January 17, 2011 Amy Chua Is a Wimp By DAVID BROOKS

 

January 17, 2011

Amy Chua Is a Wimp  By DAVID BROOKS

1.)  Sometime early last week, a large slice of educated America decided that Amy Chua is a menace to society. Chua, as you probably know, is the Yale professor who has written a bracing critique of what she considers the weak, cuddling American parenting style.

2.)  Chua didn’t let her own girls go out on play dates or sleepovers. She didn’t let them watch TV or play video games or take part in garbage activities like crafts. Once, one of her daughters came in second to a Korean kid in a math competition, so Chua made the girl do 2,000 math problems a night until she regained her supremacy. Once, her daughters gave her birthday cards of insufficient quality. Chua rejected them and demanded new cards. Once, she threatened to burn all of one of her daughter’s stuffed animals unless she played a piece of music perfectly.

As a result, Chua’s daughters get straight As and have won a series of musical competitions.

3.)  In her book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” Chua delivers a broadside against American parenting even as she mocks herself for her own extreme “Chinese” style. She says American parents lack authority and produce entitled children who aren’t forced to live up to their abilities.

4.)  The furious denunciations began flooding my in-box a week ago. Chua plays into America’s fear of national decline. Here’s a Chinese parent working really hard (and, by the way, there are a billion more of her) and her kids are going to crush ours. Furthermore (and this Chua doesn’t appreciate), she is not really rebelling against American-style parenting; she is the logical extension of the prevailing elite practices. She does everything over-pressuring upper-middle-class parents are doing. She’s just hard core.

5.)  Her critics echoed the familiar themes. Her kids can’t possibly be happy or truly creative. They’ll grow up skilled and compliant but without the audacity to be great. She’s destroying their love for music. There’s a reason Asian-American women between the ages of 15 and 24 have such high suicide rates.

I have the opposite problem with Chua. I believe she’s coddling her children. She’s protecting them from the most intellectually demanding activities because she doesn’t understand what’s cognitively difficult and what isn’t.

Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls. Managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group — these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale.

6.)  Yet mastering these arduous skills is at the very essence of achievement. Most people work in groups. We do this because groups are much more efficient at solving problems than individuals (swimmers are often motivated to have their best times as part of relay teams, not in individual events). Moreover, the performance of a group does not correlate well with the average I.Q. of the group or even with the I.Q.’s of the smartest members.

7.)  Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon have found that groups have a high collective intelligence when members of a group are good at reading each others’ emotions — when they take turns speaking, when the inputs from each member are managed fluidly, when they detect each others’ inclinations and strengths.

8.)  Participating in a well-functioning group is really hard. It requires the ability to trust people outside your kinship circle, read intonations and moods, understand how the psychological pieces each person brings to the room can and cannot fit together.

9.)  This skill set is not taught formally, but it is imparted through arduous experiences. These are exactly the kinds of difficult experiences Chua shelters her children from by making them rush home to hit the homework table.

Chua would do better to see the classroom as a cognitive break from the truly arduous tests of childhood. Where do they learn how to manage people? Where do they learn to construct and manipulate metaphors? Where do they learn to perceive details of a scene the way a hunter reads a landscape? Where do they learn how to detect their own shortcomings? Where do they learn how to put themselves in others’ minds and anticipate others’ reactions?

10.)  These and a million other skills are imparted by the informal maturity process and are not developed if formal learning monopolizes a child’s time.

So I’m not against the way Chua pushes her daughters. And I loved her book as a courageous and thought-provoking read. It’s also more supple than her critics let on. I just wish she wasn’t so soft and indulgent. I wish she recognized that in some important ways the school cafeteria is more intellectually demanding than the library. And I hope her daughters grow up to write their own books, and maybe learn the skills to better anticipate how theirs will be received.

 

Gender Code

 Pre-reading questions:

1) What happens when people break gender codes?  Do kids naturally know and obey gender codes?  When do they start to be more aware of them?

 

2) This is from a mother’s point of view who wants her son to let his creativity and identity be and flourish without gender code restrictions.  Can boys wear nail polish?  Is it okay for them to wear lots of jewelry?

 

Bedecked

by Victoria Redel

 

Tell me it’s wrong the scarlet nails my son sports or the toy store rings	1
he clusters four jewels to each finger.
He’s bedecked.  I see the other mothers looking at the star choker,
the rhinestone strand he fastens over a sock.
Sometimes I help him find sparkle clip-ons when he says sticker earrings	5
look too fake.
Tell me I should teach him it’s wrong to love the glitter that a boy’s only
a boy who’d love a truck with a remote that revs,
battery slamming into corners or Hot Wheels loop-de-looping off tracks
into the tub.	10
Then tell me it’s fine—really—maybe even a good thing—a boy
who’s got some girl to him,
and I’m right for the days he wears a pink shirt on the seesaw in the park.
Tell me what you need to tell me but keep far away from my son who	15
still loves a beautiful thing not for what it means—
this way or that—but for the way facets set off prisms and  prisms spin up
everywhere
and from his own jeweled body he’s cast rainbows—made every shining
true color.	20
Now try to tell me—man or woman—your heart was ever once that brave.

 

Post-Reading Questions

Read again to yourself.  Mark a line that stood out to you either because you liked it or didn’t understand it or for any other reason.

 

Discuss gender expectations. Why can’t this little boy like sparkle?  What is mom doing?  Can males wear nail polish?  Why or why not?  Can girls wear "boy" clothes and participate in "boy activities" more easily?  Why is this a double standard?

 

 

Sometimes The 'Tough Teen' Is Quietly Writing Stories By: Matt de la Peña

 Sometimes The 'Tough Teen' Is Quietly Writing Stories

By: Matt de la Peña 

November 11, 201310:19 AM ET 

 

 

 

Matt de la Peña is the author of Ball Don't Lie, Mexican WhiteBoy, We Were Here, I Will Save You and, most recently, The Living.

A few years ago I did an author visit at an overcrowded junior high school in a rougher part of San Antonio. I write young adult novels that feature working-class, "multicultural" characters, so I'm frequently invited to speak at urban schools like this.

As is often the case, the principal and I talked as the kids filed into the auditorium. The student body was mostly Hispanic, he told me, and over 90 percent qualified for free and reduced lunch. 

It was an underprivileged school, a traditionally low-achieving school, but they were working hard to raise performance.

The principal then pointed out a particular student, seated near the back. "That one's a real instigator," he told me. "But don't worry, we'll remove him if he starts acting up.

 It wouldn't be the first time Joshua blew an opportunity like this."

As the librarian introduced me to the school, I studied this kid. Joshua. He was bigger than everyone else. He had neck tattoos and a shaved head. He kept smacking the kid next to him in the back of the head and laughing. A nearby teacher shushed(be quiet) him.

I started my talk by describing my own early struggles in school. I was nearly held back in second grade because I "couldn't read," which shattered(devastated/exhausted) my confidence.

 For a long time after that experience I viewed myself as unintelligent — and the most difficult definition to break free from, I told the students, is self-definition.

Joshua began to pay attention.

Even though I was a reluctant(unwilling:shy) reader in junior high and high school, I found myself writing poems in the back of class. Secret spoken-word-style poems I never shared. They were about girls, mostly. And my neighborhood. And the confusion I sometimes felt about growing up racially mixed.

I wasn't able to express myself the way I truly wanted to, though, until I was introduced to multicultural literature in college that led to me falling in love with books.

After the session, Joshua came to the front of the stage and asked to speak with me in private. He told me he was born in a prison and that he'd been held back in school. 

Twice. He didn't belong in junior high anymore.

 It made him feel like a loser. But he wanted me to know that he wrote stories sometimes.

 About San Antonio gangs. When he asked if I'd be willing to read the one he'd just finished, I told him I'd love to. "But you'll have to get it to me quick," I said. "They're about to shuttle me to the next school."

He sprinted off toward his locker on the other side of campus.

The librarian told me she was stunned(daze) as I we both watched Joshua disappear into the halls. It was the first time she'd seen him engage in anything school related.

A few minutes later he was back with thirty typed pages. He was sweating and out of breath. He handed me his story and told me I was the first person he'd ever let read his writing. I gave him one of my books in return, and we shook hands. He called me "sir."

That night I read Joshua's words. They were beautiful. And ugly. And sad. They were full of heart. This Mexican kid, who was a thug(violent and aggressive person), who was not pretty and felt like he was too big for his grade, too old — he had all these feelings he didn't know what to do with. So he wrote them into stories.

Owning One's Creativity

This is not an isolated case. A surprising number of teens I meet in rougher schools around the country find refuge in novels and creative writing. It's not always the usual suspects either, the high achievers. Sometimes it's the second-string point guard on the basketball squad. Or the girl bused in from a group home. Or the kid who's twice been suspended for fighting. The one constant I find? Many of these teens — especially the ones from working-class families — do their reading and creating in secret.

Young-adult author John Green has done an amazing job mobilizing a generation of readers and writers through his "nerdfighter" campaign. Kids from all around the country shout from the rooftops that they love to read and learn and make art. One day Mr. Green will undoubtedly win a MacArthur Fellowship, or something similar, for the groundbreaking online community he's created (as well as for his fiction). But not every kid is able to own his or her creativity in this way. In many working-class neighborhoods, the "nerdfighter" label just isn't gonna fly. Self preservation won't allow for it. I'm sensitive to this because it's the way I grew up, too.

I'm ashamed to admit this, but I didn't read a novel all the way through until after high school. Blasphemy, I know. I'm an author now. Books and words are my world. But back then I was too caught up in playing ball and running with the fellas. Guys who read books — especially for pleasure — were soft. Sensitive. And if there was one thing a guy couldn't be in my machista, Mexican family, it was sensitive. My old man didn't play that. Neither did my uncles or cousins or basketball teammates. And I did a good job fitting myself into the formula.

But there was something missing.

Becoming Whole

My world changed the day professor Heather Mayne sought me out in the middle of campus during my sophomore year in college. "I was rereading this last night," she said, holding out a book for me, "and I thought of you."

"Me?" I took the book and studied the cover.

"You." She made me promise to read it before I graduated. "And when you finish," she said, "come talk to me. That's all I ask. Deal?"

That gave me 2 1/2 years. "Deal," I told her.

I took the book with me on our next basketball road trip, to New Mexico State. The night before the game I cracked it open and read the first 10 or 15 pages. Why'd she give me this book? I wondered. It wasn't any good. The narrator couldn't even speak that good of English. This was usually when I'd toss a book aside, telling myself it just wasn't my thing. But that wasn't an option in this case. I needed to find out why my professor had connected me to this one specific book.

By Page 50 or so, I started caring about the character. She had a really tough life, far tougher than anything I'd experienced, and I tried to put myself in her shoes. The broken English which seemed awkward at first, became poetic. I read a third of the novel that night and went to sleep.

After our game the next day, which we won on a buzzer-beater, I hustled back to my hotel room to continue reading my book. I finished at 4 in the morning.

First of all, I'd never read a book in two days, and it made me feel smart (an important piece of the puzzle). Even more surprisingly, though, when I turned the last page I found myself on the verge of tears. I was shocked. How could black and white on a page make me feel so emotional? I was a tough kid from a tougher family. I hadn't shed a tear since elementary school. And here I was, choked up. From a book.

Before I reveal the title, I want all the guys reading this to know I didn't cry that night. I fought it off. Not everyone knows this, but it's not an official cry unless a tear exits the eye. And when I felt it coming on that night, I used an age-old trick. I looked up, allowing everything to soak back in. And it was all good.

The book I read that night was Alice Walker's The Color Purple.

My professor said something I will never forget when I went and talked to her the following week. Even in the harshest and ugliest of circumstances, she explained, there's still hope. That's what she loved most about The Color Purple.

It's what I loved most, too, I decided.

That hope.

I immediately went in search of other stories that might move me, too. I read all the novels I'd skipped in high school. I read novels by black female authors like Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston. I read Ruth Forman's first poetry collection so many times I had every line memorized. And when I discovered Hispanic writers like Sandra Cisneros and Junot Díaz and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, it was over. I was hooked. Novels became my secret place to "feel." My dad and uncles didn't need to know about it. Neither did my teammates. But I could sense something happening inside of me: reading was making me whole.

Today when I write my own novels, I try to craft the best possible stories, and I certainly aim to be entertaining, but I'm also conscious of the powerful function literature can serve — especially in the lives of kids growing up the way I did. My goal as a writer is to recede into the background, allowing readers to fully participate. I want them to be able to watch the characters and listen to conversations and be free to form judgments of their own. I believe it's in this space that young readers acquire experience with complex emotions like empathy and sensitivity, which makes them more likely to be in tune with emotional nuance out in the real world.

Happy Endings

A few weeks after I met Joshua I tried to track him down through his school librarian. I wanted to tell him what I thought about his pages and ask if he'd had a chance to check out the book I'd given him. What a great story this would make, I thought. An author and a student exchanging writing every so often, becoming long-distance creative buddies. Maybe one day he'd even publish something of his own, and I could brag to everyone that I was his mentor.

Unfortunately this story doesn't have the neat little happy ending I'd imagined. Joshua, I was told, had dropped out of school. The last the librarian had heard, he'd gotten in trouble with the police and had left San Antonio to live with his grandma in Houston. I left my contact information with her in case she heard anything, but that's pretty much where the trail went cold.

So, what happened to Joshua? Did he make good in his new city? Or did things continue to spiral downward the way they sometimes do for kids born into impossible circumstances? I'll probably never know. But even if it's the latter, I'll still never forget our brief encounter. A happy ending doesn't make something more valid. And as long as Joshua manages to stay alive, his story could change at any time.

Even late in life, the way it did for my dad.

Back in my graduate school days, I used to drop by my folks' place once a week for dinner. I'd eat at the kitchen table talking to my mom and little sister while my dad ate in the living room watching his favorite TV show, Cops. We didn't usually interact a whole lot. But one night, my old man stopped me on my way out the door. He pointed at the book tucked under my arm and asked what I was reading.

"One Hundred Years of Solitude," I said, holding it out for him to see.

He nodded.

I assumed that was the end of it so I waved to everyone and made my way through the front door. My dad followed me outside, though. "Hey, Matt," he said. "You think I could borrow that book when you're done?"

I'd never seen my dad read much of anything, and Garcia Marquez seemed like a tough jumping-off point, but I handed over the book anyway, telling him: "It's all yours. I finished it on the ride up here."

It took him over a month to read the book. When he handed it back to me I tried to get his feedback on the multiple storylines and the magical realism, but all he'd say was that he liked it. He followed me outside the house that night, too. "I was thinking," he said, looking over his shoulder to make sure we were alone. "Maybe you could let me read whatever books you finish."

"Sure," I said, trying to hide my surprise.

Over the next two years, my old man read everything I put in front of him. Fiction, nonfiction, essays, plays. He even started reading books he found on his own. My mom pulled me aside one day and told me he was becoming a completely different person. He was less angry now. He even talked about going back to school.

After my first novel came out, and I moved to New York, my dad enrolled at the local community college but kept it a secret. He struggled through a year of remedial courses but eventually got the hang of it and told his family what he was doing. He went on to earn his associate's degree, and we were all incredibly proud of him. But he didn't stop there. The following year he transferred to the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he studied literature.

My dad just recently finished his bachelor's degree, and he's now a bilingual teacher at an elementary school in Watsonville, Calif. (where my mom teaches, too). He's still tough, and he doesn't show a whole lot of emotion. But you should see the guy's eyes light up when we start talking books. "You gotta read Roberto Bolaño, Matt. I'm serious. I don't know what's taking you so long."

"OK, OK," I say. "I'll read Bolaño."

"Start with The Savage Detectives and just go from there. Trust me."

Sometime when I have these kinds of conversations with my dad, I find myself thinking: Who the hell is this guy?

But it's like my dad always tells me. Reading changed his life.

Just like it changed mine.

Will anything come along and change Joshua's life? Maybe not. But I always go back to my professor's line about The Color Purple. Even in the harshest and ugliest of circumstances, there's still hope.

Matt de la Peña (@mattdelapena) is the author of many young adult novels including The Living, which will be released on Nov. 12. He lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., and visits high schools and colleges throughout the country. 

This essay is from the following website:

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/11/11/243960103/a-reluctant-reader-turns-ya-author-for-tough-teens