Bird’s Eye: The New York Times noted that in recent tests Shanghai students outscored their counterparts in dozens of countries. You might think this is a good thing, and we have an article by a Chinese mother who agrees utterly. But even in China there’s some doubt about the cost of success. And for your listening pleasure Randy Newman inserts a wonderfully satiric blade, as double-sided as always, into the issue with “Korean Parents”, from his most recent “Harps and Angels” album.

* Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior Amy Chua Wall St Journal

A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it’s like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I’ve done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and  Louisa, were never allowed to do:

• have a playdate

• attend a sleepover

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• watch TV or play computer games

• choose their own extracurricular activities

• get any grade less than an A

• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

* China Student Testing: China Schools Obsessed With Test-Taking LA Times

Chinese adolescence is known as a time of scant whimsy: Students rise at dawn, disappear into school until dinnertime and toil into the late night over homework in preparation for university entrance exams that can make or break their future. So it came as little surprise when international education assessors announced last month that students in Shanghai had outperformed the rest of the industrialized world in standardized exams in math, reading and science.

But even as some parents in the West wrung their hands, fretting over an education gap, Chinese commentators reacted to the results with a bout of soul-searching and even an undertone of embarrassment rarely seen in a country that generally delights in its victories on the international stage. “I carry a strong feeling of bitterness,” Chen Weihua, an editor at the state-run China Daily, wrote in a first-person editorial. “The making of superb test-takers comes at a high cost, often killing much of, if not all, the joy of childhood.”

* Korean Parents Randy Newman youtube 4 minutes

“Look at the numbers

That’s all I ask

Who’s at the head of every class?

You really think

They’re smarter than you are?

They just work their asses off

Their parents make them do it.

…So let’s see what you can do

Korean parents and you.”