Musings

A friend of mine posted something about The Lottery on Facebook last night. It’s a documentary about charter schools in Harlem, a neighborhood just a few blocks from where I currently live. I’ve heard things about schools in Harlem, but to be honest, I didn’t know much more beyond that it’s typical of many inner-city schools in America. I took a break from exam studying and watched this movie. Though the film itself was a bit one-sided and the statistics were somewhat questionable, it did served as much needed inspiration, and got me thinking about education in the USA.

After receiving my primary school education in Taiwan, I continued the rest of secondary education in a suburb of Saint Louis. Although both were public education, I was stunned by the difference. I will never forget the first day of math class in 6th grade, when the teacher gave out multiplication timetable test. I could not believe it. Time table was drilled in our little heads since well before second grade and I was ready to do some advanced algebra. When the teacher approached me to ask me why I wasn’t doing my time table, I gave her a “are you for real?” look and said, “I am finished.”

Needless to say, the school system that I was a part of was average at best. Although I didn’t turn out too badly, I know many of my classmates only made it as far as the community college. The high school promoted a program that feed students into community college rather than a 4-year degree university. As a result, many do not complete a 4-year degree. Guidance counselors and teachers did not inspire students to think of sky as limit when it came to career aspirations and college choices. To compensate for the lack of preparation, my sister and I both graduated high school early and jump started on college courses at community college. My sister actually received comments along the lines of “you are making a terrible mistake” when she decided to leave and to give up her seat as Student Body President. Where is the priority?

Yes, I wish my high school put more focus on SAT prep and pushed for opportunities beyond community college and the University of Missouri system. But some people simply wish their school taught them how to read and to write properly. I spent my undergraduate years at SLU mentoring kids from the City of Saint Louis schools. The experience was heartbreaking. Even working with kids as young as 4th and 5th grade, I knew they were already so far behind academically, that to catch up with the average American will take immense effort and resources that these kids were not receiving.

The American education system reflects the inequity that this country is fighting via various Occupy movements. It would have been nice to move into a more affluent neighborhood where public schools were more college-prep. For kids in the inner-city, it would’ve been nice to be born into families that can afford to live in nice school districts. To a larger extent, one’s fate is largely determined by where one was born. It probably would be nice for the children in my Cameroonian village to be born in an industrialized society where teachers show up to teach regularly.

I still believe in the American dream. After all, I managed to crawl as an immigrant child from a low-income family into the Ivy walls, albeit via mediocre public school system. Anything is still possible in this country, more so than many others in the world. But as great as this country is, shouldn’t a child’s fate be less dependent upon the neighborhood where he or she grows up? And shouldn’t a country that prides itself on entrepreneurial spirits able to come up with a “business model” that can help schools properly meet its supply and demand?

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During my French Riviera vacation, I polished off Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother by Amy Chua. I first heard about this book from Amy’s WSJ article, “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” and literally laughed out loud while alone in my dorm room. I told myself the day after exams were over, I’d indulge in this book.

I finished the book in just a few days, in between eating gelato and soaking up the sun (which my tiger mom does not approve of). I loved the book. It’s a quick read and highly entertaining. Parts of it really resonated with me and my upbringing, but in other parts, I did think, “this lady is crazy” – particularly the part where she made her kids practice on vacation. I do think it’s a must read for all the kids in America who thinks their tiger mother is insane.

The book, as Amy has stated many times, is a memoir of her own parenting journey and is meant to be more of an entertainment than anything. I find it rather preposterous that people took this as a parenting guide and criticized it to no end. The parenting style aside, circumstances and resources differ greatly between Chinese families, and try as a tiger mom might, there are still plenty of Chinese kids who do not achieve as a Tiger mom would expect. We can’t all be concert pianist, violinist, have perfect score on SATs and go to Ivy League universities. Tiger Mom parenting comes in different variation, and the important thing is the values that a Tiger Mom upbringing instill in a child that ultimately allow them to craft their own path in life.

I am glad to have been brought up by a Tigher Mom, and this is my own Battle Hymn from the other side.

Before reaching the legal age of 18, I spent half of those years in Taiwan – the natural habitat for Tiger mom- and the other half in the USA. My mom is a classic Tiger Mom, although I am the one who was born in the year of Tiger.

This picture of me at the piano always makes me laugh

I do not remember my first piano lesson – because that’s how young I was. I guess I was 3. My life in the following 8 years went something like this: 7:30am – school. Depending on the day, school finished between 3:30 and 5:30pm. Then, time after school and evenings were filled with: piano lesson, piano practice, art class, writing class, abacus class (not kidding), math tutoring (I was bad at math), calligraphy class, speed-reading class, English school, etc. Basically, any lesson that you can think of, I did it at one point or another in my life. Then after these lessons – homework and studying and bedtime at 10pm.

My mother worked from home when I was young, but when she had appointments to attend to, she dropped me off at the local children’s library – my favorite! I was an avid reader and hated the 3-book per check out rule at the library. When we took vacations, everything had an educational purpose of some sort – museums, exhibitions, historical something or another. We did not go lay on the beach and hang out, thus why my sister and I are now making up for lost time. My birthday presents were also educational – in second grade, I got a pink pencil sharpener that shaped like a dog, and in 3rd grade I received a Children’s English dictionary.

I came home one day in 1st grade with a 89% on my math test and my mother went ballistic. I had math tutoring from then on until I moved to the US, where I became a math genius relative to my American classmates. We had screaming matches at home regarding playing the piano, but unlike Amy, my mother gave up the fight when I was 11. I stopped piano for one year, but took it up again when I moved to the US, where I became a piano genius relative to my American classmates. The virtuous circle worked when I moved to the US.

At age 10, two years before moving to the US, I read this series of books about a Taiwanese girl’s journey to Harvard Kennedy School. I wanted to just be like her. My busy life in Taiwan as a child didn’t render me unhappy, it gave me the motivation to dream big and aspire to great things in life. My friends and I used to talk about our dream of going to an Ivy and various vocations that we may pursue.

And then, I moved to the American suburb.  No one cares about school. It is uncool to talk about academics, much less dreams of Ivy and changing the world. American teenagers are brutal beasts. They make fun of people for the way the dress, the way they talk, the way the stand, the way they sit. My ability to speak Chinese was met with curiosity that I did not know how to handle at 12. “Say my name in Chinese, say xyz in Chinese” – my classmates would hassle me. I felt less like a talented bilingual student, but more like a circus monkey. In addition, mandated uniform in Taiwanese schools gave me an awkward fashion sense, top with bad English and the desire to talk about school – I’ll leave it to your  imagination on how my first year in the USA went.

The home front was also less than rosy. Unlike Amy Chua and her parents, my parents were clueless on how the educational system works in the US and all the steps to get me to an Ivy. Working as hard as you can only takes you so far in a crappy public school system in suburbia America. Case in point: first day of my 6th grade math class, the teacher did a drill on the time table. My reaction? wait, WHAT? My mother had drilled this time table in me since I was in 1st grade. I did the whole drill in barely 20 seconds. The teacher came over and asked me why I wasn’t doing mine, in which I responded, “I’m done”, and then proceeded to wonder how these kids don’t know the time table in 6th grade.

My own tiger mom didn’t understand how I had so much free time, yet she didn’t know how to fill my time with activities. Haunted with the first year of my time in the US, I was determined to have a social life and not be a weirdo. The culture divide created tension and confusion. My tiger mom didn’t know how to be one anymore in the foreign land. She went soft because she didn’t know what to do, and I took advantage of it and participated in musicals, attended sleepovers and had a social life that in retrospect was a lot of time wasted. Though I realized the Ivy dream may not happen, I did as much as I could to get ahead given limited guidance and resources. It took a few years of detour, but I am finally fulfilling that Ivy dream I had as a 10-year-old girl. side note: I am well aware that non-Ivy institutions can provide just as good of an education. I had a decent one from my undergraduate university.

Although the path I took is most likely not what my tiger mom had planned for me (no tiger mom in their right mind would encourage their kids to join the Peace Corps), the intrinsic value that came from a tiger-mother upbringing stayed with me. I strive for my best in any situation given resources at hand. I took challenging classes instead of ones that would boost my GPA, I did interesting work that enriches me as a person rather than a cookie-cutter life. I choose to live life off of the beaten path, and wouldn’t be able to do it without values & discipline instilled by my tiger mom.

I love my parents and appreciate their tiger parenting style. If anything, I wish they hadn’t gone soft in my high school years. I did not have an unhappy childhood, instead, a productive and enriching one. And you can bet anything that I will be a fierce Tiger Mom myself!

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About a month ago, one of the hundreds of emails that I get from the LSE had an interesting title: OUCAN Conference: Chinese Investment in Africa. I get these emails so frequently that I often pass up many very interesting conferences and talks. But this one, I opened it immediately and signed up with Jennifer, a fellow MPAer who shares this Sino-African interest.

The conference is held by OUCAN: Oxford University China-Africa Network. Ever since befriending my Chinese friends in Cameroon, whom more or less adopted me as a daughter, I have been deeply interested in this subject.

Due to the hectic end of the term, Jenn and I could only make Day 2 of this conference. We took a train from Paddington bright and early at 8:20 to get to Oxford. It was nice to get out of London. The sunny weather also helped lifting the mood! The conference wasn’t as full as I thought it would be, and had a surprisingly low number of students. There were more LSE students there than Oxford, which I thought was odd. Also, considering it’s a China-Africa conference, the proportion of Africans present were strangely low.

Nevertheless, it was one of the more stimulating conferences/talks that I have attended this year. Throughout the day, I heard practitioners from the World Bank/DFID, China’s IPRCC, a Senegalese economist, Spanish journalists in China, Angolan Embassy rep, etc. The lack of students actually allowed us a great deal of opportunities to network and to exchange interesting ideas with these practitioners. Besides, I always love a chance to speak English, Chinese and French all within 45 minutes. I talked about Taiwan as a fun place to travel in Chinese while discussed lots of various things about Africa in French. Good to know I still got it!

Anyhow, the debates were incredibly interesting as both extreme points of views were represented. On the one hand, there were those who applauded the Chinese efficiency in Africa in terms of infrastructure development. On the other, there were some who recognized positive impact of China’s role in Africa, but criticized on the lack of opportunities created for Africans, lack of accountability on the part of the Chinese government. I stand somewhere in the middle. Having personal ties with both the Africans and Chinese people on the ground, it’s hard for me to take one extreme position or another.

My Chinese Family's Shop in Cameroon

One thing that was repeated highlighted throughout the day was the resiliency of the Chinese people in Africa. One presenter described the way Chinese were doing business in Egypt – they recognized a need for larger Egyptian women to buy clothes without going to the market, where they may feel embarrassed. The Chinese walked around with a 25kg bag of different clothing goods and went door to door to sell them to Egyptian women. They did not speak a word of Arabic, yet were able to somehow make the sell. The presenter highlighted on the sacrifices that the Chinese are willing to make, and I couldn’t help but think of my Chinese family in Cameroon.

While the Western world criticizes Chinese practices, not enough credit is given for these Chinese workers who are willing to be a world apart from their family, to live in a place where they do not speak the language, do not understand the culture, and do not have luxury conditions (especially compare to Western aid workers). Perhaps people would not be so quick to form judgment if they would just take the time to cultivate some connections and to understand the people – both the Africans and the Chinese.

I would love to take part in more of these conversations and see more Africans and Chinese become engaged. There is something about discussing development with an African in French that makes me feel very alive!

Definitely a wonderful day in Oxford! Jenn and I then finished out the day by eating at a delicious Chinese restaurant in Queensway upon returning to London. Who knew there were so many authentic Asian restaurants in this part of the town. Not to mention, the oriental version of Costcutter – it blew my mind!

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This week, an article in Foreign Policy titled Corps Concerns, discusses the need of the Peace Corps in the 21st century. The PC advocate in me couldn’t help but want to share my personal response to the issues raised in the article.

The author evaluated the need of Peace Corps base on three main goals of the Agency:

1.    Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2.    Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3.    Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

Argument: Peace Corps was designed to benefit its host countries with well-educated (if usually inexperienced) young Americans in undereducated developing economies. But today, countries like Indonesia, Panama and Guatemala have a far higher percentage of university graduates than 50 years ago.

My Response: Panama, Guatemala and Indonesia are just three of the 77 countries that Peace Corps serves today. Large majority of the 77 countries today, certainly the case of Cameroon, could still benefit from skills and knowledge of well-educated (if usually inexperienced) young people as myself.

Argument: The Peace Corps is operating in a world where people in even remote regions have exponentially greater access to sources of information about American culture and foreign policy than they had in 1961. People have access to American films and news about American foreign policy from the Internet and TV.

My Response: I was often horrified by what my village friends think of Americans. They ask me questions such as, “Do you have a gun? Don’t all Americans have guns?” or “Can I come to America with you? there aren’t any poor people in America, right?”. We all know what is portrayed in Hollywood is not really America, and I would hope that is not the image of the US that we want to portray. Just as you can’t learn about what life is really like in any given place by watching National Geographic, citizens of other nations also wouldn’t know what America is really like from TV and movies.  While each of us may have biased opinion of what being an American is like, the opinions are at least more real than Hollywood’s version.

Argument: While it is obvious that Peace Corps  can provide a hugely enriching and life-changin experience, the world is a very different place than it was in 1961. Between 1996 and 2009 alone, the number of U.S. citizens traveling to Africa tripled to 399,000 a year; 260,000 U.S. students studied abroad in the 2008-2009 academic year, up from around 75,000 20 years ago. A lot of those studying did so in developing countries — 13,681 in Africa and 3,670 in the Middle East, for example.

My Response: I studied abroad in college  – three times, and each time lasting no more than 4 months. Did those experiences change me? sure. Then I served in the Peace Corps, for 27 months. That’s 6 consecutive study abroad programs at 4 months a session. Not to mention in a completely different environment where there is no group bus and I’m to fend for my own. Are we really trying to compare study abroad experiences to Peace Corps services?

Argument: Trimming the current bureaucratic structure — and perhaps rethinking the two-year commitment — would expand the number of countries where the program could operate and allow the Peace Corps to attract more volunteers.

My Response: Most people don’t have problem giving up one year of their lives to go live somewhere very different. The reservation I’ve often heard from people not wanting to join is because of the two-year commitment. Living without running water/electricity/basic modern comforts, and being far away from friends/families and missing holidays are all good and well for one year, but two years is an entirely different story. It’s certainly not for everyone, but it sure sets those who can endure it apart from the rest. This is what makes Peace Corps unique.

From the volunteer’s perspective, it takes an entire year to really become comfortable with the culture, the language, and to gain trust of the community. It’s usually in the 2nd year that volunteers flourish. Year one, I knew my ways and I was capable of doing things in my village. Year two, I became the daughter of my village. So far, I have not heard participants of other similar programs claim that they feel like they are the daughter/son of the community they worked with. I hear this from Peace Corps volunteers all time. Perhaps someone can prove me wrong here.

Et voilà, those are my thoughts as a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. Take them for what they are worth. As for does the world still need Peace Corps? I think my answer is obvious, but I’ll leave it for you to decide.

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Serious dose of sunshine today in London. I think the universe was saving it to give London lovers a perfect mood to snuggle up in parks across the city. It’s been two years since I last experienced Valentine’s Day in its full commercial frenzy. Flurries of updates on Facebook has led to some interesting observations. The optimists, or those who have a significant other, don’t seem to mind the commercial nature of V day, but the pessimist, or perhaps those that are “alone”, are much more cynical.

I am an optimist, and even though I spent the day largely alone in classes and the library (though I did “treat” myself to some takeaway curry from Sainsbury’s), I appreciated the love that was all around me today. Seeing men and women alike lining up to purchase last minute flowers by the stand next to Holborn station brought a smile to my face. One day a year, people show special appreciation for their loved ones. If the positive externality (I gotta do it, I’m at the LSE) is extra profit for the flower/chocolate/restaurant industry? pourquoi pas?

I am sending loving thoughts to all of my loves across this world today. To family and friends near and far, and to those I’ve met through experiences off line or through idea exchanges online, I’m glad grateful that you are a part of my life. A day of sunshine and love from around the globe? Life is not so bad at all. Happy Valentine’s Day, my loves.

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