Economix Blog: Do Parents Put Too Much Pressure on Students?

Even Tiger Moms seem to think they’re pressuring their kids too much.

That is one possible reading of a new Pew Research Center global survey of parents’ attitudes to the pressured placed on students.

The survey, conducted March 18 to May 15 by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, found that China was the only one of 21 countries or territories where a majority believes parents put too much pressure on students to do well in school. In China, 68 percent of adults think parents pressure students too much, and just 11 percent think they don’t push them hard enough.

On the other side of the spectrum is the United States, where more than 6 in 10 Americans say parents do not put enough pressure on their children.

It’s hard to know what to make of these attitudes. The countries where people are most likely to say students are pressured too much do have reputations for being pressure-cookers for students (China, Pakistan, India). And the United States has repeatedly disappointed on international testing.

Does that mean surveyed attitudes are correct? If they are, why aren’t they affecting behavior?

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=b804f1348c58f5dda97a5348cdc0acde