The Chinese are going to rule the future, says Spengler, because they're teaching their young how to be classical musicians, and we aren't. Excerpt:
America outspends China on defense by a margin of more than six to one, the Pentagon estimates. In another strategic dimension, though, China already holds a six-to-one advantage over the United States. Thirty-six million Chinese children study piano today, compared to only 6 million in the United States. The numbers understate the difference, for musical study in China is more demanding.It must be a conspiracy. Chinese parents are selling plasma-screen TVs to America, and saving their wages to buy their kids pianos - making American kids stupider and Chinese kids smarter. Watch out, Americans - a generation from now, your kid is going to fetch coffee for a Chinese boss. That is a bit of an exaggeration, of course - some of the bosses will be Indian. Americans really, really don't have a clue what is coming down the pike. The present shift in intellectual capital in favor of the East has no precedent in world history.
"Chinese parents urge their children to excel at instrumental music with the same ferocity that American parents [urge] theirs to perform well in soccer or Little League," wrote Jennifer Lin in the Philadelphia Inquirer June 8 in an article entitled China's 'piano fever'.
The world's largest country is well along the way to forming an intellectual elite on a scale that the world has never seen, and against which nothing in today's world - surely not the inbred products of the Ivy League puppy mills - can compete. Few of its piano students will earn a living at the keyboard, to be sure, but many of the 36 million will become much better scientists, engineers, physicians, businessmen and military officers.
Why does it matter that the Chinese are studying classical music in particular? Why can't American kids sit still long enough to master the discipline required of classical musicianship? Read the whole thing.
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The Chinese diaspora community in California is much more in line with the practices in China than those of the US. They have yet to be acculturated. My wife teaches these kids in the top rated public high school in California and I work with their parents. All I can say is most of you have no idea. They look at Anglo children the same way I have read many writers here perceive Latino and African-American students. So far below them academically to be of little interest and often of contempt. It’s really interesting to talk to a Chinese graduate of an Ivy about the legacy peers at said Ivy. It's not a flattering portrait.
The upwardly mobile Chinese family which is led by the mother puts tremendous pressure on the children to achieve academic excellence. A "B" grade in anything is unacceptable. A senior at my wife’s school who had never received a "B" in his life, who had won several National Science Foundation awards was getting a B. His mother came to see my wife and cried that this would ruin his life. Just imagine what he hears at home. In another case a student begged to have his grade raised from a B+ to an A- explaining that his mother would keep the whole family up all night screaming. I could tell stories like this all day long.
Activities that are deemed helpful for college admissions at top-tier schools are the only accepted activities outside of school work. Music lessons are perceived as developing the mind. Every activity is designed to game the system in any way possible.
The school day for Chinese-American students does not end at 3 or 4. In an almost exclusively Chinese (more accurately Taiwanese) community next to mine, literally every strip mall contains at least one tutoring school and all are successful. Saturday Chinese school is mandatory. These students turn in every assignment on-time (no exceptions) and do every potential piece of extra-credit work. This is even true for the students who otherwise have 100% averages.
They had to implement a policy at my wife's school of calling every student with a perfect average "Valedictorian" to prevent excessive competition. There were about 90 in last year’s graduating class. The top-tier public institutions in California (UC Berkeley and UCLA) are becoming dominated by Chinese students since racial quotas were removed. If it weren't for the legacy preferences that are still allowed, the white populations at these schools would fall farther.
I fully expect California economic leadership to be dominated in the future by Asian-Americans. My MD and my dentist are already Chinese. I figure that they will at least keep California in the worldwide economic competition.
SiliconValleySteve: In another case a student begged to have his grade raised from a B+ to an A- explaining that his mother would keep the whole family up all night screaming.
This is certainly one way to achieve excellence. I wonder what Mom's transcript looked like.
My MD and my dentist are already Chinese.
They converted? Mine are still Jewish.
"Daniel Myers December 1, 2008 10:58 PM http://www.danielcraticparty.blogspot.com/ (I had some stuff in here about statistics, but Erin beat me to it.) Being a pretty good musician myself, I think it's interesting that the Chinese have gravitated towards Western classical music. It is, in many ways, one of the least creative and most rigid styles you can study."
I read stuff like this and my first thought is "another casualty of current American educational system." Why does it always seem necessary that someone must diminish the outcome of their own culture and in the process reveal their own "dumbness."
I will see you and raise you because I am a pretty good musician also and have studied music from many perspectives. Classic Western Music being considered "less creative and most rigid" is a statement from a mind that grasps rather little about classical music. Good heavens man, stand up for yourself and have some pride. With the exception of Indian Classical music nothing can come close to the width and depth of sohisticated Western musical art. And as good as Indian Ragas are, I suspect in an objective way they do not really approach the Western Tradition. And for God sakes, this is exactly why the Chinese and the Japanese study Western Music. They don't seem to enjoy floundering around with inferiority and self imposed denigration.
It's certainly true that classical music is rigid NOW. It wasn't once. Schubert wrote dozens of great creative pieces by his early twenties - he was a far more prolific songwriter than any rocker, over 600 by his death at 31. Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, and Brahms were all capable of improvising creatively for hours at a time. Some people think that Beethoven's two sets of Bagatelles were improvisations that he thought were good enough to be written down, and his improv was sometimes better reviewed than his symphonies in major newspapers.
What's changed is how we teach and learn classical music. The rote education of the modern classical world is the education of a preservation culture, not a creation culture. But it's important to realize that the stiffness is our fault, not Beethoven's fault. The old dudes in wigs were pretty much the opposite of stiff dumb rote zombies.
America's population .3 billion. China's population 1.3 billion. Per capita, they are barely beating us. By comparing raw numbers and not giving contextual numbers, the points you make lose value.
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