Academic prep vs athletic coaching
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Anonymous
I am not generalizing about all Asians. What I am talking about is the tendency to overschedule a child from a young age. It starts with Kumon. The repetitive sheets upon sheets of math, dulls and kills any interest the kids have in that subject. Repetition is important in math. In FCPS and in many families in USA that is under emphasized. From what I have seen with many of my friends, the repetition is carried to such an extent that the kids begin to hate math. For my own child, I started with mental math. DC really enjoys math, it is his favorite subject and for the last 4 years, almost always ends up as the best performing student in math from the school in various competitions. When we go for a long hike, DC would ask for a complicated math problem that can be performed mentally. Really enjoys it. If we had been in NOVA, I am guessing but I might have done Kumon and other such things. At least from the group of friends that I know, all their kids do well in math, but none has a real interest in it. Very little curiosity in most of them on the subject. There are plenty of Asians who have an interest in math and do very well. No doubt. I dont know how they approached it, but doubt they overdid the kumon worksheets. I have seen many science competitions and my kid participated in one event where DC worked with kids from another school, predominantly Asian. The team is composed entirely of Asian kids. When I saw how the whole event was being done, I was horrified. It is an event where my kid is super interested in, DC did many of those things right from 5 years of age. DC would do many of these without any help from me. In the event, not one kid had any interest in the activity, all are actively being pushed to participate. They are just not into that kind of thing. One kid has a state rank on another different activity. These kids are very good, they are not dumb. But parents are pushing them to do an activity that they have no interest in. That is what I am more worried about. Killing children's interest by making them do activities they are not really interested in. Not all Asians. But I see this often enough. The article above shows what rich White people do in athletics. Replace Lacrosse, Fencing, etc with Piano, Spelling Bee, etc and you see the Asian equivalent. We Asians do a lot of things right in terms of education. But we overdo somethings too. Like focussing on TJ as a prize that hard working children's should aspire to. Who do you think put such a thought into their head? Not directly, but via how they talk and actions. My DC would rather do Science Olympiad, all 23 events by self. So I do know what kids with passion in STEM look like. |
Anonymous
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The above post took a meandering mess. The point I am trying to make is that, there is a lot of things Asians can learn from Whites, including some very valid criticism on test prep, etc. and there are a lot of areas where Whites can learn from Asians like Math practice.
Also all Asians are not like just like all Whites are not like. There a few of my friends who are White and they are out Asian me on some academic things. We were in Midwest when DC was growing up and we did not have many Asians in our neighborhood. So by accident we ended up not doing many typical things and I am glad about that. |
Anonymous
I agree that my preference is a more balanced approach between stereotypical Asian parenting and white parenting. But I also don't think that extra schooling or academics are necessarily a bad thing. With my kids, I take a very practical approach. My kids can't control how much or how little effort other people's kids put into things. The only thing they can control is how much effort they're going to put into something and whether the end result is worth it. They will always encounter kids who are better with equal or lesser degrees of natural talent, because the other kid started earlier, is working harder, or is getting private coaching/tutoring. That's life. The solutions are to either work harder, too, or accept that you won't be the best. |
Anonymous
| ^ Wanted to add that it's why I find white parents who whine that Asians are putting in more effort or complain that their kids are denied their rightful place at the top to be distasteful. I'm white, and I have no resentment at all for Asian kids who work harder than my kids. |
Anonymous
Neither do I, in moderation. They are kids, let them follow their interests. Our jobs as parents is to help them find balance while nurturing their interests. And while I fully believe that there are kids interested in math and doing more, I seriously doubt that the majority of the kids in prep courses for the NNAT or CogAT are there because they are interested in being there. I would be surprised to find that the majority of the kids at Mathnasium asked to attend. AoPS and Russian Math sound like different types of programs and something more interesting that a academically natured kid would be interested in. The original post asserted that people don’t get upset by the extra sports emphasis and the reality is that many parents have no interest in rec sports, never mind travel sports. And lots of people think the travel sports are over the top. There are maybe 250-300 kids in third grade who play Rec baseball in the Reston-Herndon area, guesstimating here based on the numbers in the two leagues I know of. Figure similar figures for other sports. That is not a huge number. Soccer might have more kids because it is a normal fall sport. Point being, sports are not the all encompassing activity that the OP is arguing they are. Travel sports participation is even smaller. My concern for any child submerged in one activity is does the child want to be there? I see plenty of kids playing sports who don't want to be there. You see it in how they play and act. The kids parents will be talking about how much their kid loves to play while the kid is walking on the field or playing in the dirt or yelling at a coach. Some kids are quiet but they are not hustling or moving away from the action. I suspect that there are a good number of kids in academic programs with the same attitude. |
Anonymous
| We're white and we prep and do sport coaching too shamelessly. I was tutored all my life and I don’t see a problem with it. H played a sport at an ivy and he had private sport classes. |
Anonymous
This reeks of white privilege. |
Anonymous
Now you're being absurd, and name calling for no other reason than that it sounds topical. If the poster was Asian, you'd call the child an over-prepped drone and the parent an insane tiger parent. This poster's white so you call it white privilege. They're just engaged parents doing what they can to support their child. We need more parents who demonstrate this level of engagement, at whatever income level. There are far too many parents who take little to no interest in what their child wants or needs, treat schools like daycare, and refuse to take the smallest step to equip their children with the tools they need to succeed. |
Anonymous
I am the PP you responded to. Spouse and I both attend one of "those schools" that parents are shooting for. I disagree that it made a big difference. Sure, there were people in my graduating class there who you see in the news, but I also have classmates who are run-of-the-mill doctors, lawyers, engineers, even elementary teachers. The people I know who are most successful are those who found careers they love and are really good at, regardless of where they went to undergrad. I do think there can be an advantage to big name grad schools in certain fields, but those top schools admit top students from all sorts of undergrad programs. I think people are most likely to be successful if they are not pushed in a certain direction by their parents. They need to find their own way, and the chances that parents are pushing them into the field that is "right" for them in elementary school seems really slim. Our kids are smart and hardworking and do well in school. As parents, we want them to be motivated, which means being well rounded enough to discover their passions. |
Anonymous
Yes and no. As long as the activity isn't too onerous or time consumptive, it's fine for parents to push their kids into things the kids aren't currently interested in doing. My mom made me take piano lessons from grades 2-6. If I had the choice, I would have quit from sheer laziness. I did have the choice to continue or quit in 7th grade, and by then I was good enough that it was fun and rewarding for me to play the piano. So, I continued lessons through high school. I'm glad that I wasn't allowed to quit or dictate my activities too much as a child, because I would have quit everything the moment the activities became challenging or were no longer new and shiny. I also was forced to take swimming lessons as a kid. I would have quit if given the choice, but as an adult, I'm grateful that I won't drown. Forcing kids to do activities 10+ hours per week that they don't want to do is bad. Forcing kids to do activities that require 5 or fewer hours per week isn't necessarily a problem. |
Anonymous
Who cares what other people think. As long as it is kid led, it’s fine IMO. If it’s not kid led I look down on the academic preppers and sports over coachers equally 
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Anonymous
I attended a small private liberal arts college for undergrad and was accepted into a top 25 Doctoral Program, which I completed. There are prestige schools which look great and can be great, if you figure out how to take classes with the top professors at the school, but they really are not that different then most other Universities. A kid who is willing to put in the work and is interested in learning will thrive at most Universities and will find plenty of Graduate opportunities or employment opportunities. The same can be said for elite high schools. I am not stressing about my kid getting into TJ, he will do fine if he does and he will do fine if he doesn't. Why? Because he is bright and has involved parents. If he said he wanted to attend a math class, I would be fine with that. If he wants to do other clubs, I am fine with that. He is 8. He doesn't need to be pushed any further ahead in math. I want him to enjoy school and make his best effort. Outside of school, I want him to find what interests him and pursue those areas. I think ES is far too early to be pushing kids into activities that take dominate his life. If other families want to push their kids ahead, more power to them. I hope that their kids really enjoy what their parents are putting them in. But my kid is not competing with your kid academically, mainly because I am comfortable that my DS will be successful if he ends up at his base school and not TJ. I know that he can be successful if he doesn't end up at an Ivy League school or a prestige school. I already know he is not going on an athletic scholarship, so I am cool with his not wanting to try out for travel teams. He does enjoy the sports clinics he asks to participate in. |
Anonymous
| Parents should push their kids, if kids need pushing. When I was young my parents gave me freedom and I didn’t make use it, didn’t go to good college.. so when I became a parent I don’t want my kids to struggle in studies or sports. We have done kumon, chess, Rubik cube, math counts, science Olympiad, taekwondo, little league and private sports lessons as needed. The kids need directions and guidance initially, once you know that they can manage then no pushing is needed. |
Anonymous
Look, the fact that "Growth Mindset" blurge is showing up everywhere is a sure sign that it's just the latest fad in education. https://russellwarne.com/2020/01/03/the-one-variable-that-makes-growth-mindset-interventions-work/ "Reconciling the Contradiction For a few months, I puzzled over the contradictory literature [on growth mindset]. The studies are almost evenly balanced in terms of quality and their results. Then I discovered the one characteristic that the studies that support mindset theory share and that all the studies that contradict the theory lack: Carol Dweck. Dweck is a coauthor on all three studies that show that teaching a growth mindset can improve students’ school performance. She is also not a coauthor on all of the studies that cast serious doubt on mindset theory. So, there you go! Growth mindsets can improve academic performance–if you have Carol Dweck in charge of your intervention. She’s the vital ingredient that makes a growth mindset effective." A follow up here, with two more big studies failing to replicate the magic of growth mindset: https://russellwarne.com/2020/04/03/mindset-theory-in-jeopardy-after-2-new-studies/ But it sure sold a lot of books, and got Dweck invited to cool parties, and I bet someone really cleaned up on the money FCPS paid to develop this semester's entire WEEK of training in growth mindset. Incidentally, this training replaced math class. |
Anonymous
You can take anything to an extreme. The basic idea behind Dweck's book is pretty solid and seems intuitively obvious to me. You can think you are dumb and give up. Or you can choose to believe that with effort you can become good at most things (not all) or believe you are not smart and not meant to do somethings and give up. That is the gist of the message I took away, nothing more and nothing less. |