James Baker’s Reviews > Beyond the Tiger Mom: East-West Parenting for the Global Age > Status Update

They’ve already mentioned Shahrukh Khan twice this book slaps

Talking about the immense amount of money invested in preparing kids for exams, and how it keeps increasing like an arms race, I suspect it is a strong indicator that education is about signaling, not human capital. Were these long hours capital formation, South Koreans would all be jillionaires, but I’m not sure if the data supports this.

Another benefit to these exam systems, is that they are a very straightforward way of keeping schools and teachers accountable. However, I fear that, on the margin, innovative or even definitively superior methods of teaching may be neglected by teachers whose careers depend on how they score on exams, and they will rigidly “teach to the test” instead.

The Singapore culture here seems almost diametrically opposed to any sort of genetic theory of human intelligence, most recently observed in the Cult of Smart by DeBoer. Both the author and the parents she talks to are convinced that you can work and teach your children into academic success. There is ZERO discussion of innate talent. I wonder if that’s a “western” ideal

Weirdly, my parents actually did some of what this author said pretty well. As a kid, I had limited exposure to electronics but holy shit did we have books everywhere. Reading was a big part of my childhood, and many of the things she says that parents should do, like library membership, bedtime stories and reading to set an example my parents did. Good job Marcia and David 👍👍👍

The author claims that Asians/members of the Asian diaspora excel in math due to parental influence. I think this rhymes with Amy Chuas thesis that parental pressure makes successful students; both of them do not emphasize the role of educational systems or even the wider culture of where children grow up