政法频道今日在线直播:Amy Chua Is a Wimp

《纽约时报》2011年1月17号

中国虎妈蔡美儿是个软蛋

David Brooks

上周初，一大批受过教育的人认定蔡美儿是在找美国社会的麻烦。如你所知，蔡是一位耶鲁大学教授，她发表评论批评美国懦弱、溺爱式的家庭教育。

蔡没让她自己的女儿外出玩耍或留宿，没让她们看电视、玩视频游戏、或参加像手工一类的垃圾活动。有一次数学竞赛女儿拿了第二，排在一个韩国孩子后面，就逼着女儿每晚做2,000道数学题直到她拿回了第一。一次，女儿给她的生日贺卡质量欠佳，蔡拒绝接受，要求女儿重做新卡。又一次，她威胁烧掉女儿所有的玩具动物，除非她出色地弹好一段乐曲。

结果，蔡的两个女儿得全A，赢得了一连串的音乐比赛。

在她的《虎妈的战斗颂歌》书中，蔡猛烈抨击美国式家教，尽管她也自嘲自己极端的“中国”方式。她说美国家长缺乏权威，教育出自以为是、没有被强迫发挥潜能的孩子。

我的电子收件箱上周就收满了激烈的谴责信。蔡抓住了好多人对美国衰落的恐慌心理，瞧这个如此用功的中国人家长（顺便说一句，还有10亿多个她），她的孩子将彻底打败我们。实际上，（蔡不会同意我）她并不反对美国式家教，她是流行的精英式家教的逻辑延伸。她的做法就是美国中上阶层父母高压式的做法，称得上死心塌地的榜样。

批评她的声音有点老生常谈，如说她的孩子不可能幸福或有创造性，她们会成长为有技能、听话的孩子，但没有成就大业的胆量，她在摧毁她们对音乐的热爱，在15至24岁的亚裔妇女自杀率这么高肯定有原因等。

我对蔡的看法恰恰相反，我认为她在溺爱孩子。她不让孩子参与对智力要求更苛刻的活动，因为她不懂什么是和什么不是（智力上的）认知困难。

练四个小时的音乐需要集中注意力，在认知要求方面却远远不及与其他14岁女孩一起过夜。处理孩子间攀比、不断搞好关系、认识社会规范、游刃自我与群体之间的区别——所有这些以及其他社会实践，对认知方面的要求远远超过了任何一节紧张的耶鲁辅导课。

熟练掌握这些艰巨的技能一直是成功的最关键。我们大多数人与别人一起工作，一起工作比分开单干更能有效地解决问题（与单项赛相比，游泳选手在接力赛时往往互相鼓劲而发挥得更好）。此外，群体的表现与该群体的平均智商没有联系，甚至与群体内最聪明的成员的智商也无关。

麻省理工学院和卡耐基梅隆大学的研究发现，集体认知表现好的群体是成员善于阅读别人的情绪——表现在轮流发言、流畅地处理各人的意见、善于发觉彼此的意向和长处。

加入一个运作良好的团体很难，这需要你有如下能力，即信任你的亲属圈子以外的人、会阅读人的语调和情绪、了解各人带进同一个房间的心理因素是否合拍。

这组技能学校是不教的，只能从艰苦的经历中获取。这正是蔡保护她的孩子，就知道赶紧让她们回家做作业，而不让她们参与的艰苦实践。

如把课堂学习看作是童年艰辛考验的一个课间休息，蔡会做的更好。她的女儿们从哪儿学习如何处世？她们从哪儿学习使用和应对隐喻？她们从哪儿学习像一个猎人观察地形一样地察言观色？她们从哪儿学习如何检测自己的缺点？她们从哪儿学习如何理解别人的心灵并预测别人的反应？

这些和其他的无数技能只有从非正规的成长过程中获取，如用正规学习垄断一个孩子的时间，他们就发育不全。

因此我并不反对蔡对两个女儿的严教方式，我也真心喜欢她勇敢、发人深省的书，写得比评论所说的更优雅。我只是希望她（的家教）没有如此软弱、放纵，并希望她认识到，在对智力要求的某些方面，学校的食堂比图书馆更能锻炼孩子。同时，我希望她女儿长大后也写书，学会各种技能，更好地预测别人会如何评价她们的书。

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/opinion/18brooks.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

January 17, 2011

Amy Chua Is a Wimp

By DAVID BROOKS

 

Sometime early last week, a large slice of educated America decided that Amy Chua is a menace to society. Chua, as you probably know, is the Yale professor who has written a bracing critique of what she considers the weak, cuddling American parenting style.

Chua didn’t let her own girls go out on play dates or sleepovers. She didn’t let them watch TV or play video games or take part in garbage activities like crafts. Once, one of her daughters came in second to a Korean kid in a math competition, so Chua made the girl do 2,000 math problems a night until she regained her supremacy. Once, her daughters gave her birthday cards of insufficient quality. Chua rejected them and demanded new cards. Once, she threatened to burn all of one of her daughter’s stuffed animals unless she played a piece of music perfectly.

As a result, Chua’s daughters get straight As and have won a series of musical competitions.

In her book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” Chua delivers a broadside against American parenting even as she mocks herself for her own extreme “Chinese” style. She says American parents lack authority and produce entitled children who aren’t forced to live up to their abilities.

The furious denunciations began flooding my in-box a week ago. Chua plays into America’s fear of national decline. Here’s a Chinese parent working really hard (and, by the way, there are a billion more of her) and her kids are going to crush ours. Furthermore (and this Chua doesn’t appreciate), she is not really rebelling against American-style parenting; she is the logical extension of the prevailing elite practices. She does everything over-pressuring upper-_middle-class parents are doing. She’s just hard core.

Her critics echoed the familiar themes. Her kids can’t possibly be happy or truly creative. They’ll grow up skilled and compliant but without the audacity to be great. She’s destroying their love for music. There’s a reason Asian-American women between the ages of 15 and 24 have such high suicide rates.

I have the opposite problem with Chua. I believe she’s coddling her children. She’s protecting them from the most intellectually demanding activities because she doesn’t understand what’s cognitively difficult and what isn’t.

Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls. Managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group — these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense

tutoring session or a class at Yale.

Yet _mastering these arduous skills is at the very essence of achievement. Most people work in groups. We do this because groups are much more efficient at solving problems than individuals (swimmers are often motivated to have their best times as part of relay teams, not in individual events). Moreover, the performance of a group does not correlate well with the average I.Q. of the group or even with the I.Q.’s of the smartest members.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon have found that groups have a high collective intelligence when members of a group are good at reading each others’ emotions — when they take turns speaking, when the inputs from each member are managed fluidly, when they detect each others’ inclinations and strengths.

Participating in a well-functioning group is really hard. It requires the ability to trust people outside your kinship circle, read intonations and moods, understand how the psychological pieces each person brings to the room can and cannot fit together.

This skill set is not taught formally, but it is imparted through arduous experiences. These are exactly the kinds of difficult experiences Chua shelters her children from by making them rush home to hit the homework table.

Chua would do better to see the classroom as a cognitive break from the truly arduous tests of childhood. Where do they learn how to manage people? Where do they learn to construct and manipulate metaphors? Where do they learn to perceive details of a scene the way a hunter reads a landscape? Where do they learn how to detect their own shortcomings? Where do they learn how to put themselves in others’ minds and anticipate others’ reactions?

These and a million other skills are imparted by the informal maturity process and are not developed if formal learning monopolizes a child’s time.

So I’m not against the way Chua pushes her daughters. And I loved her book as a courageous and thought-provoking read. It’s also more supple than her critics let on. I just wish she wasn’t so soft and indulgent. I wish she recognized that in some important ways the school cafeteria is more intellectually demanding than the library. And I hope her daughters grow up to write their own books, and maybe learn the skills to better anticipate how theirs will be received.
 复制自上海大学校务论坛汇总（2011-01-20）