虎媽轉性放任讀哈佛女兒

養育法新解讀﹕幼練堅強 鋪路自立

虎媽轉性放任讀哈佛女兒

明報 26-12-2011

  

因主張從嚴管教子女而聲名大噪的「虎媽」蔡美兒，為其「虎式養育法」提出新解讀。這名耶魯大學法律教授稱，她在長女讀大學後放手讓其自由發展，從選科到課餘生活都不干預，因為虎式教育的宏旨是培育堅強自立的子女，關鍵教育階段為5至12歲，大學則讓子女踏出自立的第一步。

蔡美兒在《華爾街日報》撰文談論長女索菲婭（Sophia）讀大學後的教育心得。她說﹕「外子與我可能是我們認識的大學家長裏對子女最放任的。我們從未問過索菲婭要選修哪一科，也不問她晚上做什麼。當我們收到她描述期末試時緊張心情的短訊時，我們叫她放輕鬆，依平常去做，便可做很很好。她確實做到了。」

虎式教育關鍵5歲至12歲

蔡美兒表示，對許多孩子來說，大專生活是第一次真正自立，而虎式教育就是為了孩子應付這一時刻。她指出，很多人未領會虎式教育的要旨，它其實針對「非常早期」的養育階段，子女若在5歲至12歲時教育得當，長大後就會更堅毅與自立。她還認為，虎式教育與美國傳統育兒理念一脈相承，全為了培育獨立、富創意及勇敢的孩子。她說，許多人把虎式養育與「直升機養育法」（helicopter parenting）混淆，但兩者本質完全不同，前者假定孩子夠堅強，後者則把孩子視為弱者，作出過度呵護。

對於有人批評虎式教育下的孩子欠缺主動性或社交技巧，蔡美兒認為那在中國等較嚴苛專制的教育體制下或許是事實，但不會發生在注重獨立性和思維、不強調尊卑觀念的西方教育環境裏。她還以15歲時的親身經驗，解釋何謂真正的「虎式撫育法」。她說，當年其父攜眷赴德講學，把她與姊妹送進普通學校。她抱怨不懂德語，在大學教混沌理論的父親教她到圖書館找語文書，並點出數學和科學科採用國際通用符號。他說﹕「這是一個機會。充分利用它。」蔡美兒形容，在德國的這一年，最終成為她人生中最棒的其中一段日子。

終極目標令子女自知能力高

蔡美兒在著作《虎媽的戰歌》裏指出孩子須嚴厲管教才有成就，掀起中西方對教育的巨大爭議，她因而入選《時代》周刊本年度百大最具影響力人物榜。今年考入哈佛大學的索菲婭曾發表公開信，力撐母親並非「惡魔媽媽」。索菲婭稱，母親的督促讓她更自立，自發追求目標，發揮潛能。蔡美兒則強調，對她來說，虎式教育終極目標不是為了取得成就，而是令子女明白自己的能力比想像中更高，「只要他們不放棄，不找藉口，對自己要求高，就可在人生達到任何目標」。

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

By AMY CHUA

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.

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."