Funny - I came to the comments with this exact same quote in my clipboard. I don't think it's child abuse, though, as both the parents and children are part of

Funny - I came to the comments with this exact same quote in my clipboard. I don't think it's child abuse, though, as both the parents and children are part of this world view which uses socially accepted norms for success as their primary metrics of worth. It's an extreme form of absolute submission to external motivation. I think this comes from a culture of insecurity, addiction to simple success metrics, and maybe even a little intellectual laziness. Doing well in school isn't worthless, but it's perpendicular to learning to decide for yourself what your values are and in what direction you want to pull the world as you interact with it. At least in my experience, the latter is a lot more intellectually difficult (and satisfying) than learning a particular set of skills to solve a particular set of problems.