The graduate student experience at McGill
Three Minutes to Change the World
“Fast paced” is practically the antithese of “Grad School.” When you think about explaining your research, doing it quickly is rarely part of the experience. Most of us are prone to panic attacks when our presentations are limited to 45 minutes, discounting the question period as optional. So what do you think about someone trying in less than 5?
Tuesday’s Globe and Mail ran an article on Yale law professor Amy Chua, who just published a book entitled Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (Penguin Press 2011). The article, “Confessions of a Tiger Mom: Why Chinese parenting is best”, focuses mostly on the sometimes extreme parenting style Chua advocates in her book, which is itself influenced by a specific cultural perspective that places great value on obedience and self-discipline, especially in terms of academic and musical achievement. Implicit in this child rearing treatise, however, is also a particular understanding of human creativity, the conditions necessary for it to thrive, and who should, ideally, benefit from its manifestations — the individual, the networks of other people to whom we feel a sense of obligation (e.g. parents, teachers, peers), or “society” more broadly?