Hoops for Heifers

Last Friday was a great day at Gunston.  After watching both of our lacrosse teams score victories against their opponents, nearly sixty students, faculty, and friends went to the gymnasium and spent a good part of the evening playing 3-on-3 basketball in order to raise funds for Heifer International.  The student-organized tournament raised over $600--enough to purchase an actual heifer for a family in need.

Heifer's mission statement is:

Heifer's mission is to work with communities to end hunger and poverty and care for the earth. By giving families a hand-up, not just a hand-out, we empower them to turn lives of hunger and poverty into self-reliance and hope.  With gifts of livestock and training, we help families improve their nutrition and generate income in sustainable ways. We refer to the animals as "living loans" because in exchange for their livestock and training, families agree to give one of its animal's offspring to another family in need. It's called Passing on the Gift – a cornerstone of our mission that creates an ever-expanding network of hope and peace.

Congratulations to our students for putting together such a successful event, and congratulations to both the boys and girls teams who won the tournament.

Off the Bookshelf: The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is one of the most widely-reviewed and controversial books of the year, and some of its anecdotes--Chua calling her daughter "garbage", making her three-year-old stand in the cold until she agreed to practice the piano, and not allowing her daughters to attend playdates and sleepovers, or watch TV and play video games--have been widely cited in newspapers, magazines, and on talk shows.  Chua's stated aim is to explain the style of "Chinese Parenting", which she sets in contrast to "Western Parenting".  In the book, she explains the controversial nature of these terms, as well as their limitations.

With my interest piqued, I downloaded the "sample" of the book on my Kindle, and I soon found myself engrossed by an extraordinarily vivid tale of alpha parenting.  Indeed, I finished the book in just over a day, mainly because Chua's writing style is as hard-charging as her parenting style, and when I put the book down, I needed to catch my breath.  While it might be easy to dismiss Chua's parenting style as "over the top" (and yes, I think she's not just over the top, but WAY over the top), I think her book provides some extraordinary insights about parenting.  In The Atlantic Magazine, reviewer Caitlin Flanagan captures the essence of Chua's arguments and philosophy: 

Kids are inherently strong, not weak; self-esteem derives from accomplishing difficult and worthwhile pursuits; adults are better than children at judging what does and does not constitute a valuable or enriching experience; the better you get at something, the more you will enjoy doing it; and a great deal of what is on offer to American teenagers these days is not only coarsening but downright dangerous.

While I am certainly not advocating some of the extreme parenting measures employed by Chua, her book speaks to the power of high standards and the value of pursuing excellence in a worthwhile activity.  A few years ago, I did an exercise with a group of faculty members, asking them to describe the "best" teacher they ever had, and what quality it was about the teacher that made them so great.  In a room of fifteen teachers, every single person shared essentially the same response: the best teacher they ever had was the most demanding teacher they ever had; someone who pushed them beyond their own perceived limits.

The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is a deeply engaging book; it's worth reading.

March Community Letter

Dear Gunston Community:

To read the March Community Letter, please click on this link: community letter
Regards,

John

Off the Bookshelf: The View from Lazy Point

The View from Lazy Point is one of the best books about nature and the environment that I have ever read.  The Barnes and Noble review captures the book well:

Beginning in his kayak in his home waters of eastern Long Island, Carl Safina's The View from Lazy Point takes us through the four seasons to the four points of the compass, from the high Arctic south to Antarctica, across the warm belly of the tropics from the Caribbean to the west Pacific, then home again. We meet Eskimos whose way of life is melting away, explore a secret global seed vault hidden above the Arctic Circle, investigate dilemmas facing foraging bears and breeding penguins, and sail to formerly devastated reefs that are resurrecting as fish graze the corals algae-free.
 
"Each time science tightens a coil in the slack of our understanding," Safina writes, "it elaborates its fundamental discovery: connection." He shows how problems of the environment drive very real matters of human justice, well-being, and our prospects for peace. In Safina's hands, nature's continuous renewal points toward our future. His lively stories grant new insights into how our world is changing, and what our response ought to be.

In addition to his brilliant ability to show the interconnectedness of humans, animals, and the environment, Safina's true gift is his ability to show how seemingly benign changes in the environment at Lazy Point (in a climate similar to the Eastern Shore) actually represents significant larger scale changes occurring on our planet today.