Shannon Love writes in reaction to this:
She forgets that tradeoffs dominate everything in life. When a culture specializes for proficiency in one area of endeavor, it must sacrifice proficiency in another area. Cultures noted for their food, music and sociability often fall short in economic endeavors. Cultures noted for economic endeavors usually don’t have very interesting cuisines, food or music. Southern Italy is a great place to vacation but its hell trying to get anything built or maintained. Germans get things done by few go to Germany for the food. (There aren’t a lot of German cookbooks on bookshelves outside of Germany but almost everyone has an Italian cookbook.) Examples abound in comparisons of any two cultures. All cultures represent some type of tradeoff and therefore all cultures relatively excel in some areas but fall relatively short in others.
Chinese culture excels in instilling individual proficiency but at the tradeoff of not teaching small or large scale teamwork.
(They might also fall short in teaching experimental problem solving an overall adaptability but that’s another post.)
Although she seems utterly unaware of it, by depriving her children of sports and other team activities, Chua guarantees they will grow up to be highly educated and skilled but they won’t have any experience forming teams or working within them. They will always have to depend on non-Chinese to provide organization. Worse, since a good leader is also always a good team player, her children will never have what it takes rise to the top of any large organization. They will never lead.
