Things to Read - 4 Interesting Articles From Around the Web (Two Articles on the Role of Struggle in Education, One Article on Obesity, and One Article on Not Having It All)

1. NPR published a really interesting segment on the different ways Easter and Western Countries approach learning - "I think that from very early ages we [in America] see struggle as an indicator that you're just not very smart," Stigler says. "It's a sign of low ability — people who are smart don't struggle, they just naturally get it, that's our folk theory. Whereas in Asian cultures they tend to see struggle more as an opportunity."

In Eastern cultures, Stigler says, it's just assumed that struggle is a predictable part of the learning process. Everyone is expected to struggle in the process of learning, and so struggling becomes a chance to show that you, the student, have what it takes emotionally to resolve the problem by persisting through that struggle.

"They've taught them that suffering can be a good thing," Stigler says. "I mean it sounds bad, but I think that's what they've taught them."

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2. "How Do You Raise a Prodigy?" in the New York Times also addresses the role of struggle in raising children. "There is no clear delineation between supporting and pressuring a child, between believing in your child and forcing your child to conform to what you imagine for him. If society’s expectations for most children with profound differences are too low, expectations for prodigies are often perilously high. “When you have a child whose gift is so overshadowing, it is possible for parents to be distracted and lose track of the child himself,” says Karen Monroe, a psychiatrist at Boston’s McLean Hospital who works with prodigious children.

If you dream of having a genius for a child, you will spot brilliance in your child, sometimes even when it isn’t there. Such children, despite being the subjects of obsessive attention, can suffer from not being seen; their sorrow is organized not so much around the rigor of practicing as around invisibility. And yet, accomplishment entails giving up the pleasures of the present moment in favor of anticipated triumphs, and that is an impulse that must be learned. Left to their own devices, children do not become world-class instrumentalists before they turn 10."

. . . .

"Children who are pushed toward success and succeed have a very different trajectory from that of children who are pushed toward success and fail. I once told Lang Lang, a prodigy par excellence and now perhaps the most famous pianist in the world, that by American standards, his father’s brutal methods — which included telling him to commit suicide, refusing any praise, browbeating him into abject submission — would count as child abuse. “If my father had pressured me like this and I had not done well, it would have been child abuse, and I would be traumatized, maybe destroyed,” Lang responded. “He could have been less extreme, and we probably would have made it to the same place; you don’t have to sacrifice everything to be a musician. But we had the same goal. So since all the pressure helped me become a world-famous star musician, which I love being, I would say that, for me, it was in the end a wonderful way to grow up.”

. . . .

The article also addresses, in detail, the difficulties involves in raising a true prodigy - "Prodigies are able to function at an advanced adult level in some domain before age 12. “Prodigy” derives from the Latin “prodigium,” a monster that violates the natural order. These children have differences so evident as to resemble a birth defect, and it was in that context that I came to investigate them. Having spent 10 years researching a book about children whose experiences differ radically from those of their parents and the world around them, I found that stigmatized differences — having Down syndrome, autism or deafness; being a dwarf or being transgender — are often clouds with silver linings. Families grappling with these apparent problems may find profound meaning, even beauty, in them. Prodigiousness, conversely, looks from a distance like silver, but it comes with banks of clouds; genius can be as bewildering and hazardous as a disability. Despite the past century’s breakthroughs in psychology and neuroscience, prodigiousness and genius are as little understood as autism. “Genius is an abnormality, and can signal other abnormalities,” says Veda Kaplinsky of Juilliard, perhaps the world’s pre-eminent teacher of young pianists. “Many gifted kids have A.D.D. or O.C.D. or Asperger’s. When the parents are confronted with two sides of a kid, they’re so quick to acknowledge the positive, the talented, the exceptional; they are often in denial over everything else.”

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3. On Slate.Com - "I Once Was Obese and Now I'm Not. Please Don't Applaud Me for Losing Weight" - "every shred of evidence available to medical science indicates that it’s nearly impossible to take off large amounts of weight and keep it off. That was largely the point of Tara Parker-Pope’s New York Times Magazine article from earlier this year, from which the main takeaway was that even a more than typically well-informed healthy eater and marathoner like Parker-Pope is 60 pounds overweight. And her experience is not unusual. Of the statistically minuscule number of people who ever manage to take off serious poundage in the first place, an even tinier number manage to keep it off in the long term. The article describes the complexity of metabolic changes that occur in dieting obese patients that seem to effectively convince their bodies that they are perpetually starving and should conserve every calorie consumed and burn fewer calories than most people would easily shed through normal activity or exercise. “A sobering reality,” writes Parker-Pope, “[is that] once we become fat, most of us, despite our best efforts, will remain fat.”

. . . .

"Let’s say you had to starve yourself daily for bare maintenance of your health and physical appearance. Could you do it? Forever? And would you be happy? I doubt very much that you would. But still, it’s what I have to do."

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4. This departure memo from a working mom/big-law associate has the internet all abuzz - Can women really have it all?

This is an excerpt from the end, but I highly suggest reading the whole timeline, it says a lot - "Needless to say, I have not been able to simultaneously meet the demands of career and family, so have chosen to leave private practice, and the practice of law (at least for now). I truly admire all of you that have been able to juggle your career and family and do not envy what a challenge it is trying to do each well."