When I was six years old, my biggest accomplishment was walking across the entire balance beam during P.E. The class clapped for me. I still remember it vividly. Most of my afternoons were spent in play-dates, where we’d eat snack and pretend to be animals or draw for an hour or two. In the evenings it was dinner, and then either The Simpsons at 8 or “family game night.” Yep, we were that family.
The evenings of the six-year-old I tutor are quite different. He gets home from his after-school activity literally minutes before I show up. His mom is usually frantically trying to get him to change out of his school clothes, use the bathroom, and have some water when I walk in the door. Then I tutor him in English for an hour and a half, until 8:30, at which point he tells me he eats and does his homework. That’s Wednesday for Henry. The rest of the week is divided between: science, dance, music and art classes after school, with math tutoring and homework in the evenings. He’s an extremely bright kid, and his parents are well-off, which allows him to sign up for every possible after school class. “Typical Chinese kid,” my coworkers described him to me, before I started tutoring.
When I tutor him, I try to make it as fun as possible, knowing that learning English is quite possibly the last thing on earth he’d like to be doing at that moment. I have him singing, making up funny sentences, and illustrating his stories for most of the time. Even though he’s “super-kid,” he’s also very six-years-old. What I mean is: he’s always bordering on collapsing into giggles, creating sentences where Mickey or Minnie Mouse do something hilarious (then, more giggles), and his mind is usually wandering somewhere between what I’m talking about and outer space.
While his mom clearly adores him, I have yet to hear her say one positive thing about him. When we chat after class, I’m quick to dole on the compliments: “he read so well today!” or “he’s doing a great job of speaking in whole sentences.” She’ll smile, then quickly off-set the positive comment with a critical one. Something like “yes, but we both know his grammar is terrible” or “really? I thought he was so bad at pronunciation!” In another example, I was tutoring a 10 year old named Jason. One of the activities for the lesson on America, was for him to write down three things he did not know about the country. One of his sentences was “I do not know the names of the lakes in America.” His mother, who was standing directly behind him with her hands on his shoulders (I’m not making this up. She wouldn’t leave), scolded “Yes you do! You know Lake Eerie! You know Lake Michigan!” She means the best for him, so does Henry’s mother, but it’s become a phenomenon in China to overwork and overextend your children…err, child. In China, bearing a few circumstances, you’re only allowed to have one child. So any hope or desire for your offspring is planted on that kid. There’s pressure from preschool.
It’s why I recently did an English tutoring demo for a barely-verbal three year old. It’s why my coworkers tell me that they had an “easy” childhood compared to kids these days: they only went to Chemistry, Math, and Reading classes after school. Easy? I went to soccer practice after school, and it was mainly so that I could hang out with my friends and braid their hair on the sidelines during games. I would have made a terrible Chinese kid. If you’ll remember, my parents congratulated me last year for quitting my job. It’s hard to know what’s best for children, because despite everything I do leave my tutoring gigs impressed every time. If Tiger Moms produce Super Kids, then fine. We can all definitely learn something from the Chinese work ethic. Still, I can’t say I regret not cramming for exams at a time when my biggest worry was when my first tooth would fall out.
