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Teressa Glazer's column Friday, while thoughtful, misses the point. I lived in Asia for over two decades, for 15 years as a teacher of college students. Every professor I ever met who went there to teach longed to stay longer, so much more positive was their teaching experience than in America.
I never, ever met a parent, no matter how poor, whose one goal was not to have all their children attend college. I stayed long enough to see this coming ascendency of the Chinese. I also got to see the dark side of their educational philosophy and was dismayed at some of what I saw.
But I am far more dismayed at much of what I see in this country. I am also a mentor in a Gainesville middle school. When America scores 17th, 31st and 23rd in international test scores in reading, math and science, respectively, while the Chinese score first in all three, maybe we really do need to back up and take a long, honest and nondefensive look at our philosophy of child raising and education in this country.
Consider: An Atlanta community college has a Ph.D. English professor teaching "remedial English" to incoming students, and she is from Taiwan with English as her second language! We use recent Chinese immigrants who learned English as a second language to teach our college freshmen how to speak English? And that does not bother us?
"Pray for the Tiger Mom's neglected cubs?" Perhaps, but that hardly furthers reflection on the subject. We'd better spend far more time praying for our own neglected cubs, for they are in much worse shape lest one day they discover all their employers are the very Chinese who worked harder to get to the top.
Jesus summed it up well when He said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep rather for yourselves and for your children" (Luke 24:28)
Allen J Swanson
Gainesville