I have too met many pushy Tiger parents in my school district. Enough that my school district has done a HUGE push back. Too many parents have enrolled their children in after school tutoring to have them on the path they think they need to be to get into top colleges. And it's tricky for the school district to tell the difference in a way that seems fair.
I like the math curriculum at the Russian School of Math (many branches in Massachusetts) more than the Everyday Math our schools use (without any option for acceleration, of course). Yes, being better at math will help them get into selective colleges and do well in STEM classes there. So our three children attend RSM. A phrase such as "pushy Tiger parent" suggests we are doing something wrong, but I don't see it. We are going to send the children to summer classes this year, too. Is this pushy, or a rational response to a 2.5 month summer vacation that exists because children use to do farm work in the summer?
Yes I would too if I had to deal with everyday math. I'm not against tutoring & extracuricular math programs in general, or academic camps over the summer. What I see as questionable is parents who push kids into accelerated classes they couldn't handle without intense constant tutoring. Tricky to tell the difference if you are outside the situation and therefore I probably shouldn't use that term.
I agree. We've done a fair amount of enrichment ourselves, when we can see that the official, proffered "solution" is lackluster or worse. (As in 30 hours of actual instruction in a second year foreign language course, which we thought so laughably inadequate that we outsourced that instruction at our own expense to a highly fluent expat that we happened to know.)
I have seen that kind of thing, however, and it makes me intensely
sad for those children, who are clearly miserable and hoping for nothing more than escape from the virtual dictatorship that they are living under.
I also understand hiring a tutor when junior simply WON'T listen to Mom or Dad, too. That, too, is a different kettle of fish entirely than "put-my-kid-in-advanced-algebra-even-though-she-barely-kept-up-last-year-in-5th-grade-math" because the
parent has some brainworm that "early algebra" is "critical" to some shiny, shiny version of "College Success (tm)."
Being made to give up a passion for jazz because it "interferes" with classical performance and competition wins on a more traditional instrument... ehhhh... well, in at least one instance, I seriously believe that this is also an example of Tiger-like behavior.
