Economist, Aug 17, 2013 (II)

choi

(1) Transgender schoolchildren | Playing for the Other Team; Life is slowly getting better for the transgendered.
http://www.economist.com/news/un ... -playing-other-team

Quote:

"Under a law passed this week, from January they [transgender school children in California] will be allowed to use toilets and join sports teams according to the gender they identify with rather than the sex on their birth certificate. The law’s backers say it merely clarifies existing protections. Even so, it is the first such statewide statute in America, although a handful of other states have similar policies.

"Data on the transgender population are scarce; the Census Bureau does not ask about gender identity, and definitions are inconsistent. What numbers there are suggest that anything between 0.1% and 0.7% of Americans have a gender identification that differs in some way from their sex at birth.


(2) The economy | A Bubble in Pessimism; China's economy is inefficient, but it is not unstable.

(3) Children's home | The Nanny State; Orphanages are closing, but not quickly enough.
("Around the world about 2m children are thought to live in institutions")

Note:
(a) The theme of the article is institutionalization is bad for children.
(b) Two places in the article talk about China:

"In China around 800 state-run 'social welfare institutions' 社会福利院 house abandoned children or those with mild disabilities.

"In China small but entirely unregulated children's homes [which Economist deems institutions--as opposed to foster homes, which are good] are taking in large numbers abandoned youngers.

choi

(4) Education standards | Best and Brightest; Only a few countries are teaching children how to think.
http://www.economist.com/news/bo ... -best-and-brightest
(book review on Amanda Ripley, The Smartest Kids in the World; And how they got that way. Simon and Schuster, 2013)

Quote:

"To understand what is happening in these classrooms, Ms Ripley follows three American teenagers who spend a year as foreign-exchange students in Finland, Poland and South Korea. Their wide-eyed observations make for compelling reading. In each country, the Americans are startled by how hard their new peers work and how seriously they take their studies. Maths classes tend to be more sophisticated * * * Students forego calculators, having learned how to manipulate numbers in their heads.

"Not every story of academic success is a happy one. In South Korea Ms Ripley finds a 'culture of educational masochism,' where pupils study at all hours in the hope of securing a precious spot in one of the country’s three prestigious universities. The country may have one of the highest school-graduation rates in the world, but children appear miserable.

My comment: With quotation 1, I do not mean to say sophisticated math class (as in Taiwan) is better. On the contrary, I disapprove it (though I mastered the math back in my school days): it is too complicated, useless in later left and real world, and serves only to discourage children.