Balanced Life - the Liberal Approach

One of the subjects that I have some interest in is that of parenting. Unlike my girlfriend, I am not quite at the reading books stage, but I always stop to read any article or blog post on the matter while I am browsing the net.

Today, I came upon this through Drudge.

This, I think, is the most interesting excerpt:

There are certain cultures--particularly Asian ones--that produce child prodigies. Relentless parents, goading their children to success at the youngest possible age, are but one explanation. These are all cultures in which, traditionally, children have begun work early, in which childhood as we know it in the West is an alien idea. Indian kids are potty-trained by two. In America, that would be regarded as precocious. Pressure is brought to bear much later on purely American children than on those kids whose parents persist in old-world child-rearing ways long after they immigrate to America.

This explains my theory on parenting quite well. I believe, through reading, observation, and my own personal experience, that the purpose of childhood is often misunderstood in North America. The idea that children should do nothing other than play is highly disturbing.

When my family first immigrated to Canada, my brother was placed in a Grade 2 class at the local elementery school. He spoke no English, but after the first day he came running home and claimed that he had already graduated because he would never need to do homework ever again. I kid you not. My 7 year-old brother, who had spent only one year in a school in Middle East recognized that what we do in North America to our children is not schooling. It's some sort of social education, but not schooling.

Sure, our kids learn to share, play, and sing. But does the fact that the majority of them can't read, spell, or do long division not bother anyone? When I first moved to Canada, in Grade 8, I had to take two years off from the Junior High's math classes. My teachers actually asked me to go sit at the back of the class. One of them even gave me a book to read on Chaos Theory. I barely spoke any English and she gave me a book on Chaos Theory - I'm convinced just to get me out of her hair.

Many years later I would go through my Grade 7 notebook from Iran and realize that the math I had done in Grade 7 was the math that was being thought in Grade 12 and, the now defunct, OAC. I remember being good at it in Grade 7, but somehow after 4 years of Canadian education I had to re-learn this stuff because I had forgotten a good chunk of it.

This is a problem. We are babying our children. This is why those parents that leave the education of their kids to the schools are condemning them to a life of wondering "why is that Asian kid so good at math?" We are raising our kids to be stupid, and then wondering why they turn out that way. We are signing up our sons for hockey teams and wondering why they didn't use their brain before they punched that kid's nose in with their oversized fists.

I had a conversation with an Indian friend of mine the other day about the Indian Institute of Technology. (If you haven’t heard of it, start worrying now. You’re job will likely be off-shored soon to someone who graduated from IIT.) Anyway, I asked my friend why so many Indians were attending engineering school in North America when IIT was clearly the best school in the world. His answer: not all Indians are smart enough to get into IIT, so if they can’t get in to IIT they try MIT.

This is India folks. The same country that has people dying on the streets, going hungry, and living- well - like they do in India!

They are kicking our asses. Just think about that the next time you want your son or daughter to have a “balanced life.” I am not saying that children shouldn’t play hockey. All I’m saying is that a balanced life (edit) ought to include at least some level of academic education.