A Blog by Jonathan Low

 

Sep 2, 2011

Do Parents Put Too Much Pressure on Kids? China Says Yes, US No

Talk about reversing stereotypes. In a recent survey of parental attitudes towards pressuring students on their school work, the famously driven Chinese parents thought they should back off. Meanwhile, their American counterparts, frequently accused of creating a generation of indulged and entitled slackers, think more pressure is needed.

Why? It may simply be that parents are increasingly aware of how they compare globally. Chinese parents may now see how academic achievement is not the only route to success - and that their system may not encourage innovation. American parents, acutely aware of how their economy has faltered and their standards fallen by relative measures, may believe that to compete in the global economy, their children will have to apply themselves more diligently than they did. JL

Catherine Rampell reports in the New York Times:
Even Tiger Moms seem to think they’re pressuring their kids too much.

That is one possible reading of a new Pew Research Center global survey of parents’ attitudes to the pressured placed on students
The survey, conducted March 18 to May 15 by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, found that China was the only one of 21 countries or territories where a majority believes parents put too much pressure on students to do well in school. In China, 68 percent of adults think parents pressure students too much, and just 11 percent think they don’t push them hard enough.

On the other side of the spectrum is the United States, where more than 6 in 10 Americans say parents do not put enough pressure on their children.

It’s hard to know what to make of these attitudes. The countries where people are most likely to say students are pressured too much do have reputations for being pressure-cookers for students (China, Pakistan, India). And the United States has repeatedly disappointed on international testing.

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