China's Male Children: Spoiled Brats?

I'm not sure that subjecting these kids to physical and emotional abuse is going to solve any problems.

'Little Emperors' Learn the Hard Way in China
Parents send boys with discipline problems to West Point, a private school with a military- style regimen where the rod is not spared.
HANGZHOU, China — Asked whether anyone has ever been beaten by his teacher, all the boys point to Chen Chen. The 12-year-old lifts up his shirt. Sure enough, there are four faint welts on his back from the feared whip.

"Of course it hurt," Chen acknowledged. "But it was because I misbehaved."

"We were all scared to death," classmate Xia Jingying chimed in.

If you think these children are victims of substandard public schooling, think again. Their parents paid to send them here to West Point, a popular boot camp named after the American military academy but designed to straighten out the "little emperors" of China's one-child generation.

For more than two decades, China's strict family planning policy has created a culture in which the coveted lone male heirs tend to run amok at home and in school because besotted parents forget to teach them the meaning of discipline.