I often do not agree with David Brooks, but I often read his column. Tuesday, Jan. 18, was one of those days when I found myself agreeing with him more than not as he responded to Yale professor Amy Chua’s “bracing critique of what she considers the weak, cuddling American parenting style…In her book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” Chua delivers a broadside against American parenting even as she mocks herself for her own extreme “Chinese” style. She says American parents lack authority and produce entitled children who aren’t forced to live up to their abilities…Chua plays into America’s fear of national decline. Here’s a Chinese parent working really hard (and, by the way, there are a billion more of her) and her kids are going to crush ours. Furthermore (and this Chua doesn’t appreciate), she is not really rebelling against American-style parenting; she is the logical extension of the prevailing elite practices. She does everything over-pressuring upper-middle-class parents are doing. She’s just hard core…”
Debates about how best to help young people “live up to their abilities” are interminable, even at a small school like The Academy. But it is hard to imagine Academy parents responding to their children like Chua: “…Once, one of her daughters came in second to a Korean kid in a math competition, so Chua made the girl do 2,000 math problems a night until she regained her supremacy. Once, her daughters gave her birthday cards of insufficient quality. Chua rejected them and demanded new cards. Once, she threatened to burn all of one of her daughter’s stuffed animals unless she played a piece of music perfectly.”
It is, however, easy to imagine Academy parents agreeing, as I did, with Brooks’ assertion that the really difficult work of growing up is not memorizing formulas or maxing out on standardized tests, but rather learning how to behave and collaborate successfully in groups. “…Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls. Managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group — these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale…” In a community that’s built upon an honor code, Academy adults start coaching students in seventh grade about what respectful behavior looks like in the classroom, in the halls, online, and at a sleepover. Because the teachable moments often come when the group is experiencing conflict or frustration, Academy adults do not always succeed in cutting through the static to delivering the message, but they consistently try to address what’s going on for any group of students.
I read today’s NYT as a break from grading writing portfolios submitted by Academy seniors in the humanities seminar I lead. In a self-evaluation of the term’s work, one of my students wrote “I have also become better at working with others. In class especially I have learned to hold back and let others talk, and have taken to really considering others’ opinions before voicing my own. My class in general has become more trusting, something that colors everything we do together…” A published rubric for classroom participation might have an effect on my students’ behavior, but a more significant shaping force is the intentional culture and climate of a small school where key life lessons can be learned rather than taught. Brooks again:
“…Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon have found that groups have a high collective intelligence when members of a group are good at reading each others’ emotions — when they take turns speaking, when the inputs from each member are managed fluidly, when they detect each others’ inclinations and strengths.
Participating in a well-functioning group is really hard. It requires the ability to trust people outside your kinship circle, read intonations and moods, understand how the psychological pieces each person brings to the room can and cannot fit together.
This skill set is not taught formally, but it is imparted through arduous experiences. These are exactly the kinds of difficult experiences Chua shelters her children from by making them rush home to hit the homework table.
Chua would do better to see the classroom as a cognitive break from the truly arduous tests of childhood. Where do they learn how to manage people? Where do they learn to construct and manipulate metaphors? Where do they learn to perceive details of a scene the way a hunter reads a landscape? Where do they learn how to detect their own shortcomings? Where do they learn how to put themselves in others’ minds and anticipate others’ reactions?
These and a million other skills are imparted by the informal maturity process and are not developed if formal learning monopolizes a child’s time…”
As I said at the outset, I often do not agree with David Brooks, but I always find his columns thought provoking. Occasionally, as was the case today, I find myself nodding in agreement all the way down the page. The social curriculum of any school is hard to measure and we’ve set the bar pretty high at The Academy. What I can say for sure is that we’re actively trying to nurture a community that embraces a series of “arduous experiences”—in the classrooms, on the stage and playing fields, and in the hallways—that add up to “the informal maturity process” for all our students.
Todd Sumner, Head of School
The Academy at Charlemont
