Let's Fire Up Those Neurons!

Discussion in 'Education & Personal Growth' started by Gauri03, Jul 23, 2014.

  1. butterflyice

    butterflyice Local Champion Staff Member Platinum IL'ite

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    You can write a note like that? Wow, I didnt know about this, might come in handy in the higher grades I guess.

    Your kids don't do kumon a? what kind of parent are you?;)

    Seriously this competition between Desi parents is one of the key factors that keeps us living out of Desi neighbourhoods. Whenever there is a desi gathering (esp South Indian) I always come back feeling defeated, feeling I am not doing enough for the kids to survive in this "competitive world"! Mentally I am making note of what workbooks my kid has to work on ....
    And then I meet my american friends and all is well, we are back to reading and discussing Greek Myths; I console myself that the kid gets enough math from school and from music :)

    Sorry for hijacking this thread Gauri.
     
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  2. Gauri03

    Gauri03 Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    Now I cannot like that post! :tongue
     
  3. Gauri03

    Gauri03 Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    This is exactly what this thread is for! :) Discussions! I really wish people would chat more.
     
  4. HappyMommy

    HappyMommy Bronze IL'ite

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    It is brain work indeed.. had a hunch which is now solid.. will wait for the answer...

    Right in time for Diwali.. :)
     
  5. Gauri03

    Gauri03 Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    Welcome to the club! My kid doesn't go to any classes (except sports), and goes to public school! Oh the horror! I don't see why I should pay the price of a mid-range car to get my son to learn what I can teach him better than any school on earth.

    Math, tennis, piano/violin -- all the kids I know are little automatons with zero independent thought.

    My husband and I have taken a very different approach to parenting. Very hands on and very experience oriented. We don't buy them stuff, we buy them experiences. In fact most rewards in my house are activities, not things.

    Maybe we ought to make a thread to exchange tips on how to get your kids to succeed without helicopter parenting.
     
  6. vaidehi71

    vaidehi71 IL Hall of Fame

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    well probably I am one of the desi mums....ask my kids they will link me to tiger mother of china......:rotfl
    sorry Gauri could not resist, not related to the discussion to others.
     
  7. Viswamitra

    Viswamitra IL Hall of Fame

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    I am not sure whether this is going to give comfort to the parents of young children because my son is 26 years old. However, I would like to highlight what I did as a parent when my son was growing up prior to reaching his undergrad.

    1) Many suggested private school is a must including the woman who interviewed me to give my multi-national executive (L1A) visa in US Consulate in Chennai. I was comfortable sending him to public schools even though Florida is not necessarily the best state for school education.

    2) We have allowed him to pursue extra-curricular activities he chose such as Tennis, Karate and Guitar. We have made the mistake of choosing Piano lessons for him which he walked away in two days

    3) He has qualified for Bright Future scholarship in the State of Florida. He applied for 5 universities and got admitted in all 5 of them including 2 outside State Universities. He decided to go to a public University in Florida for undergrad as he preferred no outside loan. He asked me to fund for his boarding and lodging while the State paid his tuition. This is the only expense I have incurred for his education

    4) After finishing his undergrad, he wanted to pursue Graduate degree and chose an University that gave him a Research Associate position besides waiving the tuition

    5) After finishing his grad, he decided to pursue Ph.D. and go to another University in Florida which gave him 4 years scholarship including tuition waiver, medical care and salary as Research Associate. He chose this program because his ambition is to go and work for one of the national labs. Six national labs together collaborated under the Department of Defense to award projects to 6 Universities and this University is one of them.

    6) He has zero liability towards student loans as he chose the Universities very carefully with great financial acumen

    7) We as parents encouraged him to make a lot of independent decision and it so happened that his decisions are taking him towards his goal very nicely.

    He is still work-in-progress and I may be talking too soon. Most importantly his attitude, character, communication skills, decision-making skills, spiritual bent, etc. are spectacular going by what I heard from friends, relatives, his faculties and fellow-students.

    In my view, there is nothing like one specific model to make a child into a fine young man/woman. I am sharing this to make the parents comfortable with whatever decisions they have made or are making now.
     
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  8. Viswamitra

    Viswamitra IL Hall of Fame

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    I am grateful to all likes for the post above and take them as blessings and prayers for my son's well-being. From your click of like button to God's ears.

    Viswa
     
  9. Gauri03

    Gauri03 Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    Answer for #2483

    The answer for this puzzle is the game of Chess. Chess was invented in India around 6-7 AD. It is believed to be a variant of an older game chaturanga, a battle simulation game, mentioned as early as the Mahabharat.

    Image 1: A statue of Alice walking through a looking glass. Clue referred to Lewis Carroll's book 'Through the looking glass'. The book is structured like a game of chess and all characters are chess pieces. Alice is a white pawn.

    Image 2: Screen grab from the movie 'The Luzhin Defense', based on the book of the same name, also called, The Defense, by Vladimir Nabokov of 'Lolita' fame. The book details the life of a tormented chess grandmaster.

    Image 3: ++ and # are both chess notations for the final move in any game, the 'checkmate'.

    Image 4: The red light is the computer HAL from the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey. In this movie the astronaut Frank Poole is shown playing chess with the supercomputer HAL. It is probably the most famous chess match between a human and a computer in a movie.

    Image 5: The blue colored computer alluded to the first computer to defeat a human at chess - IBM's Deep Blue. The computer in the image is Deep Thought from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (H2G2G). IBM named the second version of their chess playing computer Deep Thought as a nod to the famous computer from the H2G2G books. In the book, Deep Thought was created to find the answer to "Life, the universe and everything in it." After 7.5 million years of computation, the answer it came up with was 42. This number has attained cult status among trivia geeks. If you ask Google the answer to life the universe and everything it will answer 42!

    Image 6: A screen grab from the movie "The Seventh Seal", about a medieval knight and the game of chess he plays with death. Good students of this thread who read the primers would have recognized the character of death from Deepslikes' Silk Road puzzle! :)

    Image 7: A painting of the battle scene in the Mahabharat. The first mention of a chess-like battle formation was from the Mahabharat. It was called Chaturanga or the 4 limbs of an army -- the elephants, the chariots, the horsemen and the infantry.
     
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  10. Gauri03

    Gauri03 Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    Discussion of textual clue for #2483

    A quintet seeking vengeance against their kindred, summoned a four-limbed host: The five Pandavas seeking revenge from their cousins summoned the four-limbed host, an army of elephants, chariots, horses and foot soldiers.

    The enlightened one warned against the gamble and banished it from his presence: The Buddha was known to have forbidden the game of chaturanga since he considered it equivalent to gambling which was a sin. There is some evidence that chaturanga was played with dice in its early versions.

    It traveled from India, through Persia, to Europe, enchanting kings and commoners with its clever campaigns. Neither luck nor force can conquer it; it is a slave to reason: The game reached Europe with the Arabs, from Persia where it had acquired the name Shatranj, a distortion of chaturanga.

    These days it serves a Viking master: The current FIDE chess grandmaster is the Norwegian, Magnus Carlsen.
     
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