"Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother"...

Parenting is an art form, of this there is no doubt. And, as an art form, there are styles one likes and approves of and there are styles that one does not like nor approves of. Yet, there is no one style that is 100% guaranteed to be successful in producing a well-adjusted and accomplished child who grows into an adult that contributes to their community in positive ways. Or is there?

There was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal the other week written by Amy Chua, an American with a Filipino heritage and a Chinese ancestry. The article was titled "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior". The general gist of the article follows the substance of Chua's arguments for successful parenting that she describes in her book "Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother".

I have not read the book, so this is not a book review. It is not a critique of her parenting style either. It is merely an opinion piece on how one might decide which style to adopt. Perhaps the point is that each person is unique and each family is unique so maybe it is a case of manipulating styles by taking the best of many styles or those bits that work and co-opting them into a style of your own.

But, back to Amy Chua and what has worked for her. Stereotypes are powerful things and it is to see them when you want to, or feel the need to, label certain things. So, why is it that Chinese children are such high achievers? The generalisation aside assuming that there has to be one Chinese child somewhere that does not fit the stereotypical bill of "high achiever", but nevertheless this is the stereotype, right? Are Chinese children high achievers because they are intellectually more capable or is it that they are more driven courtesy of strict parenting practices.

The Chua argument probably follows the line that strict parenting plays a fundamental role in ensuring 'successful' outcomes for one's children. There are plenty of children who would balk at the prospect of a home where they were not allowed to do the following:

• attend sleepovers;
• have play dates;
• be in a school play;
• complain about not being in a school play;
• watch TV or play computer games;
• choose their own extra-curricular activities;
• get a grade less than A;
• not be the  No. 1 student in a subject (exceptions for gym / PDHPE and drama)
• play any instrument other than the piano and violin (and you have to play at least one of either the piano or violin)

As a parent I am balking at this list. Maybe that is because this is not how I was brought up. So, may be our parenting styles tend to reflect those of our parents before us. As a parent I do not want to be that strict. I want Will to be able to take some responsibility for the things he wants to, and chooses to, do. Admittedly, at two-years-old he is going to have less of a say in this.

For us it is more about understanding what learning style will provide the best outcomes. Even at an early age it is easy enough to see that Will is a musical and visual learner. Nevertheless, he loves to read and enjoys acting and role-playing. So, the idea of not allowing him to pursue that seems to be counter-productive.

Then there are personal philosophies that have me believing that sleepovers and social interaction with his peers on his own terms through extra-curricular activities, like sport, and also fundamental to his overall development as a human being.

Parenting is a difficult skill. We are enjoying the ride, but it is certainly a case of learning on the job. It is also a case of trial and error, working through what gets the outcome we want to see and reworking those methods that don't or discarding them altogether.

The point overall, is I am not going to ridicule Chua's style and I am not going to write-off her book as a recollection of how she abused her children's rights, as some have. I am likely to be looking for the book next time I am in the bookstore. Besides, Chua is law professor at Yale...can't argue with that :)

With parenting, ultimately we all want the same outcome: happy, healthy, wise, and well-adjusted young people who contribute to their communities. How we get there, to each their own.

The Department of National Education, Student Data, and Privacy

There has been an interesting phenomenon occur over the past few days that highlights the power that blogging has in getting out a message and seeing changes made. The Treespotter posted a piece on the Department of National Education and their posting on their site of complete sets of student data.

The data itself is important in terms of administering the individual schools and perhaps also in terms of ensuring that the Department has up-to-date data on students so that it can do its job better. Well, at least, potentially more efficiently and effectively. There is no problem in collecting the data, the problem related only to the need to publish this data online.

There are a number of problems with publishing the names and addresses of some 30 million plus students online from primary school through to senior high school. The most likely of these problems would be identity theft and kidnapping. The identity theft would affect only a small number of students and more than likely those in senior high school who are 18 or 19 years old. They might have all manner of accounts and perhaps even credit cards.

Identity theft is pretty easy as the hacking into of Sarah Palin's email account highlights. If a candidate for the office of vice president and potentially the second in-line to the leadership of the free world is not safe, then what chance does some senior high school student in Indonesia have?

The kidnapping angle is also an interesting one and Indonesia, and in particular Jakarta, has had a few kidnappings occur of late. The idea that all of the research can be done online and at one site, in terms of targeting particular children, is frightening.

Kidnapping might only be one of the problems that could arise. Pedophiles might also find the detailed information useful in targeting certain children as well.

It is worth noting that the site and the downloadable files have been altered to remove the dates of birth and the addresses of the children whose names are included in the files. However, what is less clear is whether the Department has contacted Google and other search engines in order for them to have the cached and indexed files removed from their servers. If they have not then the files are still out there in the cyber world and can be recovered and reposted.

If you do not believe this to be so, then look no further than the ongoing fiasco of the Chinese gymnasts who competed in the Beijing Olympics. It was suspected that some of the Chinese gymnasts were under age, but the documentation provided suggested otherwise. Nevertheless, an enterprising individual managed to find cached files on a Chinese server that contained official documents stating that the ages of the gymnasts were not those contained in the passports provided as proof of their age.

The point, quite simply, is that until these files are removed from the search engines of Google and others the data is still out there. This is always going to be the problem of letting the genie out of the bottle. Once the genie is out, it is almost impossible to get it back in.

The privacy issues are also important. The law in Indonesia does not include a specific privacy law. However, there are privacy provisions in a number of laws that might be able to be used as a means of ensuring this kind of breach does not occur again. Some might argue that this disparate collection of provisions is no substitute for a specific law on privacy, and I might tend to agree. Nevertheless, there is enough in these provisions to prove that Indonesia recognizes a right to privacy and there is also enough in these provisions to sustain a case for a breach of privacy.

For example, Indonesia has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as Law No. 12 of 2005. It is clear in Article 17 of the Covenant that there is a right to privacy and that this right is one that cannot be arbitrarily interfered with. Simply, the Department's arbitrary and unilateral decision to post this private and personal data on the Internet without the express permission of the parents of the students involved is a breach.

Privacy also makes an appearance in Law No. 11 of 2008 on Information and Electronic Transactions. In this Law it relates more to investigations, but it must be noted that the principle is that there is a conceptual understanding of privacy and the damage that can be done if private or confidential information is publicly released.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court of Indonesia has also recognized that individuals have a right to privacy and that their personal or confidential information must not be traded in the public domain. In Article 22 of the Decision of the Chief Justice No. 144 of 2007 it is explicitly clear that any court official that is in a position to provide private or personal information must take into consideration any losses that might be sustained by the individual whose information is released.

Privacy has also been a feature of a Joint Decision of the General Election Commission and the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission. The Decision, No. 12 of 2004, states in Article 15 that candidates in broadcast debates cannot attack issues that are private. Once again, this presupposes that some information cannot be brought to the public domain without the express permission of the individual to whom that information relates.

The Child Protection Law, Law No. 23 of 2002, does not expressly deal with privacy. However, it is clear that the rights of the child are paramount and it is reasonable to assume that a sustainable argument can be made that the posting of the Department of National Education files on the Internet is not in the best interests of children.

In human rights terms the right to collect, collate, provide, and access information is set out in Article 14 of the Law No. 39 of 1999 on Human Rights. This provision supports the Department's right to collect the information. However, the provision also requires that the purpose of the collection of the information must be clear and for a valid purpose.

Article 47 and 48 of the Indonesian Criminal Procedure Code provide the power to investigators to open mail and other correspondence in the course of an investigation. However, if the correspondence does not relate to the criminal case that they are investigating then any information that the learn from the correspondence is to be kept secret. Although this provision does not specifically relate to privacy, it does highlight that, at least, conceptually Indonesia recognizes a right to privacy to some degree.

With the passage of the Freedom of Public Information Law (Law No. 14 of 2008) it is clear that some personal and private information is not to be provided to the public and presumably this would include posting it in a public domain such as the Internet.

For example, Article 6 of this Law is explicit that personal information cannot be provided by a public agency, and the Department of National Education would be classified as such, and therefore the information included in the school children files is conceivably out of play with regards to access by the general public. The type of information contained in the Department files would also seem to be protected from public release by the provisions of Article 17.

The Department has removed the most obvious breaches from their files. Yet, the damage might have already been done with the letting of the genie out of the bottle. This is a valuable lesson in thinking laterally and outside of the box. In this day and age of rapidly developing technology and an ever-smaller world, one must think their actions through from myriad of possibilities before uploading information to the Web.

It would seem that to try and close the chapter on this book the Department of National Education needs to make requests to all search engines that they do whatever they can to ensure that all cached and indexed files relating to this data are removed and / or are made inaccessible.

Information is important, but some information must remain private and this is a case in point.

Corporal Punishment

I need to thank Jakartass for the links that form the basis of this post. It is a topic I had been thinking about, perhaps reminiscing is a more apt word, as my 21st high school reunion approaches. I was on the end of that generation that was the last to see corporal punishment, specifically caning.

Amongst my mates and I getting the cane was a bit of a status thing. We used to keep a running tab across the year to see who could get caned the most. There were some bragging rights to be had for punishable bad behaviour. And it was always more preferable at boarding school to get "six of the best" strokes of the cane than it was to lose leave privileges or sports privileges or the like. We were always caned on the hands. There were no paddling of the buttocks at my school.

I remember once having to wire brush a fence and then repaint it as punishment for having condoms in my locker (different story and has nothing to do with sex) and thinking even 12 strokes of the cane would be better than having to spend two months re-painting a fence.

Interestingly in the more than 20 years since the cane has been banned as a form of punishment there are now more than 20% of UK teachers thinking that the re-introduction of the cane would be a good thing. This is somewhat modified and the re-introduction is being thought of as a measure to manage "extreme"bad behaviour. I wonder what extreme is though?

The results are based on a survey conducted by the Times Educational Supplement and some 6,162 teachers were asked whether or not they would support the right to use corporal punishment.

It seems that the slightly more than 20% of teachers who would support the re-introduction of the cane would do so as the ultimate deterrent. They would do so because they no longer believe that current means of disciplining students is working.

It is not surprising that there has been some surprise at the results of the survey, particularly from groups such as children's rights groups and charities and from the teachers union itself.

The Children's Commissioner for England said, "All forms of physical punishment against children and young people are completely unacceptable and go against the UN convention on the rights of the child, which the UK accepted in 1991. There are far more effective and positive methods of discipline than physical punishment."

I suppose there are some teachers that would like to have the Commissioner do a please explain with regard to what alternatives there are that work as he sees it.

Violence against children is unacceptable. But the key here would be what is the definition of violence? Do we mean physical violence is not acceptable? Do we mean psychological violence is not acceptable? Let's face it a good public dressing down can do as much psychological harm as a few strokes of the cane can do physical harm (strictly my opinion -- no empirical research to back this up).

The reality though is that there are still almost 80% of teachers who would not support a re-introduction of corporal punishment. This means that the chances of this debate getting any serious air time and discussion will require that the numbers get much closer together. When it gets to an almost 50-50 split then there will be a much more interesting debate brewing with a much different dynamic.

Perhaps the alternative to the re-introduction of corporal punishment is to force the disciplining of children back onto the parents. Any infraction of school rules sees the child sent home immediately with a note saying that the child will not be re-admitted to classes until there is a guarantee from the parent(s) that the behaviour will not occur again. If the child re-offends then they are suspend automatically for a week. A second offence would result in a month's suspension. A third infraction would result in expulsion and the problem child can be handed-off to another school to deal with.

The idea of getting the cane when I was in high school meant that in order to avoid it I had to not get caught. It was very much the reward - punishment dichotomy. The punishment did not deter the bad behaviour, to the contrary it taught us to be better on the planning and execution in order not to get caught and not to get caned.

However, if it was to ever pass that corporal punishment was to be re-introduced then the teachers who are granted the authority to do it must pass physical checks to ensure they are up to the task. If the cane is going to be a deterrent then it has to hurt when you are caned. I can remember some of the teachers at my high school were somewhat lacking physically and getting caned by them hurt less than getting kicked in the shins playing football.

Second, they must pass an accuracy test. As I recall it hurt like hell getting caned on the wrists. However, sometimes this was self-inflicted by pushing my hand forward rather than pulling it away. Simply, when word got around that this teacher was a woeful shot then they generally were no longer allowed to cane students and had to get in a proxy to do the deed.

Ah, corporal punishment and high school. Now, those were the days!