Wit and Force

I have used "A D U L T . . . I N T E L L I G E N C E" only twice on my children.

 (1) I asked one of them to push a bike for an hour, then mount and push with one foot for an hour, then put both feet on pedals and push and glide a far as he can for an hour. After only 5 sessions, he could bike well and declared that he had learned biking all by himself! With no teacher!

 (2) I read them some story in English about 15 mins about 5 days a week when they were in K1, and 2 days a week in K2.

About 10 mins of discussions on what they had read almost every day in P1, P2, P3. Then I stopped.

No grammar analysis. No rhetoric discussion.

We ban speaking in English at home. They also had to learn Chinese. They now speak Myanmar, Chinese and English.

After P6, they all could take and pass Junior College/A-Level/(General Paper). They believe they had learned English all by themselves.

They thought I didn't teach or help them at all, but just had fun with them!

Force or wit? I will use only what is good for others. That is my moral authority.

Three Very Short English Lessons

ME: What are you reading? (Son in P2 or 3)
SON: "The Red Badge of Courage"
ME: Aha (please and surprised)
ME: Are you reading the original?...
SON: No, this (showing a comics of about 20 pages.)
ME: What is this about?
SON: A young man joined the American civil war, became brave and a hero.
ME: Which side did he fight on?
SON: Union side.
ME: What is his read badge of courage? It is a medal or prize?
SON: No it's a scar.
ME: The enemy hit him or something?
SON: No, one soldier from his own side hit him when they were running away.
ME: Yah, it is a nice story. The original is very famous and good.


ME: What are you reading? (Son in P4 or 5)
SON: "The Red Badge of Courage," comic, longer version.
ME: Funny, you find another comic for same story. Good. Can you tell me how he found his courage?
SON: I don't know.
ME: Maybe the book abridged too much. It is in the original. Even psychologists and military trainers praise the author's points.


ME: (Son in P5 or 6) This is "The Red Badge of Courage," original.
After running away, he cam back to his regiment. During the next fight, he fought bravely and found his courage. Try to show me the exact sentences about his discovery of courage.
(A few hours or days later)
ME: Have you found the place?
SON: I think .... these paragraphs.
ME: Right.



No grammar analysis. No rhetoric discussion. No dictionary to check long words. We just talked about what we wanted to talk about.

One Proven Way to Build Confidence

True confidence comes from accepting your total and ever-present failure to be like anybody else, and from building your life from there.

1. Specialize. But don't specialize out of fear of competition. The competition will find its way into your home turf anyway.
   
2. Feel free to compare. It is both natural and good for learning.
   
3. Accept that you have already failed and that you will never do things the way the stars in your chosen field have done or are doing.

You don't play football like Maradona?

No problem.

Do you make that 10-meter pass today better than you did yesterday?

Will you make it better tomorrow?

You may not be a second Maradona, but you may make bigger contributions to football than the first and only Maradona!

Good luck!

One More Way Not to Build Confidence

Another common advice to build confidence goes, 'Stop comparing with others. Just work hard.' This advice is both impossible to follow and also harmful to do so.

Impossible

How can we stop comparing?

1. We do not live alone, in total isolation, in the universe.
2. We do not live in sensory deprivation chambers, with eyes seeing nothing, with ears hearing nothing, and so on.

Harmful

Why should we stop comparing? In matters of learning, comparison comes even before imitation and copycatting!

Say, I am a young swimmer. How much arrogance or blindness would it take for me not to know and learn from Thorpe , Phelps and other greats.

Say, I am a young golfer. How much arrogance or blindness would it take for me not to know and learn from Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Gary Player and other greats.

Say, I am a young footballer. How much arrogance or blindness would it take for me not to know and learn from Ronaldo (Brazil), Romario, Maradona and other greats.

There must be a better way. Let's see.

One Way Not to Build Confidence

Looking for your core competence, sticking to your strengths, staying true to your essence are commendable life strategies. But they will never build you true confidence. They encourage you to live inside a cocoon, to avoid real threats and real opportunities.

 Orcas cannot climb trees. Monkeys cannot fly. Eagles cannot swim.

So orcas should keep themselves to seas, monkeys to trees, and eagles to the sky?

1. So a budding poet should not study math because he will never be able to do math as well as his classmates? 
2. So a budding mathematician should not touch literature and arts because he will never do them as well as his classmates? 
3. So a promising engineer should never dabble in enterprise because he will never do business as well as her classmates?

All sound and sensible and sham and fake and lame!


If you avoid competition and comparison, the universe is never wide enough for you.


If you choose math out of your fear to compete in other fields, you shall find lots and lots of competition in your own field. What about famous mathematicians in history?

If you choose poetry out of your fear to compete in other fields, you shall find lots and lots of competition in your own field. What about famous poets in history?

If you choose business and enterprise out of your fear to compete in other fields, you shall find lots and lots of competition in your own field. What about famous entrepreneurs in history?

There is a better way. See the next post.

Let Your Children Play Real Games

Conclusion

1. You want your child to excel at something. Then you need him/her to practice a lot.
2. But then, you want him/her to train on their own, not with you training them minute by minute, face to face, as in an animal training program designed by Skinner or Pavlov, or their modern-day proponents.
3. Then you need to design the activities as a game.
4. The 2 key appeals of games are
   
   
   1. There are a lot of accessible gains, prizes, rewards, providing "instant gratification"
   2. There are pains too but these pains are tolerable or very limited or easily terminable. That is, you can restart a pingpong/tennis/football/video game at minimal costs.

An Ancient Warning

"Do not force ..."
"Do not rush ..."
"Forceful progress is wrong."

versus

"Persevere"
"Persist"
"Perseverance"

Why have I Ching original texts and commentaries included such phrases?

A Writer's Ratio

When a writer read 3 million words and wrote down only 3 words, the input ratios is 1 million. When the writer thought 600 minutes and spent 60 minutes to write down her/his piece, the thinking ratio becomes 10.

The reader's comprehension/digestion/rumination ratio should be proportionate.

Thank you, and good luck.

Change Management and Resilience for Kids

Just 3 perspectives should be enough.

Investment

A maxim in this field is, there is nothing new but history we do not know.

Military

All successful battle field commanders cannot do without a firm spiritual faith.

Entrepreneurship

80/20 Rule: If you are sure about 80% of your business or If you are sure about your business 80% of the time, you are okay. Or else, you need to do something about it, such as building a system to run your business, delegating more, or even breaking it up into smaller, more manageable pieces, etc.

Shall we teach kids change and volatility, or stability, history and the First Principles?

Good luck!

Stability, Adaptability, and Truth

"The world is changing. The times are changing. New technologies are emerging at a breakneck pace. New markets, new economies. new careers are emerging at a breakneck pace."

"A new graduate has to keep 6 or more careers before s/he retires."

"Changes are coming more frequently than in the past. And their impact and ramifications are far deeper and more wide-ranging than in the past."

"Our age is a complex system and we live in a chaotic world full of black swans and tsunamis."

Given such information, we as parents have 2 choices:

1. We can refuse to believe them.
2. Or we can accept them.

We Refuse to Believe in Chaos

Here are some examples of this line of believing

1. A proverb --- "The more things change, the more they stay the same."
2. Taoism --- The centre is so stable that it is not moving at all.
3. Drucker --- Invention of Internet is comparable to the invention of printing press.
4. Hidden Champions --- Timeless maxims, not business management fads.
5. "Breaking the Windows" --- It seperates boys from men to see which is a trend and which is a fad, a hype.
6. Steve Jobs --- New technology happens very slowly.

That 's what I mean by Truth. That the world is stable doesn't mean that it is a bed or roses. It can be stable and stably tough.

Or Believe the World is Getting More Chaotic

Then, we believe that past is more stable than the present.

Do you think times in 500 BC, 400 BC, 300 BC were more stable than out times?

Do we find the people of those times viewed their jobs as stable and static?

Did they view their worlds as stable and static?

Did they see their worlds as utterly predictable and sort of boring and plain sailing?

What do we find instead?

That 's what I mean by Truth. The world never was, is and shall be stable.

Read literature set in rural backwaters. Do those characters find their lives stable?

In that sense, the world is stable. Teach that to your children.

Do You Still Want Your Children to Be Smart and Clever That Way?

A Series of Paradox: 1

In Straits Times, November 25, 2010, issue, on page.36, Mr Robert J. Sternberg has said this about some people who have done well in schools and universities: "They are smart but foolish."

Here he even discusses five characteristics of such smart-foolish people: unrealistic optimism, egocentrism, omniscience, omnipotence, and invulnerability. Shall I just say such people are (1) too sure of themselves and (2) indifferent to well-being of other people.

Another Paradox: 2

In Secrets of the Rock Star Programmers: Riding the IT Crest, Max Levchin, co-founder of PayPal, said that he wanted programmers who could teach him, who are smarter than him, who are "clever but not insane."

How can a clever programmer be insane at the same time?

There's no paradox at all here.

Doing well in exams, being clever with programming -- these are things I envy, I admire. How can they be bad?

A person who does well in exams, has some right to expect some greatness in life. A person who knows a lot of programming also has earned the right to expect to write great code. But will they become great in life or write great code?

I insist again that there's no paradox at all here. To make things very clear, let's me exaggerate these cases out of proportions.

What if the scholar has cheated? Knew the questions in advance? Got unfair amount of coaching? Made improper amount of sacrifices for this scholastic excellence?

Then, it is very unlikely that s/he can re-create those 'success' conditions in life. Then, s/he will not do as well in life as in exams.

Regarding the person who knows a lot of programming, does s/he also know that writing code is more than just a matter of mastering programming syntax, commands and API's? If s/he doesn't recognize this, their code-writing will be just as effective as waging a war without considering political and economic factors.

If you do well in exams in proper ways, you will do just as well in Life.
If you really want to write good code, you will.

True (not fake, not bought) knowledge, excellence, mastery in one area never affects your performance in other areas of life unless you allow it.

So, please do well in exams. Please master programming syntax and API's.
And then write great code.

JIT Learning, Kid Learning

Peter Small, in Entrepreneurial Web, marvels at how his average-nerd or non-nerd son acquired skills to use a presentation software without his help, without reading manuals, or without any special training or courses. You too may have noticed how quickly your kids master their smartphones in no time!

He then generalizes this observation to how modern kids are coping with the complexity of their modern, gadget-filled world. He theorizes that this is the way for adults too to live with the complexity of today's technologies.

In a previous section in the book, he relates how in his youth in the post-War Britain, he and a few young men were thrown into the deep end to find their way around in the world of science, technology and engineering. That experience convinced him that JIT (Just in Time) learning is the right way to master a complex array of challenging subjects, and that a small amount of knowledge can help you realize an impressive, sophisticated goal.

I'd also recommend hands-on, immersive learning especially with science and technology.

JIT learning, or Kid learning is cool. Cool because you don't stress yourself out with unnecessary theoretical conjectures and wild goose chases. And because you get your feedback and validation at every post along the way.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance has also depicted how cool a Buddha would be with the innards of modern motorcycle engines.

So next time when you need to reset your smartphone's date format or email spam filters, etc, remember to behave like a kid.

Stay cool. Just do it. Get your hands dirty.

Above all else, go incremental, take baby steps, and dont' forget to have fun along the way.

Story for Learning Science and Technology

After Steve Jobs, everyone comes to know that the career sweet spots lie in the intersection between science and liberal arts.

After Jim Loehr's The Power of Story, everyone also comes to know that story is good for politics, leadership, teaching and business especially in marketing and sales.

I want to point out that story is also good for your kids in learning Science and Technology too.

Detective Raven TV Series

Once I overheard this conversation between Raven and a fellow female police detective on a TV sereis.

She said,about a spy murder case, "We have all the facts, Raven. But they are useless about a theory. You are to provide that theory to us."

Watson, Crick and DNA

In the Double Helix, we can note many incidences in which Crick and Watson had to explain the results of some experiments to those who had actually carried out those experiments.

Enrico Fermi

Fermi, an Italian physicist, particularly known for his work on the development of the first nuclear reactor, too has remarked "If I can name all the particles in an atom I'd become a botanist." In his day, "botanist" apparently means a gardener.

Facts after itemized facts ...

Datum after datum ...

Fragments after fragments ...

Have your kids had all down pat as a whole?

With meaning, with coherence, with integrity ...

Above all else, with a story?

Toilet Training - Freudians and Buddha

on June 23, 2011

Toilet Learning is a very nice book. I'm sort of summarizing and paraphrasing the Chapter "The Freud Complex."

1. Kids that Freud would describe as "anal erotics" are not holding back; they are just too young and not neurophysiologically ready to move their vowels at will.
2. "It is not the anus ... -- it is the parent."(the author's words, not my paraphrase.)

Please forgive Freud and chuckle, the way we chuckle at Aristotle's claim that man has more teeth than woman.

A well-known author even opines that Aristotle must have never looked into his own wife's mouth. Please forgive the pioneers, and move on.

Jataka Stories

I am referring to the 6-volumeJataka Stories by E. B. Cowell. Buddha has told thousands of stories and even these volumes contain 547 stories.

And the story I select is not directly about toilet training. Maybe neurosis, nervousness, anti-social behavior, compulsive neatness, over-cleanliness, pleasure avoidance, self-punishing etc are too trivial for Buddha.

All I remember about that story right now is:

A king was looking out of his palace window into his court. A girl relieved herself in the crowded courtyard. The kind drew some conclusions and married her. His conclusions proved right because their son became a Universal King, who according to Buddhist beliefs, commanded the whole world.

I was shocked and amused at the same time to read Buddha mentioning such an act.

Read it and you will see.

Nothing Special, Therefore Be Very Kind

1. Scoring in football ...
2. Scoring in a maths olympiad ...
3. Scoring in a violin contest ...

Nothing Special.

A few decades down the road, your kid, like James Watson and Kerry Mullis, will say, "Getting that prize in Oslo in December, is Nothing Special". When that really happens, good for you, good for us, and good for all mankind.

Proof with a Thought Experiment

Your child did something for the first time. She failed. And she stopped doing it again.

If you can rule out the following reasons :

1. She's not interested in it anymore.
2. She's distracted by other things that are more interesting to her.
3. She was severely affected by the test physically. e.g. bodily pain
4. She was severely affected in terms of physical resources. e.g. She now has fewer toys than minimum necessary.
5. She was severely affected in terms of social resources. e.g. She now has fewer playmates than minimum necessary.

Then, we are left to assume that she may have suffered emotionally.

Then again, if you can rule out the following reasons :

1. No one scold/discourage/shamed her.
2. No one praise/encourage/recognized her.

What other reasons can you imagine?

Say, if other kids of similar strengths recovered sooner, we can only speculate that your child may have been hit with something harder/meaner/bigger, something special.

To you, the tasks are similar or even identical e.g. That Number 4 question on Page 123 of that Primary 6 Maths book, and in the same class, and on the same day.

To your child, the task is tougher on her than on other kids.

Who gives that task that extra strength against her?

A ball is a ball, a goal post is a goal post and yet England strikers find it hard to score esp. in important, international matches. Sports psychologists do help them, but not much.

Who makes that task special? Who adds that extra significance/strength to it? Make sure it is not you, either as a parent or a teacher.

If it's herself who generates stress and pressure, please gently show her that it is Nothing Special.

Let's not pass on our shame, insecurities, anxieties, sorrows to our kids, our students, and all the younger generation in general. This is the least we could do.

Ability and Practice | Our New Year Gift - 2

This New Year Gift sure beats

1. Talent is Overrated, or
2. 10,000 Hour Rule, or
3. Mastery, or
4. Loving the Plateau, or
5. Liberation Management, or
6. even Tao ( all of Lao Tzu, Chwang Tzu and Lieh Tzu),
7. or even the synthesis of all. That's why I attempted no synthesis here.

Requirements of Deliberate Practice Commonly Discussed

1. Hard work.
2. Patience. 
3. Awareness or attentiveness.

Together they form a very partial answer. They raise more question than they answer. For instance:

1. How hard is hard enough? How long? How many hours a day? How often?
2. How patient? Remember that tolerance of ambiguity is a sign of intelligence but a high degree of tolerance of ambiguity suggests otherwise? What kind of patience?
3. What should I attend to when I train? How do I focus my attention? What do I do whdn my attention wanders?

Above all, how do I know whether Iam doing a deliberate parctice session or not? How do I know if I am in the "flow" when I am practising?

The Answer

Here's how the Buddha wants us to practice meditation.

You can use it whether you are an atheist or a communist or whatever.

And you can use it to improve your golf swing, to speed up your jeet kune do jab, to learn data structures and algorithms in computer science, to become fluent faster in Spanish, to rev up your carnal game with sensate focus, and so on.

1. Have no longing/ attachment / desire/ clinging /grasping /clasping /greed.
2. Have no discontentment/ill-will/anger/annoyance/aversion.
3. Have target of performance. Know what you want to achieve. Know what you're trying to do at every moment.
4. Monitor your own performance with full, ardent/vigorous awareness.
5. You know you succeed with your parctice when you see finer discriminations, when you see the consequences/impacts/implications of an action farther and wider in scope, when you can build up a good mental model with less and less input.

Compare these ideas with the literature I quoted above.

The best of this planet or the Universe?

You decide.