Education

I have just read a book review for a book called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother where the author's approach to education/parenting is based on her own cultural (Chinese) upbringing which appears to be much stricter than most cultures and..it has me wondering...

Do Asian parents put more emphasise on academic achievement than the rest of the world? Having lived in South Korea and also having hosted Japanese students in the past I can verify that students spend a lot more hours studying than Australian students....often relying on 5 hours sleep. I'm interested in what members in other cultures feel about this? Is too much pressure put on students to achieve and...if they don't...is suicide considered as an alternative? How many feel overwhelmed when they start to fall behind? etc

I would just like your input on this....

I am going to leave a link that you can use or ignore while you await the response of someone who would rather discuss being forced to study eighteen hours a day than sleep . Also Thomas Merton feared that technology would pass our moral progress

http://youtu.be/2WXo4ktQrg8

I'm trying to look at this from a cultural point of view and would hope that religion/politics would not be part of the equation...

Good luck with that then

"Genghis Khan and his brother Don
Couldn't keep on keepin' on
We'll climb that bridge after it's gone
After we're way past it"

Read more: Bob Dylan - You Ain't Goin' Nowhere Lyrics | MetroLyrics

hymn

/him/

noun

noun: hymn; plural noun: hymns

1.

hymn a religious song or poem, typically of praise to God or a god

Yeah..flogging a dead horse I think :)

Communism/Marxism did not enter my head when I posted this BTW...

Chinese Workers Are Revolting, The oriental folks I know are culturally hard working, mentally and physically

"Mao Zedong Thought (simplified Chinese:; traditional Chinese: ) is a political theory which is derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong (1893-1976). Its followers, known as Maoists for short, consider it as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxism-Leninism.[citation needed] Developed during the 1950s, 1960s, and up until the Deng Xiaoping reforms, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding ideology of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and as theory guiding revolutionary movements around the world."

"Next there is Professor Frederick Teiwes, a western academic specializing in the study of Maoist China, who was also critical of Li's memoir of Mao, arguing in his book "The Tragedy of Lin Biao: Riding the Tiger during the Cultural Revolution 1966-197 (1996) that despite Li's extensive claims regarding the politics behind the Cultural Revolution, he was actually "on the fringe" of the events taking place in the Chinese government."

On the trail of Dr Li Zhisui's illusive Memories - Part 2/4
December 16, 2011

Mao's personal physician, Dr. Li Zhisui (1919 - 1995), attended West China Union University in Chengdu [now called Sichuan University], which is one of the oldest in China.

Soon after graduating from the university as a Western trained medical doctor in his mid twenties, Li fled China in the 1940s to escape the ravages and dangers of the Civil War and ended up working as a ship's surgeon out of Sydney, Australia.

Then in 1949, "Madly enthusiastic about the Communist victory in 1949, he gives up a promising young career in Australia to take part in the efforts to rebuild China after a century of warfare and internal struggle..." Source: The Lecturn

*source

http://ilookchina.net/tag/battle-hymn-of-the-tiger-mother/

Genghis Khan decreed religious tolerance for all of his conquered peoples. So I think he definitely would approve of our constitutional protections of freedom of religion. I think he would also approve of the way the U.S. has been able to attract talented people from all over the world.

Amy Chua

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/amy_chua.html#51sUfuX6WaZUwkap.99

Hellon, I do believe there is a cultural ethic on achievement in the East, especially in China and Japan, that surpasses that of the West. Anecdotally, the visiting students from those countries I've known were almost universally serious about their studies. Those who were first generation seemed more externally driven by their families than internally.

Aaaahhh something relatable!!!! :-) well Hellon,I can honestly say that I am not the most knowledgeable when it comes to different views of education through different cultures, but I can honestly say from too many personal experiences, that education has become a form of emotional propaganda in this new age,I have seen too many friends and heard too many stories of teens becoming so overwhelmed by striving to achieve achieve achieve, that when they fail (and by fail I mean a student who gets 90% average suddenly getting 70%) many turn to suicide, narcotics etc, two years ago I met a boy who was a brilliant student, start pupil who seemed to have his life cut out for him...one day I went to church I saw many friends in tears, turns out this guy wasn't doing so great after all and he couldn't take it anymore, so he shot himself in the head, he was sixteen years old when he was released from his conscious state.my best friend, she constantly aims higher and higher, too much is never enough for her, she barely sleeps, she's sick every other day, she suffers permanent depression, all because of the stresses of wanting to aim higher, achieve more, get that perfect score, she applied to several universities to study graphics communication design (am art subject), because she had 50% average (for maths, which is completely unrelated) they all turned her down, and being as stubborn as she is, she refuses to go to college because she sees it degrading, instead she suffers every day to gain a higher score for a subject that she'll never use again in her life, just so she can have a chance at a"happy"life.this is what we as the new generation have to deal with, along with the issues of lack of funds in the education department (our school s art department has the lowest budget in the school, even lower than the sports department, and this has to pay for supplies etc) and we battle with the issue of mediocre teachers fresh out of university who have no idea how to teach, in grade nine, my English teacher went on maternity leave, that year I had a technology teacher, an ancient old man who was some type of professor,a black woman who could barely speak English, and a young inexperienced woman who we had to tech a lot of the time, all those teachers and none of them had the skill to teach us...

This sounds like a battle hymn to me ,but I could be wrong

http://youtu.be/nhKAUoF8fqQ