How children should be raised
Our upbringing has a critical importance for us. It makes us who we are and has a great influence on our way of living. Today, most parents try to raise their children to become as perfect as can be. Kids are forced into education and have become victims of insecurity because of the major pressure the civilization puts on their shoulders. These methods of raising children have caused great debate. 1. In text 1, Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld tells about how it was being raised by her mother Amy Chua. Her Chinese mother has recently received a lot of critic on her new book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which is described as “how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids” (p. 2, l. 4). Though most people have criticized her mother’s raising technique, Sophia Chua thanks her mother for pushing her to do that extra limit. She says her mother’s “tough love” parenting methods actually has raised her to be an independent thinker who has lived her whole life at 110 percent. Mother and writer Amy Chua has surely used strict parenting, not letting her kids attend to a sleepover or even having a playdate, making her playing violin and piano in her sparetime. Sophia Chua uses an example of how her mother and dad pushed her to learn something new in a school-assignment by not letting her interview her grandparents, which would have been the easy way out, but instead pushing her to interview a terrifying Israeli paratrooper. All in all, Amy Chua used strict child-raising technique, and though Sophia Chua admits that it was not a tea party, she is glad that she had a so-called tiger mom.

In text 2, parenting guru Dr Bryan Caplan claims that children should be allowed to eat pizza and watch more television. He thinks that parents try to hard when bringing up their children, instead they should stop trying to control them, stop making them do a million activities and just accept that their children’s lives are shaped by their genes and their own choices. He argues that parents should take a backseat role called “serenity parenting” which is the exact opposite of “tiger mom parenting”. Dr Caplan’s advice is likely to relieve busy parents from their guilt over how little time they have for their children.

In text 3, founder of the progressive UK residential Summerhill School in 1921 A.S. Neill argues how he thinks that learning should come after play. He says that learning is not important to everyone. Creative people like the ballet dancer Nijinsky, who’s mind was elsewhere than school, should not be restricted by getting forced to go to school and university by his anxious parents and in that way wasting his talents. A.S. Neill believes that the function of the child is to live his own life, not the life his parents has planned out for him. He claims that many indifferent and disciplined scholars have instead of creating a possibly good mechanic or excellent bricklayer, created incompetent lawyers and unimaginative teachers. A.S. Neill thinks it is Summerhill School’s duty not to kill creation in the classroom with its emphasis on learning, but to allow the children freedom to be themselves.

2. A.S Neill engages the reader with his own experiences as a founder of the Summerhill School. He uses many rhetorical features to persuade the reader to share his view of how children should be raised. A.S. Neill makes the topic personal at start, involving his own personal opinion on learning “I am not decrying learning. But learning should come after play” (p. 7, l. 1). Using pathos by involving himself emotionally makes it easier for the reader to identify with him. In addition he has a superior ethos when he tells about experiences he have gotten during his position as a founder of a school: “I have seen a girl weep nightly over her geometry. Her mother wanted her to go to university, but the girl’s whole soul was artistic” (p. 7, l. 11). Also, A.S Neill uses a logic feature (logos) when asking what the world would have lost if the famous ballet dancer, Nijinsky, had really to pass those exams to get into the State Ballet. It would of course be a major shame. He puts a perspective on the whole “forcing children into education” by asking this question, it makes the reader imagine what talents we have lost because of this.

A.S Neill indeed also uses humour in an attempt to reach out for the readers. This is for example when he says “I would rather Summerhill produce a happy street sweeper than a neurotic primeminister” (p. 7, l. 23). In appendix to his humour he uses pathos to frighten us by saying that all this pressure and controlling we lay on the children result in a generation of robots: “All this interference and guidance on the part of the adults only produces a generation of robots” (p. 7, l. 31). Beside the rhetorical features, A.S Neill is also devastating well formulated. With the well argumentative and rhetorically language, A.S Neill persuade the readers to share his point of view successfully.

2. I’m sure that Sophia Chua thinks she has lived her life 110 percent, but I also think that most people would say that in the age of 18. Everyone has their own opinion on living life the best as possible; the ideal possible comes from your childhood - that is unless you are a “moldbreaker”. Mother Amy Chua definitely has something to be proud of, her daughter is successfully becoming an adult and most of the credit goes to herself as a parent. Personally, I think that it is the parent’s responsibility to show their children what opportunities life can offer. Pushing the kid into in to their parent’s preferred path in life is wrong, showing the path and also letting the kid choose between any of the other path it may know of is the right thing to do! “Serenity parenting” as Dr Caplan suggests, argues against Amy Chua’s “tiger mom-theory”. On the other hand A.S, Neill believes that parents push their children way too much and that they destroy their children’s self-esteem. That exists several of hundreds of various child-raising methods, and that is also one of the things that actually makes us different from each other. We are all brought up in different ways, with different values and different ideals – and that is what makes us who we are.