6 ms·

My Family’s Experiment in Extreme Schooling

149 points by lachyg 15y ago

brackin 15y ago
Wasn't this posted the other day?
- ColinWright 15y ago
  Several points, no discussion. I wasn't going to say anything, but since you ask ... Yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3002586 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3002586
  - lachyg 15y ago
    Yes, it got to 6 when I posted this, and I decided to give it one more chance, as I honestly think it deserves a front page chance. My apologies for resubmitting.
    - ColinWright 15y ago
      <shrug> HN is now so overloaded with so much that's not truly of "deep interest" that contentful items fall quickly off the "newest" page and don't get a chance. I think that some items genuinely do deserve a second chance. My views have been well-documented elsewhere, and having been hammered karma-wise before now, I won't clutter HN with them again.
      - brackin 15y ago
        Yes it's an interesting piece which deserves to be on the homepage.
  - acangiano 15y ago
    That was me. The reason why it didn't fly is that it was submitted in the evening EST. Submissions during that time tend to receive little attention, no matter how good they are. Check my submission history, and you'll find other interesting stuff with few points. I decided that I'll save the links and only post them during optimal times from now on.
andrewcooke 15y ago
christ. i moved to a foreign country when i was an adult. reading that article brought tears to my eyes. it's fucking hard and i wouldn't do that to a child. they are amazing for coping so well.
- joelhaasnoot 15y ago
  As a 6 year old Dutch boy I was dumped in a British classroom. I survived am lots of years later live to tell the tale. To be honest, international schools are not always a great alternative: it's very much like living in two worlds.
  - andrewcooke 15y ago
    sure; i don't have any alternative to offer and i don't know much about children. i just felt sorry for them... (but anyway, don't you find that you end up living in a middle-world that is not as comfortable as either? this seems to be common amongst ex-pat adults)
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- bahman2000 15y ago
  3 continents, 5 different schools, 2 different education languages for my sister and I, as children. it was okay, I don't regret it. Moving and assimilating as an adult is definitely much harder. Though it is much easier for me than for my wife, who was born and raised in one town.
lachyg 15y ago
Read through the whole article, very much worth reading! It's interesting how well this whole immersive education seems to work, but it sounds like the school employs some techniques of teaching, reviewing and involving students and teachers that mainstream schools should really look into. Although I think the thought of video taping classes would not go down well in the western world.
petercooper 15y ago
In case you're wondering, the video is well worth watching in this case. Very well produced and about 10 minutes long.
ahoyhere 15y ago
Anyone know of institutions/teachers/administrators who are doing this kind of style in the US? It's completely intriguing.
- ShabbyDoo 15y ago
  Similarly, I was intrigued with the concept of the school independent of the language or country of instruction. This school design is the sort of experience I want for my children.
- pheaduch 15y ago
  Every school in America does this, but in English of course. I came to Canada at the age of four and enrolled in kindergarden without knowing a word of English. I don't remember much but I know I was able to assimilate fairly well and able to pass without being held back. At that age, the mind is an amazing thing and children just soak everything up.
  - biot 15y ago
    Did you read the article? It's as much, if not more, about the style of teaching than it is about the fact that it's a foreign language to them.
- ethank 15y ago
  A lot of the Waldorf style schools (http://www.whywaldorfworks.org/ http://www.whywaldorfworks.org/) seem like this in the US. I went to a "multi-year" school where my classes were K-3 and 4-6. They were very much rooted in "pace" based learning instead of year based, and had very unstructured styles. i.e.: k-3 had no desks, and we had workstations and a "daily plan" to plan our own curriculum. Right now we're researching pre-schools for my son and consequently other schools. It's super stressful. I want him to have a great holistic education and with California's school district the way it is, that rules out most public schools.
jfricker 15y ago
Sounds so much like child abuse I couldn't get very far.
- lachyg 15y ago
  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'.
  - droithomme 15y ago
    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 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.
ph0rque 15y ago
As a Russian immigrant to the US, I went through something very similar, but in reverse. A few thoughts: * I am very glad I came from Russia (well, USSR at that time) to the accepting, everyone-is-a-winner US and not the other way around. It would have been much harder for me the other way around, especially if I had to attend public school. * I really appreciate the forging of one's sense of self that such an experience brings. I vividly remember going back and forth between viewing myself as an American and as a Russian during my teen years. I believe my identity eventually transcended either American or Russian; I view myself as an Earthian, a world citizen now, one who can become more Russian or more American depending on the circumstances.
- iam 15y ago
  I had a similar experience (I was 9). The difference is that in the U.S. public system you get placed in "ESL" (English as a Second Language) program which dumbs down the entire curriculum, especially English, and tries to hand hold all the students through it. Plus American education is in general less rigorous than the equivalent-year Russian education, and seeing as how kids in Russia learn some English in school, it's a much easier transition from Russia to U.S. than vice versa. The struggle then is purely a social one, kids in the U.S. don't have a belief of camaraderie, whereas in Russia a classmate would rarely get someone else in trouble casually, this happened routinely in U.S. schools. Plus of course, insert all the usual teasing about not understanding or knowing the language, being a communist/capitalist, etc.
- olegious 15y ago
  Have 3 different experiences: 1. We immigrated from Russia when I was 9- didn't speak a word of English (didn't know what "who are you?" meant on the first day of class). Spent the first year in an ESL class, within a year I was speaking English freely, all my classmates were also recent immigrants from former Soviet republics so there was very little culture shock (at least in school). But because the class focused on English and little else, I lost the great math skills I had when I came from the Russian system. Took me a few years to get completely comfortable with my new language but by the 9th grade I was one of the top students in all my classes (except math, that skill or rather the interest in the subject never recovered). 2. My cousin's son was born in the US. The parents wanted to make sure his first language was Russian- they only spoke to him in Russian, he went to a Russian day-care, watched only Russian cartoons, had only Russian friends. Then for kindergarden (around the age of 4 or 5) he got sent to a normal American school. The first month or so he experienced what the writer's kids experienced- complete cultural shock, he spent the evenings at home crying that he didn't want to go to school because he couldn't understand anything, but little by little he adjusted and is now comfortable in his new environment. 3. My wife and I met in Moscow last year, she moved to the US six months ago. She's in her early 20s, very smart (finished her university with straight As), had a good job in Moscow and is used to always being the best at whatever she tries. She's studying English full time, but is having trouble adjusting to an environment where she is not independent and has to rely on me not only financially but at least initially on simple things such as grocery shopping or explaining to the women at the nail salon how she wanted her nails done. She's picking up English quickly but the first few months she was afraid of sounding dumb and refused to speak English with anyone outside of a classroom environment. I won't even go into the cultural shock and how difficult the transition has been for her from a popular, successful woman to one with no job or friends in a new country (that's a topic for another post).
lucasjung 15y ago
I experienced something like this as a child, but it didn't seem very extreme to me at all. I started younger than eight, so that probably helped. My parents were living in Germany when I was born. My mother flew back to California for my birth, but I never really lived there. I grew up in an American household in Germany. My parents spoke just enough German to get by, and my older sisters spoke German quite fluently because they attended German public schools. However, English was the only language spoken at home. My mother taught me to read English at home, to the point where I could read age-appropriate children's books on my own by the time I was four, but she didn't teach me to read or write German. In Germany, what we call "Pre-school" is called "Kindergarten," and what we call "Kindergarten" is called "Vor-schule," which literally translates as "Pre-school." My parents never put me in Kindergarten, so my first day of school was the first day of Vor-schule. They enrolled me at a German public school. As you might expect, all instruction was in German. Most, but not all, of the teachers spoke fluent English, but none of the other children spoke any English. The teachers would not speak English to me as part of instruction, but would for other issues (e.g. going to the bathroom). I remember it being difficult and bewildering at first, but I picked up the German quickly and spoke it as well as I spoke English by the end of that first year. In subsequent years, I remember acting as translator between my parents and teachers. I think that a big key to all of this is starting young, when the child is still in the process of learning language anyway. I think that 2nd or 3rd grade is probably about as far as you could push it without adding some supplemental language tutoring.
ilamont 15y ago
It was wonderful that it eventually worked out, but for some children such an experience could be devastating. One other thing that I wonder about this example is it includes three Caucasian American kids in what I believe is a mostly Caucasian school. There were also three of them, instead of just one, which I think made the adjustment easier. It's comforting knowing a sibling is nearby -- my own kids had this experience when attending a summer school in Asia in 2008 and 2009 -- it was very reassuring for the younger one, knowing his sister was in a classroom upstairs. Another situation I was wondering about: If African or Asian children were enrolled in the Russian School, would they have been able to find their place as quickly as the NYT correspondent's family?
mkr-hn 15y ago
I don't see anything extreme, but there's probably something I'm not picking up. It's articles like this that make me think about subscribing to the NYT.
rgrieselhuber 15y ago
Amazing experience. The administrator of the school, Bogin, sounds like a jewel. The way he thinks reminds me of the things I hear about the way Larry and Sergei approach problem solving.
windexh8er 15y ago
Fantastic article and video. It made me reflect on the experiences I had with education at that age look, well, mundane and archaic. While immersion schools look to be a viable gap filler in today's educational system - there is, with even more prevalence today, the complex of "everyone's a winner". I'm looking forward to having kids and more importantly being tasked with trying to guide them through the fine line of winners, losers, diversity in culture and finding those "extreme schooling" that make sense. Again, great piece!
scythe 15y ago
I think this was a patently awful idea, and I think that a close reading of the article supports this. Consider the situation: A person with some underlying psychiatric disorder decides to steal a car. They are arrested, trialled, and ordered to receive counseling at a mental health institution. As a result of the counseling, they are able to cope with their disability and become a more successful member of society. Does this mean that stealing a car is a good idea? No! The kids were not successful because they were forced to learn Russian. They were successful because they entered an innovative and expensive (USD 10000!) private school which made special exceptions and put in extra effort to bring the kids up to speed. This sort of extra effort is not the sort of treatment one should come to expect and rely on. It is what humans do in order to take care of others who have made grave errors; it is an outgrowth of compassion for the foolish. The bit about a teacher running a class in English should really drive this point home. I am happy to hear that the kids were able to succeed. However, the author is a chode.
gommm 15y ago
I've experienced something similar as a child by doing an exchange with an English family who had a kid my age when I was ten. I went 6 month in England in that family and went to school with the kid and he then came to France for 6 months. The first few weeks were hard of course, I was alone in a family where no one could really speak French and I could hardly speak English but I quickly learned the language and at the end of the 6 months, it was harder for me to speak French than English and I spoke both languages with a british accent (which I've lost since then unfortunately)... I enjoyed the experience so much that I did the same in Germany and in Spain (I wanted to go on and do the same in Japan during high school but my parents nixed that). Kids are really adaptable and even if it is a bit hard at the beginning I truly believe that it's broadens the mind. So, to answer some of the comments who mention it's child abuse, well from the perspective of someone who was put into a foreign environment as a child I think children are more resilient and more happy to learn and discover news culture, languages and things than you imagine.
Vivtek 15y ago
That’s the one problem with living abroad. You end up getting those weird feelings like, Oh, I can’t leave; I can’t stay. Amen.
blackdivine 15y ago
Such a nice read, thanks for sharing

149 points by lachyg 15y ago

brackin 15y ago

Wasn't this posted the other day?

ColinWright 15y ago
Several points, no discussion. I wasn't going to say anything, but since you ask ... Yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3002586 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3002586
- lachyg 15y ago
  Yes, it got to 6 when I posted this, and I decided to give it one more chance, as I honestly think it deserves a front page chance. My apologies for resubmitting.
  - ColinWright 15y ago
    <shrug> HN is now so overloaded with so much that's not truly of "deep interest" that contentful items fall quickly off the "newest" page and don't get a chance. I think that some items genuinely do deserve a second chance. My views have been well-documented elsewhere, and having been hammered karma-wise before now, I won't clutter HN with them again.
    - brackin 15y ago
      Yes it's an interesting piece which deserves to be on the homepage.
- acangiano 15y ago
  That was me. The reason why it didn't fly is that it was submitted in the evening EST. Submissions during that time tend to receive little attention, no matter how good they are. Check my submission history, and you'll find other interesting stuff with few points. I decided that I'll save the links and only post them during optimal times from now on.

andrewcooke 15y ago

christ. i moved to a foreign country when i was an adult. reading that article brought tears to my eyes. it's fucking hard and i wouldn't do that to a child. they are amazing for coping so well.

joelhaasnoot 15y ago
As a 6 year old Dutch boy I was dumped in a British classroom. I survived am lots of years later live to tell the tale. To be honest, international schools are not always a great alternative: it's very much like living in two worlds.
- andrewcooke 15y ago
  sure; i don't have any alternative to offer and i don't know much about children. i just felt sorry for them... (but anyway, don't you find that you end up living in a middle-world that is not as comfortable as either? this seems to be common amongst ex-pat adults)
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
bahman2000 15y ago
3 continents, 5 different schools, 2 different education languages for my sister and I, as children. it was okay, I don't regret it. Moving and assimilating as an adult is definitely much harder. Though it is much easier for me than for my wife, who was born and raised in one town.

lachyg 15y ago

Read through the whole article, very much worth reading! It's interesting how well this whole immersive education seems to work, but it sounds like the school employs some techniques of teaching, reviewing and involving students and teachers that mainstream schools should really look into. Although I think the thought of video taping classes would not go down well in the western world.

petercooper 15y ago

In case you're wondering, the video is well worth watching in this case. Very well produced and about 10 minutes long.

ahoyhere 15y ago

Anyone know of institutions/teachers/administrators who are doing this kind of style in the US? It's completely intriguing.

ShabbyDoo 15y ago
Similarly, I was intrigued with the concept of the school independent of the language or country of instruction. This school design is the sort of experience I want for my children.
pheaduch 15y ago
Every school in America does this, but in English of course. I came to Canada at the age of four and enrolled in kindergarden without knowing a word of English. I don't remember much but I know I was able to assimilate fairly well and able to pass without being held back. At that age, the mind is an amazing thing and children just soak everything up.
- biot 15y ago
  Did you read the article? It's as much, if not more, about the style of teaching than it is about the fact that it's a foreign language to them.
ethank 15y ago
A lot of the Waldorf style schools (http://www.whywaldorfworks.org/ http://www.whywaldorfworks.org/) seem like this in the US. I went to a "multi-year" school where my classes were K-3 and 4-6. They were very much rooted in "pace" based learning instead of year based, and had very unstructured styles. i.e.: k-3 had no desks, and we had workstations and a "daily plan" to plan our own curriculum. Right now we're researching pre-schools for my son and consequently other schools. It's super stressful. I want him to have a great holistic education and with California's school district the way it is, that rules out most public schools.

jfricker 15y ago

Sounds so much like child abuse I couldn't get very far.

lachyg 15y ago
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'.
- droithomme 15y ago
  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 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.

ph0rque 15y ago

As a Russian immigrant to the US, I went through something very similar, but in reverse. A few thoughts: * I am very glad I came from Russia (well, USSR at that time) to the accepting, everyone-is-a-winner US and not the other way around. It would have been much harder for me the other way around, especially if I had to attend public school. * I really appreciate the forging of one's sense of self that such an experience brings. I vividly remember going back and forth between viewing myself as an American and as a Russian during my teen years. I believe my identity eventually transcended either American or Russian; I view myself as an Earthian, a world citizen now, one who can become more Russian or more American depending on the circumstances.

iam 15y ago
I had a similar experience (I was 9). The difference is that in the U.S. public system you get placed in "ESL" (English as a Second Language) program which dumbs down the entire curriculum, especially English, and tries to hand hold all the students through it. Plus American education is in general less rigorous than the equivalent-year Russian education, and seeing as how kids in Russia learn some English in school, it's a much easier transition from Russia to U.S. than vice versa. The struggle then is purely a social one, kids in the U.S. don't have a belief of camaraderie, whereas in Russia a classmate would rarely get someone else in trouble casually, this happened routinely in U.S. schools. Plus of course, insert all the usual teasing about not understanding or knowing the language, being a communist/capitalist, etc.
olegious 15y ago
Have 3 different experiences: 1. We immigrated from Russia when I was 9- didn't speak a word of English (didn't know what "who are you?" meant on the first day of class). Spent the first year in an ESL class, within a year I was speaking English freely, all my classmates were also recent immigrants from former Soviet republics so there was very little culture shock (at least in school). But because the class focused on English and little else, I lost the great math skills I had when I came from the Russian system. Took me a few years to get completely comfortable with my new language but by the 9th grade I was one of the top students in all my classes (except math, that skill or rather the interest in the subject never recovered). 2. My cousin's son was born in the US. The parents wanted to make sure his first language was Russian- they only spoke to him in Russian, he went to a Russian day-care, watched only Russian cartoons, had only Russian friends. Then for kindergarden (around the age of 4 or 5) he got sent to a normal American school. The first month or so he experienced what the writer's kids experienced- complete cultural shock, he spent the evenings at home crying that he didn't want to go to school because he couldn't understand anything, but little by little he adjusted and is now comfortable in his new environment. 3. My wife and I met in Moscow last year, she moved to the US six months ago. She's in her early 20s, very smart (finished her university with straight As), had a good job in Moscow and is used to always being the best at whatever she tries. She's studying English full time, but is having trouble adjusting to an environment where she is not independent and has to rely on me not only financially but at least initially on simple things such as grocery shopping or explaining to the women at the nail salon how she wanted her nails done. She's picking up English quickly but the first few months she was afraid of sounding dumb and refused to speak English with anyone outside of a classroom environment. I won't even go into the cultural shock and how difficult the transition has been for her from a popular, successful woman to one with no job or friends in a new country (that's a topic for another post).

lucasjung 15y ago

I experienced something like this as a child, but it didn't seem very extreme to me at all. I started younger than eight, so that probably helped. My parents were living in Germany when I was born. My mother flew back to California for my birth, but I never really lived there. I grew up in an American household in Germany. My parents spoke just enough German to get by, and my older sisters spoke German quite fluently because they attended German public schools. However, English was the only language spoken at home. My mother taught me to read English at home, to the point where I could read age-appropriate children's books on my own by the time I was four, but she didn't teach me to read or write German. In Germany, what we call "Pre-school" is called "Kindergarten," and what we call "Kindergarten" is called "Vor-schule," which literally translates as "Pre-school." My parents never put me in Kindergarten, so my first day of school was the first day of Vor-schule. They enrolled me at a German public school. As you might expect, all instruction was in German. Most, but not all, of the teachers spoke fluent English, but none of the other children spoke any English. The teachers would not speak English to me as part of instruction, but would for other issues (e.g. going to the bathroom). I remember it being difficult and bewildering at first, but I picked up the German quickly and spoke it as well as I spoke English by the end of that first year. In subsequent years, I remember acting as translator between my parents and teachers. I think that a big key to all of this is starting young, when the child is still in the process of learning language anyway. I think that 2nd or 3rd grade is probably about as far as you could push it without adding some supplemental language tutoring.

ilamont 15y ago

It was wonderful that it eventually worked out, but for some children such an experience could be devastating. One other thing that I wonder about this example is it includes three Caucasian American kids in what I believe is a mostly Caucasian school. There were also three of them, instead of just one, which I think made the adjustment easier. It's comforting knowing a sibling is nearby -- my own kids had this experience when attending a summer school in Asia in 2008 and 2009 -- it was very reassuring for the younger one, knowing his sister was in a classroom upstairs. Another situation I was wondering about: If African or Asian children were enrolled in the Russian School, would they have been able to find their place as quickly as the NYT correspondent's family?

mkr-hn 15y ago

I don't see anything extreme, but there's probably something I'm not picking up. It's articles like this that make me think about subscribing to the NYT.

rgrieselhuber 15y ago

Amazing experience. The administrator of the school, Bogin, sounds like a jewel. The way he thinks reminds me of the things I hear about the way Larry and Sergei approach problem solving.

windexh8er 15y ago

Fantastic article and video. It made me reflect on the experiences I had with education at that age look, well, mundane and archaic. While immersion schools look to be a viable gap filler in today's educational system - there is, with even more prevalence today, the complex of "everyone's a winner". I'm looking forward to having kids and more importantly being tasked with trying to guide them through the fine line of winners, losers, diversity in culture and finding those "extreme schooling" that make sense. Again, great piece!

scythe 15y ago

I think this was a patently awful idea, and I think that a close reading of the article supports this. Consider the situation: A person with some underlying psychiatric disorder decides to steal a car. They are arrested, trialled, and ordered to receive counseling at a mental health institution. As a result of the counseling, they are able to cope with their disability and become a more successful member of society. Does this mean that stealing a car is a good idea? No! The kids were not successful because they were forced to learn Russian. They were successful because they entered an innovative and expensive (USD 10000!) private school which made special exceptions and put in extra effort to bring the kids up to speed. This sort of extra effort is not the sort of treatment one should come to expect and rely on. It is what humans do in order to take care of others who have made grave errors; it is an outgrowth of compassion for the foolish. The bit about a teacher running a class in English should really drive this point home. I am happy to hear that the kids were able to succeed. However, the author is a chode.

gommm 15y ago

I've experienced something similar as a child by doing an exchange with an English family who had a kid my age when I was ten. I went 6 month in England in that family and went to school with the kid and he then came to France for 6 months. The first few weeks were hard of course, I was alone in a family where no one could really speak French and I could hardly speak English but I quickly learned the language and at the end of the 6 months, it was harder for me to speak French than English and I spoke both languages with a british accent (which I've lost since then unfortunately)... I enjoyed the experience so much that I did the same in Germany and in Spain (I wanted to go on and do the same in Japan during high school but my parents nixed that). Kids are really adaptable and even if it is a bit hard at the beginning I truly believe that it's broadens the mind. So, to answer some of the comments who mention it's child abuse, well from the perspective of someone who was put into a foreign environment as a child I think children are more resilient and more happy to learn and discover news culture, languages and things than you imagine.

Vivtek 15y ago

That’s the one problem with living abroad. You end up getting those weird feelings like, Oh, I can’t leave; I can’t stay. Amen.

blackdivine 15y ago

Such a nice read, thanks for sharing