3 Very Impressive Books That Have Changed My Outlook On Post EL Life

Parenting and Education (Other) General Parenting
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I’ve been pondering how to make this post for at least two weeks now. I can’t really do it all justice in a post, so I’ll just type and give you a few thoughts.

In the last several weeks, I read quite a few books (44 so far in 2014). Three of those recent books that I read have really made my wheels turn and will absolutely have an influence on our post-EL life (when Cub is older).

In no particular order:

  1. Rafe Esquith’s Teach Like Your Hair is on Fire (hat tip to KristaG on the recommendation)
  2. Judith Rich Harris’ The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do
  3. Amy Chua (Tiger Mom) The Triple Package

Each book has its own merits, and yet each complement each other. For instance, Rafe’s book will shatter assumptions you may have about what a disadvantaged (or any for that matter) kid can learn and become passionate about. The book was so inspiring that I watched a documentary that parallels the book called The Hobart Shakespeareans. Trailer can be viewed here: http://www.pbs.org/pov/hobart/ I couldn’t get the video on PBS to load, but the comments are worth a gander. The trailer on YouTube: (the whole documentary might be on YouTube/sometimes they do this legitimately, but I have not searched for it)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1EGzKtR9DE

Some of the book could be implemented into your family or homeschool environment. A lot of it couldn’t though. There are certain group dynamics that he creates. What are the key ingredients? That’s where Harris and Chua’s books come into play. All three dovetail quite nicely.

I’ll give an extremely brief summary here (I cannot do the books justice)
Chua’s Triple Package posits that three characteristics are necessary (though not sufficient) to upward mobility and achievement. The three characteristics are Superiority, Insecurity, and Impulse Control. It’s well argued and made me realize that as of now, I don’t really have a family identity that would fit Chua’s criteria for Superiority (my EL affiliation maybe - but this isn’t an identity that I could necessarily pass onto Cub without a group). That’s where Harris’ book comes in. Her book has been around for nearly two decades now, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t all that familiar with her theory. It went a long way to explaining some dissonance between several ideas and observations that I had lingering for some time. The major theory is that children adapt and adopt (acculturate) to their environment and at school age this means the majority of their adaptations are to fit in with the most significant portion of their life (which is school and their peer group). Her book, along with Chua’s certainly can put Esquith’s remarkable educational accomplishments into perspective. It also made me realize that EL can be easily undermined by the wrong peer group.

After reading these works, I’m now mostly reflecting and wondering how to create a post-EL environment that will nurture the love of learning and the love of excellence/effort, etc.

If anyone has read any of these three books, do you care to comment or chime in with thoughts on the book?

If no one wants to comment, this post can serve as my hearty recommendation for any or all of the three books for any parent that frequents this board - you’ll get something out of them.

:biggrin:

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Thanks for the recommendations, Tim. I was able to request these from my library and am eager to read them. I love book recommendations. :slight_smile:

How are you able to read so many books? Do you speed read? I have read 33 books so far this year, so you have me beat. The problem is there is an endless list of books that I want to read. Any advice on how to read more quickly would be nice.

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It’s good to remember to use the library when possible, one of those books I had to buy because mine didn’t have it.

Most of the books are audio books where I can multitask. I know “they” always say that doing the dishes takes five minutes, but routinely I find it takes me 20+ often times. Yard work is another place I use the audio books. When Cub and I go out to the hot tub to practice swimming, I have a book playing usually. The little that I do actual paid work from the home office, I listen then, too. This month, my listening took off because I figured out how to take an audio book and re-create the files automatically at a chosen speed using a program called MP3 Speed. The program makes a second copy of the book automatically and it will play on an ordinary mp3 player at a faster speed with a pitch preserve.

Out of 16 books I’ve finished this month, only 4 were read, and really only one of those was “speed reading”. The Nuture Assumption took what seemed like forever to get through (it’s a longer book and it does repeat itself mildly). Another strategy I use is to have multiple books so that when my brain has enough of one, I can toggle and switch to another topic. My guess is that usually I read at about 500 WPM, but sometimes slower and sometimes faster depending on the writing style, organization, etc of the book.

It’s interesting that you responded first to the thread, because when I was finishing Nurture Assumption, I had you and your family in mind - I think you’ll see why as you go through it. I’ll give you a hint though… if children adapt to their surroundings/peer group and you have a peer group built into your family, you also have a built in advantage as a parent (though I’m guessing you already know that).

Good times!
:yes:

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Hehe well that explains why my post reply deleted last night! lol
So it’s an interesting three to pick. I have only read one of these. Though the nurture assumption is in my iPad…but it’s such a ??? Read. I gave up before I got into it. Too much work for a pleasure read. Now I have a reason to read it I might have more luck. Perhaps it would be better in audio format.
I wouldn’t pick the same three but we are in very different places in terms of children’s ages, so some of what you have to come I have seen and experienced already.
I enjoyed. Battle Hymn of a Tiger mother but never thought to look for more of her books. That one is firmly on the list now!
I have read Raifs book teach Like Your hair is On fire. I enjoyed it. I learnt from it but I found it lacking also. It’s a great book for a 5th grade teacher but its a pretty limited audience otherwise. Anyone can get ideas from it but then you are left wanting more. i was recommended one of his other books from a teachers group so perhaps it will add more. I guess I already knew what is possible from a 5th grade class. My daughter is in 5th. as a teacher, I couldn’t do what he does year after year and have a family too. I would burn out and my kids would miss out. The most impressive things I took from that book were his test taking teaching strategies, (especially the multiple choice ones), his math games, and the music program absolutely blew me away. I had no idea it was possible to teach a class guitar in one year as he does, the thought never crossed my mind (but it is so obvious now! lol ) I see no difference between lower socio economic kids and higher, all children can be taught. he teachers attitude first and that is the key to these lower kids. He clearly has a class of kids keen to be in his class and keen to put in the time and effort. I imagine they screen pretty heavily for access to that classroom. ( I could be wrong of course) I still highly recommend the book to all parents and teachers of school age kids even though it left me wanting more.
My three picks?

  1. the well trained mind a guide to classical education by Susan Wise Bauer. It taught me what is possible, what is important and to question everything I was taught at uni and school growing up. It sets out a path that makes homeschooling entirely possible to anyone and explains quite clearly what to look for in good curriculum. It taught me to critically evaluate the depth of my children’s education.
  2. the self propelled advantage
    Even though I criticised the simple writing style and nature of this book, the ideas in it are true gold. Sometimes it’s the simple things that change your entire outlook.
  3. I don’t think I have read a third one worth adding to the list yet. Perhaps I read too much…perhaps not enough lol
    I would love to know what others you have read this year! And where on earth you find so many in audio format. Getting bored on my commute…kids get cranky if I continue listening to our classics while they arnt in the car :frowning:
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My brain LOVES this forum. For real. lol

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lol lol lol lol lol lol
Mine too! it’s like a brain massage whenever I go fuzzy around the edges!

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I enjoyed The Self Propelled Advantage. If I recall, you were the one that recommended it and started a thread here about it (do I remember that correctly?). In the book she mentions Drive by Daniel Pink. I finally got around to reading that over the Christmas holiday. It was good and has made me think about the three motivational drivers (autonomy, mastery, purpose)… I want to incorporate all of those into my work life, and hopefully get Cub to do the same. She mentioned another book about perfect scorers on the SAT. I haven’t read that one (I’d have to buy it), but I did read The Perfect Score Project earlier this month (about a mom that spends a year attempting to get a perfect SAT score). In fact, I emailed the author the minute the college board announced changes to the SAT earlier this month (she had clicked “like” on my review of the book) and that was an interesting exchange between us. I’m into books about excellence. It’s probably the same quirk that brought me to this forum in the first place.

:smiley:

Well Trained Mind is also recommended. I read through that book I think before Cub was born.

I’m half way through Grain Brain and so far I can recommend it for any parent on this forum… but I’m only half way through it. I’ll finish it tomorrow, ha ha. One of his earlier books Raise a Smarter Child by Kindergarten, I didn’t give high marks to just because I thought he left a lot on the table (no mention of EL?) and his nutrition chapter was somewhat weak. As I suspected, Grain Brain advances quite a bit over that particular chapter.

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Sadly I don’t have these books at my online library. I can’t afford to read as much as I would like to.
Using the speed up function on my overdrive app is essential for me to listen to audio books. And it also doesn’t alter the voice pitch. I did check that after you asked the other day. I never listen to things slowly so I wasn’t aware of how deep initial voices were. But they are the same.

Shen-Li has a lot of suggestions for good books.
Sam Wang’s Welcome to Your Child’s Brain is interesting.
http://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Your-Childs-Brain-Wang-ebook/dp/B005PWMG7S

I am still a fan of Po Bronson’s Nurture Shock but I didn’t feel like I got a lot out of Top Dog.

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I lived in Belize for the first 12 years of my marriage and had to buy almost every book I wanted to read. Now I live in Florida and love the library and only buy an occasional book. I adore the library. What a blessing to be able to read so many great books for free!

I am waiting for the books to come in and am eager to read them. One of the best books I read this year was Rafe’s book. He blew me away with his music program, the thinking skills with tests that Mandy mentioned and his financial plan for his kids. I thought that was awesome. I also loved The Core by Leigh Bortons. While it is about Classical Education, which I love, it is different in many ways from The Well Trained Mind. I think all you early learning enthusiasts would find some wonderful ideas of things to teach your little ones. I want to work on the mapping this summer with my kids. I actually underlined a lot of that book and need to read it again or go take notes.

The Self-Propelled Advantage challenged some of the ways I do things and allowed me to step back. I realize that my kids often like to do certain subjects without me and if I let them go they are faster and more motivated to accomplish them.

As for cleaning the kitchen, maybe I would enjoy it more with an audio book playing. What I think is a five minute job always turns into about 40. :slight_smile:

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Hi PokerDad,

Thank you for starting this thread, I always love book recommendations. I watched the video you embedded, it reminded me of Marva Collins’ way of teaching. Rafe Esquith’s and Marva’s philosophy seem to be similar. I will order Rafe’s book, (as I doubt, the library has his book here in the UK). Can’t wait to read it!

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I forgot to mention the other book I read this year that I really enjoyed. It is none other than Jim Trelease’s Read Aloud Handbook. I had read a previous edition, but the new edition really did have quite a bit of new information. It always inspires me to read more to my kids. I think reading is the single most important activity parents can do with their kids. A few years ago I vowed to join the 2012 book challenge to read I forget how many books to my kids. While I did complete the challenge along with some other parents here, I always felt that the area of weakness in our reading is making it a daily habit. There would be many days where we would not read at all. Even so, we still read a lot, but I wanted the consistency of a daily habit more than anything. Jim mentions a family that kept a reading calendar of the number of days they read aloud without missing. I found this to be inspiring for our family. It has been such a positive experience. Previously we would do other activities and miss reading. Now before we do any of these other activities we read. We have 92 days of consecutive reading behind us and it feels so great that we don’t want to miss. I love that my kids come and find me and ask me if we are going to read. They know that if they want to watch a movie on the weekends we have to read first. We have read so many books because we are consistent. The other night was so enjoyable. I had all six of my kids in my bed and they listened as we read almost all of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Even though I have older kids they still love to be read to. My 14 year old often says, “Mommy, will you please read to us? I love when you read to us.” That is music to my ears and delights my soul. I have spent so many wonderful hours reading to my kids. We have built so many memories from the times we have read together. When we were reading the Harry Potter books about 6 years ago they would jump out of bed at 6 AM so we could read for an hour. They often beg me not to stop (which I love). That was the case with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They begged me to keep reading and I had to eventually stop and send them to bed. The book is just a good reminder of why reading is important. It is preaching to the choir, but I still enjoy reminding myself why it is so important.

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Thanks everyone for the excellent recommendations. I have read most of the book mentioned above, but others were just added to my list.
Grain Brain is fabulous - on that note - about brain health and improvement I am currently reading The brain that change itself, by Norman Doidge
fantastic read. and on the pipeline my next read - recommended by a good friend is Thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman.

Great week everyone
Gloria

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I love book recommendations too and enjoy your posts PokerDad.

I love these types of books and appreciate ideas on how to enjoy more of them.

Here is something new that might help, Check out spritzinc.com, a speed reading technology. It isn’t available yet, but I think it is possibly game changing.

I am always amazed at how someone can spend months or years synapsizing much of their hard earned life’s insights into a book or books and we can buy one for $10. One of the greatest bargains of all time. What a way to leverage other peoples’ knowledge.

Julia

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YES Julia! I am impatiently awaiting the release. :slight_smile:

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Krista you just cost me another $10! Lol havnt read The Core. Up to chapter three so far, so good. :biggrin:
Can’t wait for spritz. But I DO hope they get it to work properly with all the major platforms before they release it. No point having it if it will only read a PDF. Too limiting.

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lol lol lol I know, Mandy. You guys are expensive friends to have. I always want to shop when I visit with you!!

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The Nurture Assumption is one of my favourite books and I read it three times. There are a lot of unusual ideas in the book but once I paid attention I felt a lot of it made sense. Especially the importance of peers and socialisation. I loved the story of the boy who grew up with a chimp and how rather than him “civilising” the chimp, the boy imitated the chimp because humans have better social skills. Very impressive book. Her ideas fly in the face of EL a bit - she basically says it doesn’t matter in the long run if children are in daycare or with their parents. I wanted to believe this when I was working 60 hours per week and my daughter was in full-time daycare. But my instinct said it’s not true and now in hindsight I am sure it slowed down her development and made her miserable and it still haunts me. But maybe the author is right that it makes no difference in the long run.

I’ve been very influenced by the book and she convinced me of the importance of peers and positive social experiences. I am actually placing this above EL in how I raise my children. It’s extremely important to me that they socialise a lot and make an effort to make friends and get on well with their siblings. I do believe focusing on EL only if it means robbing a child of social interaction is very harmful (but I think one can easily do both). I am more than happy to do many hours of playdates and sports and free play all day, as long as I can squeeze in my hour of EL each day (sometimes it’s one, sometimes nothing, sometimes even three).

I loved the book Tiger Mom but have not read the Triple Package - somehow I assume reading the summary will tell me enough so have deprioritized it.

I am reading Teach Like your Hair is on Fire and am enjoying it - I wouldn’t include it in my list of top three most influential books though. I really love Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.

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Excellent post. It is an excellent book, and yes she would basically tell you that EL doesn’t matter in the long run. This is where I think she goes away from her main thesis (which is very strong) into weaker territory. You also have to remember what, exactly, she’s saying. I summarized it in the first post by saying children adapt to their immediate environment.

When you stick a kid in school or send them out into the playground for hours on end, the environment there becomes more important than if you didn’t send them there. We all try to find our place in the world and children are no different.

The major lesson is, the environment shapes your child. If that environment happens to be the culture of children at the local school, then your child is being raised by that culture; and that culture will have norms, expectations, and values that can differ immensely from yours or your household.

If you look at the success of Rafe Esquith, he basically creates a particular environment, an enclave. Within his classroom are a completely new set of rules, expectations, and standards. He’ll tell you that not all the kids buy in. I’ve heard him say “a third” in referencing what percentage of kids to ignore (yep, almost ignore though I think the word might be a bit strong… they don’t want any part and so he won’t waste time). It actually makes perfect sense. Within the school, his classroom is the superior one. All the kids want to be in that room, and all the parents want their kids in that room. It’s a special status with it’s own history (he has banners on the wall from prestigious universities with the names of the kids from that classroom that have graduated from it). The kids also know that society expects certain things of them (ie, to flunk, to turn to crime, etc) and so he can set up an us vs. them (I’ll show you, I’m a Shakespearean!) Then the demands of the classroom culture (showing up early, staying late) - it’s the Triple Package. It also conveys an identity that stays with the child for the rest of their life. Harris sets up a very similar example near the beginning of her book.

The part about parents “not mattering” is a bit overplayed in my estimation. I understand where she’s coming from. In a typical neighborhood, you could swap out the parents but keep the kids in the same house and after 13 years of school, there’s not a statistical difference between them. That makes sense. Where it wouldn’t make sense is if you swapped out parents from the ghetto and replaced them with, say, Bill and Hillary Clinton (just using them as an example). Sorry, but there’s a massive difference there. Part of what she says is likely (on a statistical level) if you keep the proper perspective.

13 years being raised by the dominant kid culture at your local school is a very powerful influence. Harris would argue, correctly in my estimation, that it will dominate any counter-culture you try to throw at your kid for the few minutes per day you spend with them (yes, MINUTES… most US parents spend maybe 10 minutes of quality in a day with their teen)

Once you identify the problem (or at least the dynamic), you’re now in a position to do something about it. Harris gives some ideas, but they aren’t really expanded upon.

Homeschooling is one of the obvious options.

Finding a way to create an ideal environment (Rafe’s class) would be another… if it could be done.**

Wouldn’t it be great if we had local EL communities we could rely upon?

** this was the part where I was thinking about KristaG’s family; she basically has this set up. There was a similar description of a man that had 5 daughters and basically said “that’s all the socializing they need” and made the family a small little independent culture. His daughters, though “disadvantaged” from a demographic standpoint, had tremendous success (all doctorates except maybe one that was a registered nurse)… something along those lines though I might be slightly off in my description (I do read a lot and sometimes mix ideas, ha ha)

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Perhaps the reason it makes no difference is the same reason education prior to school makes little difference. Because any kid who is at the top of the class basically learns nothing until the rest of the kids catch up. The LEVELLING that is done in schools is discusting. I am seeing it with my own eyes. The worst place for leveling is grade 1. They want those kids levelled as soon as possible it seems. :frowning:

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PokerDad, I agree she exaggerated the insignificance of parental input, probably to provoke and sell more books. The only thing she says is really that they have little direct influence and that children look up to their peers more than their parents from an early age. But of course we have a lot of indirect influence. We decide whom we visit and interact with on weekends and afternoons, we choose the house and the neighbourhood we live in, we choose their school, so we essentially choose their peers to a large extent. So my takeaway was that if I surround my kids with smart, ambitious and well-behaved peers, it will make my job as a parent much easier as I don’t constantly have to counteract negative peer pressure.