Today is my sister’s birthday. I talked to her a few day before. She is always busy as she devotes all her non-working hours to her son’s education.

To be sure, her son is not as smart as she wishes. But given her guidance and persistent effort, he is very much up to the grade, which really proves hard work can make up to certain extent.

I told my sister of two things that have helped her son. (1) He listens to her and does what she asks. This is a huge help. (2) He knows working hard is the only way for him to get ahead, so he has been putting strong efforts at his study and has seen the fruitful result of his diligence.

Hard work will pay off for everybody.
Happy birthday to my sister!

Make no mistake here. No child left behind is a very lofty idea and very enlightening, too. But if the government metes out punishment on the schools and teachers whose students fail in state math and reading tests, this policy is no longer laudable.

The real danger of punishing teachers for students’ failure on tests come when teachers, for fear of losing their jobs, focus their time and energy on testing preparation instead of on learning. This reminds me so much of the practice in China. The end result is generating a bunch of students who are experts in taking tests but are weak in various ability.

Schools are important, but ultimately they are important only in the sense that they are to prepare students for the time when students no longer need school.

Last Saturday morning I sent my daughter to a school competition at JCCC at 7:30 AM and then came back home, got ready for library’s tax service at 9 AM. I did not get back until after 3 PM. Thus the whole morning was gone without my usual morning exercise.

Toward evening, I walked to a neighborhood Walmart to make up for the missed morning exercise. I came back from the walk, feeling very tired, more so than normal morning walk or run.

After I came back, I told my daughter and asked her if she understand why I felt so tired. She said it was because I was already tired by the end of the day. On the other hand, I should not feel tired in the morning after a night’s rest and morning walk only serves to refresh me up.

Her words make me think of this. Isn’t it also true that in learning that it is easy for people to learn new stuffs when they are young. We have more time and energy and better memory during our younger years. Children are much better equipped for learning. It will be a huge waste if we don’t make the most of these so-called “Golden Time.”

During the last weekend of last month, I told my daughter to find her own role model in life so that she has a better chance of staying on the right track in life. Not that I have doubt in her ability to keep doing the right thing but I want her to keep doing it no matter what happens.

I often talked to her about some famous people, hoping she could find something inspiring, but that day I was surprised that she told me I was her role model and so was her brother. That was a compliment. ”Because you have your goal and have never given up,” she said. I guess there are more than that.

I am glad to learn this because it is not an easy task to be a role model to a teenage child. As children move into teenage years, we not only face cultural and generation gaps, but also are further challenged by the rebellious spirit of the youngsters. When the children see you as their role model, it means they accept you and the values you represent. What a delight when that happens!

Last month we had a new doctor working at our clinic. She has a Chinese last name and physical features but not from China. I shared with my daughter my impression about this doctor. She is either very smart or very hardworking. Normally it takes 8 years of education, 4 years undergraduate plus 4 years medical school. She completed it all in 6 years in an accelerated 2 plus 4 BS/MD program. After that, she had 3 years of residence and 3 years of fellowship in her specialty. She looks like in her 20s.

You have to be really excellent in order to be accepted into any accelerated program. And you have to apply for this program. When my daughter was in elementary school, she was advanced in reading and math. She was reading 12-grade level books when she was a second grader. I should have done something like getting her into an accelerated program, but I don’t think neither I or her teacher had done anything to keep her challenged.

The teacher was following “No child left behind” policy. I should not count on her teacher to provide enough intellectual nutrients. I am sure things would be different if we had done something during her elementary school years.

Today is Martin Luther King day. No school today. Our office also closes for the day.

Children’s attitude toward no-school day is a sign of their growing up and become mature. I remember my daughter used to be excited about any no-school days. She even expected a lot of bad weather days so that there would be more no-school days.

To her, it meant no homework, nothing but play. Even after I told her to work on some long-term projects during these no-school days, she still expected no school days somewhat to be relaxing, insisting no-school meant no work. Thank goodness, she has outgrown this attitude, a sign of being mature and responsible.

I used to complain a lot about American kids having too many no-school play days. I still think so. But then, if teachers leave children to the parents, it is up to the parents to make most of these idle days. After all these years of dealing with teachers and schools here, I have come to this conclusion: for your child’s education and his future, you really cannot count on any schools or teachers.

When I was a teacher, I knew I was not just lashing out grades to my students. I thought of long-term percussion of my grading, knowing a bad grade would follow my students for all their lives. Some students never came to me, asking for a second chance. But for those who did, I knew they cared and I never refused them.

I talked to them, making them understand that I could give them a second chance but in real life they might not have the luck to meet people who are willing to give them this second chance, therefore they might end up having a bad mark in their record for all their lives.

I might not be a good teacher but in the long run, when students look back and reflect upon this, they will learn a lesson, heavier than a grade. I knew I was working with young people and they have a long way to go in their lives. Don’t we have the saying — “young and foolish”? I don’t want their youthful foolishness follow them all the way.

If a student thinks he were a loser because of a bad grade, he would give up trying and start heading downhill. What happens next is he will slip to the bottom faster than he has thought. I would do anything to prevent this downward movement.

The tragedy is not many teachers realize this downward triggering role that they can play in a student’s life.

Early this year, my mother told me of these study skills over the internet. She asked me to share them with my children. I wrote it down on a piece of paper and found it lately.

I am not sure if I have posted it. I shared with my daughter who agreed to give it a try. I am sure people will benefit from this.

(1) Be focused in class–you always get more done by pure concentration.
(2) Train your memory–ability to retain knowledge.
(3) Enhance your reading comprehension
(4) Develop your writing skill
(5) Learn to take notes with images
(6) Learn to manage well study process

On the evening of 4/1/2011, I talked with a friend of mine in China over the Skype. She told me of the experience of one Princeton student. An unpleasant one, to be sure.

For some reason, the girl alway dreamed of becoming a college professor of mathematics. Though she was admitted into Princeton University, she was toiling heavily all the way through her first three years.

Finally, on her final year, she broke down upon learning from one professor that she was not cut out for mathematics. In the end, though she managed to graduate from Princeton, she wasn’t able to land a job and to this date, is still unemployed and disoriented.

I was wondering if she could have fared better than this in her life journey if she had been better adviced before she headed for mathematics professor dream.

On April 1 2011, a Friday noon, the manager of our team told us that she was going to resign in two weeks. I was a bit shocked at first, thinking she must be making an April Fool’s joke. But some of my colleagues opened my eyes to some facts which made me see that her leaving was out of necessity.

After KUMC purchases our company, the two research departments will naturally become one under one manager. While the one at KU has a PhD and MBA, our manager has a Bachelor. Our manager might be squeezed out after KU buyout, even though she is also very capable and experienced. Hence, she left on her own before she was told to.

To me, this emphasizes the importance of one’s education in the long run. If you plan to climb up to a higher level of management, very often higher than a bachelor degree makes big difference.

On the way back home from school on 5/17, I asked my daughter if she felt superior in one sense. At first she couldn’t understand. I explained that not many parents can share their wisdom and their life’s experience as much as I do with you. Not many parents are in the position to give advice and provide guidance to their children as I have done. Proper advice can help children avoid taking detours in their career path, so that they can go beyond the limitation of their age and lack of experience and advance ahead of their peers. That’s why high school provides school counselor and mentor. That’s why some Chinese Aunties ask me about their children’s education.

She agrees with my assessment, even though she thinks I have given myself more credit than I deserve. At least I have kept in mind children’s education all the time.

Children with proper parental guidance should be more mature and feeling superior to those without, unless they choose not to follow this guidance.

Last Saturday evening, while chatting with my mother over the Skype, I mentioned children’s education should include a musical instrument and a sport event, the idea that I talked about in my 5/13 posting. I told my mother that education should aim at bringing out happy individual with knowledge and ability. A happy individual has a cheerful personality, strong character, and ability to stand on his own feet in society. I have paid attention to children’s personality, making sure they develop an open, positive and sunny personality– the main ingredients to personal happiness.

My mother said when we were little, they only made sure that we had food and clothes and books to read. Their only hope was we could find some job to support ourselves when we grew up. Great expectation! Really?

To be sure, my parenting of my children is vastly different from that of last generation’s. In fact, I have tried to align my expectation of my children with their expectation of themselves. It took me some time to explain this idea to my mother. Call it generation plus cultural gap.

On 3/18, my son went to Europe with a few friends to enjoy his last college spring break. In the afternoon, I took my daughter to her skating lesson. There were many Chinese parents attending their children’s skating.

I told one parent that a child’s education was not complete without a musical instrument and a sport event. If school work challenges their brain, sport their body and the mastery of one musical instrument challenges both. On top of this, both sport and music contribute in their own way to building a strong character –perseverance, focus, goal-setting, and competitive spirit.

This parent told me that since her child started figure-skating, she became more open and self-confident. Sport has boosted up her self-esteem and brought a change in her personality. Isn’t that wonderful!

This is a true story of a colleague of mine, an individual as rare as giant pandas, that is, you really don’t have the chance to meet a person like her. Hence, I reached out to her, rendering her unreserved support.

She is a 30-year-old single mother of two, one 12-year-old, the other 5-year-old, full-time employee, recently awarded full-ride scholarship, one of only 10 people from across the U.S. selected out of about 12,000 applicants for full-ride scholarships to her chosen University under the Project Working Mom program.

With the scholarship, she will continue working on her bachelor degree and will go all the way to get her PhD. in psychology. Her dream started when she was in second year of high school. But it was delayed because of a baby when she was 18 and the need to make a living and support her two children. More than a decade has passed, yet she still holds tight to her dream.

Now she is more than ever determined to pursue her dream degree. She knows her road ahead will be full of hardships but she is resolved to let nothing stop her until she reaches her goal.

On 10/30/2010, while my daughter was in her art lesson, I was reading a magazine Scientific American. We used to subscribe it when my son was in high school. There is an article in November 2010 issue, “Hearing the Music, Honing the Mind.” This reiterates the benefit of music in our brain. Below is the key point.

If you listen to your mother and practice piano for an hour in the afternoon, these music lessons can produce profound and lasting changes that enhance the general ability to learn.

“Assiduous instrument training from an early age can help the brain to process sounds better, making it easier to stay focused when absorbing other subjects, from literature to … calculus.

“The musically adept are better able to concentrate on a biological lesson despite the racket in the classroom… They can attend to several things at once in the mental scratch pad calling working memory, an essential skill in the era of multitasking…”

For this reason, I hope my children will keep up their piano or violin practice even after they are out of school.

On 12/2/2010, my daughter asked me about Lynndie England. This prompted me to think about the importance of one’s philosophy of life.

Lynndie England is famous for her role in the infamous torture and prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad during the occupation of Iraq. The pictures reveal without any doubt a perverted mind. It is ridiculous to hear her self-defense and her all-out efforts to whitewash herself of any wrongdoings.

In a May 11, 2004 interview with Denver CBS affiliate television station KCNC-TV, England reportedly said that she was ‘instructed by persons in higher ranks’ to commit the acts of abuse for psyop reasons, and that she should keep doing it, because it worked as intended. England noted that she felt “weird” when a commanding officer asked her to do such things as “stand there, give the thumbs up, and smile”. However, England felt that she was doing “nothing out of the ordinary”.

“England maintains that she was goaded into posing for the photographs by her then lover and more senior fellow soldier, Charles Graner. ‘They said in the trial that authority figures really intimidate me. I always aim to please.’”

Lynndie England’s experience emphasizes the importance of developing and following your own philosophy of life unwaveringly. This includes, among others, a clear sense of right and wrong, no matter what others say. Do the right thing always. If it is wrong either morally or legally or whatsoever, do not do it, no matter what, even if you are under the highest pressure. At the very least, always follow the golden rule of “Do-unto-others-as-you-would-have-them-do-unto-you.”

A single bad deed never fails to boomerang, even though good ones might disappear like nothing happens. Lynndie England could have avoided this scandal if she had a clear idea of her philosophy of life and a tiny bit of sense of right and wrong.

On 10/24/2010, my daughter complained of her European History teacher’s homework. Instead of putting out questions for students to work on, the teacher asked the students to create their own questions and then answer them.

Immediately, I see the advantage of this approach. It can actively engage students in learning, better than handing them questions. In order to do a good job, the students need to think critically and creatively. The students learn much more than the subject matter itself.

When I was teaching sociology courses back in 1993 till 1996, I created a list of questions and asked my students to seek answers while doing reading assignments. I thought it a better way than simply giving out reading assignments.

If I had a chance to teach these students again, I would do as this European History teacher did. If I had a chance to work with little children about their reading, I would try this method, too. Because it is such a superior method of teaching!

Yesterday morning we went to Union Station as part of their Saturday science seminar for students. Yesterday’s topic was on the collapse of the Hyatt Skywalk on 7/17/1981 in Kansas City, Missouri, causing 114 death, the then deadliest structural collapse in U.S. history. This happened nearly 30 years ago, hence most of these students had not heard of this tragedy.

The speaker gave a detailed analysis of the serious flaws in the design and engineering of the architecture. These flaws are the root cause of the collapse.

I think it a very good lecture for the young people in that they could learn what professional responsibilities means and the deadly consequence of the irresponsible behavior on part of some professionals.

On 11/23, a very cold Tuesday afternoon, I took my daughter to Border’s to get some closing sale. From there, we went to Costco to buy a bag of pomela, a giant citrus fruit. When we left the store, we rushed into our highlander, feeling very cold. At this moment, both of us thought of this verse and began chanting it aloud, as if it could drive away the coldness.

I am pretty sure I have dwelled on this topic many times before so much so that even my daughter can recite it. This was on an elementary school textbook. So many years have passed and with so much goings-on, I can never forget the story of Hanhao bird. The story goes like this.

When the sun is warm and bright, all the birds are hard at work, with the exception of Hanhao Bird. When a bird reminds Hanhao of getting ready for the cold weather, Hanhao said, “The winter is still far away. I will enjoy myself in this sunny day.”

Hanhao plays all the way until the winter arrives. At night when other birds are resting in their cosy nests, the shivering Hanhao regrets not to have built one for this moment. He keeps chanting this verse. The next day when the sun is out and Hanhao starts playing again, forgetting all about his nest. Thus, eventually he dies in the midst of cold winter night– a lesson for us all.

This is from reading on 9/18/2010 an article on shopaholics carried in Psychology Today. There are three types of shopaholics.

(1) Emotional shopaholics, “Shopping brings me out of a depressed mood,” said one of them.

(2) Bipolar shopaholics. When certain people with bipolar disorder hit a manic high, the first thing they think to do is shop. “When I was high, I couldn’t worry about money if I tried so I don’t…”

(3) Obsessive shopaholics. If you feel an urge to buy the same top in eight colors or to replace your coffee maker monthly because you keep finding “better” models, you may be an obsessive shopaholic. They must shop to feel that everything is OK.

When you reach to such a deplorable state, obviously something must be wrong with your life or with your feeble mind. Either you need to have a worthy goal to reach or a meaningful engagement to make you feel worthy and proud. I surely wish my children and my dear readers never fall this low.

This is from my reading of Psychology Today on 9/18/2010. There is an article reporting a research on the factors that contribute to the success of high schoolers. There are three findings.

(1) Word perfect. Babies raised among books obtain an average of three years more schooling than book-free children. That mean babies should be read to as early as possible.

(2) Boys chase girls. Boys score low in class that girls dominate. I don’t have convincing explanation on it. Probably, girls tend to bring out their best when they compete with other girls. And boys lack of the drive to compete with girls.

(3) Clique here. Seniors with more close pals have high GPAs. This is very much understandable when classmates serve as study buddies and help each other to reach their common goals — good grades.

On the Sunday of 8/22/2010, I read an article by CHRISTINA HOAG, Associated Press writer, “LA unveils $578M school, costliest in the nation.” Here are some facts that make the whole story absolutely ridiculous.

(1) The new building will house the same old group of teachers who have created 50% dropout rate and one of the lowest performance schools in the U.S.
(2) Schools with worst performance are often rewarded with the highest funding – New York City has a $235 million campus; New Brunswick, NJ, a $185 million high school.
(3) This came in the time when nearly 3,000 teachers were laid off, with many needed programs slashed.

The assumption behind this colossal spending is people attribute the poor school performance to lack of good facilities, instead of honestly confronting the real issues of parental responsibilities, the student’s lack of interest and any much-needed work ethics, and on top of its all, the whole culture that breeds the main student body .

I don’t have ready data to back up this but I strongly believe on the average the U.S. public schools spend far more than the average schools in China, yet the performance and achievement are depressingly lower here in the U.S.

Let’s face this simple fact: education is not something you can buy. Emphasis on education is inherent in a culture. You find it in most of Asian and Jewish cultures. Without a thorough cleaning of the whole culture involving predominantly Hispanic and black student body, this bleak situation will remain stubbornly hopeless, regardless how many millions are poured into these schools. It will only get worse as this student body grows bigger.

On the Monday morning of 7/12/2010, after one week break, my daughter started the first day of the second session of summer school. She got up at 6 AM, busy getting things ready. Finally we hopped on the car at 6:34. By the time, we got off highway 35, it was 6:47. Five minutes later, we passed Quivira and had less than 1/4 miles to go. Normally we have reached school by 6:52. Today, because we were about 5 minutes behind, we had to wait for 7 minutes before we could reach the dropping spot. It was 6:59 when she stepped out of the car.

I don’t know where the classroom is and how much she has to go before she enters her classroom. But I know clearly we could have avoided all the morning rush if she had got her clothes, school notes, and school bag ready the night before. The next morning we left at 6:30 AM and arrived at 6:49. I hope my children can learn a lesson from what happened on this morning.

Next year my daughter is going to take European history class. Meanwhile, we just learned that a high school friend of my son majors in history at Wash-U. My daughter asked me what was the use of learning history. I told her of the word of Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626).

“Reading makes a full man; conversation a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man writes little, he needs to have a great memory; if he converses little, he needs to have a present wit: and if he reads little, he needs to have much cunning, to seem to know, that he does not. Histories make men wise ; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.”

You may be wondering why history makes one wise. When you study history, you have to be able to think in term of time and space and understand events and their relationships, then search for the answer for why event happened the way it is. History enhances your research and critical thinking ability and of course writing ability, too. Plus, it is so much fun reading about history. After all, don’t you want to know the rise and fall of Roman Empire?

During fourth of July long weekend, I grabbed a book on ancient Chinese teaching and bumped into this piece. To be sure, it is a fairly long one. I refrain from torturing my daughter into memorizing the whole piece. Instead, I asked her to learn a tiny part of it.

The main idea of the first part is the following.
(1) Get up early. Clean around and put things in order. Go to bed early. Make sure the door is locked and the windows are closed. The key point is to do something useful after you get out of bed as opposed to watching TV or playing games or surfing the net mindlessly.

(2) At each meal, you should alway remember they don’t come by easily. There are lots of works involved in the making of your clothes. The main point is: nothing comes by easily. Do not waste anything.

(3) While you prepare for the rainy days, you should start digging well before you feel thirsty. The message is self-explanatory, that is, you save for the time when you need it urgently.

To be sure, this is not the first time that I drill these messages into their heads. I know repetition always works.

My daughter’s summer school schedule goes from 7 AM to 12 noon. During the first session, she returned home right after school and didn’t start doing homework until late in the evening. During the second session, her brother suggested that she go to the library right after school and try to get all homework done there. It helps her to focus on her work. It is also good to be away from refrigerator and other type of junk food.

It has been two weeks since she started going to the main library. Yesterday, on the way home, I asked her if she got more things done at library than at home. “Oh yea,” she quickly replied.

This reinforces the idea that I had before, that is, the environment and the atmosphere are the factor that parents should consider if they intend to develop a good study habit in their children.

While I was walking early on the morning of 6/27, I was listening to a book on confronting business reality. When the book hit the topic of outsourcing to China, I thought of some incidents related to Chinese language.

First, I learned of a Chinese parent talking about making his children learn Chinese. “They are going to work here in U.S. Unless they will work as Chinese interpreters, what’s the use of learning Chinese?” This is the first time I hear of such an excuse of not bringing bilingual kids in a Chinese family here in U.S. I have seen cases where Chinese parents painfully struggle to communicate with their adolescent kids in English, being shamefully looked down upon by the children whose only means of communication in their Chinese family is English. The children have every reason to shame their parents, because the parents’ English is so embarrassingly outlandish, after having stayed in the country for so many years.

Second, I heard some internet software companies started turning to China for outsourcing their developer job. It would be a big help if the company can communicate with the Chinese developers in Chinese. In other words, Chinese are gradually becoming both partners and colleagues of the American companies. How can one say knowing Chinese is not relevant to one’s job. You can say the same thing to people working at any fast food restaurant in KC but cannot speak Spanish because most of his colleagues speak Spanish.

Finally, language is an instrument. The more instruments that we have mastered, the better positioned we are in facing the global challenge. It is especially attractive when children can master this instrument effortlessly by simply growing up in this language environment.

I deem it a waste of resource, an opportunity lost and even an unfair shortchange to the children if their Chinese parents fail to bring up bilingual children. Alas, by the end of the day, it takes some wisdom to be a good parent.

On May 8, a beautiful Saturday, we went to a friend’s house for a dinner gathering. As usual, we parents were chatting over dinner table while the kids had their fun upstairs.

One topic that struck me as very interesting, that is, teaching Chinese to the next generation and enhancing parent-children relationship.

Many Chinese parents, in an attempt to assimilate their children into mainstream American culture, insist on English-only environment at their Chinese homes and thus deprive the youngsters the opportunity to learn Chinese while they were young.

I learned of the wretched experience of a Chinese father. He is one of those unwise parents, engaging in nothing but English with his daughter when the girl was little. Now his teenager daughter turns away from him because she cannot speak Chinese and his English sounds too outlandish, rudimentary and outrightly embarrassing to her. The combination of generation gap and cultural gap tears the two apart to an irreparable point. Now vainly the sad old dad cries over spilled water. It is not funny to witness the scene.

Their first home provides the only Chinese language environment for these ABC children. With a large part of their waking hours being exposed to English environment, the Chinese parents really don’t have much chance of raising bilingual second generation ABCs.

Here’s the key to keep in mind — if Chinese parents do not go out of way to teach Chinese to their youngsters, they not only deprive the kids of the chance of being bilingual but also run the risk of alienating themselves from their English-speaking children. Remember it is no use to cry over spilled water.

Continued with yesterday’s posting on American education and elite society. I was reading SMS year book of this past year, the 2010 Heritage Supplement and noticed this interesting phenomenon. There are about 250 high school graduates from SMS who are heading for colleges this fall. Among them, one will go to Northwestern University, one to Washington University in St Louis, one to Cornell University, and one to Columbia University. They make up about 1% of the graduates, the rest 99% go to either JCCC or K-State or KU or anywhere outside the top rank. This is the crowd. This is the flow. Thus the rudimentory hierarchical structure is taking shape with a tiny 1% on the top, sitting far above the 99% mass of society. There will certainly be change in this structure, as some might drop from the top and others climb to the summit.

For my children, if you want to be one of the crowd, you follow the 99% of the folks. Otherwise, stand above 99% of your peers. While life is easy for one staying with the crowd, it is never easy to be one of the top one percent. The road to the top is especially difficult for Asian Americans as there are so many over-qualified applicants for so limited places in top-ranking institutes of higher education. Tough decision and rough road ahead.

We all know that money, though important, cannot buy things that really matter to us, home, time, sleep, knowledge, health, respect, love and life. Here it is again from a friend of mine. I want my children not to lose sight of big picture and essentials of life while pursuing success in life.

When you have money–
You can buy a bed but cannot buy enough sleep;
You can buy a book but cannot buy knowledge;
You can buy healthcare but cannot buy health;
You can buy a house but cannot buy a home;
You can buy position but cannot buy respect;
You can buy clock but cannot buy time;
You can buy sex but cannot buy love;
You can buy blood but cannot buy life.

Last week, my son forwarded me a blog entry by Jonah Lehrer on this topic.

Lehrer introduces in his blog a recent experiment by neuroscientists at Rutgers, which demonstrated that general intelligence is mediated by improvements in selective attention. The results of these experiments “provide evidence that the efficacy of working memory capacity and selective attention may be causally related to an animal’s general cognitive performance and provide a framework for behavioral strategies to promote those abilities,” and “that intelligence is really about the ability to control the spotlight of attention. After all, having access to facts doesn’t matter if we can’t focus on the facts, or figure out which facts are actually important. (Herbert Simon said it best: ‘A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.’”

Think about internet and ocean of information together with so many kids with study problems. It all boils down to one problem, not intelligence but lack of power to focus and to concentrate their attention for long.

Last Monday, 4/5, I heard of this news about Blue Valley school district board decision. The board, faced with a significant budget shortfall, “will save $1.8 million by allowing a slight increase in class-size guidelines. Student activity fees will be doubled. The district will save another $2.6 million through a variety of other budget cuts.” It has to cut here and there in order to trim $3 million.

The news reminds me of the result of a Saturday’s state competition on 4/3. I learned that in recent years private schools have been the leading teams going national.

With budget cut in recent years, I am not surprised to see the decline of public schools. Both parents and public schools across the board are facing unprecedented challenges in keeping their quality and competitive edge with shrinking budgets.

Kansas City (KCMSD) spent as much as $11,700 per student on a cost of living adjusted basis, much more than many large districts in the country, bringing student-teacher ratio to 12 or 13 to 1, the lowest of major school district in the country.

You think you would get the expected result? Wrong. School performance, social integration, achievement gap, and graduation rate remain stubbornly unchanged. Even with tremendous amount of money pouring into school, it is still unrealistic to expect any miracle from a school district whose students come from poverty-stricken areas with most of families headed by low-educated single-parents.

Education starts first and foremost from one’s family where a child spends two-third of his day and has most interactions and influence. Family is where one’s aspiration, dreams, motivation to rise in society, and vision of future are cultivated and encouraged. Family is the root of all for every one of us.

This is as much a social problem as an educational one. Perhaps, instead of giving money to school or trying to get a new crop of teachers by laying off the old ones, we should turn our eyes to parents and invest some resource in educating parents in any poor-school-performance district or at least get their cooperation. Nothing can be done until you get to the root of all education problems — the culture and the family.

On the way from her school to gas station on 2/10/2010, I was thinking of going home directly because my daughter was going to have a test the next day, but I needed to get gas for the car and also get something else from grocery store. I told my daughter, “Sometimes I am really torn between the desire to make you happy and the need to make you work hard so that you can have good grades and get to place of your dream. I know grades are not important and there are many things in life that are more important than grades. But still we need good grades because that’s how people measure you when they don’t know you.”

“Well, we have to go by the rule. Plus, I won’t be happy if I don’t have good grades and not be able to go where I want to go,” said she. I am glad she is so much mature now, at least more mature than some of my adult friends.

To certain extent, socialization process is one of learning and following the rules of the society. Most of successful individuals are good at playing by the rule for their advantage. For example, they realize what is needed to get into a school or a company, so they adapt themselves so that they present themselves as exactly the kind of person for that school or the company. I am not sure how much individuality is preserved in the process and how happy or unhappy they are, but success will guarantee one more freedom to break the rule. A nice thing to look forward to. Until the day we become the ones who make the rule, we have to follow the rule laid off by other rule-makers.