'I haven't read Battle Hymn (or the others) but from reading an excerpt I think I get the general idea. My impression is that its almost the antithesis of those films (not sure about proof). Will Hunting pretty much cant help himself and Dead Poets society is all about making the kids actually want to do the stuff.' - Stuart
I do get Stuart's point in the comments of my last post, but I wouldn't say anti-thesis. It isn't so clear that the pushing was completely one sided in Battle Hymn. The older daughter in particular took a lot of potentially 'unnecessary discipline' since she had a lot of internal motivation.
I think Stuart is focusing on whether the hard work that went into it is voluntary or forced (so anti-thesis) - with which I would agree. I am focusing on the incredible achievements reached, and so find both inspirational.
In Battle Hymn, it isn't even clear that the second daughter who rebels against the hardcore parenting was actually rebelling against everything. I suspect that she was rebelling primarily against the delivery which from the book seems pretty tough to bear. The story in Bounce about the professor who chose to raise his daughters to be Chess Champions took a similarly intense approach to parenting, but did it less with a whip and more with a carrot. Polgar made chess into an exciting story for his girls. Chua uses all out warfare.
My response in the comments may have read incorrectly into Stuart's comment that he values Will Hunting and Dead Poets more. I am not sure a 'can't help yourself' is more inspirational.
I think I identify more with the idea of something I really want to do, but often just can't be bothered. For example, I would love to have the discipline to wake up just a little earlier every morning to do Yoga. I would love to write a blog post every day, and spend pretty much every spare waking minute reading, painting, learning something or making some sort of progress to further things I am interested in. I would love to be better at contacting family and friends. I don't have that motivation. Saying I don't have the time is not completely true - I spend a lot of time doing nothing. Maybe less than others, but through years of (admittedly forced) focus, the girls in battle hymn manage to develop incredible self motivation.
I would love to develop that focus.
1 comment:
I'm having trouble keeping the different threads that have come up separate.
I would also like to be able to focus more and be more productive. I have a special problem with that personally and I'm sure being raised in a psycho environment would have helped in that regard.
From there I basically lose the plot.
Firstly its unclear the extent to which this actually caused the kids to be more successful. Asians don't do that much better than whites, they do worse than Jews, who don't wage war on their kids. these things have a high degree of genetic heritability.
The kids in Battle Hymn have two Yale professors for parents. They were sorted no matter what.
This kind of parenting would also guarantee that Trevor would not be Trevor. You wouldn't be a souped up version of you. You wouldn't watch sport, you'd have a massively different circle of friends and social life. In fact the current you would likely shock the bizarro you in various ways and be deeply morally suspect.
I'd have less of a problem with Amy if she didn't impose her psycho tactics on such random stuff. The violin?! Forcing your child to slave over computer games makes as much sense to me.
There is clearly a culture gap here. I just don't get it.
I have my own perspective and being mean to your kids in the hope they'll be "successful" just seems, mean.
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