It's really too bad you didn't. You might have learned something. The parents, whose "inclination as parents had been to intervene to protect our children" Learned that "maybe it was better that they had to win these battles by themselves". When the family left Russia, "Danya, now nearly 14, was ambivalent about leaving, drawn toward being a teenager in New York City. But Arden and Emmett would have gladly stayed." There was no abuse, but it was hard work for the kids, and maybe that's the point.
"Life at New Humanitarian was full of academic Olympiads, poetry-reciting contests and quiz bowls. The school stressed oral exams, even in math, where children had to solve an equation at the blackboard and explain methodology. Children were graded and ranked, with results posted. We were not accustomed to this: in Brooklyn, the school instilled an everyone’s-a-winner ethos. At New Humanitarian, Danya says, “they send an entirely different message to the kids: ‘Learning is hard, but you have to do it. You have to get good grades.’ ”
Even though I consider US public schools borderline child abuse for holding kids back to keep up with the slowest kids, and for excessive to meaningless praise, I don't think reading the rest of the article and discovering that the kids did in fact overcome the challenges will make me feel it's EVER OK to dump a kid into a situation like that.
Kids are resilient. If it doesn't kill them, it can make them stronger. That doesn't mean that I believe it's OK to torture them in order to make them stronger. The ends don't justify the means.
It frankly ISN'T the competitiveness that troubles me. Not in the slightest. It's dropping the kids into a school where they can't understand ANYTHING, nor can they be understood, that strikes me as cruel and unusual. It's one thing to do that to someone who WANTS it. Kids have very little control over their lives, though, and forcing that on a kid (except when there is really no choice) is just wrong.
Especially since the PREMISE is wrong: Kids simply don't learn foreign languages faster and easier than adults. They learn them at a deeper level (different brain structures), so that they can eventually learn to speak a language as a native, but it takes as long or longer than an adult learning the same language for them to become proficient.
Why do you say that? The kids had a rough few weeks, it might of been hard, but there are a lot of things that are hard in life. I wouldn't call a tough time in school 'child abuse'.
I agree completely with you, but I recognize that person's sentiment that challenging kids and allowing them to excel is considered child abuse. This is a viewpoint found pretty much uniquely in the US, and I see it as a fascinating cultural development. The self-esteem movement is the cause. Anything that makes a child cry or even feel uncomfortable is considered de facto evidence of abuse. Also allowing your children to play in the yard unsupervised is child neglect, as are cases where a small child gets up in the middle of the night, unlocks the door and wanders down the street. We've even had parents arrested for this, charged with abuse, and placed in prison in the US. There's a "Free Range Children" movement that counters this thinking with reality checks that a child playing alone outside is not really highly likely to be abducted by pedophiles: according to statistics it's less likely to happen than being struck by lightning (and lightning strikes can happen while playing outside supervised.) Most "abductions" are non-custodial parents. Stranger abductions are extremely rare (a dozen a year) but almost exclusively teen girl kidnappings. Small children are almost never taken. Yes there are exceptions, just as sometimes people get struck by lightning.
Related to this idea of risk comparing the US to Russia I found this video that some Russian kids posted last week fascinating: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjAMdbEXSdo There you will see four school kids, three boys and a girl, wearing street clothes, climb the cable of a fairly tall suspension bridge, while videotaping the whole thing. Meanwhile cars drive by hundreds of feet below. No one calls the police, the kids aren't arrested then placed in state care, the parents aren't arrested and charged with neglect. That's what would happen in the US and people would be on TV denouncing everything about this. Is what they are doing dangerous? Somewhat. The chance of falling is similar to that of playing on the monkey bars, only the potential injuries are clearly more severe. That said, children have died from monkey bar falls. Should climbing suspension cables be advocated or sold as an adventure holiday? I'd say not. I find it very interesting though that in Russia it's not interfered with. The kids choose to do it of their own free will and they are not harming anyone, they are assuming the risk themselves. Let them do it, why not. In the past, Americans accepted more risk, more crying, more stunts. People went to the moon, an intrinsically dangerous task. Russians tried to go to the moon as well. Many died trying. It was considered worth the risk, people took the risks themselves, and if they were hurt that was part of life.
I checked one of your statements that had data -- "Stranger abductions are extremely rare (a dozen a year)". The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, citing DOJ data, states:
- 797,500 children (younger than 18) were reported missing in a one-year period of time studied resulting in an average of 2,185 children being reported missing each day.
- 203,900 children were the victims of family abductions.
- 58,200 children were the victims of non-family abductions.
- 115 children were the victims of “stereotypical” kidnapping. (These crimes involve someone the child does not know or someone of slight acquaintance, who holds the child overnight, transports the child 50 miles or more, kills the child, demands ransom, or intends to keep the child permanently.)
The video was interesting. What was the reaction of Russian people to the video, as opposed to drivers on the bridge, who may not have noticed what was going on?
This points out the number of true kidnappings of "children and youth" is between 60 and 170 within 95% confidence level, and 115 the best average estimate.
Concerning the 58,2000 "non-family abductions" reported in NISMART-2 (National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway and Throwaway Children), it notes 47% were known to police and 53% had no police contact. Most the time was because the family expected the minor to return. This gets into that the "non-family abduction" category includes many teen runaway cases where leaving was initiated by the minor themselves. Regarding family and non-family abductions that are counted as abductions but not counted as missing children, NISMART-2 notes: "Examples include children who ran away to the homes of relatives or friends, causing their caretakers little or no concern; children who were held by family members in known locations (e.g., an ex-spouse’s home); and children who were abducted by nonfamily perpetrators but released before anyone noticed that they were missing."
It goes on to point out that NISMART–1 estimated 3,200–4,600 non-family abductions and NISMART-2 estimated the 58,200 we are looking at. The difference was that NISMART-1 used a "legal definition" of non-family abduction, which for example didn't include runaways, it included police reports where there was actual evidence of an abduction.
The report also covers what I mentioned that most of the actual 115 or so true kidnappings are teenage girls and not small children: "The NISMART–2 findings reinforce the 1988 study's conclusion that teenage girls are the most frequent targets of nonfamily abductions and stereotypical kidnappings. To some extent, this finding contrasts with the image drawn from media accounts of the abduction of very young children such as Adam Walsh and Samantha Runnion. Perhaps the innocence and vulnerability of younger children ensure more publicity and greater notoriety for these cases. Nonetheless, in planning strategies for preventing and responding to nonfamily abductions, it is important to keep efforts from being misdirected by the stereotype of the preteen victim. In fact, the vulnerability of teens needs to be a central principle guiding such planning."
Regarding the very large numbers reported for missing children, NISMART-2 notes: "Most of the caretaker missing children became missing because they ran away (48 percent) or because of benign misunderstandings about where they should be (28 percent). Together, these two reasons accounted for 84 percent of all children who were reported missing." It also notes that many children go missing more than once care must be taken which counts are per incident vs per individual. Also regarding missing children, NISMART-2 points out that, "Only a fraction of 1 percent of the children who were reported missing had not been recovered by the time they entered the NISMART–2 study data. Thus, the study shows that, although the number of caretaker missing children is fairly large and a majority come to the attention of law enforcement or missing children’s agencies, all but a very small percentage are recovered fairly quickly."
Of the stereotypical kidnappings that NISMART-2 estimates as 115 per year, these are quite dangerous as 40% of them result in the child being killed and an additional 4% in being never recovered. But again, most of these "by far" are teen girls. With the non-stereotypical kidnappings that is the vast majority of abductions, one of the example cases they give is of a 14 yr old teenage boy that was detained and then released by an alarmed citizen when he was found hunting in a public park with a shotgun, a 4 yr old boy that did not get off at the right stop on the school bus and was later returned home when the bus driver found him, a babysitter who would not let the children leave until she was paid, and a 17 yr old girl who was taken by her 17 yr old date to a mountain even though she didn't really want to go there and molested by him until he gave up and returned her home. None of these nonfamily abductions they give as examples involve small children playing in the yard unsupervised who are taken by a stranger.
"that challenging kids and allowing them to excel is considered child abuse."
Actually that's nothing like my sentiment. There is an age and time appropriateness that shouldn't be overlooked. Immersive study is excellent - my own daughter had my support to immerse into Argentina for 6 months when she was only 17 and I certainly wouldn't have considered it unless she had life skills, coping skills and emotional maturity.
But, plunking a kindergartener into an immersive foreign language and culture environment is dubious wisdom.
While parenting is most certainly not deterministic, it does seem to me that the child (especially the youngest) experienced quite a bit of unnecessary suffering so that the author could proceed with an experiment. That the suffering ended with fairly positive results is as serendipitous as any non-deterministic process.
"Life at New Humanitarian was full of academic Olympiads, poetry-reciting contests and quiz bowls. The school stressed oral exams, even in math, where children had to solve an equation at the blackboard and explain methodology. Children were graded and ranked, with results posted. We were not accustomed to this: in Brooklyn, the school instilled an everyone’s-a-winner ethos. At New Humanitarian, Danya says, “they send an entirely different message to the kids: ‘Learning is hard, but you have to do it. You have to get good grades.’ ”