Dissecting the hype over the ‘Tiger Mother’
This week’s column is a response to a reader’s request and an incessant number of articles in foreign and Chinese newspapers and magazines.
In the 1970 and 80s, when Japan’s manufacturing and financial might was peaking; Quality Circles, Total Quality Management, Kaizen and other ideas, influenced in part by W. Edwards Deming, whose ideas had been previously rejected in the United States, were the manias of the moment.
Japanese schools, educational systems and students were studied and lauded. Later, during its glory days, prior to absorbing its eastern sibling, Germany attracted some of the same attention for its gymnasiums and trade school systems.
It is a story that is older than the Romans and Greeks. One culture borrows what it admires about another culture. Today, it is the “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” by Amy Cua, a book which paints the Chinese mother as the archetypal progenitor of the master race.
Read more here in the latest issue of BizTimes Milwaukee.
