Wir werden es zusammen machen.

Du bist einen Mann.
Ich bin eine Frau.
Du bist meinen Mann.
Ich bin seine Frau.
Wir sind zusammen.
Wir sind eine Nation von zwei.
Ich muss mehr lernen.
Aber wir werden es zusammen machen.
(Und das ist alles ich habe)

Ich denke ich nur auf Deutsch hier sprechen soll. Niemand wird es sehen oder korrigieren aber dann kann ich alles sagen, schreiben. Es ist mehr privat. Es is mein. Ich habe heute ein Mann den Deutsch spricht getroffen. Er is auch Turkei und ist sehr suss. Ich denke ich ihn sehen werde wann ich keine Arbeit haben. Dass werde nachste Woche sein weil ich kein Gluck habe. Kein Gluck. Aber ich mochte Deutsch lernen und vielleict werde ich von ihm. Aber vielleicht nicht. Ich bien jetzt ein bischen blau. Wir sind zu Jill's Haus...ich vorgesse. Ich vorgesse viel. Ich muss mehr studieren. Ich werde Zeit haben. So das ist gut. Nicht viel ist jetzt gut aber das ist. Ich muss gut sehen oder ich will zu traurig sein. Ich denke das ist alles. Ich been mude in muss schlafen..und will schlafen. Aber ich will mehr schreiben wann ich sagen mehr kann. Tschuss.

Freakonomics: What Makes a Perfect Parent?

So here are the conclusions from Chapter 5 of Freakonomics, "What Makes a Perfect Parent?" (A topic of particular interest to me)

1. Parenting theories change every week and often rely on fear-mongering - probably always good to keep in mind. I'll inevitably end up reading an army of theorists' work and end up quite confused and, of course, scared.

2. Parents are often scared of the wrong thing, namely, the outrageous and not the hazardous. They use the example of a pair of parents who don't let their daughter go to the home a friend whose parents keep a gun in the house and do let her go to a friend's house with a pool. The pool, and not the gun, is more deadly but a death by gunshot is more horrific while a pool seems more familiar and therefore less threatening. (This is an example of our lousy risk assessment - they conclude risks we control are less a source of outrage than risks out of our control. Therefore, whether or not those risks out of our control are actually more dangerous than those within our control, we fear them more and consider them more hazardous. "When hazard is high and outrage is low, people underreact...when hazard is low and outrage is high, people overreact." pg 138)

(2a. The per-hour death rate of driving versus flying is about equal - considers how much time you spend in a car and in a plane...I'm not sure what to make of this...)

3. Bad parenting matters but good parenting doesn't really affect test scores or predict a child's future. Peers have more influence on personality than parents.

• 50% of a child's personality and abilities can be attributed to genes alone.
  
• Interesting study: "Colorado Adoption Project, which followed the lives of 245 babies put up for adoption...found virtually no correlation between the child's personality traits and those of his adopted parents." pg 140
  
• Cites Judy Rich Harris and her 1998 book "Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn out the Way They Do and Parents Matter Less Thank You Think And Peers Matter More." She writes that the idea that parents contribute to mightily to a child's personality is a "cultural myth." "Harris argued that the top-down influence of parents is overwhelmed by the grassroots effect of peer pressure, the blunt force applied each day by friends and schoolmates." pg 140

4. It's not about going to the right school.

• They cite a study of the Chicago Public School system that showed that when given the choice to enter a lottery to attend a school other than their zoned school, students who won spots at other schools performed at the same levels as those who were left behind. The conclusion: students who opted out of their neighborhood schools tended to be smarter and more academically motivated than those who didn't enter the lottery. The school didn't make or break an already smarter and motivated child. - My problem with this one: if peers have an inordinate amount of influence on your kid, wouldn't having more academically motivated peers have a positive influence? Namely, wouldn't attending a better school surround your kid with better influences and therefore help him succeed? They don't seem to address this. So the peer argument is up in the air for me.
  

(4a. Students in the CPS study who were assigned to a technical or career academy performed substantially better than they did in their old academic settings and graduated at a much higher rate than their past performance would have indicated.)

5. The black/white income gap is virtually eradicated if the blacks' lower eighth grade test scores are taken into account. "In other words, the black-white income gap is largely a product of a black-white education gap that could have been observed many years earlier. 'Reducing the black-white test score gap...would do more to promote racial equality than any other strategy that commands broad political support." pg 146

6. Eight factors that are strongly correlated with test scores:

• The child has highly educated parents. (positive)
  
• The child's parents have high socioeconomic status. (positive)
  
• The child's mother was thirty years or older at the time of her first child's birth. (positive)
  
• The child had low birth weight. (negative)
  
• The child's parents speak English in the home. (positive)
  
• The child is adopted. (negative - mothers giving a child up for adoption tend to have significantly lower IQs than the people doing the adoptiong. They may not take the same prenatal care as a woman who is keeping her baby.)
  
• The child's parents are involved in the PTA. (positive)
  
• The child has many books in his home. (positive)

7. Eight factors that are not correlated with test scores.

• The child's family is intact.
• The child's parents recently moved into a better neighborhood.
• The child's mother didn't work between birth and kindergarten.
• The child attended Head Start.
• The child's parents regularly take him to museums.
• The child is regularly spanked.
• The child frequently watches television.
• The child's parents read to him nearly every day.
  

8. Concluding from these lists: the first describes what the parents are, the second describes things the parents do. What matters: who you are, whom you married, what kind of life you lead. "If you are smart, hardworking, well educated, well paid, and married to someone equally forunate, then your children are more likely to succeed." pg 161

9. Parents DO have an influence in the long term. Citing another study of adopted children: "Parents were not powerless forever. By the time the adopted children became adults, they have veered sharply from the destiny that IQ alone might have predicted. Compared to similar children who were not put up for adoption, the adoptees were far more likely to attend college, to have a well-paid job, and to wait until they were out of their teens before getting married." 162