Better Late Than Never: My Opinion About the Twilight Series

    I was just reading a very old blog post called, “Why You Can’t Read Twilight, a Letter to my Daughter."  I then made the mistake of starting to read some of the comments that were left—something that I should never do as it always makes me angry because I tend to read things about three years after they were written and therefore, anything that I want to say about the topic is now completely irrelevant.  So, instead of uselessly ranting on a two-year-old blog post, I am going to tell you why I believe that the Twilight books are actually dangerous for teenage (and the “Oh, Too Young To Be Reading These Books in the First Place” pre-teen) girls. I am going to skip over the writing style and skill (or lack thereof) of the authoress and purely address the basic storyline and emotional appeal that these books have upon the reader.

     

    The main character, Bella Swan, completely ordinary.  When she describes herself she says that she is average. Dark hair, small, non-athletic, not terribly popular, but smart, a girl who loves to read. The author has just describes most high school girls.  This heroine is not the star of the basketball/softball/soccer/track/whatever, team, she is not the cheerleader that dates the star quarterback or the lead in the high school musical, she is not the valedictorian, but she is also not the nerdiest girl in her class.  Bella Swan is every other average girl who doesn’t feel special in any particular way. Boys don’t really pay attention to her, while she is a good student, she isn’t the best, she is insecure, at times awkward, and very clumsy.  What you have here is a girl who wants to be special, but isn’t.  Most girls are drawn to this heroine because this is them.  Honestly, this was me in high school. While I wasn’t especially clumsy or insecure, I was everything else. “Nice” looking, definitely not the best looking girl in the class, a decent athlete, not the star, a good student, not the valedictorian, no boys paid attention to me, I wasn’t asked to lots of parties, I spent lots of time reading. I was average. Girls will be drawn to Bella Swan, they will like her (though at times they may find her obnoxious), but, for the most part, they will identify with her. 

     
    Bella moves to a new town and all of a sudden, she becomes really interesting.  People want to be around her, lots of boys ask her out, and most importantly, the “most beautiful” guy in school, the “popular guy” the one that every girl is secretly in love with but who doesn’t pay attention to any of them, wants to date her. This is most high school girls’ dream. So the reader is hooked, the reader identifies with the heroine, the reader is emotionally involved because she wants this to happen to her. (This of course all plays out in about the first half of the first book.)  From here, the rest of the story starts to unfold, but I’m not really going to get into all of that.  What concerns me the most is not everything that happens in the middle, which is bad enough, but the end.

      
     First of all, Stephanie Meyers has taken an evil tradition and turned it on its head.  Traditionally, vampires are evil. Vampires are soulless, blood-sucking monsters (as seen in books such as Dracula). People have attempted to alter this tradition as the popularity of vampires has risen. The TV show Angel portrayed a vampire with a soul, who unlike all other vampires around him, feels remorse for his evil deeds (because he has a soul) and therefore, he doesn’t drink human blood and tries to help people. The TV show The Vampire Diaries puts forward the idea that the vampires are able to do good because they have a “humanity” switch.  When they still have their humanity they feel remorse and have some sense of right and wrong.  However, if they “turn off their humanity” they become the monsters.  Both of these ideas still address the issue that vampires = monsters = bad. In the Twilight series, this issue is presented as a “lifestyle choice”—“will I drink human blood and thereby kill people or will I eat from animals?” Some very nice and “good” vampires choose not to drink animal blood.  This whole, “Vampires Kill People” thing is really glossed over.  Rather than vampires being represented as bad, they are actually compared to angels.  Throughout the books when Bella describes Edward, she talks about his, “angelic face” or how he is more “angel than monster.” The vampires “sparkle in the sun.  They are more angel than demon. 

     Lastly, when Bella becomes a vampire, she is transformed from something completely average, to something extremely special.  She doesn’t just become a vampire, she becomes the most special and best vampire around. She is graceful, drop-dead gorgeous, extremely rich, super smart, and she has special powers.  She says at one point that she was basically born to be a vampire. Then, at the end of the books, she gets to live, FOREVER, with tons of money and clothes, in paradise with everyone that she loves. Just living their ordinary lives, together, forever, while being beautiful and special.

   As a reader, once I finish the books what have I learned here? I can be amazing if I have a guy who loves me like Edward loves her, and if I become a vampire.  And this is why I think that these are especially dangerous books. In a vampire obsessed culture, emotionally vulnerable girls (and frankly, this is most high schoolers), are being shown something that is evil, but it is represented as being good, beautiful, and an answer to all of one’s wildest dreams.

    Will I let my daughters read these books? No, because no good can come from it, but plenty of harm could be done.  “But, does it really matter what they read as long as they are reading?” Of course it matters.  That is like saying, “Does it matter what they eat as long as they are eating?” If your child will only eat chocolate and nothing else, they will die from malnutrition.  Do I allow my children to read trashy romance novels (which I have not read but I do know that these days most are EXTREMELY graphic) but say that it is okay because, “at least they are reading”? No, and I’m sure most every parent would agree with me. So where do we draw the line? I’m a parent, so I must be the parent, and sometimes that means making the hard choice (or in this case, not so hard).

The Good and the Bad: Quotes About Homemaking

Quotes like these are why I started this blog.

"Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night — she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — "Is this all?" " ~ Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique

"Strange new problems are being reported in the growing generations of children whose mothers were always there, driving them around, helping them with their homework - an inability to endure pain or discipline or pursue any self-sustained goal of any sort, a devastating boredom with life." ~ Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique

  

From The Big Bang Theory.  Bernadette states that she doesn’t like kids, and Howard replies…

“Don’t you think it will be different when the child is ours?” – Howard
“Right; when its our kid that’s ruined my body, and kept me up and night and I’ve got no career and no future and nothing to be happy about for the for the next twenty years; sure that will be completely different.” – Bernadette

"I know I should be accepting, but I cringe whenever I hear someone say that a smart/educated woman is a "happy homemaker." I can't get over what a waste it is." (unknown author, found on Quora)

And then there are quotes like these. . .

“No occupation in this world is more trying to soul and body than the care of young children. What patience and wisdom, skill and unlimited love it calls for. God gave the work to mothers and furnished them for it, and they cannot shirk it and be guiltless.”
            ― Isabella Macdonald Alden

“I'm only a housewife, I'm afraid." How often do we hear this shocking admission. I'm afraid when I hear it I feel very angry indeed. Only a housewife: only a practitioner of one of the two most noble professions (the other one is that of a farmer); only the mistress of a huge battery of high and varied skills and custodian of civilization itself. Only a typist, perhaps! Only a company director, or a nuclear physicist; only a barrister; only the President! When a woman says she is a housewife she should say it with the utmost pride, for there is nothing higher on this planet to which she could aspire.”
            ― John Seymour, Forgotten Household Crafts

“I believe that a godly home is a foretaste of heaven. Our homes, imperfect as they are, must be a haven from the chaos outside. They should be a reflection of our eternal home, where troubled souls find peace, weary hearts find rest, hungry bodies find refreshment, lonely pilgrims find communion, and wounded spirits find compassion.”
            ― Jani Ortlund

“The career of motherhood and homemaking is beyond value and needs no justification. Its importance is incalculable.”
            ― Katherine Short

Family

People often stereotype what it is like to be around family members during the holidays. And while I never realized it until recently, a lot of people don't get along with their family.  Some people may read that and think, "duh!" but I grew up in a family where we were really close, so, to me, it is rather an alien concept.

I have three brothers, no sisters, and five cousins. I have always been extremely close with all of my family members and I love being with them.  This Christmas all my brothers and I will be spending Christmas with our parents (and families) and we will try to be together as much as possible, not just on Christmas day when we Have to be together.  We are all very different with unique personalities.  Three of us are Catholic, one is Protestant; three of us majored in history, one in English; three of us are boys, one is a girl; three of us went to Hillsdale, one to West Point; three of us played baseball/softball, one didn't, are we noticing a pattern here?  While we do not have everything in common, we do find that we agree on the really important stuff.  We are all Christians, we are all happily married (and don't believe in divorce), we all love our parents and each other, we all discipline our children, and we all homeschool our kids. The list could go on about our similarities and differences, but the point I am trying to make is that we do not get along because we have everything in common. Our jobs are different, some of our views on parenting are different, some of us watch television and some don't, some can sing and some are tone deaf, but we LOVE to be together.  Do we still occasionally fight? Yes.  Do my brothers still try to just pull my chain? YES! But if we had the choice between being together or being with our dearest friends, we choose our family because we like each other just that much.  And, at least in my case, my best friend is part of my family.

What does this have to do with homemaking?  I want my kids to be as close with their brothers and sisters and cousins as I was with mine.  But that is not something that just happens accidentally.  You have to teach your children how to love their family.  While I fought with my brothers A Lot, I was also taught how to respect them, and how to treat them with kindness.  My father taught my brothers how to protect me and watch out for me, and they always have and always will.  If we just sit by and say, "Oh, they will love each other, they are family"  they might, but not necessarily.  I didn't have to teach my son how to love his sister, but I do need to show him how to treat her with kindness, how to protect her (not sit on her), and how to recognize that "when she hit you, she didn't mean to hurt you, she really loves and admires you."

The type of home that we create, and the culture that we surround our children with, will form how they view family.  I don't want my kids to have an uncle that they have never met, or cousins that they can't name. I want my children to be excited about holidays, just like I am, because that means they will get to be with their grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, and sisters.  One of the ways that we encourage our kids to love their family is to pray for different family members each night. Also, when Sebastian was younger we made him a photo album with pictures of all his cousins and aunts and uncles in it and we would go through it with him to make sure that he could recognize the family and know which cousins belonged to which aunt and uncle.  If we don't teach our kids that family is important, then they will grow up thinking that it's not.  Love is a choice, and while we can't choose who our family is, we can choose how to love them.

I Have Done Enough

My sister-in-law recently had an interesting conversation with a fellow academic.  At one point during the conversation the man said that his wife had sacrificed by putting her career on hold in order to have a baby.  Now, he would like to have more children, but he thinks that it is not fair for him to ask her to sacrifice more.  She has, in his words, sacrificed enough. 

I am relaying this story not to gripe about the “One Child and Done” mentality or the woman who has a baby and then must hurry back to her career.  What I find so very sad about this conversation is that it is an example of a point of view that is rather widely held.  Many people seem to think that we have a “right” to be selfish.  We can give of ourselves, but only so much because there comes a point where we have sacrificed enough and we now deserve to think of ourselves; we must put ourselves first.  Even if we are not as blunt about it as this, we still hold this view, I know I do.  Every day when my kids go down for a nap, I take some time to relax and get my energy back for the rest of the day.  It is a good thing that I do this, it is best for my family that I do this as it means I am not as cranky.  However, it is not my RIGHT to do it.  If I have other people to take care of and a house to clean and there just isn’t time in the day for me to take a break, I don’t get to say, “Ok, I have given enough today, I’m just not going to make dinner or change any more diapers.” It doesn’t work that way.  God doesn’t tell us to love selflessly as long as it is easy--that is why it is called a Sacrifice. 

Sacrifice is the “forfeiture of something highly valued for the sake of one considered to have a greater value or claim.” When we decide that we have “sacrificed enough” we are saying that other people are of less value to us than ourselves.  Think of this definition and how it applies to Christ’s crucifixion.  Christ sacrificed Himself for us.  He decided that we were more important, of more worth, of more value, than Himself, than of God Himself.  Yes, Christ rose from the dead, but He died, and His rising makes His sacrifice no less significant.  But what if He had changed His mind?  What if, after one set of scourging Christ decided that He had sacrificed enough, that He was done.  Part of a crucifixion is not enough, Christ had to DIE, not just be badly wounded. 

Considering the sacrifice that He made, God asks very little of us in return.  But, we are called to be like Christ, which means that we are also called to suffer.  The modern world thinks that sacrifice is a bad thing, but it isn’t.  When we suffer, when we sacrifice something for others, we ourselves are changed for the better.  If I devote selfless love towards my family, it will increase my understanding of the selfless love of God.  And when we sacrifice and give to others, we need to do so, not grudgingly, but with a joyful heart. 

Someone Watching You

As I was making dinner this evening(Actually it was a couple of minutes ago. The dinner is now in the oven and I should be cleaning up the dinner-prep-mess, but I am writing this instead). To continue, as I was making dinner this evening my husband came into the kitchen and it popped into my head that he would probably ask me "what's wrong?" (he didn't by the way).  I thought this because whenever I am tired my demeanor is very similar to when I am upset about something, probably because they often go hand-in-hand.  But this evening, there was nothing wrong, I'm not even THAT tired, comparably.  Thinking about it a moment I started to wonder what I am portraying to my children, to my spouse, and to others, through the Manner in Which I do something.  So, while I finished making dinner, I pretended that someone was sitting in my kitchen watching me. When I did this I immediately noticed that I stood a little straighter, I was more efficient, and my face probably looked a bit happier.

   How would we live our lives differently if there was always someone watching us?  It can't be the same person each day or we would grow complacent towards them, like we sometimes do with our spouse.  But what if a new person came into your home every single day and just sat and watched how you clean your home, parent your children, cook meals, and spend your free-time? Would your day look different? Of course it would, we want to project the best picture of ourselves that we possibly can.  We recently had some men working on the tile in our kitchen for a couple of days.  I found that on those days I was more patient with the children and an all around better mother because there were strangers in my home who heard how to talked to my kids.

   What we often forget is that while there is not someone sitting at my kitchen table observing how I make dinner, there is always someone watching us. No, not Big Brother, but our children, and our spouses, our guardian angels, and, most importantly, God.  We should tried to remember that and, just maybe, it will help us to, if not be more organized and efficient, to at least be a little more joyful as we go about our tasks.  I want to teach my children how to do something well and with a good spirit, so, like all things in parenting, I need to set that example first.

Caroline Ingalls: A Good Homemaker

I love Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books. I have read the Little House on the Prairie series many times over the years, both as a child and as an adult.  I am currently rereading them aloud to Sebastian and he is loving them.  Whenever I finish a chapter, I tell him what the next one (that we will read next time) is titled and he always says something like this, on the chapter where Pa builds a new floor and roof for the house, “Oh, can we please read one more chapter, I never knew how to build a roof before.” Or, when we will be reading about building a fireplace, “Oh, can we please read one more chapter, I really want to know how to build a fireplace.” As a young girl, I was never very interested to read about how Pa built everything, but that is what Sebastian loves. (This is but another example of the differences between little boys and girls.) These books are so wonderful to read to one’s children as they have MANY examples of how a child should obey his/her parents.  There is one instance where Laura is out in the barnyard at night with her mother. They are going to go and milk the cow since Pa is away in town and when Ma goes to pat the cow, she discovers that it is in fact a bear.  She turns to Laura and says “Go into the house Laura” and Laura turns and obeys.  This scene was a perfect opportunity for Sebastian and I to then have a conversation about the importance of obeying one’s parents without arguing. The last thing I want is to ever be in a dangerous situation, to tell my son to do something, and for him to turn to me and say, “why?”  There are many wonderful teaching moments within these books, but I digress.

   It is always fascinating to read books as a child and then to reread them as an adult. This is not the first time that I have read these books since I became a homemaker but each time that I do read them, I am more and more impressed with Ma.  In my mind, Ma is the perfect example of a good homemaker.  Here is a woman who, without complaint, moves from a comfortable home in Wisconsin that is near lots of family members, to the wilderness of unsettled Kansas, miles from another human being and even further from civilization.  And she does not do this only once, but rather moves multiple times in order to start all over.  She works so hard to provide and care for her family, and even in the wilderness, she teaches her daughters how to be young ladies.  As a former schoolteacher, she was extremely well educated and she passed her love of learning on to her daughters.  I think that Caroline Ingalls is a homemaking inspiration and I always work so much harder around the house after reading about all of the things that she did just to keep her family fed and clothed. But she didn’t just do the bare minimum, wherever they went, she made a home for her family. Laura often describes how comfortable and clean their houses were with the checked tablecloth and lamp on the table, the beds neatly made in the corner, and the little china shepherdess up on the mantle.  Caroline Ingalls cared for her family and she did so to the best of her ability.

We Are Our Choices

Yesterday in Mass our priest, as usual, gave a Wonderful homily. I was, unfortunately, not able to hear all of it as I had to leave with a noisy toddler, (one of the joys of parenting) but the main thing that I heard that really stuck with me was this--of course there was a lot more too it but I am not great about summarizing things. He was talking about the Kingdom of God and how it is not of this earth and he said that in order to belong to that kingdom, we need to choose Truth.  The Truth that we choose cannot be our truth, or what we want to be truth, or what others say truth should be, but rather, it Must be God’s Truth.  He also said that when we choose something else; when we choose not to say our prayers because we are too tired; or not to something that we have said we will do because it doesn’t sound like fun; when we choose not to follow His Truth, then we are choosing not to belong to the Kingdom of God.   

After Mass, when I was discussing the homily with Patrick, he told me about this quote from Peter Kreeft: “Here is one of the truest and most terrifying sentences I have ever read (from William Law’s Serious Call): ‘If you will look into your own heart in complete honesty, you must admit that there is one and only one reason why you are not a saint: you do not wholly want to be.’ That insight is terrifying because it is an indictment. But it is also thrillingly hopeful because it is an offer, an open door. Each of us can become a saint. We really can. What holds us back? Fear of paying the price.”  When taken together (the homily and the quote) it made me think about how many poor choices I tend to make and how when I make those choices I am choosing Not to follow God’s Truth and Not to be a saint.  A friend of our family once told us, and it became a sort of mantra in our home growing up, “We are not our Feelings, we are our Choices.”

Then, this morning while saying morning prayers I was reading 2 Thessalonians 3:10b-13, the verses that begin, “Anyone who would not work should not eat,” which is a verse that I have always known.  But I was especially struck by verse 13, “You must Never grow weary of doing what is right.” 

I began to think about all of these things in connection with homemaking.  It is extremely easy to become weary with my tasks in the home.  Lately, I have felt very weary almost all of the time.  But, this is the job that God has given to me, this is my task.  His Truth teaches that this is what I am doing, and it is important, therefore, I need to Choose to continue to do it, no matter how I feel.  We often make the excuse, “Well, I am only human” or “I’m not a Saint” as if that is okay.  We expect less of ourselves rather than more. We need to choose to be more, to choose to obey God and His Truth, not matter how difficult to the task.  We must choose to be Saints. 

“Father, may everything we do begin with your inspiration and continue with your saving help. Let our work always find its origin in you and through you reach completion. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” (From the Liturgy of the Hours, today’s ending to the Morning Prayer.)

"Struggle" as Viewed by East and West

This is an article from NPR that I found extremely interesting. I have some thoughts on the article, but they won't make any sense unless one reads the article first, so here it is.

Struggle For Smarts? How Eastern And Western Cultures Tackle Learning

by Alix Spiegel

In 1979, when Jim Stigler was still a graduate student at the University of Michigan, he went to Japan to research teaching methods and found himself sitting in the back row of a crowded fourth grade math class.
"The teacher was trying to teach the class how to draw three-dimensional cubes on paper," Stigler explains, "and one kid was just totally having trouble with it. His cube looked all cockeyed, so the teacher said to him, 'Why don't you go put yours on the board?' So right there I thought, 'That's interesting! He took the one who can't do it and told him to go and put it on the board.'"
Stigler knew that in American classrooms, it was usually the best kid in the class who was invited to the board. And so he watched with interest as the Japanese student dutifully came to the board and started drawing, but still couldn't complete the cube. Every few minutes, the teacher would ask the rest of the class whether the kid had gotten it right, and the class would look up from their work, and shake their heads no. And as the period progressed, Stigler noticed that he — Stigler — was getting more and more anxious.
"I realized that I was sitting there starting to perspire," he says, "because I was really empathizing with this kid. I thought, 'This kid is going to break into tears!'"
But the kid didn't break into tears. Stigler says the child continued to draw his cube with equanimity. "And at the end of the class, he did make his cube look right! And the teacher said to the class, 'How does that look, class?' And they all looked up and said, 'He did it!' And they broke into applause." The kid smiled a huge smile and sat down, clearly proud of himself.
Stigler is now a professor of psychology at UCLA who studies teaching and learning around the world, and he says it was this small experience that first got him thinking about how differently east and west approach the experience of intellectual struggle.
"I think that from very early ages we [in America] see struggle as an indicator that you're just not very smart," Stigler says. "It's a sign of low ability — people who are smart don't struggle, they just naturally get it, that's our folk theory. Whereas in Asian cultures they tend to see struggle more as an opportunity."
In Eastern cultures, Stigler says, it's just assumed that struggle is a predictable part of the learning process. Everyone is expected to struggle in the process of learning, and so struggling becomes a chance to show that you, the student, have what it takes emotionally to resolve the problem by persisting through that struggle.
"They've taught them that suffering can be a good thing," Stigler says. "I mean it sounds bad, but I think that's what they've taught them."
Granting that there is a lot of cultural diversity within East and West and it's possible to point to counter-examples in each, Stigler still sums up the difference this way: For the most part in American culture, intellectual struggle in schoolchildren is seen as an indicator of weakness, while in Eastern cultures it is not only tolerated, it is often used to measure emotional strength.
It's a small difference in approach that Stigler believes has some very big implications.
'Struggle'
Stigler is not the first psychologist to notice the difference in how East and West approach the experience of intellectual struggle.
Jin Li is a professor at Brown University who, like Stigler, compares the learning beliefs of Asian and U.S. children. She says that to understand why these two cultures view struggle so differently, it's good to step back and examine how they think about where academic excellence comes from.
For the past decade or so, Li has been recording conversations between American mothers and their children, and Taiwanese mothers and their children. Li then analyzes those conversations to see how the mothers talk to the children about school.
She shared with me one conversation that she had recorded between an American mother and her 8-year-old son.
The mother and the son are discussing books. The son, though young, is a great student who loves to learn. He tells his mother that he and his friends talk about books even during recess and the American mother responds with this:

Mother: Do you know that's what smart people do, smart grown ups?
Child: I know... talk about books.
Mother: Yeah. So that's a pretty smart thing to do to talk about a book.
Child: Hmmm mmmm.

It's a small exchange — a moment. But Li says, this drop of conversation contains a world of cultural assumptions and beliefs.
Essentially, the American mother is communicating to her son that the cause of his success in school is his intelligence. He's smart — which, Li says, is a common American view.
"The idea of intelligence in believed in the West as a cause," Li explains. "She is telling him that there is something in him, in his mind, that enables him to do what he does."
But in many Asian cultures, Li says, academic excellence isn't linked with intelligence in the same way. "It resides in what they do, but not who they are, what they're born with," she says.
She shares another conversation, this time between a Taiwanese mother and her 9-year-old son. They are talking about the piano — the boy won first place in a competition, and the mother is explaining to him why.
"You practiced and practiced with lots of energy," she tells him. "It got really hard, but you made a great effort. You insisted on practicing yourself."
"So the focus is on the process of persisting through it despite the challenges, not giving up, and that's what leads to success," Li says.
All of this matters because the way you conceptualize the act of struggling with something profoundly effects your actual behavior.
Obviously if struggle indicates weakness — a lack of intelligence — it makes you feel bad, and so you're less likely to put up with it. But if struggle indicates strength — an ability to face down the challenges that inevitably occur when you are trying to learn something — you're more willing to accept it.
And Stigler feels in the real world it is easy to see the consequences of these different interpretations of struggle.
"We did a study many years ago with first-grade students," he tells me. "We decided to go out and give the students an impossible math problem to work on, and then we would measure how long they worked on it before they gave up."
The American students "worked on it less than 30 seconds on average and then they basically looked at us and said, 'We haven't had this,'" he says.
But the Japanese students worked for the entire hour on the impossible problem. "And finally we had to stop the session because the hour was up. And then we had to debrief them and say, 'Oh, that was not a possible problem, that was an impossible problem!' and they looked at us like, 'What kind of animals are we?'" Stigler recalls.
"Think about that [kind of behavior] spread over a lifetime," he says. "That's a big difference."
Not East Versus West
This is not to imply that the Eastern way of interpreting struggle — or anything else — is better than the Western way, or vice versa. Each have their strengths and weaknesses, which both sides know. Westerns tend to worry that their kids won't be able to compete against Asian kids who excel in many areas but especially in math and science. Jin Li says that educators from Asian countries have their own set of worries.
"'Our children are not creative. Our children do not have individuality. They're just robots. You hear the educators from Asian countries express that concern, a lot,'" she notes.
So, is it possible for one culture to adopt the beliefs of another culture if they see that culture producing better results?
Both Stigler and Li think that changing culture is hard, but that it's possible to think differently in ways that can help. "Could we change our views of learning and place more emphasis on struggle?" Stigler asks. " Yeah."
For example, Stigler says, in the Japanese classrooms that he's studied, teachers consciously design tasks that are slightly beyond the capabilities of the students they teach, so the students can actually experience struggling with something just outside their reach. Then, once the task is mastered, the teachers actively point out that the student was able to accomplish it through the students hard work and struggle.
"And I just think that especially in schools, we don't create enough of those experiences, and then we don't point them out clearly enough."
But we can — Stigler says.
In the meantime, he and the other psychologists doing this work say there are more differences to map — differences that allow both cultures to see who they are more clearly.