Identifying passions and teaching the value of hard work July 31, 2009

The past few weeks, I’ve read two books – “The Element” by Ken Robinson and “Outliers” by Malcom Gladwell. Reading these books have raked up many conflicts in my mind about parenting and education.

Ken Robinson in his book talks passionately about finding one’s true passion – whether it is in math, science, history, business, music, art or sports, whatever it maybe. His book is filled with examples of how people who have identified their true passion and pursued them with hard work and determination lead meaningful lives. The book ends with a call for educators and policy makers all over the world to  reform education in a way that children get to explore a variety of interests and identify their true passions. Every child is born and nurtured differently and may not be equally passionate about the popular subjects (like math and science) that the schools teach. Yet, most education systems all over the world, through their rigorous assessment methods, test all children on a narrow set of skills and tag every child with a label called “intelligent” or not.

As a parent, there is nothing more satisfying for me than to raise a child who will not only make meaningful contributions to the society but will also lead a life which will be meaningful to herself. These two things definitely go hand-in-hand because only if work is meaningful to someone will the person be able to make a meaningful contributions to the society. And work can be meaningful only if you are passionate about what you are doing.But this book left more questions in my mind than answers to previous ones.

How does a parent figure out this true passion in a child? What if I completely miss it, given the many many different spheres of influences that a child experiences in her life? A child may say, she is interested in something and a parent can provide the opportunities. What does it mean if the child loses interest in that activity at a later time? What do I make out of it?  Sometimes, a child may become passionate about something only after being exposed to a skill deeply. Until then, the passion may be buried somewhere else. How do I figure out as to which area of interest the child should pursue in depth ? As a parent, am I thinking too much about these issues? Can I leave it all to chance or should I do my due diligence? And how do I do my due diligence in a way not to pressure my child too much?

Wait! My thought process doesn’t end there. It has become even more complex after I’ve read Malcom Gladwell’s “Outliers”.

Gladwell focuses on how demographic advantages, unexpected opportunities, hardwork and ethnic cultures play a big role in achieving something big. He gives examples of many outliers like The Beatles, Bill Gates, the big lawyers in New York City. He even talks about Chinese as a society, who have achieved deep expertise in math that other societies haven’t and why it is so. Most of us parents don’t set out to make our children become outliers. Apart from the priority of their leading meaningful lives, one of the topmost priorities on our minds is to make sure that our children would grow up to be economically self-sufficient.  The lessons that Gladwell imparts in his book would hold good not just for outliers but even to lead a reasonably “successful” life. In today’s world, you would still need demographic advantages and the right opportunities in order to be economically self-sufficient. You only have to look around at a person graduating from college when his/her country is in deep recession to know the value of “demographic advantages” and “opportunities”. And we as parents know all too well about the importance of “hard work”. Gladwell, in his book, talks about how it takes 10,000 hours of practice in total (which usually amounts to 10 years of time) in order to become an expert in any skill. This 10,000 hour rule is not a new concept and has been referred to many times within the realm of scientific research in the field of education.

As a parent, again I’m having a hard time coming to grips with how to have my child understand the value of hard work. The struggle is more to do with having my daughter understand the value of hard work without taking away the “joy of learning” in her. The rule of thumb in the field of education is that if a child is interested and motivated to learn something, the child will work on practicing that skill automatically. Yes, I agree but it is not as simple, is it? For, as the tasks start to become tougher, the natural human tendency is to give it up. This is where the value of “hard work” kicks in. But the more I push my daughter to pursue a skill through “practice”, the more I’m nervous that it may backfire. I’ve had some reasonable amounts of success balancing my urge to have her practice a skill and still retain the “joy of learning” in her. But sometimes I feel this balance slipping away right in front of my eyes and all I can do is throw up my arms in frustration (thankfully, not in front of her).

I guess if the child is “wildly passionate” (as opposed to just being “interested”) about something he/she would be lot more inclined to work hard. I know that some children, begin to exhibit their deep passions at an early age. But many children don’t and I feel that these conflicts that I’ve described are more relevant in these situations.

I want to close this window to my web of conflicts with a final set of questions . As an adult, it is a matter of balancing two things – pursuing one’s passion and at the same time, finding ways to be economically self-sufficient. What if your passion doesn’t fit in well with economic realities of the time that you live in? How do I make sure that my child is able to achieve this balance between these two things, when she grows up to be an adult? The first thing I can think of is that she should definitely have opportunities to pursue a variety of interests so that she develops competency in a range of skills that will help her find meaningful careers. Now, the conflicts in my mind have just multiplied. Identify multiple interests and motivate her to work hard on all of them? This is a full-time job. I’m definitely passionate about parenting but I’m not sure that this will lead me to economic self-sufficiency .

Natural growth versus Concerted cultivation July 28, 2009

I’ve been reading the book “Outliers” by Malcom Gladwell. In one of the chapters, he contrasts two parenting philosophies – natural growth v/s concerted cultivation.

Research has shown that some parents follow the philosophy of natural growth. They think of their responsibility for their children as one where they have to care for their children but let them grow and develop on their own. They are not involved in intensive scheduling in the lives of their children. These children spend a large amount of their time making up games on their own with other kids. The second kind of philosophy is of concerted cultivation. Here the parents are heavily involved in their children’s free time, shuttling them from one activity to the next, quizzing them about their teachers and coaches and peers. The parents also talk things through with their children, reasoning with them.

Gladwell talks about how research says that there is nothing to show that one philosophy is better than the other. The children who experience the natural growth philosophy are more often than not, better behaved, less whiny, more creative in making use of their own time and have a well-developed sense of independence. Where as the children who are heavily scheduled and experience the concerted cultivation philosophy are exposed to a constantly shifting set of experiences. They learn teamwork and how to cope in highly structured settings. Depending on the different environments that they are exposed to, they are taught how to interact comfortably with adults and to speak up when they need to.

With my daughter, I’ve found that I feel the urge to strike a balance between both these philosophies. Since she attends a Montessori school, I feel pretty comfortable that she is getting the freedom to explore her personal interests and hence experience natural growth,  for a significant amount of time within the school setting. At the same time, the structure within the Montessori environment, gives her a good space to  collaborate with her peers on different tasks, interact with the adults to express her needs and pursue academic activities – in short, experience concerted cultivation. She gets off school at 3.00 p.m every day. After school hours, I do take her for after-school classes at least 3 days in a week during the school year. These are pretty structured settings where she has to learn/practice new skills. Alternatively, we also have playdates with other kids quite often where she usually has an unstrcutured setting. At home, again we have a mix of both – unstructured time and structured activities.

I still remember what my professor at my graduate school (of Education) once said – “Children need to get used to boredom”.  When they grow up to be adults, they need to be able to figure out how to make use of their own time. They need to be able to independently figure out their interests and pursue them. What my professor said really struck a chord in me. Since then, I’ve tried to control my urge to engage her in too many structured activities. Even then, I find that my daughter comes to me once in a while and says, – “Now, what do I do? How do I spend my time now?”. I find myself struggling to give her an answer. Sometimes, I try and find an activity that she can do. But most times, her asking me that question is an indication for me that she hasn’t learnt to manage her time on her own . Hence I shoo her off to find something to do. After all, mommies need their own time too – especially time for reading . The best times are when, she decides that she wants to read a book sitting next to her dear mommy. Those are the times when I feel that all my dreams have come true. Mother and daughter sitting cuddled next to each other and reading their own books while the whole world passes by .

A lesson in courage and perseverance July 6, 2009

We had been eagerly waiting for our road trip in Colorado and Utah for many months. After we landed in Denver, Colorado, we spent our first day of the road trip at the Rocky Mountain National Park. My daughter had displayed amazing patience on the previous day, at the airports and in the airplane, on our way to Denver. Our frequent travels has molded her into a patient traveler. Her only whimper had come when we had finally landed in Denver and she had found out that our hotel was still an hours worth of drive away from the airport.

On our first day at the Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP), we were looking forward to indulging in pristine nature, watching the beautiful scenic views, hiking among wildflowers, watching the wild animals and trying to spot the beautiful birds among the trees. We definitely got to do all of this and much more.

As we started our first hike, I knew that this was not going to be easy for my daughter . It was a 5 mile, moderately difficult hike. But I thought that this was an opportunity to not only be a little adventurous but also to teach her some perseverance. I knew that she would start complaining as we hiked further into the trail. The first 1.5 miles of the hike was beautiful. She hardly stuck to the hiking trail. She hiked most of the first 1.5 miles by jumping from one rock to the other and watching the least-chipmunks and the marmots play games with their friends. But complain, she definitely did after that . For a while, her complaints sounded very artificial and it was very easy for me to keep her going by telling her about how she could do anything if she just made up her mind.

But finally, the moment she was waiting for, arrived , when she tripped on a rock and fell flat on the ground, hurting her knee – giving her the perfect excuse to turn back home. It’s a wonder that there were no landslides on the rocky mountains, considering the shrill cry that she let out during the next 5 minuntes . I managed to calm her down. Stories from my childhood when I had nasty falls, seemed to convince her that her wounds had nowhere else to go but be cured. She actually started to trudge along the trail again giving her best shot. By now, we were a couple of miles into the hiking trail. But luck was definitely on her side as dark clouds started to kick in and it started to drizzle. We had not prepared ourselves for rain had to hike the 2 miles back to our car in pouring rain. We finally, reached our car about an hour later, thoroughly drenched and with no hope of changing into dry clothes because there were none. The temperature had dropped to upper 50s and we were shivering. The next couple of hours were spent drying ourselves and feeding our hungry stomachs. I think that a lesson in courage and perseverance in the face of bad weather and a persistent mother respectively, had already unraveled for my daughter that day.

What she hadn’t expected was the threat of another hike – a shorter 2 mile hike this time. She initially resisted it but knew that it was in vain. It turned out to a easy hike this time in spite of her “why do we have to hike so much in one day” complaints. But what we encountered during the hike blew us all away – a big black bear, right in the middle of our trail. Luckily, we had some smart fellow hikers who knew what to do when a big bear is staring right at you. As one of these hikers started shouting at the bear, the bear decided that the best thing to do was to turn his back on us and carry on with his life.

The bear encounter, however, was enough to leave a lasting impression on my daughter. The remainder of the day was dedicated to talking to her about whether bears attack humans and what can be done when that happens. The inexperienced ‘bear’ person that I am, I had very few answers to her questions but managed to appear courageous. As for my daughter she came back to the hotel and journaled her fears away by writing about it.

It had been an eventful day for my daughter. She had a couple of lessons each on both courage and persevence. As for me, my horizons on experiences related to raising my child had only widened.

Homework for summer June 12, 2009

Summer is a time to enjoy time off from school and nourish the soul with life-enriching experiences. It is a time to spend more time with family and friends than at school, more time outdoors than indoors, more time amidst nature than disconnected from it. I have been looking forward to spending long, bright summer days with my daughter.

In the US, many children get almost three months off from school during summer. I read a statistic recently which said that counting all the vacations, holidays, weekends and the number of hours in a school day, children in America spend only 14% of their time in the year attending school. They spend close to 33% of their time sleeping and the rest 53% at their home and communities. This statistic made me wonder about what I could do to help my daughter be in touch with some of her schoolwork during summer. Going back to school for first grade in September and realizing that she has forgotten many concepts that were fragile in her mind and having to re-learn all of them again would not be a good thing, not just for her academic progress but also for her self-esteem.

Montessori children spend a large part of their school day doing “real” work and practicing their academic skills. As a result, most children in the lower grades don’t get any home work from school. Moreover, Montessori children learn many concepts through real life experiences and play. Hence I knew that it was imperative to use every day life experiences and play to enrich her learning during summer, so that her joy of learning is not compromised. At the same time, I also knew that there were some things that she needed to learn which can only be done through repetition and practice. For example, in order to progress in math, it is very important that the basic math skills and operations become second nature for her. For this, she needs to develop mental math skills. As she starts to write more elaborate stories and experiences in her journals, her handwriting needs to become more refined. She is a prolific reader, but it is also important to make sure that she is comprehending more and more of what she reads and building her vocabulary by understanding the meaning words that she reads.

My daughter loves to learn new things, be it  a new sport, new song, new concept about the world around her – you name it and she will have a million different questions about the things around her. But if it was left to herself she’ll probably not spend time practicing and refining some of the skills that she has newly learned. Her teacher had informed me that her favorite thing is to try new things. She would rather not spend time repeating what she had already worked on.

So, my thinking was that I should help her realize the value of practice and the importance of learning something really well, when it comes to academic skills. I popped the question to her about spending an hour a day during the summer doing “homework”. She knows what “homework” is – it means doing school work at home. To my surprise, she was thrilled with the idea. So, on the last day of her school, we visited a store nearby which sells many curriculum materials to schools in our area. We browsed the shop and I let her choose journals, workbooks and hands-on math materials that she could work on during summer.

The next day (yesterday) I marked a few pages in the different workbooks and journals that she could work on. She seemed very proud to be working on these. She wouldn’t move on to anything else until she finished her “homework”.  Today, before I could come back from the gym in the morning, she had woken up, picked up her journals and workbooks, chosen her homework and started to work on them. When I went to talk to her in her room, she even complained that I was “disturbing her” and not allowing her to “concentrate” on her work.

I’m not certain how long this motivation to do her “homework” regularly will continue. I’m sure that as the summer progresses, I’ll have to find ways to re-motivate her. As is the case with her fascination to try new things, this many be just one of her new fads which may wear off after a little while. But so far, I’m very happy with how happy she is, to be doing her “homework”.

What kind of basic education would I choose for my daughter? May 9, 2009

I recently watched the documentary -” Two Million Minutes”. The time between the moment a student enters ninth grade to when they graduate out of twelfth grade is about two million minutes. The documentary compares how a a few students in India, China and U.S spend these “two million minutes”.

While the documentary doesn’t make any conclusions at the end, it  seems to drive home a message that students in India and China are spending their time more fruitfully. It seems to say that compared to Americans, Indian and Chinese students seem to be  more serious about careers in math and science and are hence better off. It seems to conclude that America is not doing enough to compete with the rest of the world in the areas of math and science.

Ok, I agree that given what I know about education in USA,  the country can do better in preparing it’s students for math and science careers. But given what I know about education in India, I strongly feel that there is absolutely no need to put the Indian education system on a pedestal and say that it is better than the US education system. How much time the students spend on academics and whether they chose a career in math and science is not the only measure of a successful education system. An education system should be measured with many more outcomes – how well-rounded the students are, whether they are able to critically think about issues and make decisions, whether they are able to problem solve, able to think out of the box, whether they are confident, compassionate, responsible and so on.

First of all, I would like to note that I’m very passionate about developments in both India and America. I am a first generation Indian American who lives in America currently and who has plans of living in India in the future. I received an engineering degree in India and after a Masters and a ten year career in the engineering field, changed my career to one in Education after getting a Masters degree in this field. While my daughter is currently getting a K-12 US education, she will in all probability continue her education in India in the future. Given this background , I would like to think of my opinions on both these education systems to be quite objective.

Given what I know about both US and Indian K-12 education systems, if I was given a free choice without any other constraints to choose between these two systems for my daughter, I would any day go for the US education system. Following are the reasons why:

Firstly, I feel that my daughter will have a better environment in the US to explore her interests and pursue a career inline with her interests. She will have an opportunity to explore many options other than math and science – humanities, arts, sports and what not. She will even get opportunities to be competent in more than one field. I know that in India, unless parents work hard to swim against the tide, the society and the environment will put enormous pressure on the children to pursue a career in science and math even if the children are not interested in these careers.

I feel that even if my daughter decides to pursue a career in math/science after doing K-12 education in America, it will be out of her own interest. There is a huge difference in outcomes when someone pursues a career out of passion as opposed to when someone pursues a career because she was pressured to do so. Research studies have shown that people perform at their peak when they are pursuing something out of their own interest.

And secondly, there is the question of how well-rounded my daughter will be if she does K-12 in the U.S. My daughter will grow up in an environment where creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork etc are encouraged in a non-competitive environment. Research studies have shown that these skills are critical to success as an individual. I also feel that these skills are critical for a successful democratic process in a country. There is a reason why the American democracy is as sophisticated as it is today. If the Indian democracy has to reach this level of sophistication, it is crucial to instill these skills in it’s citizens. Research studies have also shown that a non-competitive environment is crucial for developing competencies at their best. The K-12 education environment in India is extremely competitive which puts a lot of pressure on the children to be the best, which in turn could bring-down their performance.

Apart from these academic skills, I also feel that my daughter would have a much better chance of growing up to be a social-minded, compassionate, confident and responsible individual if she completed her education in USA.

While the documentary “Two million minutes” has made a good attempt to bolster the importance of math and science education in K-12 schools in America, people should not confuse this attempt to mean that the Indian education system is better than US or that US education system is inferior to Indian and Chinese education systems in all respects. All these education systems have a long way to go and success cannot be measured on one dimension alone.

Any thoughts?

Book review: Motivated Minds – Raising Children to Love learning April 5, 2009

While it is true that the schools play a central role in developing the love of learning in children, the role of the parents is crucial too. It is true that parents cannot spend the same amount of time as teachers in helping their children learn. But there are some very simple non-time-consuming strategies that the parents can use with their children which will help to increase their children’s motivation to learn better at their schools. Making parents’ aware of such strategies is the focus of this book, “Motivated Minds – Raising Children to Love Learning”. Deborah Stipek, one of the authors of this book is the dean of the School of Education at Stanford. The co-author is Kathy Seal who is a journalist and has written about education and psychology for many years. The authors offer a lot of practical wisdom which most importantly are also proven by research. While everything they have to offer in this book has been proven by research, the book is by no means a boring list of evidence from research which the parents have to plough through to find what they need. It is filled with many interesting examples and anecdotes from their own life about situations which commonly occur with children and how parents can overcome them.
I enjoyed reading the book thoroughly. I myself had developed many strategies in the past few years to deal with situations where my daughter was at the risk of losing interest in a certain activity if appropriate action was not taken. This book helped me confirm some of my strategies and went a step further in helping me learn more of them.
For example, the book talks about how “nothing motivates children more than competence”. I have seen this happen with my daughter many times. When she takes up a new type of activity which is hard to learn, she sometimes gives up after a few tries and is afraid to go back and try the same fearing that she will not be able master it. For example, this used to happen often when she tried to play a new song in violin which was above her current skill level. Each of those times I have had to walk a fine line of not being pushy yet convincing her to practice enough to be able to play the song and develop a healthy attitude of perseverance. Each time, when she was able to play the song after some practice, she has derived motivation to play the violin even more due to her successes and her competence in the skills needed. The parents’ role in helping children develop this persistence is crucial I feel, and this book talks about that. This book goes one step further and says that not only does competence motivate children to learn something but “feeling competent is as important as competence itself”. For, a child may be very good at doing something but may not feel confident about it. Feeling confident about being able to do something is of extreme importance because the child may otherwise not try on his/her own to learn tougher skills in that area, otherwise. This book gives strategies to overcome such obstacles to learning.

The above is just one example of how this book helped me clarify the effective strategies in some of the situations that I face regularly with my daughter. There are many more such strategies in this book which apply to parents of children of any age. In short, you now never have to feel at a loss when you are not sure how to overcome the obstacles to your child being motivated to learn either at school or at an after-school activity. With this book, you will have a very credible, useful and practical resource to refer to for effective strategies and apply it to the situation you may be facing.

The importance of researching books for your child February 5, 2009

“When Ramma Mabbit started teachin’
Runny how to eat,
He ficked his pood up with his ears
He wasn’t very neat…”
You may be wondering which language this book is written in. It’s an excerpt from Shel Silverstein’s Runny Babbit, I’ve found Silverstein’s books to be not only entertaining but also very educative for my daughter. Everyone knows how books open doors for children. But what I would like to remind you today is that choosing the right books at the appropriate time in their lives can make an even bigger difference.
Take this book Runny Babbit. I fell in love with it as soon as I picked it up from the shelves in my daughter’s school library. I got it home and read a few pages that night to my four and a half year old daughter. She immediately dived deep into the word play presented in this book. I read aloud each sentence to her the silly way and she started setting the sentence right. It took her a little while to find the correct form for the words in some of the sentences, but I could see that she was thoroughly enjoying the process. What could be better than a child enjoying and learning at the same time? I now often see her reading this book aloud on her own
But I wish every book that I bought or borrowed were as big a hit as Runny Babbit was. It has taken considerable effort on my part to research different authors and get the right books for her. Amazon.com and public libraries are often great resources for research. I also discuss books and authors with my friends who are moms. And sometimes, you just don’t know, you have to read the book to the children and find out whether they like it or not. I usually know that she isn’t so interested in it when I don’t see her reading it again or when she doesn’t want me to read that particular book to her. It’s like a trial and error and over a period of time, you find out their interests and what books would suit them. And as you know, their interests keep changing and hence you also have to keep up with it. In short, it takes effort but it is really worth it. I see many positive changes in my daughter because of this. Not so long ago, I remember, we were lazing around on a weekend not knowing what to do and my husband asked her whether she would like to go to a movie or to a bookstore and she immediately picked bookstore. So, that says something.

I’ve also found that the learning from books doesn’t need to be just academic. Take this book, Colors of Us by Karen Katz. I can’t begin to describe what a difference this book has made in her life. As an immigrant living in the US, I had always been worried about the many challenges of bringing up children in my non-native country. This book has helped her to become more comfortable with her surroundings. Before reading this book, I’m sure she had observed the color differences among people but hadn’t found a language to express her observations. And I didn’t know how to talk about this either. I still remember this one particular day, after we had read this book. She pulled out my hand, placed it next to hers and looked at it for sometime. She said, “Amma, your color is French toast. I think, I’m the color of cinnamon…” And she went on to describe the colors of all her friends in her class. I felt that just to be able to talk about these differences was huge!!!

In conclusion, I would like to again remind you what a difference it makes in a child’s life if an adult took the time to research and read the right books to them. And I can assure you that the process of choosing a book is fun. I always find that I become a child again when I enter a children’s library or a bookstore.

What do we parents need to know so that our children can learn.. March 20, 2007

The face of education is changing. Research has uncovered how the human brain learns and in turn what the best methods are to teach children. Many of us parents didn’t get the kind of education that our children are receiving today – instead we were taught to accumulate facts through rote learning. Then, as adults, when we started working, we realized that this education was not very useful for the kind of skills that our jobs demanded from us.

Knowing that we as parents didn’t receive this progressive education, how do we facilitate our children’s acquisition of the right skills and attitudes that are conducive to their well-being in the future? How do we as parents learn what is important for our children to learn? What opportunities do we provide them to facilitate the right kind of learning? What kind of teaching methods do we use?

You may ask – why do we parents need to care about all these? Isn’t this the job of the schools? But the fact of the matter is that, many parents try to routinely facilitate their children’s learning at home so that their children can do well . These parent-initiated learning experiences have an effect on their child’s cognitive development. Children spend only a part of the day at school. What happens during the rest of the day matters significantly in the children’s cognitive, emotional and social development.

What have your experiences been related to helping your children learn? What do you thing is important for them to learn? How do you help them learn?