Math for Young Kids

I just came accross this maths for young kids post - more nice material worth exploring!

Asian education values: what adoption studies say.

I found this old post on Gene Expression which questions the idea that academic achievement in Asians is due to better child rearing values.

As Stanley Sue and Sumie Okazaki pointed out in their 1991 American Psychologist paper, Asian American Educational Achievements: A Phenomenon in Search of an Explanation, the parenting styles and values found in East Asian-American homes tend to correlate with lower test scores when they are found in white homes.

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The Results showing higher grades for the Asian adoptees is particularly interesting, becuase of the control of white adoptees unique to this study. If Asian academic success was really due to some special set of academic values inculcated by Asian parents (something not demonstrated by the data to begin with), then why do Asians do better academically than whites even when they are raised by white parents?

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The gap between whites and Asians fluctuated from 19 to .09 in the NAEP data while the gap in the adoption data is from 1/3 to 3 times larger. This is consistent with the Sue and Okazaki paper above which showed that contrary to popular anecdotes, the values that lead to higher academic grades are actually found more often in white homes. In other words Asian-Americans perform highly despite their Asian home cultural environment not because of it.

Seems like a good case for taking Amy Chua's advice with a grain of salt, or at least for trying to get a better understanding of what impact (if any) parental styles can have, and why.

Chinese Mothers: article by Amy Chua

This article has been going around the internet - it's in praise of a Chinese Mother's way of raising kids, which fits my experience pretty well; apparently the book itself is much more nuanced.

There are also some very good comments on this thread on Quora (and this other testimony of an east-west mix that seems to have worked well).

I'm sympathetic to Amy Chua's approach, but it also has some downsides: it doesn't emphasize social skills (which are more important both for personal development and in the professional world) and creativity and initiative (which are useful, but may be overvalued compared to hard work); it can give rise to psychological problems. Also, it's possible to work long hours at something because it's interesting, not because someone is forcing you.

But still, I can see the appeal of the hardcore approach - the Western/Liberal way seems to produce a lot of "smart but lazy" kids, it may be possible to do better than that, and I do recognize that "yes but we're creative" might be a comforting lie.

Gatto on the History of American Education

I just read an article on the history of American Education, by John Gatto - pretty thought-provoking stuff!