Beyond the Tiger Mom: East-West Parenting for the Global Age by Maya Thiagarajan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I definitely share the author’s view that “knowledge is a prerequisite to imagination”. While I’m all for encouraging creativity and innovation, they can’t arise out of a vacuum. One needs a base of knowledge before making new connections , discoveries and understandings. The book does a decent job of highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the general Eastern (Asian) and Western approaches to education. She writes about the benefits of memorization and the need to inculcate resilience in our kids. She praises memory-based and conceptual-based learning. Ultimately, the author advocates practising the best of both worlds, and balancing our expectations with what the world needs from our children. Overall offers nothing revolutionary but still a good attempt at raising awareness.
