Millionaires' daughter gets into Harvard

One of the daughters of abusive Chinese millionaire Amy Chua and her wealthy Zionist husband, Jed, has gotten into Harvard.

Quite a shock. A millionaire going to Harvard.

But this has been presented as big news. As proof that Amy Chua and Jed's sick, abusive child rearing practices "work".

Chua made a fortune off her best-selling book in which she gloated about how she spent years abusing her two daughters.She and her Zionist husband, Jed, agreed that they would do this. They would raise their daughters in what Chua claimed was "the Chinese way". The daughters couldn't engage in any activity unless they could win a medal, they couldn't be in school plays or play sports, they had to have the highest grades in their school in every subject except physical education, they had to practice for hours a day but only on the piano or the violin. She called one of the "garbage" because she wasn't able to learn a classical music piece fast enough, she loaded one girl's dollhouse in the car and was going to get rid of it unless the 6-year-old learned to play some piece perfectly on the violin in one day, she forced one of them to practice for hours on the piano without a break for some reason, she called them fat, lazy, stupid.

I first heard about Chua's bragging on NPR.

Maureen Corrigan reviewed the book and said:

"The success of this strategy is hard to dispute. Older daughter Sophia is a piano prodigy who played Carnegie Hall when she was 14 or so. The second, more rebellious daughter, Lulu, is a gifted violinist."

I heard that and though, "That's it?" The daughters went through all that, and all they get out of it is that they play the piano and the violin? And all they play is classical music, which means they play the same music that's already been recorded countless times and that they try to sound exactly the same as every other person who has ever played it. How is that a boon to mankind?

What does it tell you that a rich Yale law professor like Chua feels perfectly qualified to teach her children to be classical musicians? It requires no knowledge or creativity. You just listen to the CDs and try to sound exactly like everyone else.

Now the girls can't do anything without it being a reflection on their sick, twisted wretch of a mother. Anything they do---getting into Harvard, for example---is now seen as a victory for Amy Chua.