Little Soldiers, Lenora Chu
Little Soldiers, Lenora Chu
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

Little Soldiers
An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve

Author: Lenora Chu

Narrator: Emily Woo Zeller

Unabridged: 11 hr 30 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 09/19/2017


Synopsis

In the spirit of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Bringing up Bébé, and The Smartest Kids in the World, a hard-hitting exploration of China’s widely acclaimed yet insular education system—held up as a model of academic and behavioral excellence—that raises important questions for the future of American parenting and education.When students in Shanghai rose to the top of international rankings in 2009, Americans feared that they were being ""out-educated"" by the rising super power. An American journalist of Chinese descent raising a young family in Shanghai, Lenora Chu noticed how well-behaved Chinese children were compared to her boisterous toddler. How did the Chinese create their academic super-achievers? Would their little boy benefit from Chinese school? Chu and her husband decided to enroll three-year-old Rainer in China’s state-run public school system. The results were positive—her son quickly settled down, became fluent in Mandarin, and enjoyed his friends—but she also began to notice troubling new behaviors. Wondering what was happening behind closed classroom doors, she embarked on an exploratory journey, interviewing Chinese parents, teachers and education professors, and following students at all stages of their education. What she discovered is a military-like education system driven by high-stakes testing, with teachers posting rankings in public, using bribes to reward students who comply, and shaming to isolate those who do not. At the same time, she uncovered a years-long desire by government to alleviate its students’ crushing academic burden and make education friendlier for all. The more she learns, the more she wonders: Are Chinese children—and her son—paying too high a price for their obedience and the promise of future academic prowess? Is there a way to appropriate the excellence of the system but dispense with the bad? What, if anything, could Westerners learn from China’s education journey? Chu’s eye-opening investigation challenges our assumptions and asks us to consider the true value and purpose of education.

About Lenora Chu

Lenora Chu is a Chinese American writer whose work explores the intersection of culture, policy, and behavior. Her stories and op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, Christian Science Monitor, and on various NPR shows. Raised in Texas, Chu holds degrees from Stanford and Columbia Universities.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Nancy on October 16, 2017

I am struggling with writing this review because I have so many thoughts about the ideas presented in this book. First of all, I found the first hand account of the author's experience to be fascinating and well written. The author is first generation American of Chinese descent, educated in Texas p......more

Goodreads review by Майя on March 29, 2022

The book by Lenora Chu, an American of Chinese descent, who, together with her husband and son, came to live and work in Shanghai in 2010, reflects to a large extent the same duality. Shanghai is not quite China, who understands, and at the same time, the symbol and banner of today's Celestial Empir......more

Goodreads review by Jean on October 09, 2017

The author is born in Philadelphia and raised in Houston. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in journalism. Her grandparents fled China during the Cultural Revolution and immigrated to the United States. Chu notes the irony that 50 years ago Mao conducted his anti-intellectual purg......more

Goodreads review by Kressel on April 30, 2018

Comparisons between this book and Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother are inevitable, so here goes. Both books are written by American-born women whose parents were Chinese immigrants. Both married white American men. And both have respect for the Chinese aspects of their upbringing and try to imple......more

Goodreads review by Maddie on February 12, 2020

There were two parts to this book: (1) an American woman (whose parents immigrated from China) sends her child to a state-run Chinese school and experiences culture shock and (2) she does some journalistic investigation into how the Chinese educational systems functions. Part (1) should have been li......more