"Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives.”
---William A. Foster
One thing we in the West are good at is our ability to thoroughly understand something and professionalize it. Every endeavor has been crafted down to a science. Running a business used to be something that gets passed from father to sons. Now there is a whole groups of professionals looking at every aspect of running a business. With MBAs, finance and economics, nothing is left to chance, no stone left unturned. The same zeal is applied to raising dairy cows. From breeding to gestation interval to every aspect of a cow's life is controlled. The average American cow produces 21,000 lbs of milk. In contrast, a cow from China only produces 6600 lbs of milk.
If only this ruthless efficiency is applied to raising kids. When it comes to raising kids, there seems to be left to each set of parents, who is new to the game, to figure this all out. There are no owners manual when you have a kid, no training program. What is more, the best practices do not get spread out like the other professions. This is the last frontier ripe for applying some of the professionalism we have developed for our other endeavors.
The biggest issue has been that people raise kids were doing things not for the kids but for themselves. For example, nowadays many have adapted a very soft way of treating the kids. They will not doing anything to get the kids mad because they want to be the kid's friend, they want their kids to like them. If we are doing things for the kids and not for ourselves, we would not care if the kids are mad at us, if this is for their own good. Another example is found with tiger moms, they drive their kids to the brink. Often times, there is a competition between adults to see whose kids got into the best colleges, or who went to the best summer camp. This is the same competition as who has the best handbags, or who drives the best car. It is for the parents. Though they will couch this as for the kids own good, if a kid did not do well, it is the parents that "lose face". The well being of the child is lost in this competition.
The other issue is that we follow what is trendy. History is repleted with example of trends that seem sensible at the time but looks completely foolish in retrospect. The Tulip mania is an example, but when your relatives and your friends are all doing it, you feel that you will miss out if you don't join in the action. Not only do we follow what our friends do, the best of the lot will up the game and take it to the next level. In my kids school, there is so much work that they both stay up until at least 11:00 pm. This is crazy for kids who are 10 to 14 years of age, but most of their peers are doing the same. Some stay up until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning. None of the parents are concerned of the harm that this does to their kids. In fact, they are the reason why the school drive their kids so hard.
There has to be a better way. In my next few posts, I will discuss a new model for schooling the kids.
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