Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Good Losers

He lost, but he's a good loser. This was actually quite gracious.

Something my own government seems to find very difficult.

As strange as it sounds, I want my kids to learn to fail. How you fall and what you do afterwards is probably a lot more important than achieving continual success.

Fab and I were speaking about what kind of formal education our kids would have, and I think that most Asian systems over-emphasize the goal (taking exams) at the expense of the process (i.e. learning something). It's a question we have to figure out later as Sophie and Alex grow older, but it gives us something to talk about on our date nights.

I have a guilty confession - on our last date we went to sureno and had a wagyu steak.

For health and ethical reasons, we are trying to reduce our meat consumption. One way to do it is to have grass-fed, humanely killed meat (if you want to know more about this, google Michael Pollan's book - the Ominvore's dillemma).

1 comment:

Zoya said...

English system doesn't seem to be any better. There are so many tests and exams. I'm still in slight shock after finding out that compulsory schooling starts at 5 in England and some parents send their kids to school as year as 4 afraid that their kids will fall behind.

I was reading a lot on education before going to New York, but I think I need a break from thinking about it now. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on the subject, specially when Sophie gets older.

Found the full text of Ivan Illich Deschooling Society online http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Deschooling/intro.html