本帖最后由 lilyma06 于 2011-12-27 09:52 编辑
虎妈家教的真义何在？
很
多人曾这样问我：你的大女儿索菲娅(Sophia)上大学了，你是不是还以“虎妈”的方式对她？是不是以“遥控”的方式禁止她在外面过夜、催促她做功课，通过Skype监督她练习钢琴，并确保她不看电视，不玩电脑游戏？
 Zuma Press
法学教授蔡美儿说，她和丈夫是他们所知最放得开的大学生家长。
事实恰恰相反。我和丈夫可能是我们所知最放得开的大学生家长。我们从不问索菲娅打算修什么专业，晚上做些什么，有时候我们还可能忘记参加家长的周末活动。收到她几条对期末考试感到紧张的短信时，我们告诉她要放松，平时做什么就做什么，不会有事的。结果她真的没事。
“虎妈家教”的关键点是很多人都没有注意到的：它实际上只在非常早期的育儿阶段才适用，在孩子大概5到12岁时最为有效。如果运用得当，“虎妈家教”可以让孩子变得更加勇敢、自立，而不是相反。
经常有人把“虎妈家教”和“直升机式家教”混为一谈，但其实这两者之间有着很大的区别。事实上，有了前者就没必要有后者。如果你仔细想想，“虎妈家教”跟美国开国者和先驱们的传统教育方式没有多少不同，其核心是假定孩子是强大的，而不是弱小的。相比之下，直升机教育就是家长（特别是母亲）在孩子头顶盘旋，为他们提供保护，比如一辈子都为他们拎运动包，在他们遇到困难的时候施以援手。据我所知，这种教育方式不但于史无据，效果也不好。
开讲，分享他们教育孩子成才的经验和心得。
我坦诚地讲述了自己如何培养几个女儿，为什么那样培养，但却因此而在过去一年里遭到了很多责难。但最让我受不了的，可能是有人说“虎妈家教”造就的是逆来顺受的机器人。这根本没有理解“虎妈家教”的精髓。
这里给大家举一个真实的“虎妈家教”的例子。我15岁的时候，身为加州大学伯克利分校混沌理论教授的父亲带着我们全家，跟他一块去欧洲休一年的假。有一个学期，他把我们姊妹几个安排到了慕尼黑当地一家公立学校读书。
我跟他说，我们完全不会讲德语，也听不懂老师说什么，他就叫我去图书馆找几本语言书，并提醒我说，数学和科学课程用的都是通用符号。他说，这是一个机会，要充分利用。结果那一年成了我一生中最美好的回忆之一。
“虎妈家教”是要培养独立、有创造力、勇敢的孩子。当下的美国有一种把创造力浪漫化的危险趋势，结果却给创造力的培养造成损害。比如，大家都以乔布斯(Steve Jobs)和扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)为例，然后得出结论说，创新的秘密就是从大学退学。事实上，这两人都极端刻苦，自我鞭策力极强，在面对失败时抗打击能力也很强，这些正是“虎妈家教”希望促进的方面。乔布斯和扎克伯格真正教给我们的是，我们应该把这些品质应用到我们充满热情的东西之上。
不过，如果你没有掌握最基本的东西，如果你不愿意投入大量时间，如果你在生活最初10次将你击倒之后无力从地上爬起来，你就不能发明出谷歌(Google)、Facebook或是iPod。
对大多数孩子来说，大学生活是他们第一次真正意义上体验自立。“虎妈家教”就是要让孩子为这一刻做好准备。对于那些不管做了什么都会听到“你真棒、真了不起”这样的反馈的孩子来说，要是有什么事做砸了，他们肯定会感觉很糟糕。相比之下，“虎子”通常都比较达观。知道即使不是天资聪颍也可以成功，知道勤能补拙，这会令他们鼓舞。
我现在还记得我自己进入大学后才猛然惊醒的情形。在我上的第一堂课上，教授当时讲授的是伯罗奔尼撒战争(Peloponnesian War)。好像所有人都知道他说的是什么，但这些内容我却从未听说过。是现代的事吗？发生在越战之前？我的第一篇说明文写作课作业只得了一个B。不过我并没有气馁，全身心地投入到接下来的作业当中，夜以继日地努力，结果却得了一个B-。那一年相当坎坷。然而我一直全力以赴，尝试各种办法，最后终于掌握了其中的诀窍。
当我们的孩子们上大学的时候，我们希望他们有足够的信心、判断力和能力来照料自己。就连批评我的家教方式的人可能也得承认，经过多年的训练和调教之后，“虎子”在集中注意力和完成课业方面做得相当好。如果能够在早期就得以逐步灌输，这些技能可以帮助他们避免出现大学前恐惧症，而很多美国家庭都因这种恐惧症受到了创伤。
 Lulu Chua-Rubenfeld
无拘无束：哈佛学生索菲娅·蔡·鲁本菲尔德，摄于三月。
不过，“虎妈家教”一个最大的不利之处就是，可能会令孩子丧失主动性，或是缺乏社交技能。这种情形在中国或许存在，因为中国的教育体系大部分仍相当严厉，权力主义盛行，而且仍以死记硬背为主。不过，西方的情形则大不相同。在西方，“虎妈家教”是在一种社会背景（或者在我这种情况下是家庭背景，这一点要归功于我丈夫）下进行的：主张挑战权威、独立、幽默、打破常规思考。
如果说有什么不同的话，我发现，在美国养育的“虎子”的情商都非常高。从一方面来说，他们终其一生都在与疯狂、严厉的父母周旋；从另外一个方面来说，他们往往不会爱慕虚荣，因为虎爸虎妈都很诚实──诚实到残酷的程度。
今天的很多父母都很害怕，他们对孩子说的话会让孩子难过。不过，如果孩子真的做了错事，就应该难过。那些知道何时需要感恩、需要谦卑的有责任感的孩子（而不是认为一切都天经地义的孩子）才能够更好地在大学这个“社会性鱼群”中畅游。
在我不扮演“虎妈”这个角色的时候，我是耶鲁法学院的一名教授。如果说这些年的教书经历让我明白了什么的话，我想那就是培养出超凡的孩子的方法多种多样。我有一些非常棒的学生，这些学生的家长有的严厉，有的宽厚，还有很多学生的家庭非常复杂，难以尽述。
另外，我也明白，“虎妈家教”对不同的人有着不同的含义。对我来说，最终的意义并不是成就，而是告诉你的孩子，他们实际能做到的比他们所认为的多得多。如果他们不放弃，不编造借口，坚持以高标准要求自己，他们在生活中就能够做到任何他们想做的事，突破任何阻碍，从不为别人会怎么看待他们而操心。
蔡美儿(AMY CHUA)
蔡美儿是耶鲁大学法学院的小约翰•M•达夫（John M. Duff Jr.）教授。她的作品包括《我在美国做妈妈》（Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother，现已出版）和《帝国盛世》(Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance ─ and Why They Fall)。
Tiger Mom's Long-Distance Cub
Amy Chua on how she has handled her daughter's departing the den for college. Drilling and discipline from afar? No, not even a growl
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204791104577110870328419222.html?google_editors_picks=true
Zuma Press Law professor Amy Chua says she and her husband are among the most hands-off college parents they know.
Author Amy Chua, and her husband, law professor and novelist Jed Rubenfeld, shared their thoughts about raising successful children, live at the New York Public Library.
A lot of people have asked me whether I still "tiger mom" my older daughter, Sophia, now that she's in college. Do I block sleepovers from afar, drill her on schoolwork remotely, monitor piano practice by Skype and make sure that she never watches TV or plays computer games?
Actually, it's just the opposite. My husband and I are probably the most hands-off college parents we know. We never ask Sophia what she's going to major in or what she does at night, and we accidentally forgot about parents' weekend. When we got a few stressed text messages from her about finals, we told her to relax, do what she always does, and she'd be fine. And she was.
Here's the key to tiger parenting, which a lot of people miss: It's really only about very early child-rearing, and it's most effective when your kids are between the ages of, say, 5 and 12. When practiced correctly, tiger parenting can produce kids who are more daring and self-reliant, not less.
Tiger parenting is often confused with helicopter parenting, but they could not be more different. In fact, the former eliminates the need for the latter. At its core, tiger parenting—which, if you think about it, is not that different from the traditional parenting of America's founders and pioneers—assumes strength, not weakness, in children. By contrast, helicopter parenting—which, as far as I can tell, has no historical roots and is just bad—is about parents, typically mothers, hovering over their kids and protecting them, carrying their sports bags for them and bailing them out, possibly for their whole lives.
I've taken a lot of flak over the last year for candidly describing how I raised my daughters and why I did it that way. But what drives me the craziest may be the charge that tiger parenting produces meek robots and automatons. This just misunderstands what tiger parenting is.
Here's an example of real tiger parenting for you. When I was 15, my father, a professor of chaos theory at Berkeley, took our whole family with him to Europe for his sabbatical year. For one semester, he threw my sisters and me into a local public school in Munich.
When I mentioned to him that we didn't speak any German and couldn't understand the teachers, he told me to check out some language books from the library, and reminded me that mathematics and science employ universal symbols. "This is an opportunity," he said. "Make the most of it." It ended up being one of the best years of my life.
Tiger parenting is all about raising independent, creative, courageous kids. In America today, there's a dangerous tendency to romanticize creativity in a way that may undermine it. Take, for example, all the people who point to Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg and conclude that the secret to innovation is dropping out of college. In fact, both men exemplify extraordinary hard work, drive and resilience in the face of failure—exactly the qualities that tiger parenting seeks to promote. What Mr. Jobs and Mr. Zuckerberg teach us is that we should apply those qualities to something that we feel passionate about.
But you can't invent Google, Facebook or the iPod unless you've mastered the basics, are willing to put in long hours and can pick yourself up from the floor when life knocks you down the first 10 times.
For most kids, college is their first experience truly on their own. Tiger parenting prepares kids for just that moment. For kids who are used to hearing "You're amazing, that's great" in response to whatever they do, it must be pretty shocking to fail at something. Tiger cubs, by contrast, are typically resilient. It's empowering for them to know that you don't need to be brilliant to succeed—that hard work can fix just about anything.
I remember my own rude awakening when I arrived at college. In the first class that I attended, the professor started lecturing about the Peloponnesian War. Everyone else seemed to know what he was talking about, but I'd never heard of it. Was it recent, maybe just before Vietnam? In my expository-writing class, I got a B on my first paper. Undaunted, I poured myself into the next assignment, working around the clock—and got a B minus. It was a tough year. But I kept bearing down, trying different things, and eventually I got the hang of it.
 Lulu Chua-Rubenfeld No Strings Attached: Harvard student Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld in March
When our kids go off to college, we want them to have the confidence, judgment and strength to take care of themselves. Even critics of my approach to parenting would probably concede that, after years of drilling and discipline, tiger cubs are good at focusing and getting their work done. If instilled early, these skills also help them to avoid the college-prep freak-out that traumatizes so many American families.
But one of the biggest knocks against tiger parenting is that it supposedly produces kids with no initiative or social skills. This might be true in China, where so much of the educational system is still harsh, authoritarian and based on rote learning. But it's definitely not true in the West, where tiger parenting is done in the context of a society—or, in my case, in a home, thanks to my husband—that celebrates irreverence, independence, humor and thinking outside the box.
If anything, I've found that tiger cubs raised in America have really high emotional intelligence. For one thing, they've spent their whole lives maneuvering around their crazy, strict parents. For another, they don't tend to be prima donnas, because tiger parents are brutally honest.
A lot of parents today are terrified that something they say to their children might make them "feel bad." But, hey, if they've done something wrong, they should feel bad. Kids with a sense of responsibility, not entitlement, who know when to experience gratitude and humility, will be better at navigating the social shoals of college.
When I'm not the Tiger Mom, I'm a professor at Yale Law School, and if one thing is clear to me from years of teaching, it's that there are many ways to produce fabulous kids. I have amazing students; some of them have strict parents, others have lenient parents, and many come from family situations that defy easy description.
It's also clear that tiger parenting means different things to different people. For me, it's ultimately not about achievement. It's about teaching your kids that they are capable of much more than they think. If they don't give up, don't make excuses and hold themselves to high standards, they can do anything they want in life, break through any barrier and never have to care what other people think.
—Amy Chua is the John M. Duff Jr. Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Her books include "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" (now out in paperback) and "Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance — and Why They Fall."
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发表于 2011-12-27 10:10
