UPDATED! What happens when you are first-time parents who study competition and education?

ETA: On January 4th, 2012 we welcomed our son, Carston, into the world. Two days later, his daddy's research on value-added teachers appeared on the front page of The New York Times. Coincidence?! Everyone is doing well and no one has been fired yet! I was correct (per original post below) that this work would get a lot of attention. What do you think? My husband, John Friedman, and I are expecting our first child in about three weeks.  Both of us have spent parts of our careers studying education, childhood, and competition in various forms.  I can't decide if this is going to be good for our offspring, or a total disaster...

John, and several colleagues (including Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hilger, Emmanuel Saez, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, and Danny Yagan), recently published the lead paper in The Quarterly Journal of Economics: "How Does Your Kindergarten Classroom Affect Your Earnings? Evidence from Project Star." (If you would like to read a full version of the manuscript, click here.)  In the paper they find evidence that your kindergarten classroom has significant, longitudinal effects on your life, using data from students who were part of Project STAR, a Tennessee program in the early 80s that randomized children into kindergarten classrooms.  These effects include higher earnings, college attendance, home ownership, and retirement savings.  I guess Robert Fulghum was right that all you really need to know you learned in kindergarten. Can you imagine the kinds of questions we are going to ask before enrolling our child in a kindergarten?!

Currently John is working on another paper (again, with Raj Chetty, and also with Jonah Rockoff), that will surely get a lot of attention as it focuses on the long-term impacts of teachers-- not just kindergarten teachers.  To oversimplify things, teachers who improve students' standardized test scores also improve adult earnings.  A one standard deviation increase in test score raises earnings by about 10% of your yearly salary per year. Really interesting stuff, but I can't imagine the kinds of questions John is going to ask at school open houses and parent-teacher conferences!

As for me, if you read this blog you know that I study kids and competition and various afterschool activities.  So can you imagine the kinds of questions I am going to ask sports coaches, music teachers, etc.?  Since I also write about how these issues often intersect with schooling and college admissions I know how important early education can be.  Recently I checked out websites of some schools around our house to see about tuition and admissions requirements for pre-K, if we go the private school route. Now, if I lived in some cities (oh, like one Big City a couple hundred miles south of Boston), I would be quite behind if I hadn't already been reading up on the options and gotten myself on mailing lists.  Despite being one of the great intellectual centers of the world, Boston isn't quite as intense as this other Big City.  Nonetheless, I started filling out an online form to request more information on a particular school, figuring I have some downtime to read up on places.  When I got to the section on child's info (like name, grade interested in, birth date, etc.), I suddenly realized that putting my due date in as an upcoming birthday would likely not be looked upon kindly by the Brahmin elite!  I wouldn't want to flag myself as a Tiger Mom before I'm even officially a mom... especially because I'm not quite sure I will be a Tiger Mom, preferring more of a "buffet" approach to early childhood parenting.

What do you think: son lucky to have parents who study these issues, or destined for a lifetime of therapy? Personally, I hope for something in between, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to pass them on!

Triumph and Tragedy in Scholastic Chess

I have a soft spot for scholastic chess. In 2005 I started studying chess as part of my dissertation research (which is forthcoming as Playing to Win: Raising Kids in a Competitive Culture). One of the things I loved the most about the chess scene is the diversity of people who meet and engage over the board.  At many tournaments you can walk in and see men, women, boys, girls, whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, rich, poor, young, and old shaking hands before their games... And then shaking hands at the end again, before retiring to the "skittles rooms" to analyze one another's moves. It's really a beautiful thing.  I already can't wait for my husband to teach our son "how the pieces move." During my time exploring parents' motivations for enrolling their then-elementary school-age kids in chess tournaments I met many wonderful families and kids. It was a particular thrill recently to see one of these "kids" (who is really almost a man) written up in The New York Times for his chess accomplishments. Jehron Bryant is now 15 and he was recently named a chess master.  His current chess rating is a remarkable 2219 (and I'm guessing he'll soon perform higher than that number when he takes his SATs, for which I know he has been studying).  What's even more remarkable is that Nigel, Jehron's twin brother, is also close to becoming a chess master, with a rating of 2099.

Nigel and Jehron are part of a remarkable group of African-American chess-playing teenagers in the New York City area, Dylan Loeb McClain explained in his article.  Three other teens-- Justus Williams, Joshua Colas, and James Black, Jr.-- became masters before their thirteenth birthdays.  Why is this so remarkable?  A quote from grandmaster Maurice Ashley (the first black GM, and only African-American GM) sums it up nicely: "Masters don’t happen every day, and African-American masters who are 12 never happen... To have three young players do what they have done is something of an amazing curiosity. You normally wouldn’t get something like that in any city of any race.”

While there is much to love and applaud in the scholastic chess world, there has also been recent tragedy.  A few weeks ago, at the National K-12 Championships held in Dallas, another young chess player of color, and of great potential, died unexpectedly.  Quinton Smith was a junior at Estracado High School in Lubbock, Texas.  He was one of two representatives from his school; they only had money to pay for two of their eighteen students to attend nationals and Quinton won his spot after an intrasquad tournament.  In addition to being part of the chess team, Smith was on the mock trial team, the tennis team, and involved with the drama club.

Quinton Smith's death was officially designated as "unexplained."  After losing his first four games, and taking a bye for the fifth game, he appears to have gone up to the roof of the hotel and either fallen or jumped.  No one seemed to know how he got up to the roof.  Dr. Daaim Shabazz's entry on The Chess Drum offers a particularly sad description of what occurred.  I'm not the only one to think this was likely a suicide, though I couldn't find any verified reports online.  Chess teacher Elizabeth Vicary wrote on her blog: "I assume his tournament performance had something to do with his death: that he was used to being smart and successful and just couldn't take the frustration and pain of so much losing."  Vicary used the opportunity to talk about how to make decisions and recover from mistakes/errors with her own students.

Just as all competitive endeavors can bring the joy of victory, they also bring the agony of perceived failure.  For most kids learning to deal with loss, and learning how to recover, is an important life lesson/skill that they can acquire by participating in a variety of competitive activities, like chess, as I've written about before.  But for a small group, this lesson may be too much to take-- especially if they have become accustomed to success. Unfortunately it seems as if Quinton Smith may have fallen into this category.  Hopefully parents and teachers/coaches can learn from this tragedy how to better identify kids who may wilt in the hothouse of competition and give them special attention or ease them into larger competitive endeavors.

Review of COMPETITION in the International Review of Modern Sociology

I recently published a book review of Francesco Duina's new sociological investigation on competition in the latest issue of International Review of Modern Sociology.

You can read the review by CLICKING HERE. While it did appear in an academic journal, I believe the review (and the book itself!) should be accessible to a non-academic audience.

If you've read the book, would love to hear your thoughts!

Developing the All-Around Child (from BostonMagazine.com)

I was honored to participate in an "online roundtable" panel of experts over at Boston Magazine related to overparenting.  The question I was asked to answer, along with four experts in psychology and social work, was "Are We Overparenting Our Kids?" This roundtable was tied to a feature story written by Katheine Ozment called "Welcome to the Age of Overparenting."  (Note that I was especially thrilled to have a seat at the virtual table with Jerome Kagan, who I met as an undergraduate when I received a fellowship in his name/honor to support research related to childhood.) At the annual College Board conference this fall, the dean of admissions at Harvard, William Fitzsimmons, revived some parental panic. According to The New York Times, he told an assembled crowd that successful Harvard applicants are “good all-rounders — academically, extracurricularly, and personally.”

This wasn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last, that gatekeepers like Fitzsimmons induce hand-ringing, acid reflux, and sleepless nights among credentials-concerned parents — even if their children are still in elementary school. In the fall of 2008, Fitzsimmons similarly set off alarm bells in affluent suburbs around Boston when he was quoted in The Boston Globe, saying, “Even fifth-graders in Wellesley, Newton, and Brookline, who as adults will face international competition for jobs, should begin beefing up their academic résumés if they want a shot at an Ivy League education.”

It’s clear that for millions of upper-middle and middle-class American children today, waiting until high school to prove one’s mettle would be a mistake. The college admissions race requires far more advanced preparation, orchestrated and monitored by involved parents who ferry their scheduled kids from school to music lessons to sports practice to private tutoring to home, repeating the cycle day after day.

Of course, it is tempting to denounce these preoccupations as the hyper-fixation of neurotic parents who are living through their children. (See: Controversy, Tiger Mom, Amy Chua) But are these parents crazy?

No. (Though at times they may exhibit questionable behavior …)

Their children face very real bottlenecks through which they need to pass if they are going to achieve in ways similar to their parents. And the probability of that outcome appears to be less than it once was.

Media coverage of recent low college acceptance rates only fuels parents’ anxiety, reinforcing the competitive culture, even among the preschool set. This is partly because of the 15 year-long rise in the number of high school graduates — which is peaking right now at around 2.9 million. And it’s not just that there are more students, but also that more of them are applying to particular schools. Last year Harvard saw a 6.2 percent acceptance rate, with almost 35,000 applicants.

Based on my research of families with elementary school-age children who participate in competitive chess, dance, and soccer, it would be a mistake to think that parents fixate on college admissions every Saturday afternoon. Instead, they understand the grooming of their child as producing a certain kind of character and a track record of success that is valued during the long march toward the pursuit of advanced degrees, like JDs, MDs, MBAs, and PhDs. But were parents to think in directly instrumental terms about that thick admissions envelope, they would not be far off the mark: activity participation, particularly athletics, can confer an admissions advantage, either through athletic scholarships or an admissions “boost.”

That U.S. colleges and universities consider admissions categories other than academic merit is rooted in history and is uniquely American; I argue that it is part of the reason that highly competitive and organized afterschool activities are more common here. Jerome Karabel in The Chosen shows how the “Big Three” of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, developed new admissions criteria in the 1920s to keep out “undesirables,” like Jews and immigrants. This new system valued the “all-around man,” who was naturally involved in extracurricular clubs and athletics.

Middle- and upper-middle class parents today understand the importance of this “all-around (wo)man,” and consequently may seem to overparent their young kids to get them on the right track. But given the history of college admissions in this country, and current state of affairs, can you blame them?

CLICK HERE TO SEE THIS ON BOSTON MAGAZINE'S WEBSITE!

Foot Perfect: A Review of Jig

One weekend I went shopping at a mall in downtown Boston—and was transported into another culture.  A hotel, connected to the mall, was hosting an Irish dancing competition (or “feis”). My friend turned to me and asked, “Wait, is this a child beauty pageant, or something else?”  With the bobbing heads full of Shirley Temple-like artificial curls, the tanned legs, the glitzy, flouncy dresses (that can cost around $2500), the make-up, and the anxious mothers and daughters, you’d be excused for thinking you might be at a child beauty pageant (And, indeed, I think the events might be distant cousins for historical and sociological reasons—but more on that another time. In the meantime, it's interesting to think how appearances in Irish dancing compare to the appearance of young, Irish Traveller girls). But you’d be wrong. Jig, a 2010 feature documentary just released to DVD, focuses on nine contestants competing at the 40^th Irish Dancing World Championships, held in Glasgow, Scotland.  The film shows the extraordinary hard work, practice, and athletic ability (including a serious cardio workout) that goes into creating a “foot perfect” contestant.  All contestants have already qualified for the Worlds and are in the final preparations for the big event. Jig concludes with the award ceremony in Glasgow.  Interspersed throughout are interviews with the dancers, their parents, and their teachers.

The stars of the film are its youngest contestants, three ten-year-olds.  Brogan from Northern Ireland is an especially well spoken, clever, and engaging young lady.  Her main rival, Julia O’Rourke from Long Island, is a serious competitor. Julia’s family (including her Filipino mother and Irish father who had never participated in Irish dancing before) invests in private lessons (aka “privates”) and physical therapy sessions to help give her an edge.  John, from Birmingham, England, is immensely talented and sweet, if a bit forgetful—a real-life version of Billy Elliott.

I had a harder time engaging with the three nineteen-year-old female contestants, and keeping them straight. Two teenage boys have interesting back stories (one boy grew up in California, but his parents moved to England to help him train as a dancer, with his father giving up a medical practice; the other is from the Netherlands, adopted by a Dutch family from Sri Lanka), but less interesting onscreen personas.  And the team of older Russian women were also hard to keep straight, especially because their story arc is fairly short in the film.

Not surprisingly Jig has been compared to two of my favorite documentaries of all time—Spellbound (about the National Spelling Bee featuring middle schoolers from the US and Canada) and Mad Hot Ballroom (featuring elementary school kids from across New York City participatingin a city-wide ballroom competition). While I really enjoyed Jig, it doesn’t reach the level of these other two films for me for two reasons.  The first is that many of the children draw you into their lives in Spellbound and Mad Hot Ballroom. When I saw the latter in the theater my fellow audience members and I cheered aloud together by the end of the film.  Partly due to the presence of so many characters in Jig, I felt this was harder to do. Then again, I loved that the featured dancers really showed how international competitive Irish dancing is, so it is a difficult trade-off.

The second way in which I found it more difficult to relate to Jig is that it is simply harder to understand competitive Irish dance. We know from Riverdance that the upper body is usually stationary.  But I didn’t understand why the face was often blank while dancing. And I certainly didn’t understand the intricacy of the footwork, and differences between hard and soft shoe style.  Even as someone who follows dance (and cheer, and gymnastics, and figure skating…), I couldn’t quite discern why some dancers were so far superior to others, even when they danced side-by-side (as they do in rhythmic gymnastics, for example).  I was certainly impressed by their skills, but with a bit more explanation of the technique I could have been blown away.

That said, the film highlighted many similarities between Irish dancing and other forms of competitive dance.  For example, as in Dance Moms, we saw teachers who yell, kids who give up aspects of their social lives (like missing birthday parties), and young dancers struggling with injuries.  You also see and hear about the ways in which family members invest in this activity, both financially and by making costumes.

More serious issues that affect many other competitive activities also came up—like judge tampering.  Another similarity across different competitive activities includes the language of getting drawn in by the competitive experience itself (Julia O’Rourke’s parents astutely commented that when they started they couldn’t understand why a family would drive to Connecticut to compete, but now they fly to foreign countries).

What I truly enjoyed about Jig is that it highlighted some important and powerful differences too.  Again, this is a very international activity, which was nice to see.  You also actually have to qualify for the Worlds (unlike many “Nationals” in the US, which for most activities are pay-to-play) and the Worlds appear to be quite a big deal.  Over several days you get about six minutes on stage dancing among 6000 other competitors and in front of 20-30,000 spectators who cycle through.  Finally, I loved the use of live music during the competitions, which is not common at all at dance competitions (even ballet competitions), or gymnastics, figure skating, or synchronized swimming events.

The end of Jig is a real highlight.  You can feel the tension in the room as scores are announced and revealed on a screen.  It was amusing to see the kids, parents, and teachers hold their heads in anxiety waiting to see the final scores—I kept shouting at the screen that all they had to do was add! I’m sure nerves played a role, but I know I would just bring a calculator or use an Excel spreadsheet to add up the scores quickly.  I guess that’s the social scientist in me… I also took particular delight that the top prize included a mirror-ball trophy. Maybe that is where they get the inspiration from on Dancing with the Stars?!

All in all, Jig is a delightful and objective portrayal of an impressive, but little understood competitive activity.  I hope this brings some deserved attention to Irish dancing, especially in the United States, and that we continue to receive updates on its stars (Note: Jig’s IMDb page has results from the 2011 World Championships for those spotlighted in the film).  But you won't be seeing them on Toddlers & Tiaras anytime soon.