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September 5, 2006
Double Happiness
Today's NY Times has an interesting article about American couples recruiting au pairs from China. And why are they doing this? They want their children to learn more about Chinese culture, and learn Mandarin in a more natural fashion, because they believe that in China lies the economic destiny of the world.
Learning about another culture is admirable enough (though the "glass half empty" view would be that children raised in two cultures face a kind of double jeopardy: most cultures are as much prison as palace). Still, I see clouds around this silver lining:
1. These people are often making substantive decisions for their children on little evidence. To quote the article:
“I’ve never been to China,” said Ms. Friend, a single mother who is retired.
She added that she considered China central to the future of global economics, saying, “I think China will rule the banking world in my children’s lifetime, and I want them to be able to participate in that if they want to.”
So what lesson will her kids be absorbing? To make decisions without doing any homework?
If Ms. Friend had visited China (as I have, and many times) she would see that the clean narrative of an emergent hyperpower becomes considerably more complex on the ground. And China's future is far from assured. Have any of these parents looked into the implications of the graying of China, for example?
I bet these people would have had their kids learning Japanese in the Eighties, and Russian in the Fifties (and, in terms of their motivation for doing so, wasted their own and their kids time).
2. These Chinese girls might be dangerous. At the bottom of the article one of them explains:
As for American cooking, she foresees it as a challenge.
“I don’t hate it but I don’t like it,” she offered. “I had pizza yesterday. It’s better at home.”
I've had pizza in China: you don't want a monster like this around your kids. Trust me.
Posted by dag at September 5, 2006 2:35 PM