The 'tiger parents' who want hyper-prepared children
The extracurricular is a world apart. We commented the other day several mothers that this, in our childhood, was neither like that nor similar. But of course, our saints did not have to do the pine with their ears to pick us up after school and that 'conciliation' was a word still non-existent.
In general, the parents were not obsessed with teaching us three sports and four different languages. In addition to the precarious English of the school, taught by a nice lady from Cuenca who graduated, back in Franco's time, in French Philology - this is what our hair looks like -, some very 'modern' father pointed his children to an academy where a teacher from Sepulveda, but this time with English Philology, she would bait her students to grammar and, from time to time, would put on an old 'radiocassette' a sizzling tape to listen to some native speaker with a gleeful voice.
Now what is styled is to be a 'tiger mother'. It is the one that has several parallel agendas, all without a single available space: yours and your children who, under the protection of the succorful phrase that the only thing that will leave them in life is their education, has decided to bury them under tons of education of dubious validity.
Because that mother is very read and is very modern. And since he knows that chess is good for sharpening mathematical ingenuity, he points to his children. And as you have read in the newspaper that the economy will be dominated by China in a few years, to Mandarin classes that point them. And as you have read that it is important to master body and mind, you have a centennial and unknown type of judo. And since it's good that they have a team sport, they're in the soccer game, even though they do not like it or even walk with a ball. And since he wants to generate a healthy ambition in them, they also play tennis. It's early for golf, but everything will be there. And since she could not study piano and it is her frustrated dream, because solfeggio and piano between time and time, because the most important thing is not to waste time so that the modern world does not get on top of us.
These children are worthy of all our compassion. The first reason is obvious: they lack one of the most important elements for their proper development: free time. His life is like a permanent obstacle course in which there is not a minute for improvisation and even less for the game. But it is that the game -which supposes being with friends- and improvisation -which sets the imagination in motion- are much more necessary than Mandarin.
The second reason may seem less obvious but education experts are beginning to realize that this type of children is very well prepared in the academic field, but practically does not have skills for everyday life. They are children who know how to say shoes in five different languages, but do not know how to tie them. Although they can memorize large word lists and are accustomed to spending many hours working, they are not able to accept the rules of the game that a group of friends has just created.
The third is very serious and the 'tiger parents' are not aware. With their best wishes, they are creating child prodigies whose self-esteem is based on their superiority in those areas that they dominate to perfection. But in reality they tend to have problems of low self-esteem - disguised with an excess of arrogance - in any area that is unfamiliar to them. Because they move like fish in the water because of the immense oceans of extracurriculars that their parents have aimed at, but they do not know what to do in a nice and comfortable fish tank for which they were not trained.
