Karen Heller: 'Tiger Mother' vs. 'Race to Nowhere'

Did you forget to raise exceptional kids?

Neglect to teach them Mandarin? Require a mere hour of music practice daily? Let them watch television? Permit play dates? Condone B's?

I ask because Yale Law professor Amy Chua did not. Both daughters collect straight A's, and one played Carnegie Hall at age 14.

For her best-selling parenting treatise Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Chua has received death threats and been eviscerated in the blogosphere. A New York Times column ran under the headline "Amy Chua is a wimp."

Her book, more mea culpa than manifesto, is not nearly as fierce as advertised. In parts, it's quite affecting. Chua admits her transgressions as she gradually abandons her belief in the superiority of Chinese parenting. The result is happier girls who remain, by any measure, superachievers.

Frankly, I'm more curious about the blistering reaction than Chua's methods.

Why are people enraged about how one woman chooses to raise her children? Is it because her girls' success arouses feelings of inadequacy in a competitive environment where every child is deemed a winner?

Chua's approach is the polar opposite of the documentary Race to Nowhere: The Dark Side of America's Achievement Culture, which has had 1,500 screenings followed by audience discussion.

The movie, by Vicki Abeles, was motivated by watching two of her children buckle from the "pressure-cooker culture" of academic, athletic, and extracurricular commitments.

"We live in a very competitive culture," she says. "The thinking is 'If you don't do this, you're going to miss out.' I want my children to be present in school, but I don't want it to be all about achievement. They leave us all too soon. I no longer ask about homework, tests, and grades. I ask, 'What are you excited about?' I don't let homework take over their evenings. I protect their sleep at all costs."

The documentary advocates less pressure in children's lives, less teaching to the test, fewer prescribed activities, and more time for play, for being a child.

Most screenings have been held in the very middle- and upper-middle-class communities where academic pressure and "college resumé-building" remain prevalent. These students tend to be children of high achievers and put tremendous pressure on themselves.

After a recent screening, parents advocated complimenting effort over achievement. Chua belittles this behavior, the preoccupation with self-esteem: "Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them."

One father in the audience suggested, "We don't teach our children how to fail, and the truth is they're going to fail a lot." To which Chua might answer: "Hah!"

The documentary asks how children best learn. Americans receive comparatively more homework, yet rank poorly in standardized international tests, where - Chua might crow - Shanghai ranked first in every area.

At the screening, several parents suggested eliminating homework, to which William Penn Charter School head Darryl J. Ford asked, "Do you know how quickly parents would call, when they're paying $28,000 a year and I'm getting rid of homework?"

College pressure can begin the moment a child starts ninth grade, as if the whole point of high school is getting into college. And not just any school but an elite institution where excellence is determined, in no small part, by the increasing difficulty in gaining admittance.

Not all children are exceptional in every way. Nor should they be. They can't all be in the top 10 percent.

And not every child will go to Harvard, though it's not for lack of trying.

With a range of colleges and universities, how did so many students see themselves at Harvard? A record 35,000 students applied for the Class of 2015, a jump of 15 percent, despite a decline in high school graduates. This means one in 50 seniors wants to attend Harvard, even though the odds of getting in are lousy. The admittance rate last year was 6.9 percent.

So, yes, we'd better prepare our children for failure.

Abeles dates the current climate to the government's 1983 Nation at Risk report of the "rising tide of mediocrity" in our schools. That same year, U.S. News & World Report launched its annual college rankings. The 2001 passage of No Child Left Behind brought an increased reliance on testing, and pressure on schools for higher results.

"Are you teaching to test, or are you providing a rich education that might result in high test scores?" asks Rhonda Feder, who has three children in the Cheltenham School District. "You can demand peak performance in the right child, with the right support, but to expect every child to perform well in every class, that's unfair."

Race to Nowhere "calls into question not only how we, as parents, define success, but also the manner in which we help children achieve it," observes Gladwyne Montessori head Abbie Miller.

What constitutes success in contemporary America? Is it money, privilege, choice? Do high grades and test scores, and acceptance to an elite academic institution, guarantee such success?

With parenting, there are so many ways to seemingly mess up. The tendency among some parents is to treat their progeny like eggs, as if at any moment they'll crack, each action capable of preventing or causing failure.

Children don't come with operating instructions, though that doesn't stop parents from searching for them. The natural inclination is to look to experts, peers, and community for guidance in how - and how not to - raise children. We're constantly utilizing peripheral vision.

Parents naturally pour so much love, time, care, and expectations into their children, who are born with nothing but possibility. They're vessels of hope.

Many adults see children's achievements as the end, as a guarantee of success. The problem occurs when children are so focused on the future that the present is lost, to say nothing of happiness. So the conversation never stops, nor the battles as to how we perform our most important role best.