About

This blog was set up to meet a class assignment. However, the combined topic of cultures, education and parenting is very interesting to me. In 1970, most schools in the Houston area integrated.  I had been attending a predominantly white school but lived closer to a predominantly black school, so my family didn’t know which school building I would walk to for fourth grade.  Integrating our schools was hard for everyone –students, teachers, and families– but it was the right thing to do, because now our children are attending public schools where diversity is taken for granted.

Shortly after Amy Chua’s book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” was released, an article entitled, “Why Chinese Parents are Superior,” was published in the Wall Street Journal.  Reading some of the responses to the controversial article, I realized that families and parenting styles have both changed a lot since integration started the process of creating equal educational opportunities.  Now, if some children are more academically successful than others, the first difference that comes to mind is no longer the school they can attend but the way their parents raise them.  This blog explores the cultural differences and similarities of parenting school-age children and teens in Houston, Texas.

Blog Brevity

In the beginning of the semester, we were required to write long posts, then mid-semester, our class was charged with cutting the longest posts in half and starting to write more concisely for future posts.  After trimming the longer posts, some of the original comments may no longer make sense.