patrick.net

Actually the easiest way to get into an Ivy, according to my wife, is to become a top kid at a really impoverished area, like the middle of nowhere in Alabama.

"is to become a top kid at a really impoverished area, like the middle of nowhere in Alabama."

Yes, that's the "easiest" way. But their school experience would suck and being half Chinese, half mutt northern European will not help them in the local popularity contest. It's not worth it.

I'd rather they have a good primary and secondary education, attend a second tier university/college (if Cal or UVA can be called second tier). If they're smart enough, they can get into Big Name U. for grad school. If they're really smarter, they'll drop out and start a company to revolutionize..., if they're absolute geniuses, they'll figure out a way to capture a blackhole and use it as a renewable energy source...enabling man to time travel and fight Daleks and...

Yup, I'm not going to be one of those overly demanding Asian parents, not at all :P

astrid says:
The situation is particularly ridiculous given that the parents had to be amazing overachievers just to get into these school districts.

Yeah, I think it's a cruel joke on these folks...

I’m not positive about US v. other countries. I find the best programs in US are better at developing creativity and critical thinking ability, while there’s more rote learning in foreign programs.

Yeah, you're probably on to something. Creativity cannot flourish when you're stressed out. So in that sense, a school that's somewhat less academically demanding could very well bring out that talent in kids.
(Although I must say that where I went to school, it was pretty laid back, too. No cramming.)

But what if Junior is bored with what's offered, and there is no other choice because there's no money for it in the richest corner of the richest area of the richest country in the world?

The only answer is private school.

My understanding (and it's from watching a PBS feature about the subject, so it's worth exactly what you paid for being able to read it), the philosophy behind the U.S. single-tiered higher education system is that they really wanted to get away from the elitist, "Old European" tiered system to give every child a chance to excel whereever their talents are (of course the theory being that in evil Old Europe, the upper tiers were open only to the upper classes in society).

Great idea, and worked very well for quite a while.

Enter Prop. 13, plus some good old fashioned organizational atherosclerosis, a good dose of touchy-feelyness and the societal mandate for political correctness, and the quality of education these once great schools provide has reached rock bottom.

The result is that the tiered system is back - with a vengeance. This time, it's *actually* class-based, because you can send Junior to a decent school only if you make the necessary coin to afford going private, whereas in evil Old Europe, Junior just has to be smart.
Sigh.

SFWoman where do you intend for your daughter to go to high school? I know there are a number of good private high schools in The City, but I haven't really done any research on it.

Where does she go now, if you don't mind my asking?

And do you know if St. Paul's is any good?

I got into CalTech by being the top kid at Red Bluff High School. I applied to Stanford but did not get in. So I have two good reasons to hate Stanford Jr. University!

Girgl, I think you overestimate the quality of education overseas, or at the very least the importance of secondary education. Our colleges are still the best in the world and how can that be if they start with the world's worst High School students? I just don't buy the standard line that the American educational system is so bad. We still generate the most Nobel Prizes, the best scientists, the most clever engineers and on and on to the point where our economy is still the envy of the world.

I am sure our high schools could do better, especially here in California where we have been starving secondary education for decades. By some measures, California schools are 40th or worse in the nation. But we still end up generating a tremendous number of great college graduates. My guess is that we are doing a poor job with many and very good job with a few. We should spend more resources on our public schools.

I attended a hollowed out HS in a farm town in BF, Ohio. I was a college prep kid, and took all whopping two AP courses that were offered. I was a stellar student and heavily involved in various extracurricular activities, often in a leadership role.

I applied to a lot of schools, including MIT, CASE, and two Ivys. I was accepted by all those but one Ivy, which shocked the hell out of me and more so my parents who knew there was no way in hell we could swing it (and I didn't have full command of my debt options, being that our counselor at school only knew about vocational school stuff since very few went to college at all). I was only rejected by one other school, a small state school in Ohio which markets itself far beyond its value (they told me I had insufficient non academic credentials).

Randy,

did you apply for financial aid and tuition waivers, I know of someone who got 80% of his tuition covered by the school, not loans, a grant. We international students didn't have that option, had to pay through our nose even at the public schools. A friend of mine went to Berkeley for undergrad, paid $18,000 a year as an international student.

Jimbo,

first of all, you are looking backwards, Nobel prize is typically granted to someone for his achievement 20+ years ago.

Second, most of my friends with brilliant kids do a lot of heavy-lifting themselves, the ivy-trained dual-PhD parents are home schooling half the time on a much more advanced curriculum they brought along from home countries.

If you look around the good public school district, they are all relatively affluent areas with highly educated parents. So it's not the public school that is doing the job, it is the parents. Until we are ok with leaving someone behind and advancing at the pace of the best 20% of the class, I am not for wasting more money on the public school system.

Randy,

You wuz robbed! I had plenty of friends whose parents didn't pay for a cent of their college education. Pricy private education is very doable, as long as your parents were poor.

Randy, very similar to my story, I was a poor rural kid in a rural High School. I got into CalTech, Cornell, Harvey Mudd and UC Berkeley, but not into Stanford, dunno why.

CalTech basically offered me a full ride, since they are so weathly, the offered to pay the part of my financial aid not covered by Pell and Cal Grants. But this was back in 1982, when the government was willing to pay more of your education.

I failed out though and blew that chance, so I went into the Army and did a stint as a medic to get the GI funds for education, which I spent at UC Berkeley.

I did all my own research on getting scholarships, grants, etc though since I knew my counselor was not too sharp at my high school. Very few of us went off to college and those that did mostly went to Chico State.

Jimbo,

SF schools, like all big urban schools, are messed up by urban politics. It might be okay if your daughter turns out to be very bright and get into a good magnet school. Otherwise, she's probably better in private school or public school in a good school district.

Jimbo,

Thanks for illustrating why the going to Nowheresville school is not really a great option. These schools do such a poor job of college prep, so that even if you get into a big name school, you're not ready to compete academically in the first year.

It used to be poor kids can go into the military and climb up that way. BushCo's war really messed up that option.

I was robbed, and probably didn't maximize the financial options available. Actually, MIT tried to convince me to continue the process my admissions rep called me a couple of times telling me we could make this work somehow.

My parents were against it, so that was probably the real reason. Try telling parents who are thrilled that you're just going to college at all, and would have been quite content with a local community college and an Associates degree, that you want to go to MIT. Keep in mind, these were Midwestern parents with Midwestern humility. They also weren't poor enough to get any grants. This was during the teeth of the Reagan 80s, after they revised the income calculation to include the value of farm land and other "non wealth" factors. My wife also grew up in Ohio, and she was bona fide poor. But, since they were poor farmers, she didn't qualify for a cent of government grant money.

Yeah, I was totally unprepared for CalTech. Part of it was just my own immaturity, going off to college at 17, but a big part of it was that there was nothing really academically demanding at this rural high school. I took the best honors classes (there were no AP classes), starred in the High School play, went to All State Band playing the French Horn, was President of the Chess Club, etc and worked part time but I was completely used to getting As with no homework.

As you can imagine, CalTech was quite a shock. Before you knew it I was a half quarter behind and there is no catching up in that place.

Plus there were no girls, but that is a different story....

Randy,

You could have legally separated yourself from your parents. Looking back, loans back then would not be so crushing considering the improved earning potential

Oh well, it didn't matter that much in the long run. You stilled turned out to be a whip smart Mill Valley MBA :P

Jimbo,

Should have gone to Harvey Mudd, right next door to an all girls school :P

LOL, thanks astrid.

There was a look-back (at least then), so legally separating from your parents didn't help for 3 years, if I remember correctly. A lot of farm kids who wanted to go to college did this and worked for a couple years under the table until they could get loans. My problem was that my mother owned a share in an "estate", which owned mainly my deceased grandfather's land. But it was non-liquid, and no one was willing or smart enough to take out a loan against it. My mom didn't, and still doesn't, even understand what an interest rate is (yet she just took a big HELOC, despite my protestations).

Oh hell, it's all bygones now. On with life and off to bed. At least I did end up going to a school with tons of girls ;)

Jimbo says:
Girgl, I think you overestimate the quality of education overseas, or at the very least the importance of secondary education. Our colleges are still the best in the world and how can that be if they start with the world’s worst High School students? I just don’t buy the standard line that the American educational system is so bad. We still generate the most Nobel Prizes, the best scientists, the most clever engineers and on and on to the point where our economy is still the envy of the world.

I agree that U.S. colleges are the best in the world. I also did not want to state that CA high school students are the worst in the world. They're just as smart, if not smarter, than kids in other places.

However, I will stand by my statement that they're 1-2 years behind everybody else, simply because they're not asked to learn as much. Also, they _have to_ miss out on learning whole subjects of quite useful stuff because classes are just not offered due to lack of funding.

In essence, they're leaving high school knowing less about the world than kids in other places who have gone through the same number of years of schooling.

It may not matter all that much when they specialize themselves in college and won't need World History, Physics or French anymore, but it may help them understand the world better on a day-to-day basis.

I hear that it's not always been that way. Friends who grew up in CA and have their kids in local high schools today tell me that both the academic level and the choice in classes has diminished a lot since they went to school.

I am sure our high schools could do better, especially here in California where we have been starving secondary education for decades. By some measures, California schools are 40th or worse in the nation. But we still end up generating a tremendous number of great college graduates. My guess is that we are doing a poor job with many and very good job with a few. We should spend more resources on our public schools.

I fear that throwing more money at the existing, broken system might not help much. It's just going to make it worse by cementing the bullshit into place.
Have you been to a public school board meeting? I have been at a few, and IMHO, the pieces of the puzzle come together quite neatly.

Randy,

there is nothing to regret, you've done very well for youself coming from a rural background, and because of that, you seem to have an incredibly grounded perspective about the world, which is very precious. After your first job, nobody gives a damn about which school you go to.

Just make sure when it comes to your kids, grab every single penny of grant and financial aid available out there, ok?

No, I have never been to a school board meeting.

I do know firsthand that education was better in the Rocky Mountains in the late 70s though and it is probably more true today.

My parents were divorcing, so I bounced between Wyoming, Montana and California schools and I was always a year or so ahead when going to California schools and then scrambling to catch up when I was back in Wyoming schools. It must be worse today.

I do remember being amazed at how many more counselors, vice principals, nurses, etc, there were at California schools. In Wyoming there is just a bunch of teachers, one principal and maybe a secretary. In California, there is always a whole building full of administrators, so you might have a point.

But California schools were better back in the 70s when we spent more money on them, even with all the waste. I am sure we could spend our money more efficiently, but even so, money helps. My aunt is a principal at a grade school in Riverside and when she gave me a tour of the school, I was kind of amazed at how meagre the accomidations for the teachers were, how old the books were and in general how little it looked like they spent on everything.

New thread: Housing futures

“the top 10% are our leaders for the future”

hmm, very functionalist point of view - doesn't take into account the behaviour patterns of the establishment elite, who try to pass on their privileges to their offspring regardless of actual merit or ability. one study by hans eysenck showed a 'regression to the mean' of IQ when he studied intelligent men in management and their children (in other words the children were less intelligent), but i don't think he accounted for the IQ of the women they married, conducting the study in the 60s. i don't think they considered that women had intelligence or an IQ back then, or it was too tiny to be measurable...

interestingly, when American exchange students come to Sydney to study for a semester, a lot of them complain they are getting Cs when they were getting As in their college courses back home, and that the workload is much harder.

Further, I spoke to a guy recently who is in his late 40s or early 50s, who runs his own medical equipment servicing business, who did his college degree in America years ago, somewhere in NY - he says the courses back then were still easier, and that he couldn't get any recognition for his qualification in Australia.

however, i doubt whether the intelligence spectrum is much different across the countries, the participation rate in university is relatively low here, and the (conservative) govt actually wants to make it lower - they think people should be learning a trade and getting a job rather than doing a 'useless' degree that doesn't vocationally equip them for anything much. i expect attending caltech or MIT etc would be every bit as difficult or more so than a science degree in australia, and uni is what you make of it to some extent. i wouldn't congratulate myself on producing loads of gifted scientists and engineers, etc given a population of 280 million with a technically oriented society which values higher education - it's fairly automatic. the scots produced a bizarrely high number of engineers and scinetists etc when you consider their small population and appalling weather ;)

But then, she is a un-reconstituted Trotskyite. (Maybe I should introduce her to Different Sean, drive him crazy with her notions, and turn him into a Libertarian…)

i've heard it all before, heh... if you're not a trotskyite in your 20s, you've got no heart, and if you're not a libertarian capitalist free market fundamentalist apologist schweinhund by your 30s, you've got no brain... apparently...

And the number one reason to be pround of California is....

Patrick.net

DS,

Engineering is a fairly class free occupation. Anyone could go into it and travel the world if they were capable enough. The Scots probably just studied it to escape the appalling weather.

SFWoman,

Do you know if they're still planning on closing the Corte Madera Lyce'e?

Do you happen to know a couple who live in Half Moon Bay/El Granada with two sons at Lyce'e SF? You'd know him if you met him; quite an eccentric, but a great friend of mine.

SFWoman,

We were strongly considering Lyce'e in CM. My friend has been selling Lyce'e over FAS. I'd love to hear your perspective. We're not so concerned about IB (but it would be nice), but more early language immersion and international perspective (call it helping him hedge the future).

Our first choice were the German American schools (he's been learning German & English since day 1), but since we moved to Marin they are too far to be practical.

Brief soapbox: it is a tragedy that the public schools don't touch language until well past a child's prime developmental language opportunity stage. I have never, for the life of me, understood this.

SFWoman and SQT,

Are there any Japanese American schools around the BA and if so, any thoughts about them? This is purely hypothetical (since I still have serious reservations about having kids), but I figure if I have any I'd teach them Mandarin, and if they're forced to learn Kanji, they might as well learn Japanese.

SFWoman,

One more practical question: is it at all realistic to put a child into either French school without a fluent French speaking parent (my wife only speaks at a moderate level)? My friend at Lyce'e said there were some parents there like that, but they are definitely the "out" crowd. More importantly, I want to be able to provide a lot of homework support, which I cannot do in French.

SFWoman,

Thanks for everything :)

SFWoman,

Thanks! :)

P.S. -- the Chinese American school does look very interesting. It's a pity they don't seem to offer other languages. Your FAIS sounds much better.

SFWoman,

I really appreciate this discussion about kids and languages. Languages and social skills are indeed the most important things to teach young children, and both are sadly neglected even in the best public school systems.

I'll have to outsource any European language learning though, I'm a very poor language scholar. I'm very lucky that Chinese is a foreign language here.

SFWoman,

You've still got Eton to hang over their heads. Tell them about the overcast weather and no proximity to beaches. Talk up the appalling English cooking. That should get them to eat faster. :P

SFWoman,

Last week, I was talking to a Latin teacher who decided to pick up Chinese in mid life. He was very enthusiastic and I'm sure he has a natural affinity for languages (he also speaks Hebrew, Greek, French, and maybe something else), but it was very hard for me to follow his Chinese.

The very adept languist can probably pick up the nuances if they live in China for a little while (I've heard a few Americans speak nearly flawless tonal Mandarin), but it's probably just very hard.

I notice that a lot of Chinese here, especially those who arrived as kids, speak a flat sounding Chinese. For kids who were born here, their Chinese often seems no better (no more tonal) than the Caucasians, even though their parents start sending them to Chinese school at 5 or 6.

To some degree, my Mandarin has flattened too because I speak Shanghai dialect with my parents and English with everyone else, so my Mandarin gets rusty. But I can pick up the nuances if I spend a week in Beijing or two weeks in Shanghai.

Good grief! English food = curry + Chinese takeout! I wonder how they'd receive the infamous fried Mars bars.

SFWoman, Astrid,

My first professional job was in NYC's Chinatown. 99% of our clients were Chinese, and all of the office staff were Chinese too. More Chinese was spoken in our office than English. I made no effort to learn Chinese, I just overheard conversations held in Chinese day long.

One day when I was at an asylum hearing, the IJ asked my client a question. My client did not speak English, just Fujianese, so an interpreter was present to translate all of the questions and answers. When the IJ was doing the preliminary examination of my client (name, address, date of birth, etc.) I was sort of listening with one ear and thinking my the upcoming direct examination. The IJ asked a question, and the interpreter translated it, and I said, without thinking, "no, that's not right. The question was whether he had ever been convicted of a crime, not whether he had ever been arrested," or something like that. Somehow, I had picked up enough Chinese to understand what the interpreter and my client were saying to one another.

I was shocked because I had not realized that I understood Chinese until then. In the months that followed I started to pick up more and more. For example, one time our secertaries were discussing pop culture at lunch and I was able to follow the conversation. Toward the end I understood probably 70% of what was said.

I could not SPEAK the language to save my life, however. But I could understand it. It was like in those 50's westerns, where the cowboy points to native american colleague and "he doesn't speak English, but he understands it just fine," or something.

Sadly, I forgot all my Chinese almost instantly after moving away, I am sure I would have to start over from square one today. But I have no doubt that an adult could learn to understand Chinese. Maybe speaking it is another matter, I just don't know, but understanding it seems doable.

Joe Schmoe,

I grew up with Chinese, so I just know, rather than know how. So it's interesting to hear it from another perspective. Perhaps your Chinese immersed office is the best way to learn Chinese. Did you notice any tonal differences between the secretaries?

Joe Schmoe,

what you understood was Mandarin or Cantonese? Quite different from each other.

Astrid,

Yes. Most of our cleints (and office staff) were poor people from Fuchzou province who were not well educated.

Our paralegal/office manager was a college graudate, however, and her Chinese sounded different. The INS-certified translator we usually used was a graduate of a US college, and his Chinese was different too. Just before I left a secretary who was also a college graduate came back from materntiy leave, and her Chinese really stood out, I could tell that her diction was flawless even though I didn't speak the language. Ironically, I had a hard time understanding her.

I could sort of tell how intelligent a client was by listening to him speak. But it wasn't a question of being articulate, it was tonal. I hope that makes sense, I don't know, but the smart ones just sounded different.

99.999% of our clients were economic refugees, people who wanted to come to the US to build a better life. At first I thought their motivations were strictly economic, although I didn't care becuase if I grew up in Fuzhou City I'd want to move to the US too, but I later learned that they really did value our political freedoms, they just didn't talk about that.

All of the clients just made up their stories of persecution, I could never convince them to tell the truth no matter how hard I tried, and I tried hard becuase I thought a couple of them might have credible claims, but no one would ever listen to me. It was almost funny; they'd claim to be Catholic, and at the aslyum hearing the INS trial attorney would ask questions like "have you ever been to church," (they'd say no), or "who is Jesus Christ" (I don't know), etc. At the beginning of the process I would always encourage the "Christians" to go to church, etc., but no one ever did. The women would all claim they had been forcibly sterilized, but the doctor would do an ultrasound during the medical exam which would reveal that there had been no tubal ligation, etc.

However, we did have a few legitimate asylym claimants. I could always tell who they were just by listening to them for a minute or two. They sounded different somehow. And again, it wasn't their mannerisms or confident air -- they sounded different. For example, a lot of our male clients of a certain age claimed to have been at Tienamen square or one of the related protests in other cities, but one time we got a guy who really had been there -- and he had pictures! At the hearing the INS trial attorney realzied that this guy was legit after questioning him for about two minutes and actually made an oral motion for judgment in the asylee's favor!

One time we had this guy who had become sort of a conscientious objector while in the PLA; I was never able to prove that his story was legit, but I knew he was telling the truth. I won that case, thank God, becuase the judge made a really stupid ruling, and I won my appeal to the BIA and convinced the New York office to agree to a grant of asylum when it was was remanded. This client was just as afraid and inarticulate as all the others but somehow listening to him I knew he was telling the truth. That case was incrediby stressful, though, becuause I knew this guy was for real but had absolutely no evidence of it, and the client otherwise acted like, and was every bit as unhelpful as, the phonies. I coached him for days but the hearing was a disaster, he'd never look you in the eye while testifying, he was meek and hesitant, etc. Thank goodness I won the appeal and the INS dropped it in the end, I sort of had to call in a favor there but it worked out. It was scary as heck, though.

So yeah, there were huge tonal differneces between the secretaries and the clients. You could tell who was educated, who was intelligent, and who was truthful just by listening to people talk for a minute or two.