Calum

__ Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother __

When the exert from “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother “debuted in The Wall Street Journal, many Americans and western living families took offence and felt guilty. As more and more parents wrote vigorous letters of complaint and controversy, it heightened the publicity and notoriety. Many different views on the subject have been published in many different magazines, journals and a newspaper stating their thoughts about Amy Chua’s parenting skills insulting and commenting on every detail of the excerpt. Though out this essay I will analyze and summarize a few of the published articles detailing the opinions and thoughts of the writers. In one of the articles “Amy Chua is a Wimp “written by David Brooks, the writer explains the difference in difficulty of formal teaching and social skill you must acquire to survive in the jungles of public and private schooling. As a child you acquire the ability to survive society through baseball games, school plays and extracurricular activities. As you can’t teach life experiences formally and that it is much harder to make friends and develop people skills than it is to play at Carnegie hall at thirteen or fourteen. And without the ability to function in a group situation and socialize within that group it may lead to problems when you are an adult working with others. Although life experiences can be pleasant and unpleasant it is a part of life and they are harder than getting into Yale. Another one of these articles was ‘Mother Inferior?” the writer Hanna Rosin, she defends and gives examples that Amy Chua is depriving her children from having a childhood. And that she is making it so that they do not have a love for music because Mrs. Chua is acting like a drill sergeant and taking the fun out of playing music. “ but there is no reason to believe that that calling your child ‘lazy’ or ‘stupid’ or ‘worthless’ is a better way to motivate them to be good, than some other more gentle but persistent mode.” Hanna rosin believes that letting children find what they are interested in j. If a child finds out what they are interested in, they will make it a goal and go after it and learn more than they could ever learn with a drill instructor ever could teach them.

In my opinion Amy Chua is a great parent maybe her parenting skills need improvement but in the long run all she is doing is trying to make her children succeed at Academic activities, and skipping a few sleepovers and school plays doesn’t make a difference. Some of the articles that where wrote in response to this article stated that they will become robots, or super children, but what the writers did not relies that the children are still going to school , a place of mainly education but with socialization involved. The Amy Chua children in no way will become robots, but in a sense may become very accomplished individuals (a super child). For many months now, Amy Chua’s exert from the WSJ has created over 10,000 comments online and over 100,000 comments on her facebook page. I believe that Amy Chua is a good parent, all she wants is for her children to succeed , and to grow up and have the ability to provide for there own families once they are adults. The argument of good and bad parenting has been going on for forever, and I do not think that it will end here.

Is Lewis Thomas right, can we only make great strides from our failures. Or do we learn from our successes. I do not believe we only learn from our mistakes, or successes, but that you need the ability to use your failures as opportunities to improve yourself in what you are trying to achieve .In Lewis Thomas’s exert from ‘the Medusa and The Snail,’ he explains that failure is the key to great strides. But in my opinion some people in some situations do not learn from their failures, and to them they are just failures. Only the people that allow themselves to learn from their failures will ever be able to learn anything from them.

A very popular example of the right mistakes at right times was the creation on penicillin, a very strong antibiotic that treats bacterial infections such as staph. This remarkable discovery saved thousands of lives and continues to today. This was not only a mistake but it was a prodigious breakthrough. Without mistakes your cannot make strides in and out of the tech field, for it is human nature to make mistakes and that we are ‘ programmed for error .’ But there are times that people don’t learn anything.

But what happened when you don’t learn from your mistakes, personally I know that not every mistake I’ve ever done I’ve learned something from. For example, every time I hung out with my old best friend we would do something really stupid, but one time we strapped ourselves to a truck and rode down Victoria on office chairs. I of course was the only one to get hurt in this incident but we went on and continued to do stupid shit. Another example would be my sister ,she has partaken in a little bit of drugs in her life time … well more than a little. And throughout all the bad experiences that have happened to her because of it, she continues to do them almost every day.

Although people are programmed for error good thing may come from it. Most of the time, sometimes people don’t learn anything and go on without fixing there mistake anything from it.

30 by 30
 * 1) See all of Europe
 * 2) Clime all the pyramids
 * 3) Go to Thailand
 * 4) Cure aids
 * 5) Hunt a grizzly with only a pair of boxing gloves
 * 6) Wrestle a lion
 * 7) Ride a ostrich [[image:callum-summerschool-2011-outside-.jpg width="480" height="316" align="right" caption="Calum listens to fellow student during class discussion."]]
 * 8) Win the lottery
 * 9) Learn French
 * 10) Learn mandarin Chinese
 * 11) Fly a plane
 * 12) Crash a plane
 * 13) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Jump out of a plane
 * 14) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Walk across the US
 * 15) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Learn to spell maricea
 * 16) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Be a better cello player than everyone in the world put together
 * 17) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Dunk a basketball on a black man
 * 18) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Marry a famous foreign actress
 * 19) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Become president of a country I’ve never been to
 * 20) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Create world peace then destroy it
 * 21) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Meet a alien
 * 22) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">climb mount Everest
 * 23) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Sky dive without a parachute
 * 24) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Legalize Mary Jane
 * 25) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Become superman
 * 26) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Go to space
 * 27) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Become the most interesting man in the world
 * 28) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Be in a alcohol commercial 5 times
 * 29) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Participate in a smoke off with Cheach and Chong
 * 30) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;">Be able to say I’ve done everything on this list



**__In class essay__**

‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever does ‘a quote by Margaret Meade. In the essay I will show good and bad examples of what she is saying that have happened in history. Many have good outcomes but there are some that have changed the world for the bad. An incident where a good thing came from a group of individuals is the flight, flight 93 On September 11, 2011 a hanis crime was committed againstAmericaand its citizens. Thee air lines, hijacked in mid air smashed into several very important building killing every one inside. This crime was committed by a small group of individuals in an organization known as Al Qaida led by a terrorist leader Osama Binladin. The plan was to strike fear into every Americans mind by killing a thousand terrorizing millions, this plan was known as 9 11 and it was a success, changing theUnited Statesand several other countries in the world forever. But there are groups of individuals that can change the word, either by working for a almost unachievable goal or sacrificing them selves for the greater good of the country, or world. An example of this happened on the exact same day as the horrific events of 9 11 .As the world trade centre was hit another plane identified as flight 93 was stopped from hitting its believed target, a government building inWashingtonDCby its heroic passengers. Todd beamer and Jeremy Glick are just two of the names of these heroic citizens. There are many times in history where a small group or minority banded together and changed the world for ever almost non as famous as the civil rights movements which later lead to amendment in the US Constitution. African American figures such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr lead these movements. Ms meads quote has lots of truth in it although I believe it shou7ld incluse the words ‘for good or bad .’Other than that I believe that Ms. Meade couldn’t have said it any better.

Madea Is Jason the hero or villain, was Madea the truer person or the hideous evil doer .IN the ancient play ‘Madea’ A husband (Jason) breaks all bonds with his wife Madea to advance in society. Forsaking all the promises he made to her and cast aside all sacrifices Madea has made for him. IN this ancient play write Madea is made out to be the villan. The actions she made, although stupid her point was made. And she could be considered the hero of this story, Justice for what Jason had done. And although her children die at the hands of Madea, she in the end had never broken any promises made. In the end her hatred for Jason was more than her affection for her children. Jason does have a point, what hideous sole could commit such an act to her own children. Jason believes that madea is insane, blinded by her new found hatred for Jason. In Jason’s mind the divorce had been for profit and tells Madea that his marriage is nothing more than to advance his children in society and nothing else. The idea of jason advancing in society made jason break his promises and forsake his divine love for Madea that at a time the gods longed for themselves ] Although Jason may have had reasons for his actions, Madeas far outweighs his. Madea was once a high priestess in her home land, daughter to the king, but once she met Jason on his quest for the golden fleece , they immediately fall in love with each other. Madea then sacrifices everything for Jason, betraying her father, murdering her brother just so they could escape. Jason then pleged to love her itternaly and to never leave her side. After a few years broke these promises and claimed it for the better. After Jason completely destroyed madea with divorce the king, king creon threatened to force madea to live in exile with her children. The hatred for Jason and 5the longing for justification drove madea to kill her own children, But not in a moment of insanity. Na other act would damage Jasons heart then taking his children but her hatred for Jason was much more important to her. Madeas actions where unideal and most likely unnessisart. In the end madeas should be compared to Jason’s a hero, they both acted foolishly but madea was always true to her word.