Robin Banksy is rather famous for often saying things that others would be hesitant to vocalize, in consideration of the foregoing, he once said, “A lot of mothers will do anything for their children, except let them be themselves.” With that in mind, I contend that Amy Chua’s perspective of what constitutes as ‘successful’ parenting, which she believes is “academic achievement” (Chua 2), is actually ultimately the exact opposite. In fact, her idea of ‘successful’ parenting is a detrimental combination of child abuse, operant conditioning, and social isolation.
First of all, Amy Chua blatantly condones and practices verbal and/or emotional child abuse as well as negligence as a method of effective parenting. Child abuse can be defined as a
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Operant conditioning is a term B.F. Skinner coined and is an approach that explains behaviour by examining actions and their consequences. Essentially, when someone is faced with actions that will reward them, they tend to be more likely to do it; however, if the action proves to punish them, then they are less likely to do it. Also, I use the term ‘train’ loosely because in this sense it means training a person to learn or adapt a particular behaviour. Chua emphasizes that children don’t understand that they must be good at something to enjoy it (Chua 2) and that it is important to ignore the things they like to do or learn; instead, the key to raising a child right is to impose the needs and wants of the parents upon the child. Regardless, of what the child may think or any possible resistance. Interestingly, she gives the impression that when a parent doesn’t force their child to act or become like their ideal child, then they’re giving up. I argue that the parents who stop pushing when their child becomes emotionally distressed and basically says “no” is worth respecting. It doesn’t mean they’re giving up, but rather that they know when to stop because they can always try again. Unfortunately, she seems to think that raising your children to seek praise and approval through excellence in school and music is the key to confidence. Amy Chua is teaching her …show more content…
Western parents are those who have adapted the Western European and/or North American culture and lifestyle. Engaging in common childhood activities such as sleepovers, play dates, extracurricular activities, watching cartoons, and hanging out with friends can be considered childhood norms. Personally, I believe that academic success is finding enjoyment in learning and exploring different areas of study. As well as, engaging in opportunities to grow, gradually strengthening one’s weaknesses, and learning how to manage the world around them while simultaneously living life happily and completely. Amy Chua starts off her essay by listing multiple activities that her children are not allowed to engage in. Many of those activities are classified as childhood norms and usually essential to a child’s development. Most of the activities have more benefits to children than not. For instance, some of the activities she prohibits are all forms of social interaction that have been shown to further develop the social skills of several children. She doesn’t even give her children the chance to choose their own extracurricular activities and that further removes their freedom to express themselves by doing something that they want. In
Amy Tan shows that Ni kan resents her mother's decisions and resists her control. After many failed tests in knowledge and skills, Ni kan asserts to herself, "I won't let her change me. . ." (Tan 492). This clearly shows a child resisting parental domination and control. The piano lessons evokes a response of "...I felt like I was being sent to hell" (Tan 493).
“Operant conditioning is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior. Through operant conditioning, an association is made between a behavior and a consequence for that behavior” (Cherry). Positive reinforcement which is praising a person for doing something good verses negative reinforcement which is an unpleasant remark a punishment. B.F. Skinner did an experiment on a rat, the rat was taught to push two buttons, one to receive food and the other was a light electric shock. The rat tried both buttons and realized which button was good and which one was bad. This experiment goes to show that upon the rewards and punishment system one can learn their rights from their wrongs through a series of lessons. Kincaid and Hemingway both use operant conditioning to show human behavior under stimulus control.
Operant conditioning is changing behavior through the use of reinforcement after the desired action is given; a behavior that is rewarded positively is more likely to continue and a behavior that is rewarded negatively would likely stop occurring (Santrock,2014). In addition to reinforcement, Skinner also talks about punishment. Reinforcement increases the probability an action or behavior will be repeated, while punishment is intended to decrease a behavior (McLeod, 2015). When Laurie was younger, she thought she was being sent to school every day to socialize with her friends and that learning was a secondary, unintentional happenstance. In third grade, compared to the other students in her class, she was falling short in reading and math.
In the first few paragraphs, author attracts the attention of the reader and explains the main point of the article. The author begins the article saying that she “Pity[s] today’s parents who want to do the right thing.” The sentence attracts the audience to continue reading the article because the sentence sparks curiosity in why the author pities today’s parents. The article continues, “They [parents] buy child-rearing books, explore over psychology articles, play Mozart in nurseries festooned with alphabet cards and the periodic table.” Parker shows good persuasive technique by describing an exaggerated scenario of what parents are doing these days to try to develop their child’s mind.
Although our school system is in need of change, the film did not consider the part parental involvement plays in education, a drawback of the film. Education spending in our country has more than doubled in recent decades, but children in most states have proficiency rates of only 20 or 30 percent in math and reading (Weber 6). One must wonder if, with all of this extra spending and consistently low test scores, the problem goes beyond the school system and into American families. After all, even with small class sizes, the amount of one-on-one attention is limited for each student. Isn’t it up to parents to push their children to succeed? Amy Chua, author of the book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother uses an almost militant form of parenting which – though highly controversial – demands nothing short of excellence from her children. While other children were allowed to ride their bikes or play video games with their friends, Chua demanded that her seven-year-old daughter practice t...
Operant conditioning is a kind of conditioning, which examines how often a behavior will or occur depending on the effects of the behavior (King, 2016, pg. ). The words positive and negative are used to apply more significance to the words reinforcement or punishment. Positive is adding to the stimulus, while negative is removing from the stimulus (King, 2016). For instance, with positive reinforcement, there is the addition of a factor to increase the number of times that the behavior occurs (King, 2016). An example of positive reinforcement is when a child is given an allowance for completing their household chores. The positive reinforcement is the allowance which helps to increase the behavior of doing chores at home. In contrast with negative
Brooks appears to agree with the way Chua pushes her daughters to excel, but finds Chua overly shelters them from necessary, everyday life skills. Brooks states “She’s protecting them from the most intellectually demanding actives because she doesn’t understand what’s cognitively difficult and what isn’t” (Brooks). In other words, Brooks believes that Chua shelters them too much from interacting with other children their age and believes that this will present challenges later on in
A child will never learn anything unless they get the experiences themselves first. Parents shouldn’t be involved until their child needs them to be. Solving a problem on their own for children is way slower but they learn better than having to be taught, especially if the parent is going to be yelling at their children. Betsy Shaw writes about a blog she read about a mom not having her children as a priority in her life. “Mom tells modern world to toughen up and get real,” quotes the mom Stephanie Mets when she talked about how her children learning in and out of school. Met’s writes about how parents who protect their children from disappointment are failing them from learning how to fix and reflect on what the mistake they did was. They are going to get hurt for simply not being able to face up to their problems is what she is writing about. Met’s son talked about being a yellow action figures whom he had for 2 years with him to show and tell. The yellow action figure had a hard hat and a drill. He thought about if after showing her and decide the teacher might of thought the drill is a gun and didn’t want any trouble so he switched it. Analyzing a situation all on his own without her help. That what Met’s blogged about to get parents now to know. Getting kids to learn on their own is better than having anyone else try to fix it for them. A parent will never ever be with their
Operant conditioning is a type of learning where a person is taught that specific actions are related to specific consequences. The main goal of using this type of conditioning is to encourage the individual to change his or her behavior in some way. Specifically, the individual can be encouraged to perform a desired behavior more often through use of positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement, and he or she can also be encouraged to perform an undesired behavior less often through use of positive punishment and negative punishment. Positive reinforcement is basically a type of operant conditioning in which an addition or reward is given to the individual when he or she has displayed the desired behavior, and as a result, the behavior
This article was interesting to read. This article makes me think about all of my siblings who I have seen grown up around me and I can relate the article to their life. One adolescent that comes in mind is someone who would have parents that would try to get involve in school work and other activities. The only problem was that the school climate and the friends that surrounded this adolescent didn’t help at all. This led to a lot of conduct problems like running away from home, smoking, and coming home after
In How Children Succeed, Paul Tough attempts to unravel what he identifies to be, “some of the most pervasive mysteries of life: Who succeeds and who fails? Why do some children thrive while others lose their way? And what can any of us do to steer an individual child – or a whole generation of children – away from failure and toward success?” (Tough, 2012). Children are born into environments of varying circumstances, good and bad, influencing their development. Through direct encounters with researchers, educators and children of different environments, Paul Tough approaches his questions by ex...
Operant conditioning is a system of learning that transpires through punishment and rewards for behaviors (Kalat, 2011). Through this, a connection linking a behavior and a consequence is made. For instance a kid could be told that she will not get recess privileges if she talks in class. This possibility of being punished leads to decrease in disruptive behaviors from her. The major components of operant condition are punishment and reinforcement (Kalat, 2011).
3. Operant conditioning is the way that most of a human’s daily activities and behaviors are learned. This is the idea that a behavior is learned by the consequences that follow it, whether they are positive or negative consequences. When the changes in the environment around the individual are reinforcing, or give a reward, the chances of the behavior occurring again are increased. Similarly, if the environmental changes give no reinforcement or a aversive stimuli, the chances of that behavior occurring again are decreased.
In contrast to classical conditioning, operant conditioning, discovered by B.F Skinner, is a learning process that involves either an increase or decrease in some behavior as a result of consequences (Amabile, 1985). Operant conditioning attempts to elicit new behavior through use of reinforcers and punishments.
This is selective reinforcement. Pavlov and his dogs were and excellent example of operant conditioning. Pavlov rang a bell when it was time for the dogs to eat; eventually the dogs associated the bell with food. Each time the bell rang the dogs salivated. On the other hand, N.Chomsky who was a nativist argued that children are born with a language acquisition device (LAD).