How to Raise An Ivy Leaguer
One of my friends raised her kids in the Lower Merion School District, in a Philadelphia Main Line community. (Kobe Bryant went there.) She used to tell me horror stories about the "helicopter parents," like the ones who insisted on getting their kids into the other kindergarten class - because more of that teacher's students ended up going to Harvard. (Really.)
But this takes it to a whole new level:
BEIJING - The book spawned a genre, selling more than 2 million copies in China on the premise that any child, with the proper upbringing, could be Ivy League material.
Now, eight years after the publication of "Harvard Girl," bookstore shelves here are laden with copycat titles like "How We Got Our Child Into Yale," "Harvard Family Instruction," and "The Door of the Elite."
Their increasing popularity points to the preoccupation - some might say a single-minded national obsession - of a growing number of middle-class Chinese parents: getting their children into America's premier universities.
Because government policy allows families only one child, many parents in this rapidly developing country feel immense pressure to groom their sons and daughters for success and, in the process, prepare a comfortable retirement for themselves. They fervently mine the expanding volumes of child-rearing manuals - "Stanford's Silver Bullet," "Yale Girl," and "Creed of Harvard" - for tips on producing what the Chinese term "high quality" children.
"Harvard Girl," written by the parents of one of the first Chinese undergraduates to enter the university on a full scholarship, chronicled Liu Yiting's methodical upbringing that instilled the discipline and diligence necessary for academic success. The tome has a place in many urban households with high school-age children, and new parents receive the book as a present from family and friends.
"Going to Harvard means that the way they raised their child was successful," said Yang Kui, publisher of the bestseller. "People are willing to copy and learn how they did it."
