Harvard Baby
Ira Humperdink MD
The intimidating secrets of raising high-achievers.
By Ann Hulbert
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2005, at 1:33 PM ET
Book Cover
In 2001, a how-to book called Harvard Girl Liu Yiting surged to the top
of the Chinese best-seller list. Written by two parents from the
Sichuan
provincial capital of Chengdu, it laid out the rigorous "family
education" methods they credited with getting their daughter into
America's best known Ivy League university-the current pinnacle of
academic success in a country now thinking globally. According to press
accounts of the manual, Yiting's parents launched the regimen with a
cognitively stimulating "verbal barrage" when she was 15 days old. On
top of intensive home studying, Yiting went on to endure toughening
feats like swimming long distances and holding ice-cubes in her bare
hands. By 2003, Harvard Girl had sold about 3 million copies. It also
spawned more than a dozen imitators peddling techniques for raising
successful Chinese applicants to Oxford, Cambridge, and Columbia
University. (Yale, it seems, might need to work on its marketing, ha
ha.)
goodg...@yahoo.com
child/daddy's girl. Didn't her father quit his job to spend time on
her and only her? That must have felt nice.
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Stress affecting 30m schoolchildren
JOSIE LIU
Prev. Story
Copyright ©2005. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights
reserved.
buy scmp photos
Students sleep in a classroom during a midday break at a private
elementary school for the children of migrant workers in Shanghai.
Reuters photo
About 30 million school-aged children on the mainland are weighed down
by psychological problems - and the number is growing, a study has
found.
Authors of the report estimate that 20 per cent to 30 per cent of
primary and secondary school students faced pressure over their
studies, work, money and personal relationships, and did not have the
skills to deal with emotional challenges.
The study, the China Youth Development Report, was compiled by the
China Youth and Children Studies Centre and the Communist Youth League.
E Liran, a Beijing ninth-grader studying for senior high-school
entrance exams, said the pressure of the tests made some students
emotionally fragile.
"Some girls, who didn't cry that much when they were in the seventh and
eighth grades, now easily break into tears over little things," she
said. "Everybody fears not being able to get into a good high school."
She said the pressure was made worse by the fact their future would be
decided by one examination - a test teachers described as a monumental
event.
"They said it is the first major dividing line in life. Those who
cannot get into a good high school might not be able to get into a good
college and find a good job," she said.
The student also said her peers did not like to talk to teachers and
parents about their pressures and fears because of the generation gap.
Liu Weiheng, another ninth-grader, said the pressure was "endurable",
but some students needed help with the stress.
"Today's students are already facing great psychological pressure and
are studying extremely hard for their future. We need some way to
cope," he said, adding he did deep-breathing exercises to calm himself.
Renmin University psychology professor Yu Guoliang said education
administrators had looked at improving mental health in schools, but
the situation varied from region to region.
Professor Yu said urban areas did better than rural areas, with
education on mental health almost nonexistent in western rural
districts. He added more work was needed to improve teachers' ability
to counsel students.
"Most instructors didn't receive systematic training and their ability
is poor," he said.
Professor Yu also suggested a nationwide survey be carried out to
identify major problems and assess the state of education in schools
about mental health.
vjp...@at.biostrategist.dot.dot.com
This is a fascinating issue for me.
Here are some of my readings.
Still no conclusions.
Raphael Patai, The_Arab_Mind, hatherleighpress.com 2002,1983,1976
p41 lower paternal control is correlated, in Lebanon as in America,
with higher achievement [cites p152 Protho Child Rearing in the
Lebanon, Harvard MidEast VIII, 1961]
---
Kornich (CUNY), Underachievement, ChasThomas SpfdIl 1965 LC65-16650 66-09071
Pierce & Bowman Motvn Pttn Suprr HS Students
p251 higher-achieving students reported that they had been more active in
school-related activites.. valued the concepts school, work, and imagination
more highly.. more active in religious groups.. mothers held higher
educational aspirations for their children.. engaged in more educationally
related activites (music, science, [church school? ancestral language?],
etc).. first-born or only child.. Small families produced proportionately
more high achievers than did large families
Bernard Rosen (orig Am Soc Scty 8/57) Race, Ethnicity and the Achievement Syndrome
p253-5 "new" immigrant groups which settled primarily in the Northeast,
the Greeks and Jews have attained middle class status more rapidly than most
of their fellow immigrants. In general, ethnic groups with Roman Catholic
affiliation have moved up less rapidly than non-Catholic groups. And the
vertical mobility of Negroes, even in the less prepressive environment of the
industrial Northeast, has been relatively low.. many Jews came to America
with occupational skills better suited to urban.. Both the Greeks and Jews
were quicker to develop effective community organizations.. many Jews and a
small but influential number of Levantine Greeks had come from small towns or
cities, while most of the Roman Catholic immigrants from Eastern and Southern
Europe (and SOuthern Negroes before their migration to the North) came from
rural communities [cit Sklare The_Jews FP 1958, Burgess Greeks_in_Am 1913,
Saloutos S Atl Q 4:69-82 1945, BCROsen AmSoclgRvu 21:203-211 1956]
p260 Jews expect earliest evidence of self-reliace from their children
(mean age 6.83 years), followed by the Protestants (6.87), Negroes (7.23),
Greeks (7.67), French-Canadians (7.99), and Italians (8.03)
p261 Puritan Ethic with its concept of work as a "calling" and the
exhortation that a job be done well. Of course, not all Protestants would be
equally comfortable with this tradition; it is much more applicable, for
example to Presbyterians and Quakers than to Methodists and Baptists
p262 Protestants, Jews and Greeks place a greater emphasis on independence
and achievement training than Southern Italians and French-Canadians
p267 cultures of white Protestants, Jews, and Greeks stand out as
considerably more individualistic, activistic, and future-oriented than those
of Southern Italians, French-Canadians, and Negroes.. Like protestantism,
Judaism is an intensely individualistic religion and the Jews are intensely
individualistic people
p268-9 In some respects, Greek and Jewish cultures were strikingly similar
at the turn of the century. The ethos of the town and city permeated the
Greek more than most other Mediterranean cultures, although only a small
proportion of the population was engaged in trade - with the important
exception of the Levantine Greeks, who were largely merchants. The image of
the Greek in the Eastern Mediterranean area was that of an individualistic,
foresighted, competitive trader. Early observers of the Greek in America were
impressed by his activistic, future-oriented behavior. E A Ross, a rather
unfriendly observer, wrote as early as 1914 that "the saving, commercial
Greek climbs. From curb to stand, from stand to store, from little store to
big store, and from there to branch stores in other cities - such are the
stages in his upward path. [cit Saloutos p71] Though separated by thousands
of miles, French-Canadian and Southern Italian culutres were similar in many
respects. Both were primarily peasant cultures, strongly influenced by the
Roman Catholic Church. Neither could be described as activistic,
individualistic or future-oriented. In Southern Italian society the
closed-class system and grinding poverty fostered a tradition of resignation
- a belief that the individual had little control over his life situation and
a stress upon the role of fate (Destino) in determining success. The living
conditions of French-Canadians, although less harsh, were sufficiently sever
to sharply limit the individual's sence of mastery.. Extended family ties
were very strong in both groups: there is the SOuthern Italian saying, "the
family against all others;" the French-Canadian farmer in need of help will
travel many miles to hire a kinsman rather than an otherwise convenient
neighbor. Irnicannly, although Negroes are usually Protestant (however, not
ordinarily of the Calvinistic type [Condi Rice is Calvinist Preby]) and have
been exposed to the liberal economic [welfare] ethic longer than most
p273-4 [cit Williams Am_Soc 1951, Woods CultVal_AmEthnGr 1956)
Protestants' stress upon formal education.. Jews have placed a very high
value on educational.. Southern Italians, school was an upper class
institution, not an avenue for advancement for their children, booklearning
was remote from everyday experience, and intellectualism often regarded with
distrust. French-Canadians, although not hostile to education and learning,
were disinclined to educate their sons beyond the elementary.. Greeks -
generally no better educated than Italians or French-Canadians - on the whole
were much more favorably disposed towards learning, in large part because of
their intense nationalistic identification with the cultural glories of
Ancient Greece (footnote: Attempts by Mussolini to create a similar bond
between his people and ancient Rome, or even the more recent Renaissance were
unsuccessful. French-Canadians for the most part have long refused to be
impressed by the "secular" achievement of European anti-clerical French
society) This identification was strengthened by the relatively hostile
reception Greeks met on their arrival in this country, and is in part
responsible for the rapid development of private schools supported by the
Greek community and devoted to the teaching of Greek culture - an interesting
parallel to the Hebrew School among American Jews.. 96 per cent of the
Jewish, 88 per cent of the Protestant, 85 per cent of the Greek, 83 per cent
of the Negro (much higher than was anticipated), 64 per cent of the Italian,
and 56 per cent of the French-Canadian mothers said that they expected their
sons to go to college
p278 achievement motivation is more characteristic of Greeks, Jews, and
white Protestants than of Italians, French-Canadians, and Negroes. The data
also indicate that Jews, Greeks, and Protestants are more likely to possess
achievement values and higher educational and vocational aspirations that
Italians and French-Canadians. The values and educational aspirations of
Negroes are higher than expected, being comparable to those of Jews, Greeks,
and white Protestants, and higher than those of the Italians and
French-Canadians. Vocational aspirations of Negroes, however, are the lowest
---
Religious Preferences and Worldly Success Mayer&Sharp AmSocRvu 25#2 (4/62)
p226 Members of the Jewish, Greek Orthodox, and Semi-Christian faiths
appear to have made the greatest achievements, given the system followed
here. Behind these three groups are the several major Protestant
denominations, with Baptists ranking below those white Detroiters who have no
religious preference. For both whites and Negroes, the Catholics have the
least economic success as measured by our index.. TO sumarize our findings as
they apply to white residents of greater Detroit: (1) Jews, followed closely
by Episcopaleans and Calvinists, have achieved the greatest worldly
success. In the middle range are the remaining Protestant groups, with
Baptists falling toward the end of the economic scale. Catholics have
achieved the least. (2) If an ascription "handicap" is considered, the
Eastern Orthodox group, closely followed by adherents of the Semi-Christian
faiths, join the Jewish group at the top of the scale
---
Lehrer Religion as Det Edu Attainment Soc Sci Rsc 28 1999
Ceteris paribus, the educational attainment of Jews exceeds that of
mainline Protestants by approximately 1.2-1.3 years; at the same time, the
schooling level of fundamentalist Protestants is lower than that of mainline
Protestants by about 0.3-0.4 years
---
1st3yrChild Karl Konig Floris2004 FrGstlbnStuttgt1957 ISBN0-86315-452-2
p37 With the extraordinary manifoldness of the syllables he can
form, he has the possibility [unused parts of which atrophy at the
second year] of learning any possible language. It is also of
importance to realize that children born deaf babble to the same
degree and extent as those who can hear
p39 end of the eighteenth month. During this period the child
acquires between forty and sevety words, which he uses as one-word
sentences [postWW2 biz Japanese was restricted to 250 words to
increase literacy and decrease dialects]
p40 eighteenth to the twenty-fourth months, the child lives in the
realm of speech that is connected with 'anming'
p41 number of words grows, but they also begin to be
differentiated.. toward the end of the second year the child has
acquired the building stones for forming he first primitive sentences
p43 One's native language unfolds astonishingly quickly in the
course of the third year.. Words begin to develop, to be inflected and
changed [vjp2 argues it is at this stage that ambilingualism allows
the thought process to develop supralingually, unconstrained by any
single language's bounds]
p46 'saying,' 'naming' and 'talking'.. abnormalities can only be
unterstood as the falling apart of this threefoldedness, which must
become a unity in the speaking if speech is to express itself, and the
inharmonious working together of these three members and the inability
to weld them together or keep them apart
p51 Speeech is like a plough that works the field of the soul so
that the seed of future thought achievement can be laid into the open
furrows
p54 Something like the theory of categories as they were first
discovered and described by Aristotle becomes laive in the speaking
child
p58 At the transistion from the Atlantean to the post-Atlantean
cultural epoch around 8000 BC, the change from localized to rhythmical
memory took place. When the high cultures of Asia Minor were succeeded
by that of Greece, at about the time of the Trojan War and the laying
of the foundation stone of Europe, rhythmicall memory changed into
picture memories
p60 When a two-year-old child demands that the same thing should
happen every day at the same time, or that a fairy tale must be
repeated with the same expressions, and accents of feeling, it is
indicative of the rhythmic memory that govers that age. Toward the end
of the third year memory ideas become more frequent and insert
themselves widely int the totality of memories
p62 Just as fantasy is bound up with playing, so does memory work
in close union with speaking. The faculty of memory is most intimately
connected with the faculty of naming because one truly remembers only
what is to be named
p63 Memory on the other hand is the result of the child's painful
collision with the world
p67 Thinking overtakes speech. It runs ahead of it and speech
formulations themselves already come partl under the power of the
child's own thoughts. It is no longer speech alone that utters the
words, but the child's thought experience begins to make use of
speech. Movement and speech, which so far have followed rather
autocratically their own laws, come under the rulership of
contemplation and judgement. Step by step thought becomes king of the
soul, whose functions bow down under its light-filled majesty
p71 At the awakeing of thinking something becomes apparent that is
not so obvious in the case of walking and speaking, namely that all
three faculties have metamorphosed out of pre-earthly activities in
rder to appear in the child in an earthly garment.. sleeping thinking
awakens at the call ofthe personality that finds itself [in fact,
human personality develops, adapted to its environment, by age five,
in place of animal in-born instinct, as the human brain is the only
one not born fully developed, hardwiring persoanilty by five]
p72 The ego is born in the awakening thinking, and the result of
this even is the age of defiance that now follows. Neither is it the
hour of the birth of the higher ego, but rather the death of it. What
now comes to light is the lower ego, which will accompanay man through
the whole of his earthly life
---
Feinstein & Symons Attainment 2'school Oxf Eco Ppr 4/99 51#2
p316 The major influence on attainment is parental interest
p317 peer groups also have a significant effect on attainment.. confirm the
'parents and peers' theory of educational attainment for children in British
secondary schools as emphasised by Robertson and Symons (1996) for children
in primary schools
---
Peter Te Yuan Hao 17FEB1955 NYU Ed D dissertation "J2895JAn1355" UM12218
[Conclusions in front] "The Chinese students in this study proved
to have vocabulary and reading difficulties which did affect adversely
their academic perfomance. ALl their test scores except the ACE [Am
Council Ed] Quantitative score were significantly inferior to those
made by the American college freshmen. THe learning difficulties of
CHinese students were found linguistic ratherr than quantitative in
nature.
---
Glazer & Moynihan Beond Melt Pot MIT 1963
p35 West Indians, in contrast to that of the Southern Negro,
emphasized saving, hard work, investment, education
p37 Chinese-owned business is, in proportion to their numbers,
forty-five times as great as the income of the Negro.. Jews, Greeks,
and Armenians, while not as specialized as CHinese, show a similar
history
p45 Negroes do place a high value on education.. Parents
continually emphasize to children te theme of the importance of
education as a means of getting ahead; and this is true among the
uneducated as well as the educated, the failures as well as the
successful
p81 New York Negro minister is in general far less cautious in
indicating his preferences than the white minister
p121 Puerto Rican has entered the city in the age of the welfare state
p165 Jewish families break up lss tha non-Jewish ones.. Jewish
parents still seem to hover more over their children and give them
shorter rein for exploration and independence than other middle-class
American parents. THe results seem to be that there is more neurosis
among Jews but less psychosis. [Hillinghead & Redlich Wiley 1958] The
fault of Jewish family relations is in the strength of the tie that
binds; but the radical disorders that result from the absense of such
a tie are less common among Jews than non-Jews
p169 Some East European Jews followed the German Jews into the
Republican party, and some, like other immigrants, went into the
Democratic party. But at least as many became strong SOcialists. It
was for this reason, as well as because the Irish held tenaciously to
their posts, that Jewish progress in the Democratic party was slow
p200 By contrast, the problems of the Italian children stemmed from
a too strong, too rigorously ordered family, which did not value
education
p201 The difference in Italian enrollment between Hunter and City
College reflects the role of Catholicism in the process of Italian
adaptation to American norms of high education. THere were more
Italian girls in Hunter because of the sequence of Catholic presidents
there and because, in accordance witht he Catholicpreferred practice,
Hunter is [was] not coeducational
p274 The future of the Irish in New York Politics will be profoundly
affected by events within the Catholic CHurch, which is, and for a
generation at the very least, will remain, essentially an Irish
Catholic Church
p314 Religion and race seem to define the major groups into which
American society is evolving as the specifically national aspect of
ethnicity declines
---
Kolesnik & Power, Catholic Education, MGH 1965 LC 65-20975 Gustave Weigel,
SJ (orig Rvu_Pol 19:275-307 7/57) American Catholic Intellectualism
p72 When Galileo was condemned by the Church, the new science almost
literally left the Church
p73 It is a fact that in the United States, where the Catholics form
something between a fifth to a third of the population, the proportion of
Catholics in American scholarship is nowhere near the overall figure
p74 The American Catholic problem is a sociological one, not theological.
The peculiar situation of a Church, whose historical roots are a
non-intellectual proletariat, gathered from all over Europe and only recently
rising to economic conditions requisite for scholarly dedication, is the
cause of our poor intellectual showing
p75 The Church must, by divine mission, guard the deposit of faith. Any
novelty, even when it is only renovation rather than innovation, is
suspected. It seems that, to keep the deposit of faith, it is safest to keep
all of its expressions not only formally but even materially as we received
them from the past.. This explains the suspicion people have aginst the
intellectual. The cold, calm, ivory-tower contemplative is potentially
subversive. He seems to live on isolation and on a plane far removed from
pedestrian life. Yet he threatens the structure of man's work-a-day world
p76 American Catholicism, until very recently, has always had the feeling
of being a beleaguered community. An ubiquitous, formidable enemy was
threatening its very existence. Loyal defense was needed, not a divisive
effort of criticism. Everything that was, took on a holy aspect; to be loved
and died for. Such an atmosphere was not propitious to American Catholic
intellectualism. Yet th increased social power of the Catholic group and its
greater economic independence have gradually diminished our sensation of
siege. The very fact that the Catholic Commission on Intellectual and
Cultural Affairs can now honestly recognize and publicly discuss the dearth
of Catholic intellectuals shows that our Catholic body is no longer
exclusively concerned with mere survival. Our young Catholics are not worried
about defense. They want to expand Catholic life as life
p83 The general Catholic community in America does not know what
scholarship is. Instead of a true concept, false conceptions are
prevalent.. Yet in vast areas of our American Catholic community, the
intellectualoid is given the place of the intellectual
p87 The more important feature of our American Catholic body is its
obsession with the apologetic defense of Catholic positions, ever looking to
verbal debate with opponents who are only projections of subjective fear..The
insecurity animating the apologetic spirit of Catholic teachers makes them
prone to undermine the real work of intellectualism. They wish to prevent the
students from meeting thought which has not been apologetically
sterilized. Instead of making the disciplines an intellectual encounter with
the real as it swims into our experience, they prefer to petrify it by
reducing it to a logical scheme of abstract verbalisms. The student is
habituated not to consider the existent real with its confusions,
effervescence and rich variety. He is taught to look spontaneously for a
given atemporal scheme of terminological coordinates which he can superimpose
on reality.. heritage from an unexamined past.. Memorization has been valued
over direct investigation
Ira Humperdink MD
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