Oriental Express: One secret to stepped-up scores

From Chinese tradition we get Bruce Lee – but also affordable and effective extra schooling

By Dad

It may be New York’s best-kept secret (outside the Chinese-American community).

For years, I’ve been trying to find an affordable formula for getting the kids on a path to the best schools and a top-flight college.

My own tutoring attempts proved an age-old maxim; kids don’t listen to their parents.

As I canvassed for a solution, a couple of Chinese-American parents I know introduced me to the world of supplemental education in New York’s Chinatown.

It’s a mystery to most parents outside the Chinese-American community because many of the schools, if they advertise at all, do so only in the Chinese-language press.

Having now put the girls through Chinatown schools over the summer, I’m ready to declare “Eureka!” (or whatever the Chinese equivalent is). I've found the pocket-book friendly secret to stepped-up test scores.

Dora (13) is well on her way to achieving her goal of passing a crucial citywide examination this October to get into a New York “specialized” high school. She has her eyes on one that boasts eight Nobel-prize alumni (that’s more than many countries can claim).

Penny (10) has started fifth grade of regular school with heightened confidence. She now has the discipline to finish her homework on the early side of Letterman's Late Show.

Cathy (6) is picking out one chapter book after another to read after her first grade public school teacher last year dubbed her reading-skills as deficient (actually, she said they were "developing," because no one is ever "behind" in the politically correct public school system).

This, all for minimal cost compared to what I saw of private school tariffs outside Chinatown – or to one-on-one tutoring.

Brutal

But there is a catch – in the shock your kids undergo if they’re not used to being driven hard.

Boy, do those Chinatown schools set a pace! Make no mistake, they live up to the cultural reputation Amy Chua emphatically spelled out in her 2011 book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

Do's and don'ts posted in one classroom 

While the teachers don’t scream at the kids like Amy said she did with her daughters, the classroom rules are brutal.

“No shaking legs,” warns one of the more bizarre exhortations listed on a form issued at Dora's school.

"No ostentatious greeting" is another – so think how out-of-place the over-the-top Disney Channel stars would be at a school like this.

Being an eager student will get you nowhere either: "Calling out the answer (is) not permitted," the form says.

Just a minute's tardiness will get a student an hour's banishment to the reception area.

But the punishments for most other infractions have not even reached the maturity of the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (circa 1772 BC).

The code was among the first to state what would happen to you if you broke the law. Compare that to what the form at Dora's schools says:

"The school reserves the right to take any disciplinary action on your violation of the above-described rules" (my italics).

You're at the mercy of the principal – a perfectly nice guy (who just happened to brought up in China during the Cultural Revolution, when nonconformists figured they'd got off lightly if they were condemned to hard labor).

And, like during the Cultural Revolution, some infractions are not even posted, but carry harsh punishments. The school suspended one student for a day because he’d tossed a piece of crumpled paper into the garbage can, instead of walking over at break time and placing it inside.

Finally, there’s also this less-than-subtle admission that the school is driving the kids hard: “During break time, students can sleep with their head on the desk.”

“It’s so hard” Penny balled about the workload at the school she and Cathy attended.

Achievement

All of which brings me again to the pace: all three girls did more in a day than I recall their doing in a week at public school last year.

Penny survived and has even recovered, writing in a short composition during her first week of regular fifth grade: “I know it was for the best and I am better for it.”

Cathy actually thrived throughout her Chinatown experience, and now playfully recreates the setting at home as a backdrop to extra regular school studies I have her doing. (Remember, she’s only six, so starting them young seems to be key, and no doubt explains why she acclimatized so readily to the Chinatown school pace.)

"We made it" the main Chinese script reads in the center

Dora is still attending her Chinatown school to complete a course that takes her to the October specialized high school admissions test.

Her pride in her consistently high scores in biweekly tests stands in stark contrast to her attitude before we signed up for the school.

“Why are you acting like a Chinese parent?” she had barked in reaction to my efforts to push her back then.

Quite ironic, given where she ended up, and how she ultimately submitted to Chinatown rules.

Many parents outside the Chinese community believe there is some cultural secret to the fact that, statistically, well over half of the students enrolled in New York’s eight specialized high schools that require a test for admissions are Asian (click here for a New York Times report on this).

Our experience shows that there's nothing particularly cultural about it. We didn’t adopt oriental traditions. We just followed a rigorous program. The secret is nothing more than hard work.


Update: In March, 2014, Dora received word she had been offered a place in Stuyvesant High School, the most sought after of the Specialized High Schools in New York. She starts in September, 2014. This is the toughest school to enter. More than 70% of its students are Asian.

Bag-to-School Blooper

In the bag: the girls had to make do with old bags – but the combat boots were new

By Dad

The kids were back-to-school today – lamentably without new backpacks. They wanted bags that could be found only online, but this procrastinating Pop didn't order them in time.

So Cathy packed off to second grade with a colorful picnic bag under her arm – her pencils stuffed in the knives and forks slots.

Penny's using her (now grubby) backpack from last year, and complained that her fifth grade compatriots will think she's “weird” when she shows up with a new bag several days after school has re-started.

Dora was less perturbed because she’s entering eighth grade in new combat boots that we managed to snag at Target over the weekend (they were the last pair in her size, so I almost missed the boat on that buy too).

I tell myself I put off ordering to allow the kids maximum time to change their minds. But overshooting the mark is a bit of a bad habit that I'm sure is a parenting sin.

I hate to think what sort of message it's sending to the kids. One friend (a mother) warned they'll pick husbands who'll never do anything on time. Such huge consequences for a little bit of forgetfulness!

_______________________________

Back-to-School quote for stay-at-home-dad age

(our add in italics):

If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylums would be filled with mothers and stay-at-home dads ~ Edgar W. Howe (American novelist and journalist)

Losing the Space Race

Tudors R Us: The girls keep even their headless Barbies

By Dad

Tired of our Manhattan apartment,* the girls have been asking how to get onto the show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

I tell them we're more likely to star in Hoarders – and point to the piles of toys clogging up our abode.

Chucking anything bearing the kids' fingerprints always invites trouble. Major feelings are hurt if our trio catch me sneaking something of theirs into the garbage chute.

“I worked really hard on that," six-year-old Cathy says of anything I'm tossing that she's written or drawn.

We could be talking about a ballpoint-pen sketch of a stick person on dogeared paper torn from some long-discarded notebook: Cathy wants it kept. 

Her sisters once raced to the garbage chute with my prized Churchill collection when they caught me trying to whittle down the number of plush toys all three keep in multiple space-consuming bins.

Little matter that some of the furry animals smelled like they'd been stored in the Parisian catacombs, so long had disuse denied them contact with fresh air.

At the chute, Dora (13) opened the intake door and yelled: "I mean it," as she dangled a volume of the History of the English Speaking Peoples to within a finger's slip of incineration.

Standing in the doorway, Penny (10) blocked my access to the threatened tome with all the determination of the Spartan 300 holding back the Persians at Thermopylae. 

With neighbors beginning to crack open their doors to get a handle on the ruckus, surrender was my only option (this was not – to borrow from Churchill – my "finest hour").

The plush toys stash remains to this day.

Headless

As does just about everything else we've ever bought, including now broken toys.

Most puzzling is why the kids keep their headless Barbie dolls. The younger girls say they still play with them. Play at what? The Court of Henry VIII?

Parental-advice sites typically urge involving the children in any culling of their stuff. That debate would lead to history's longest-ever filibuster in our home. 

Buying replacement stuff is no solution either. When Penny spotted a new lunch bag she liked, I bought it on condition she toss her old one, which had a broken zipper.

Penny agreed, and later swore she’d kept her side of the bargain. I later glimpsed the old bag “hidden” in one of her drawers. Watch this space for the day I confront her on that. 

So, for now, we’re stuck with a shrinking living space as “stuff” continues to consume the apartment. Now, where’s that number for the Hoarders show?

Either that, or we'll just move out and leave the apartment to the headless Barbies and stick people!


* Who wouldn't be tired of this place? It's on the Upper East Side at 10 minutes' walk from Central Park and 20 minutes' from the Metropolitan Museum; it has a roof garden, 24-hour doorman service and periodic parties in the entrance hall. Altogether untenable. And if you detect a note of sarcasm in this footnote, you're right on the money! How tired would they be if they were growing up in a British "council" house, with no indoor toilet, no TV until I they're 5, no refrigerator until they're 13, and certainly no heating in any room other than the living room? Yes, their Pop and millions like him suffered these deprivations, I tell the kids. So what do they say to that?  "That was the olden days," they tell me. Case closed as far as they're concerned.