Wednesday, August 26, 2009

How to forgive friends and judge people

With Senator Kennedy’s death today, most media and friends on Facebook were talking about the loss of a great man. But then somebody piped up “He should be buried at the bottom of a lake. A murderer cannot be glorified”. I was reminded of similar comments when Michael Jackson died. I even blogged about it. My first reaction is to say that we should judge a person by their body of work, and not just one or two, what could be constituted, as mistakes. It is possible to like somebody's work without liking the person himself. But then again, just because somebody is glorified, we shouldn’t gloss over their negatives.

But it got me thinking. Who decides when the balance has tipped in one direction or another? Hitler must have done some good deeds in his life, but his death was as good a riddance as any, and I would be the last person asking him to be honored just because he is dead.

I often tell my kids that there are no good or bad people – only good and bad actions, and you judge people by weighing their good actions against their bad ones. All actions, however, don’t weigh the same. How do you teach them when to tip the scales? Did Ted Kennedy do enough good that his part in causing harm to some young women can be excused?

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Survival of the Fittest

I just saw this video on YouTube, and it got me wondering why is it that we don’t see a lot of original art coming out of India. India has a large population and an ancient tradition of classical forms of art, and yet you have to really strain hard to think of original artists – A. R. Rahman, M. F. Hussein and that’s it! I cannot even imagine a performance like this in “India’s got talent”. India has a huge film and music industry, yet most of the films are rehashed and adapted Hollywood scripts. Fittingly, there is no award distinguishing between adapted and original screenplay in the Indian "Oscars". The music directors for these movies are too smart to plagiarize from popular songs from big artists so they look for “inspiration” in smaller markets such as Turkey and Thailand and lift music from there.

This brings me to an article I read today about how babies can very quickly internalize the concept of probability and discover new mechanisms, just by exploring. The article stresses, however, that this type of learning best happens when babies are given freedom to explore and experiment on their own. Most babies and young children in India do not get this freedom and I think this is what ends up in stilted creativity as they grow older.

Anybody growing up in a country as populous as India, has to compete for resources at every stage of life – nothing comes to those who wait. If you don’t push through, leave aside getting a seat on the bus; you will probably not even get on the bus. If you stick to driving in your lane and politely try to pass others, you probably won’t get anywhere. Unless you excel in school in some way, you will be starved for teacher’s attention. Unless you perform, and perform really well in school you will not have any kind of a career. This is the lesson you learn at every step – life is very competitive and it starts early. Even a small block party held in the neighborhood to celebrate a holiday will have some kind of competition for kids – poetry recitation, some sort of race etc. and only the winner gets a prize. Only success is rewarded and recognized; not perseverance, not hard work, not originality – only success. You do not have the freedom to fail, and learn from it. There are no second chances. To see how endemic this has become in the culture you only have to visit a “Chuck-E-Cheese” type game parlor. There you will see the store workers as well as parents helping each child to win as many tickets as possible so that they can get a big prize in the end. This is what brought it home for me finally as I had to keep telling surprised store workers to back off. They couldn’t understand why I didn’t want them to help my child win big!

This is the reason that parents start teaching babies the alphabet, the multiplication tables and seek out academic programs by the time the kids are 3, to give them a heads up later. It is easy to find math and zoology classes for 4 year-olds in India! There is no room or time for exploration – learn your facts so that you can ace that interview for a good elementary school. If you don’t get there in the first try, you don’t have any more chances. And if you don’t get in a good school, your chances in life start dwindling right away. If you don’t do well in your 10th grade finals, you lose the chance to ever study math and science in the grades ahead. There is no room for and no appreciation for creativity, and definitely no time for discovering and indulging in your passions. Most kids spend 2-3 hours every day after school in classes to help them perform better at school. Only winning matters – and this is instilled early and often.

My intention is not to insult my roots, or the system that got me where I am today. But I do think it is time to take some pressure off the children because it seems to just keep growing. Mention this to any Indian and they will point out how Indians win math and science competitions world-wide, and thank you very much, but it is a great system. Why do Indian kids win spelling bees and geography bees – not because they are any smarter but because their parents grew up in a culture where winning competitions and memorizing facts are the tickets to success. Most Indians follow successful careers in the US, but do they ever follow their passion? Do they ever blaze a new trail in their field?

There is some upside for a system like India’s. Children learn early that you don’t get anything for just showing up, you have to perform. I have never seen kids cry at a competition in India because they didn’t win. In the US we seem to have the opposite problem where kids think themselves too entitled. I have had 8yo burst into tears at birthday parties here because they didn’t win musical chairs, and only got the basic “goody bag”, not the special prize. The American public education system has so much focus on leveling the playing field, and catering to the average that exceptional kids often feel left out, unappreciated and bored.

Is it even possible to create a perfect system?