Tiger mums and gifted children. Analysis of the ideas of Amy Chua

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Patricia Mellany Jensen 3.B.Engelsk stil nr. 1D. 2/9-2012 Tiger-mums and gifted children Methods of upbringing differ depending on the parents, whose methods depend on their values, which again depend on their cultural background. It makes sense that two different continents like the Western and Asian continents have completely different cultures. The Asian children are said to be overperforming themselves in terms of knowledge and education, since they achieve extremely high grades in Western schools. This is the cause for great debates in the Western continent concerning the Asian children and their parent’s methods. Amy Chua provides her opinion as to “Why Chinese mothers are superior”, how a misunderstanding between the two continents exists and how Western parents are on the wrong path. But who is really superior? And can we all have gifted children?        Amy Chua is a person with a great amount of ethos; she is a professor at Yale Law School in USA, which is of course marked in her article. This gives Amy Chua, also known as tiger-mum, a lot of credibility. Her clear observations balance perfectly well with this fact, but they are risky, since her intention is to clear all misunderstandings and thereby argue
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for the methods of the tiger-mums. As she explains herself, the typical Western parent expects a child to be fragile, which is why the methods of the tiger-mums can seem to be inhumane and abusive. The tiger-mum believes that a person does not think something is fun, until the person gets to be good at it. The parent must therefore make certain that the child is focused on important things, until the child finds it interesting. In resemblance to this, the Western parent would consider a child to be an individual being, who needs to follow his/her own desires. So ...

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