Book review: Ender’s Game (or being a teenager again)

Twenty-five years ago, when I was 13 years old, I competed in an athletics competition in Dunedin (in the South Island of New Zealand).

Those of us in the Auckland team flew down to Dunedin, and, before competing, we did a bus sightseeing tour to Queenstown and back again.  If you have been to Queenstown you will probably know how stunningly beautiful the scenery is in that area.

The trouble is, I mostly don’t know how stunningly beautiful the scenery is.  For the entire bus journey, I had my nose stuck in a book.  Whenever I looked up to see where we were, I thought, “ho hum, we haven’t yet arrived at our hotel.  I wonder why it is taking so long to get there.”  I don’t think I realised that I was supposed to be enjoying the scenery.

The book I was reading on the bus was from Frank Herbert’s Dune series (Heretics of Dune maybe, or Chapterhouse?)  Needless to say, I thoroughly recommend the series.  It is far more enjoyable to a teenage boy than stunningly beautiful scenery.

Last week, I was a teenage boy again.

When I was at the bookshop buying Mulan and Miya’s schoolbooks, I also bought Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game.  After the children went to sleep last Friday, I read it until 3:30 in the morning.  I had four hours sleep, and then when I woke I finished the book that morning.  (Luckily, it was Saturday, so Mama was around to take care of the girls.)

It should go without saying that Ender’s Game is a brilliant, can’t-put-down story.  It is perfectly paced and tensely exciting.  The twist at the end is shocking (though I must admit I did slightly suspect it coming).  It is the sort of book that I would have devoured as a 13-year-old, along with the rest of the books in the series, and I am slightly surprised that this is one book series that never caught my attention back then.

The book has the standard teenage-boy plotline, with heroes acting heroically.  It has none of that wishy-washy incompetent-loser-struggle story so beloved of school English teachers.  It is about super-smart people doing inspirational super-smart things.  Exactly what a teenage boy needs, in my opinion.

The author, Card, tells us that the book was inspired by Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series (another brilliant book series, in my opinion, which I read as a teenager).

It also has similarities with Herbert’s Dune (though in my opinion Ender is far less deep).  The storyline of both books centre on the maturing of a child genius who has the potential to save the world (Ender Wiggin in Ender’s Game; Paul Atreides in Dune).  Again, this is perfect teenage boy stuff, where the super-smart people are young themselves.

As an adult though, I am allowed to be slightly more cynical.  As much as I loved being entertained by the storyline of Ender’s Game, I felt that I couldn’t quite suspend disbelief.

In his introduction to the new edition, Card discusses a letter from a school guidance counsellor for gifted children, who thought the depiction of gifted children in the story was unrealistic.  She said that real children don’t speak and act like the children in Ender’s Game.  Card strongly disagreed.

I have to say that I agree with the school counsellor.  At the beginning of the book, when Ender is six years old, he is shipped off to military school.  For the next several years, he trains intensely, and before he reaches ten years old, he is devising new military tactics no one has tried before.  At something like twelve years old, his genius military brain is saving the world.

Inspiring stuff for teenage boys.

But probably not very realistic, even if Ender and his companions are supposed to be the several best and brightest children in the entire world.  Would even the best and brightest children talk and act in that way?  I doubt it.  And contrary to Card’s assertions, I highly doubt Card and his acquaintances thought and acted like that when they were that age.  Similarly, is it plausible that pre-teens could have better military minds than people with fifty years more experience?

Herbert’s Dune series could get away with four-year-old highly-trained assassins and so on, because it is set twenty-whatever thousand years in the future, and they are explained away by technological, chemical, and breeding advances.

But ten-year-old world-leading military geniuses in Ender’s near-future Earth world?  I couldn’t completely suspend disbelief, so I couldn’t completely accept the book.  I guess I have been thinking homeschooling and teaching for too long now.

Having said all that, I still think Ender’s Game is a great book—both entertaining and thought-provoking.  It is more of a teenage book than an adult book, and, with suitable discussions afterwards, it could be a nice introduction to military ethics (amongst other things).  I would definitely put it on the teenage schooling reading list.

Mulan’s schoolwork

When I bought workbooks for Miya, I also got some more for Mulan.

For the last few months, Mulan has mostly been doing maths workbooks (and before that, it was science).  So it was time to get back to doing a bit more reading comprehension.  This is what I got:

Previous reading comprehension workbooks we’d done had suggested that Mulan was at, or just slightly ahead of, her age in English.  (This makes sense because she is simultaneously learning Chinese.)  Five months ago, she finally finished the Grade 1 advanced learner book that we had started almost two years ago.

So my guestimate in the bookshop was that the book on the left, which is for seven to eight year olds, would be a little easy but mostly about right.  I guessed the Grade 3 book on the right may be a little too challenging right now, but I expected it would be about right in a month or two, after finishing the first book.

It turns out I was wrong.

When I got home, I showed all the new books to a delighted Mulan and Miya.  They both immediately excitedly said that they wanted to do a page or two of each book every day.  They didn’t want to put any away for later.

I replied to Mulan that I had expected her to complete the easier book first and the other after.  But she wouldn’t hear of that.  So I said okay she is welcome to try the Grade 3 book, and see what she thinks.

It turns out that the Grade 3 book is more Mulan’s level.  For the past week, she has used the first book as an easy warm-up (doing it all completely independently and correctly herself), before turning to the second book for her real lesson.

Each day, with the second book I start Mulan off by getting her to read aloud the study words of the day (she can read them all herself with no trouble).  I then check she understands the tasks (she always does).  She then silently completes the exercises while I help Miya with her work.  At the end of each page, I check Mulan’s work (mostly all right, with a few minor corrections).

When Mulan has done two pages of each of these two books, she then continues with the maths book we bought last month.  She does a page or two of this, which I check at the end.  Our big thing at the moment in this book is getting familiar with times tables.  It is a good challenge for her to calculate them in her head, though after several of them her brain gets tired.

Finally, if she still has enough brain energy, she has a look at the activity pad:

We haven’t done much yet with the multiplication flash cards, except to suggest that Mulan could play some games with them when her friend Yiran comes to our place every day after school for babysitting/play/homework.  Mulan thought that would be a fun idea.

Oh, and at the beginning of each school lesson I read aloud to the girls a page from this How Come? science book, which was a present for Mulan last Christmas:

Miya’s schoolwork

Miya’s schooling situation is very different from Mulan’s at that age.

With Mulan, we started workbooks just before she turned four, and we worked on them for maybe about ten or so minutes a couple of times each week.  She didn’t finish her first workbook until she was four years and two months.

In contrast, Miya finished her first two workbooks on Monday.  She is three years and nine months.

The reason Miya is speeding through these workbooks so fast is that she likes to do school just as often as Mulan does.  This means that she does it every day, for maybe half an hour or so at a time.  (Mulan now does about an hour each day.)

All of this meant that last week I had to go back to the Guangzhou Book Centre bookshop to pick up more book supplies.  (I went on my own and had a wonderful relaxing time there!)  These are the books I got for Miya:

I also discovered that I had stored away in my future resources slash pressie cupboard this book, which I gave to her, too:

Each day this week Miya has been doing a couple of pages from each of these four books … and loving it.  Every morning, she nags at me to start their “school time”.

Is all this extra school time bookwork helping speed along Miya’s learning?

I doubt it.

For one thing, it is all swings and roundabouts.  Gains in one area are offset by losses in other areas.  Soon enough, things will more than likely even up.

For example, one other big difference between Mulan and Miya at that age was that I read to Mulan a lot.  When it was just Mulan and me together, we would often snuggle up together during the day with a reading book (or ten).  It was often an hour or two every day.  That just doesn’t happen with Miya.  In general, the only time I get to read to Miya each day is at night for about ten minutes just before bed.  So, Miya is far less advanced with story reading than Mulan was.  Which means that she is less familiar with letters and words.  She doesn’t yet know how to recite her ABCs (Mulan learnt from Dr Seuss).  And she gets bored quicker with longer stories.

Another big difference is that Miya has had a lot more free time playing with Mulan and other big kids.  This has resulted in her gaining skills and knowledge that would have been completely outside Mulan’s world at that age.  (I am a firm believer that children’s free play is not merely frivolous and fun; it is an essential part of how they learn [blog entry lost].)

And still another big difference is due to personality.  Miya has a much more spatial/sporty/engineering/physical mindset.  She loves screwdrivers and hammers, and likes to “fix” things.  She also likes sitting down and colouring in (which Mulan didn’t).  I suspect it is this background that has given her an advantage when holding her pencil, and has made her more advanced with her writing than Mulan was at that age.

I also doubt our workbook sessions are helping speed along her learning because I have read studies showing that starting children early with schooling does not make them more advanced than their slower-starting peers later on.  The education system in countries where children start school at seven is just as (or more) successful as those where children start at five (or younger).

So, I have no illusions that Miya’s more frequent workbook sessions will make her more advanced.

What we do suits Miya, and it suits our family lifestyle.  But I’m sure it is not better than what we did with Mulan.  (Or worse, for that matter!)

My next post (when I get around to it) will be on Mulan’s current schoolwork.

Sightseeing in Guangzhou

“No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one whit stronger, happier, or wiser. There was always more in the world than men could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does a bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being.” (John Ruskin)

 Suppose you decided to go to China for a sightseeing holiday, where would you go?

I’m guessing places like Beijing, Xi’an, Tibet, Hong Kong, Macao, Guilin, and Shanghai might spring to mind.  So might many other places.  China is a big country.

Guangzhou probably wouldn’t be high on the spring-to-mind list.

When My Big Sis said that she and her family were coming to China for seven weeks, my first question was where else in China should we take them.  It seemed obvious that there would not be enough to see and do only in my adopted home city of Guangzhou.

So, I suggested two outside-Guangzhou trips.  Beijing was an obvious choice, for maybe a couple of weeks.  And Xingping, which is a lovely little place nearby Guilin, was suggested for a shorter countryside trip.

As it turns out, we never went to either of those places.  My Big Sis and her family spent their entire time here in Guangzhou (they returned to New Zealand a few days ago).  And we never ran out of things to do.  In fact, not only were we kept busy the whole time, we also never completed our Guangzhou to-do list.

What did we fill our time with?

We went to a few parks:

Baiyun Mountain is a big park area to the north of the city.  There are many whole-day semi-nature walks up and around the mountain (I say “semi-nature” because it is all very civilised with paved paths and plenty of shops).  The cable car ride up from the south entrance (metro line 5, Taojin, then bus 245) is definitely worth it for its stunning views.  At the top of the cable car, we walked north to Moxing Summit, which is the highest peak in the area.  Continuing north down the worryingly-steep steps on the other side of the summit left us with rubbery legs, but we all managed to keep going.  We followed the path past the reservoir (which we didn’t swim at, but I read that it is possible) and out the west gate (where bus 424 took us to metro line 2).  All this took us about 10 hours.

Xiaogang Park (metro line 8, Xiaogang) is a medium-sized park just one metro stop, or a short walk, from our home.  It is a pleasant little half-day outing, and the children loved the several cheap amusement park rides near the entrance.

Dongshanhu Park (metro line 6, Donghu) is another medium-sized park fairly near our home (easier for us to get bus 211 rather than the metro).  The boats for hire on the lake are enjoyable.

Yuexiu Park (metro line 2) and Martyrs’ Park (metro line 1) were on our to-do list, but we never got to them.  Yuexiu Park is where the goat statue, the symbol of Guangzhou, is located.

We went to a few shopping areas:

Shangxiajiu Pedestrian Street (metro line 6, Huangsha) and Beijing Lu (metro line 1/2, Gongyuanqian) are horribly crowded street malls, but they are also cultural must-sees.  Beijing Lu has an interesting historical section, where you can see the ancient paved city streets.

At IKEA (metro line 1/3, Guangzhou East Railway), it is interesting to see the locals make themselves at home in the air-con coolness and comfort of the displays.  Us home-types also like to buy lots of stuff there.

It is an interesting walk through the richer parts of town from IKEA to Guangzhou Book Centre (metro line 1/3, Tiyu Xilu).  The book centre has several floors of books and the English book section is good and cheap.

Decathlon sports mega-store (metro line 3, Xiajiao) is worth a visit, both as a source of cheap-but-good sports equipment and as a playground for the children.  But it is best to go during school hours, if the children want to play with the free equipment.

And there are countless other shopping malls dotted throughout the city.

Several other city spots are worth a visit:

Shamian Island (metro line 6, Wenhua Park) is a must-see if you are interested in pretty European buildings from a hundred or so years ago.  The island was a sandbank before the Europeans built there, and so if you are lucky enough to go during the rainy-time, you can walk the streets with the water up to your thighs.  The US embassy is on the island, as are lots of souvenir shops.

Ersha Island (metro line 6, Donghu).  This island has two things going for it.  Firstly, it is a cultural centre, with an art museum, pleasant riverside promenade, and so on.  Secondly, it has the best children’s playground in the city.  It even has swings!

Canton Tower (metro line 3, Canton Tower).  Every city needs a big tower, and this 600+m tower is pretty impressively tall.  It is beautiful, and the views from the top aren’t bad on a clear day/evening.

Guangzhou Zoo (metro line 5, Zoo) is a good place to see pandas.  It also has white tigers.

Sacred Heart Cathedral (metro line 2/6, Haizhu Square) is like a mini Notre Dame.  Seriously, the front is very similar.  It also has English Catholic church services.  It is located in the old city area, and many nearby streets are crowded and bustling with the movement of shopping goods.

Zhujiang New Town (metro line 3/5, Zhujiang New Town) is worth wandering around.  When I first moved to Guangzhou nine years ago, I said that its new buildings looked so boring and old-fashioned.  But in the last few years some brilliantly creative people have built some modern masterpieces.  And a lot of them are in this area.  It also has a cool fountain and a very fancy Pizza Hut.

We enjoyed an open-top double-decker bus ride (bus line 1) out to Huangpu, an old local village, where we wandered around for a few hours.

Panyu Square, at the end of line 3, is worth visiting.  It is a bit like a mini-Tiananmen Square.

A ferry ride up and down the river is a good way to see the area.  The ferry stops at several places, including the North Gate of Sun Yat-sen University.

Most of the metro lines are underground, but some end above ground.  These are line 4 (Jinzhou), line 5 (Jiaokou) and line 6 (Xunfengang).  It is worth travelling to the ends of these lines to see the city outskirts.

We didn’t get to the Guangdong Science Centre (metro line 4, Higher Education Mega Centre North, then bus 5), which was a shame, because I think it is a brilliant place for the children.  It also looks like a Star Trek spaceship.  Neither did we get to the Chen Clan Academy or the Guangxiao (Bright Filial Piety) Temple.  We didn’t visit any open homes of new apartment complexes, and we didn’t have a night boat cruise on the river.

We went to more personal places:

I live on the campus of Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University (metro line 8, Sun Yat-sen University).  There are lots of pleasant walks inside the university grounds.  The North Gate exits at the river, and in the evenings it is a social place for music and dance.

Sun Yat-sen University also has a campus in the university town (metro line 4, Higher Education Mega Centre north), and this is where Yeye worked for six months back in 2007.  Apart from seeing the building where Yeye taught at, it is also interesting to wander around the big, wide, empty-ish streets, the parks, and the several university campuses.  It is a contrast to the more crowded central city areas.

I worked for three years at Guangdong University of Business Studies (end of bus line 14).  Since I left in 2008, they have taken over the next-door farmland and built some huge new classroom buildings.  In the distance, several new Canton Trade Fair buildings have popped up, too.  But the immediate surrounding area still is pretty rundown and poor-looking.

Before I got married in 2006, I lived by the Kecun (line 8) metro station in an apartment complex owned by a film studio.  There have been big changes since I left there, including several old buildings pulled down and a new shopping centre built.  But out back behind all the fancy buildings there are still some interesting older alleyways.

Mulan used to have drama classes at a Children’s Activity Centre (metro line 5, Xiaobei), which has weekend children’s classes.  It is interesting to see how the local children spend their weekends.  This area is also interesting because it is where a lot of African and Arabian foreigners make their home.  As I walk the streets there, I occasionally get asked if I am Muslim.

Mulan and Miya had ballet and art classes.

My Big Sis’ family went to English language church services at a few different churches.

Gufu caught the fast train to Shenzhen for the day, to visit one of his relatives who lives there.

And we spent the rest of our time talking and playing.  The children would have been equally happy just playing together at home the entire time.

P4C: Fairness and sharing the burdens

Two days ago, I did an English-language P4C lesson with the six children (Mulan, Miya and the cousins).

Since we have been doing a lot of walking lately, I decided to do an activity that gets them thinking about what is the fairest way to share the carrying burdens.

Unschooler-style, I left six copies of the dialogue (the first page of the above-linked pdf) sitting on the floor of the children’s play area.  As I put it down, I casually said to the children that they could look through it if they want.  On one of the pages, I had written out a suggestion of who could read which lines in the dialogue.

I then left the children to continue their free play.

A little later, I heard the children reading through the dialogue out loud, with each child taking the parts that I had suggested.  Soon after, Mulan came to me and said they were ready to do it with me.  So, we all sat down together on the floor in the playroom.

I had done no other preparation for this lesson, so everything that followed was just off the top of my head.

I started with some general points of clarification, just to make sure they understood the background.  I asked if they knew where Edinburgh was, who the Duke of Edinburgh is, and what is the Duke of Edinburgh Award.

They didn’t know much about this (one thought Edinburgh is in England), so I talked about these three things for a few minutes.  I concluded by saying that the award is an international skills-based learning programme for teenagers.  They can do it in New Zealand.  The teenagers in the dialogue are doing a tramping expedition as part of the requirements of the award.

The children then read through the dialogue together.  Each of them had circled on their own paper the lines they were saying, so it went smoothly (I helped Miya say her line and Cousin Rosa helped the youngest cousin, who is still learning to read).

I asked for a volunteer to be in charge of the blackboard, and Mulan was eager, so I asked her to write out the names of all the characters, which she happily and neatly did.

Once that was done, we discussed each characters’ ideas in turn, and I summarised their main thoughts on the blackboard.  This naturally turned into a general discussion about each of those ideas, and the reasons for and against each idea of fairness.

I think the main point of this activity was to introduce to the children the possibility that different people could have different ideas about fairness.  All too often, a child will shout out, “it’s just not fair!”, and when they do this, they usually assume that it is their idea of how things should be which the fair one and what is actually happening is precisely not fair.  So I wasn’t too worried that we didn’t get into a lot of depth in our conversation.

If they could see that several different views could all potentially be seen as fair, depending on which values we prioritise, then in my eyes the lesson was a success.  Looking at the reasons for and against in more detail can wait until another lesson.

Finally, I selected out four of the views I had written on the blackboard (even though there were plenty more possible ideas):

• Aaron: everyone carries exactly the same weight
• Jeb: base it on money, so that people (the richest?) can buy their way out of contributing
• Charlie: start out the same weight then change when some start to struggle with their load
• Frank: people who can do more, do more from the beginning; those who need more help receive it from the beginning

I allocated each of the four corners of the room one of the four views.  We all then stood up and walked around the room in a circle.  When I said go, the children had to go to the corner that they most agreed with.

Well, this was a nice idea, except that some of us forgot which corner was for which view!  (I should have put a sign at each corner, but I was too lazy!!)  Only one person (Cousin Rosa) remembered, and went to her preferred corner.  So, we had to ask her which view was each corner.  Once she told us, everyone followed her into her chosen corner.

They had all preferred Frank’s idea.  (Or was it that they all preferred Cousin Rosa’s idea?)

I asked them if they had heard of Karl Marx.  No one had.  I pointed out that, similar to Frank, his view of fairness is “from each according to his ability; to each according to his need”.  They all thought this was quite sensible.

Hehe, all our children are Marxists!

In the evening, after the other adults came home, the children performed the play for us.  In the middle of their “stage”, they set up a mountain made of cushions and soft toys, and at the end of the play they all piled on top of it.