is crucial because it marks a point of no return. It is the acceptance of the need to work. What is a diploma, if not the passport to a career? But every university graduate has this verification of his fitness for work, so no time can be lost in trying to stay ahead of the competition.

My difficulty with the Tiger Mother recipe for bringing up children is that it eliminates and denies alternatives and options. As early as primary school, a Chinese child is expected to aspire to a profession that offers good rewards, whether that be medicine, law, engineering, computing, business or accounting. Unless the child has an extraordinary amount of initiative and bravery, activities that do not help the child achieve this goal are minimal. This is compounded by standardized examinations that cultivate a climate of continuous anxiety and mutual suspicion and the never-ending need to curry favor with teachers and 'make connections'. In this way children are continually faced with the imperative to stay ahead or catch up.

Can our children escape from this tyranny? This is a question that involves us all.

Chinese mothers know best? Ask the child, please!

The author is chairman of Chan Institute of Social Studies.

(China Daily 11/22/2011 page8)