Using Science as a Whore - How to Increase School Resources

This CBC article showed up on my Google News Search. Toronto District School board published a study showing that its students are worried about the future and losing sleep over it.

Toronto public high school students are more worried about their future than their relationships or family matters
 

...More worried about the future than they are about their relationships and families? I'm not sure if I should be more alarmed about the ranking of the level of worry on these subjects or whether they are worried about them at all.

This was the first time the board surveyed its students on mental health issues.
"What our research showed us is that there's certainly a gap in the area of mental health and we need to focus more of our resources in the area of mental health," Schwartz-Maltz told the Canadian Press.
"These surveys drive programming in our schools, they give us a snapshot of the way our kids are feeling and they drive what we do."

Read: We need more resources to fund more staff to provide more programs to "help" young people.

The TDSB is trying to inflate its importance, just like every single government body. When a study like this is performed, the actual results are at the same time irrelevant and predetermined.

The questions are tilted to favour the desired outcome - 'Are YOU concerned about YOUR future?' As far as I'm concerned, the more youth that answer, yes, to that question the better. Frankly, kids need to be concerned and, in this economy, you'd be nuts not to be concerned unless you're filthy rich. It's a perfect example of a leading question. When you hear the question, it immediately puts worry into your mind and you start to ask questions about your future. The wacky thing is, the psychologists who phrase the question know this perfectly well. They know what confirmation bias is. They study, negativity bias and framing affect in school - many probably wrote final papers on the subjects. They understand that double-blind studies should be used to ensure their own biases don't affect the science. I'm tempted to blame this on the Dunning-Kruger affect, but, it seems more likely that they use their vast knowledge of the human psyche to ensure the results match their desired outcome.

The numbers, inflated as they are, make no difference to the study's conclusion. Someone thought it would be a good idea to put more psychologists, social workers and other programs in school, or some such measure. If there isn't a problem, they need to find one and make sure that it is the school board's problem to fix. So, they performed a study on their students to support this desire. How many students need to be concerned about their future to justify spending X million dollars on better mental health support? One is not related to the other, so the whole exercise is meaningless.

The sad part is, they're talking about taking dollars that could be spent on music, sports, arts and other educational programs so that schools can do more about mental health issues. Why not have a school system focused on school issues, and health departments focus on health issues?

Once again, science whores are trotted out to the public to give the illusion that we're thinking about important issues, when we're really trying to increase funding from taxes to hire more social workers. The full colourfully graphed report is here.

Hyper Chinese Parenting

LOT's of people commenting on the dragon-lady Amy Chua and her spooky glimpse into the hyper-parented Chinese-American household. I have to take the article at face value although some commenters say her entire memoir softens the whole picture.  I don't have time between bedtimes to read it.  At the time of writing, the WSJ article has 5100 comments.

My take:

Western parents seem to be adopting strategies similar to the Chinese approach more and more.  I've been following http://www.freerangekids.com/ for some time where many examples of the "Hover Lest Our Children Fail Us" attitude are shown frequently.  Even The Simpsons picked up on this with a line from a hyper-parent "You can't let children ...(do things themselves)..., you have to hover over their shoulders and force them to succeed."
More and more pressure is hoisted on kids, although, the western flavour includes academic and athletic excellence.  Just look at the one-on-one sports training for kids as young as 4 geared toward the "anything to get them to the bigs" attitude.  I was skating on a pond (really a big puddle) with my son when a father came with his two boys to let them play hockey.  After a half-hour or so, he jumped out of his SUV to yell at them for being "lazy".  Huh? I thought this was just fun pond hockey.  You're going to ruin the sport for them. Let them enjoy some skating time without a coach breathing down their necks.
 
Chinese parents do seem to take things to the next level, and as Half Sigma says they will, "no doubt produce workers who are good value creators, and their corporate employers will love them, and they will be paid far less money than the value they create."  By turning her children into piano playing/math problem solving machines, eschewing social activities and refusing to let their children any choice, Chua is producing highly-proficient drones.  I'm not anti-achievement, but, the drive has to come from the children.  Chua thinks that she owns her children.  She is also steeling their own achievements by molding them into what she imagines them to be.  One day, they may wake up and realize that they were only performing for their parents and the emptiness will begin to grow. 
 
Read the passage about the piano practice.  Her daughter was exhasperated about a difficult piece so Chua dragged her back to the piano bench.
 
She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu's dollhouse to the car and told her I'd donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn't have "The Little White Donkey" perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, "I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?" I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn't do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.


Eventually, she got it and was elated.  Wonderful, right?  To me, it sounds empty.  To me, it sounds like Chua was the one afraid of raising a daughter who is a loser (something I'll cover on my new blog 911OnSpeedDial).  If the daughter had been allowed to go to her lesson without perfecting the piece, her teacher would have helped her.  Then, maybe after more practice, she could have mastered it on her own, in time for the recital.  Her accomplishment, or failure, would have been hers and not be overshadowed by her mother but either way, she would have learned to work it out herself. Chua is the one playing the instruments through her children and missing the point of teaching piano in the first place.  It's not to create prodigies.  It's to create a learning experience.

What western cultures realize and have ingrained, is, that to force children to excel and make their life-choices for them, is taking a big risk.  Your child could rebel and you lose your relationship.  Your child could internalize the pressure and crack if they don't achieve a high enough level of success (whatever that is).  Without making choices at a young age, they'll grow older and not have enough life experience to cope in the real world.  To most western parents, the rewards aren't worth these risks.  Still, we find plenty or western children who find their own motivation to push for excellence.  Some were pushed by parents, but most get a thrill out of competition and push themselves.

All cultures have a wide range of parenting styles, but, Chinese definitely have a higher percentage of the high-pressue style that Hua describes and take it to another level. As I've learned from Chinese friends, it is the norm in China.  There, it is probably easier since the schools are geared toward this mentality and most other students are in the same situation.  In North America, it is more difficult due to the exposure to our culture.  This also makes the risks far greater if a child rebels and goes rogue.  With less social skills, they have less ability to navigate the pitfalls such as drugs and sex.

While there are certainly things we learn from Chua's parenting; that kids can be resilient and achieve great things, the warnings are abundant and clear.  The point of raising kids is not to compete for the highest achievement in school or music.  The most important thing is to raise kids who are happy, independant and strong.  With that to build from, they'll seek success for themselves.  It just may not be in medicine or asto-physics.