Blog Archives

No Holds Barred Parenting: Part Two

Our third teacher was a soft-spoken jazz guy named Richard, with wide hips. He said he had a two-year-old daughter. At our first meeting, he gave Sophia and me a big lecture about the importance of living in the moment and playing for oneself. … Richard said there were no rules in music, only what felt right, and no one had the right to judge you, and the piano world had been destroyed by commercialism and cut-throat competition. Poor guy – I guess he just didn’t have what it took. … As the eldest daughter of Chinese immigrants, I don’t have time to improvise or make up my own rules. I have a family name to uphold, aging parents to make proud. I like clear goals, and clear ways of measuring success.

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No Holds Barred Parenting

Amy Chua’s book on Chinese parenting “Battle Hymn of The Tiger Mother” is polemic, but unflinching look at one woman’s model of parenting.

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The Other Villains Of Ebooks: The Business

In the past two weeks, the publishing company Penguin decided to ban libraries from lending ebooks and the US Authors Guild decried Amazon’s lending library as a breach of contract.

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Two Themes on Science Vs Art

If religion vs science is one eternal debate, science vs art is another. Read more »

Schooling and Education: Part 3

The first winter rain has come and gone. Children in this country and in many parts of the Western Hemisphere are settled in to a new year of schooling. I was reading Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” when I ran across this passage:
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