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A review by emilyusuallyreading
Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve by Lenora Chu
5.0
What I Liked
Lenora Chu comes from the perfect place to write a (fairly) non-biased book with an American targeted demographic. She comes from a family of Chinese immigrants, grew up in the American school system, in her adulthood she moved to China for the first time in her life due to her husband's job, and she enrolled her preschool son in China's public school.
The rigor of tests, studying, and education in China is contrasted starkly against the United States. One of my favorite parts of the book was Chu's back-and-forth descriptions of her visit to two fourth grade classrooms, one in China and one in the United States. The American teacher called her students "honey" and "beautiful," focusing first and foremost on their self esteem and working in educational lessons as they grow in confident. The Chinese classroom pits the students into competition against each other. Self esteem is of no concern to the teacher, nor is creativity or personal individualism, but these seven-year-olds are learning square roots and beyond. There are pros and cons to both cultural education systems and Chu paints both well.
What I Didn't Like
Even coming from the perspective of a writer who grew up in a Chinese-American home, Chu does occasionally take on the voice of the American who perceives foreigners as being weird. The gifts of purses to teachers, cultural methods of a teacher walking away without an answer, and so on. Sometimes what is okay in one culture is "weird" to another, but it's not because anyone is inferior.
Lenora Chu comes from the perfect place to write a (fairly) non-biased book with an American targeted demographic. She comes from a family of Chinese immigrants, grew up in the American school system, in her adulthood she moved to China for the first time in her life due to her husband's job, and she enrolled her preschool son in China's public school.
The rigor of tests, studying, and education in China is contrasted starkly against the United States. One of my favorite parts of the book was Chu's back-and-forth descriptions of her visit to two fourth grade classrooms, one in China and one in the United States. The American teacher called her students "honey" and "beautiful," focusing first and foremost on their self esteem and working in educational lessons as they grow in confident. The Chinese classroom pits the students into competition against each other. Self esteem is of no concern to the teacher, nor is creativity or personal individualism, but these seven-year-olds are learning square roots and beyond. There are pros and cons to both cultural education systems and Chu paints both well.
What I Didn't Like
Even coming from the perspective of a writer who grew up in a Chinese-American home, Chu does occasionally take on the voice of the American who perceives foreigners as being weird. The gifts of purses to teachers, cultural methods of a teacher walking away without an answer, and so on. Sometimes what is okay in one culture is "weird" to another, but it's not because anyone is inferior.