Essay1

The parent depicted in Amy Chua's WSJ excerpt (apparently just a provocative excerpt intended to drive sales of the book; see Christine Lu's answer) is the parental equivalent of a demanding, yet incompetent executive or manager.   Such people understand that high standards and pushing your employees (or children) are necessary, but are totally at a loss about how to do it without breaking down human morale in the process.   Such methods lead to short-term performance gains but no long-term success.   I've known managers like this, who excoriate and belittle their underlings in an attempt to "motivate" them, and their people will certainly move forward, but always only to avoid further punishment.   However, it never results in long-term greatness.   Treating children in the same way has similar results.

I am also a child that is the envy of my parents' friends - "Carnegie-Mellon!   Director of Engineering at Facebook!   He plays the piano so well!   Two grandchildren!"   By the time my parents' friends got around to asking them if I was considering going to work for Google, the answer they got was that Google was already passé and I was on to the next great thing, a company they'd not yet heard of.   By now I look like a genius, and when Facebook IPOs, there's a possibility that I will do pretty well by Chinese parent standards.

I had similar experiences with my mother when I was learning piano.   She would sit with me for hours, correcting every little mistake I would make and pressing me repeatedly to get the song right.   It was terrible and oppressive.   Eventually I would perform to her satisfaction, and after years passed I attained a near-concert-pianist level of piano skill.   I was the envy of other Chinese parents, who would admiringly ask my mom who my piano teacher was.   However, my talent can only be described as robotic - my ability to play the piano is restricted solely to pure technical mimicry, devoid of any emotion.   At one point, I attended a "piano...