Chinese and Americans reacted to lower birth rates in opposite ways. In Chinese people, this provoked a collective desire to wring every ounce of utility from the few children they do have, turning them into little productivity machines since daycare. Americans went in the opposite direction of over-coddling each child and raising precious little princesses of both sexes who often believe that editing down their endless whims is a terrible imposition
The contrast is clear in Lenora Chu’s book Little Soldiers. Both systems are ugly because they go to extremes. A child edited down by parents and teachers to the point where he is a cog with barely any individuality is as ugly as a child who never had to self-edit at all.
One of the most striking chapters in the book is the one where Chu describes a math lesson in a Chinese school and at a school in Massachusetts. In the former, the teacher behaves like a prison guard, while in the latter, she literally crawls on the ground like a worm in subservience to her students. It’s interesting that both these school systems are a reaction to the same phenomenon of dropping birth rates. And they both stink.
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