'Tiger Mom' Amy Chua admits to mistakes

Check out this brief interview on PBS with professor and writer Amy Chua, whose book on rigorous parenting was profiled on our blog last month. Interestingly, here Chua pulls back from what seemed to be a harsher voice and talks about making mistakes while raising her kids to succeed at all costs. She admits that what she deems the "Tiger mother" approach, which she ties closely to the Chinese immigrant experience, resulted in many squabbles with her young daughters when they were growing up and routinely had to give up socializing with other kids in order to practice violin and piano. Amy Chua claims that Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is a "not a how-to guide, it's a memoir" - admitting that children do need a sense of balance between work and play, or calamity ensues. Chua also defends "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior," the article in The Wall Street Journal on turning children into perfect students that created so much commotion last month.

The bottom line here, though, is that students do need more motivation in school than a screaming parent, and that there's more to life than scoring 100%, as opposed to 99.9%. For an enlightening dialogue on student needs, join the conversation on February 23 at the Tutorpedia Foundation's 2nd Annual Benefit on February 23, 2011, featuring speakers Vicki Abeles, the director of Race to Nowhere, Dennis Littky, co-founder of the charter school network Big Picture Learning, and Farb Nivi, founder of the educational tech company Grockit. All proceeds go to support personalized tutoring for the Bay Area's low-income students.