How to change your next generation’s destiny
anonymous-114 03/06 44924.5/125
(By Limin Song)
How to change your next generation’s destiny: Give your kids a dream for better life, encourage them work hard, if these are not part of your culture, change your culture.
I am not a politician, so I will not talk about how to make policies and laws for different races in California. I was born and raised in China, I want to tell people how my parents and I raise
the next generation to be successful.
My parents kept telling us if you want to make your life better, please work hard.
My parents has four kids, I was the third one born in 1969. We lived in a small town, and we were very poor. My parents worked so hard to provide food, cloth, and a roof. Besides the basic
living, they were not able to provide much more for us. My mother always told us that if you want a better life, if you want colorful clothes, if you want delicious food, work hard on your
study, go to college, flip your wings, and fly out of this small town, embrace the world. My dad always told us that tomorrow is always a better day if you can complete your today’s work. Of
course environment matters for young generation to be successful, but no matter how favorable policies you get for your kids, if your kids don’t know how to work hard and don’t understand what a
better life is, they will not get benefit from the policies in a long run. The bill of SCA5 is a short cut, but if they are not working hard, the chance to be successful very rare.
My parents sacrificed their own to support their kids when needed. I was a very naughty girl in school. I remember once, I got some of the kids from my class on the reservoir to swim in middle
school. The reservoir was probated of swimming because one kid drowned in the previous year. That was a very serious mistake I made I guess, so I was kicked out of school. That was the most
critical event in my life. I either dropped out of school, or I have another chance. I was just a kid, and all I knew was crying. My parents helped me through that. My dad started to negotiate
with school teachers, principles, city majors, eventually going to County Manager. Today I understand how brutal it was for my parents. My parents got fined for RMB500 in 1985 so I can stay in
school. Can somebody tell me how much that amount of money worth! That amount of money can support a household of 4 kids and two parents for a year of living. That must be very hard for my
parents to collect all that money from friends, relatives, but they provided one more chance for my life, I scored top 10 of 1000 students in my school and got in a very high ranked high school
, moved forward to college and went through graduate school in America, today I am a very hard working soft engineer in Silicon valley.
I have two kids. My daughter is still young, and my son is studying in EECS department in Berkeley. He got admitted in many top schools but he chose Berkeley because he likes Silicon Valley and
he is a Californian.
Do you know how hard as parents and my son worked to get into EECS of Berkeley. There is no way that I am not proud of it. Indeed, I am very proud of this. Let me tell you how hard we worked.
My husband started to teach my son Olympic math when he was 5. I remember often the days when I was driving the car, and his dad was giving the Monkey and chicken legs, cow grass math to my son,
he was so young, and he needed to use his fingers. My son and his dad were persistently working on math problems until my son was in middle school. After middle school my son just followed math
counter and other math competence program along with school. But how much effort my son and his dad made to guide through my son in the road of math!
We invested not only time, efforts, but also money to our kids . When my son was in middle school, the teacher called a parents- teacher call. We were informed that my son had problems for
writing. What happened was that he could come up main topics and sub topics perfectly, but was not able to fill in contents and context to support his ideas. We as parents discussed and decided
to send him to Sylvan learning center. So we sent him to Sylvan learning center for 3 years, every Wednesday for an hour for writing until high school. In high school, he was almost always the
best writer in his literature classes. How much money we spent on his writing? It is about $20000. We didn’t have a house at that time; we always cooked food in house to save money. We were
seldom dining out. We are working so hard and saving money to invest to our kids. (Of course my cooking is super, and my own homemade baozi is the best in bay area once a Taiwan sister
commented.)
We also encouraged him to go around the world following church group to do volunteer work when he was in summer break since middle school. He himself contributes the spirit of hardworking where
ever he goes.
My parents and my kids’ parents have one thing in common, I would say, the root Chinese culture is the same. The Chinese culture--- invest to kids so much -- from time, money, and more important
----a hope for better life. The second Chinese generation in America will be doing much better than the first Chinese generation of immigrant . Why? The first generation of Chinese immigrant
parents work so hard for any possible ways to send the kids to college.
If SCA5 ever passes, hard working will get punished. I can’t find the exact quote from the famous man Andre Carnegie also known as his hard work---- The way to Carnegie music Hall is through
hard work---
Different race has their different cultures, and culture predefines the future. The documentary 56 UP ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2147134/ ) demonstrated how important when young kids get the
resource to be successful in the future. when other kids are read financial magazines at 7 or doing math at 5, what are your kids doing?
If you want to change you next generation’s destiny, no matter what race you are, DON’T take the short cut ( for example SCA5 ). Please give your kids a dream and encourage them work hard, if
these are not part of your culture, and then change your culture.
(My clean lady is from Mexico, and I love her. I helped her to post advertisement on line to get more customers for her because she is really working hard and does a great job for my house. She
was able to get her son in America two years ago, and the young boy is in middle school right now. I gave all my son’s books and other things to the boy, and apparently he loves reading and
studying. I think the boy will have a brilliant future because he is working hard)
