On the contrary, you compared the Chinese parents to Paris Hilton. You compared you taking tests in American schools with planes overhead to them doing so. You compared it to the NCLB and said they were sinking to our level. Hollywood, Manhattan, yadda yadda.

If Paris Hilton demands a lunch break modeling one week, and the next week coal miners demand one, are the coal miners just as pampered? You are comparing the demands on American kids to the demands on Chinese kids, because of a request that is similar. Might as well be a different planet.



It makes a big difference because our kids get into college knowing basically nothing, and then our bloggers compare Chinese kids' situation to Paris Hilton and Beverly Hills. They have to prove proficiency in English (about as alien a language to Chinese as it gets), and even then only 5 out of 9 get in. Those that don't won't end up being Bill Gates in China.

You started the comparison. You just don't have a clue about one half of it. To me, I can't imagine walking a mile in the shoes of the Chinese parents or students, so I damn sure wouldn't be making fun of them and likening them to Paris Hilton.

It is true I was flippant with my comparisons (not having grown up in China and not being familiar with their system). So I see where you can criticize me for comparing them with Paris hilton (as I was discussing this from the perspective of spoiled Americans). However, you may have a "clue", but you fail to see the irony and self defeating nature of this act.

There are almost 200 countries on this planet. 4000 languages, and even more cultures. I am not about to walk 10 steps, much less a mile in all of those shoes. So I have to approach events from my perspective,and comment on them in such a way. If that means that sometimes I am flippant, so be it. I cannot be all knowing. However, removing the flippancy, the article would still stand as a testament to absurdity. Something you seem to fail to grasp.

I will not stop commenting on the absurdity as I see it, even when my soles are not dusty from a walk. Especially on what amounts to a written version of my opinion.

You can sympathize with those parents, and indeed I know of some that I would empathize with - on an individual basis. But then empathizing with all 1 billion+ is self defeating since those you champion here, are denying positions to the ones not mentioned.

The fact remains, they have a quota system. And there is nothing you nor I can do about it, or did to make it a fact of their life.

Actually the smart thing to do would be to only write about what you know. If you know bugger all about something, don't write about it. You're only going to mislead the ignorant and amuse/infuriate the knowledgeable, neither of which is particularly desirable.

Or you could just look it up. It really doesn't take much intelligence to figure out that exams in a third world state three times the size of the US take on a different importance to those in the US.

If your problem is more looking at things from the perspectives of others then I'd recommend a new book that's come out by Anna Wierzbicka and her daughter. It's about the different views on life possessed by those who are bilingual. It's fascinating and you might find it useful. I imagine you can find it on google or get it from Amazon - the title is "Translating Lives".

I'm not trying to jump on you, Doc, but you guys often also ask why the world hates us so much. Stuff like this is an example. It's the "Let them eat cake" syndrome.

I know you don't care what Chinese people who might visit the site think. They give people a box down here at the bottom to comment on absurdity, too, though.

I doubt I hold as much sway as you give me credit for. However, I was commenting on a news article (one can argue a biased one, or very ignorant one, but that is for another blog). JU is not a news site, or a policy site, so I do not fear about being quoted when I state an opinion. Nor will I stop when I see or read something that is absurd, regardless of the justification or circumstances that brought it about.

Not every country is like the US, but then I dont want the US to be like every country either. And that is the insidiousness of the ones who constantly want us to be. China is addressing an issue that I think can be better addressed, but then I dont have all the facts of power to change their system. Yet sure enough, in a short amount of time, someone here is going to use that incident as justification for changing something here (dont beleive me? Check out the platform the democrats ran on here in 2004).

I have admitted - given the facts that Baker presented - to being flippant because I was not an expert on the situation. I will not stop commenting on them because I dont know how to spell the Chinese Education ministers full name. You are more than welcome to point out my ignorance at such times, as I do enjoy learning more about things I am not an expert on. But I will not stop commenting on them even when I dont have 100% of the background of the situation.

First, I dont think you are jumping - until you made the statement "but you guys...". As Trudy says, that is the big but. I acknowledged my flippancy, not an error of my point.

YOu do need to stop pigeon holing people on this site. While many here are conservative, and spout a conservative line, you will find that Doc Miler and I do not say the same things, and I dont parrot Brad either. Or Shadowwar, Rightwinger, Moderateman, or anyone else here. We have some core commonalities, but we disagree a lot as well.

The latest one to pigeon hole is Deference. I dont mind being mentioned, but would appreciate those that lump me in with others to show where they are doing it - using my own postings, and not the fact that I commented on someone's article. I may or may not agree with the whole article, and may or may not comment on a point of disagreement or agreement. But rarely do I disect and comment on every point (unless it is a short single point article) of an article, right or left.

Quite frankly, I tire of being labeled "you guys" with no point to the lumping, just a generalized statement that I must agree with Doc, MM, Shadow, RW, Terp, Singr, Ted, etc. because I agree with some (or most) of what they say. I know this will come as an outright shock, but I also agree with some (albeit not most) of what SofG, Sean, Cacto, Loca, and SanC state as well. And I have seen other of "you guys" that do as well.

So... you've never wondered why more and more around the world people hate us? Why they booed Miss USA in Mexico and the like? "You guys" is only unfair if it isn't accurate, and I would have sworn you have in the past responded negatively to our place in world opinion.

The reason I differentiate between the "you guys" and me is that I see why they do, often right here on the blogs at JU. I don't have to really wonder much anymore.

I may have wondered (I do not recall doing so), but I take basically the same approach that Brad does on this issue - who cares?

I know I have responded with contempt on what the rest of the world thinks of us, but then I am not going to let it cost me sleep. I cannot please everyone, but I have to like myself. And so the ones that dont like me (or my country) can express all their hate all they want, as long as they do not act upon it.

I am glad you know all the answers and understand why the other 6 billion people in the world (or whatever fraction there of you want to make it) dont like us. And I am sure you are changing your life daily to accomodate that dislike so that they dont dislike you. Sorry if I cant live that way.

It's more a matter of simple awareness. You've no doubt seen people that are impaired in that vein, we all have. People who go into crowded restaurants and talk about Mexicans or other groups negatively at the top of their lungs, etc.

You can say that you wouldn't do that, and I don't believe you would in a restaurant, but for some reason bloggers don't bother to consider that a lot of different people read their blogs. I don't believe you'd be so crass as to bellyache about, say, illegal aliens if you had a table of Latino people sitting next to yours. That isn't changing your life to accommodate them, that's just simple tact.

I've written negatively about Chinese culture a lot more than once. I'm not telling you what to say and not say. When you just rattle off stuff without considering it, though, you'll usually be reminded that the Internet is a public place, whether it feels like one or not.

We have a over a billion Chinese, a billion people in India, over a billion Muslims worldwide. There are 300 million people in America. A third of a billion, something like a fourth of the Chinese population. I would expect within the next 5-10 years to find our place on the Internet to shift dramatically, and it won't be so easy to forget that we're not the only ones here.

Is it really being overly PC to consider the feelings of people who might read what you write and craft it so as to be understanding of the issue? If so, then we're all overly PC, exept the people we shun as loudmouths and insensitive blowhards. We just don't all recognize the Internet as a big restaurant with a lot of people wandering by.

No, sitting AT my table. And yes the discussion does sometimes run to that subject. Why? Because we are all Americans and can discuss the issue even if we do not all agree on it.

And as far as this article goes, I have already acknowledged that my comparisons were flippant. But I will state for the last time, that the gist of the article is not, nor is the problems that this article represents. Yes, as a parent we do always want the best for our children. That is not being uncaring to the parents that get the short end of the stick (as these parents did no, but others did), that is a simple fact of mathematics. Something that no amount of PC can erase or eliminate.

Quite frankly, if you are going to write anything on the internet other than a prime number series, you are going to piss off someone somewhere. Which you just did by implying that - 1: All illegals are Latino, and - 2: All latinos are illegal.

I know from having read you that is and was not your intent, but that is how it is coming across.

that is the underlying racism in this whole debate on immigration. it's easy to pick on them, cause they can't really defend themselves on any equal footing. and anyone who stands up for them will instantly be painted as "anti-american" or some sim. charge. and it's also equally as easy to deny the racism charge and claim a host of other things as the reason.

and it's unfortunate that we can't get past that rhetoric or attitude.

Baker was using that as an example (I have seen him argue against that type of stereotyping in the past) and I simply used it as an example of how anything written, taken as a sound bite, can be seen as hurtful or derogatory to someone somewhere. It was not meant to be a statement of belief or fact on either his or my part.

i'm sorry...i wasn't trying to infer that at all. those comments were directed at no one specific. i do believe that much of this debate is a racist one in many people's hearts. one that is easily denied with plenty of cover. but again, they weren't directed at anyone specific. i probably over reached by saying "whole debate."

daft is what it is, daft.

for example, i was watching an interview with an ohio official this morning on one of the "24's" who was billing the govt. for every illegal he had to jail. something that few in the current climate would be vocal against. but then he added that he bills mexico somehow in relation to the marijuana he seizes as well.

someone needs to educate this guy on where that pot is coming from. i happened to put myself thru school in large part to doing a lot of business with ohio farmers who were hardly illegal. they were good ol boy farmers (pardon the stereotype but that's the easiest brief description) born and raised here. i think the stat when i was out there (this is in the 80's) was that athens county ohio was #2 in most pot grown per capita, 2nd only to one of the hawaiian islands.

furthermore, the rest of it, the really good "headies / nuggets" that are popular with the hippie crowd these days (ohio university is a perrenial "top party school" and draws in all kinds of hippie types) are either grown domestically or come from canada, where pot is much less criminalized and rules hardly enforced. all that we get from mexico is "schwag" and "brick weed" and most of it stays well south of ohio.

so, basically, the ohio official had no knowledge of the actual source of the illegal stuff and simply "was being himself" in blaming mexico for all the pot in the US.

i guess that kind of set me off on that reminder of pure ignorance in this debate, lol..it didn't have anything to do with you 2 ...again, my apologies if that got inferred or implied.

Not a problem, and not really on topic, but I do appreciate your sentiment here.

Extreme, yes. For the parents? Not really as parents will demand all they can get for their children. For the government to accede to their demands, yes.