Confucius, why won't you die already?

A disturbing article in the NY times Education section gave me a mild temper tantrum today. I usually don't get this bitchy except maybe over bad decor, but still....

The article was about rich asian immigrants (they're shopping for homes in Scarsdale, people! Scarsdale!) moving to the US in order to...you guess it: train their sons for MIT. It is highly ironic, I might add, that the purported reason for this departure from the motherland to America is to 'free' their children from the stress of competing in the rigid formal educations of the Far East (i.e. drone factories for future Microsoft programmers). Apparently, over there, it's just too much pressure; but over here, it's all fun and games like SAT prep courses in middle school, college coaching to get into MIT., and violin lessons even though the son is tone deaf (but Harvard LOVES to see forced-labor overcoming intrinsic lack of talent, so I guess there is a sick logic at work here).

The quote below, from an immigrant mother whose businessman-husband in in Beijing while she lives alone in in the States to tend to their coached prodigy, sounded freakishly familiar to me:

"Seven more years before he finish[sic] college. Then? I don't know," she said. "Whatever he will [sic] do, where[sic] he will go, I will go. To give the boy good life[sic]. That is all."" (Sick!)

Damnit woman! It ain't the 1800's anymore! Get a life! Let your son get a life! Jeesh! Enough with this Confucius bull crap about the 3 duties of a female: 1) attend to parents until you marry 2) attend to husband until he dies 3) attend to son until he...is sufficiently suffocated to death from your relentless cultural tyrrany!

Just you wait until he tells you he's gay, dropping out of college, and dating a black transvestite name Yvonne. Oh yes. God has a great sense of humor too.

Okay, so I actually pity her, and the son, and this whole warped mindset of achievement that makes victims out of everyone. After 5,000 years of cultural brainwashing, Confucius is still going strong. Damn old bastard.