World Class by Teru Clavel

WORLD CLASS by Teru Clavel describes “One Mother's Journey Halfway Around the Globe in Search of the Best Education for Her Children” since they attended school in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo before moving back to the United States. This is definitely a topic of high interest to our students, especially those whose parents may have been educated in other countries. There are certainly cultural differences and attitudes which are fascinating and Clavel describes many of them.  However, she is extremely negative about the Palo Alto school district, one of our sister schools. Frankly, this caused me to wonder how reasonable it was to try to generalize her children’s experience(s) as describing an entire nation’s (or region’s) school system? As other reviewers have noted, I do believe that her intentions were good, but I felt that she often made sweeping statements which were rather simplistic and sometimes repetitive, as she herself says, “One of the hard truths I came around to in California was that I’d been a little naïve about the US education system in general. … I had downplayed in my own mind how deeply rooted and systemic the problems are.”  To her credit, she includes extensive notes and references, plus a glossary and index. Also, Clavel, draws a number of parallels, noting, for example that in 2017 the OECD found that globally teachers make an average of 88 percent of the salary of those in other professions with the same level of education (in US middle schools, that figure is 60 percent) – if we want the best teachers (and reduced turnover) for our children, we should reflect that in our compensation and provide better financial incentives. I also liked how she tried to steer the conversation to learning, rather than schools, although I believe there is much more that could have been written about innovation in American schools relative to Asian ones. Overall, her suggestions about dealing with administrators or encouraging your child to read the classics seemed unrealistic for many parents. She says, “I’ve always believed that you assess your child’s education every day and then support them as best you can” which is certainly important, but at what point should those students be taking increased responsibility for their own intellectual and emotional growth? If you are interested in education, I would suggest beginning by shadowing a high school student at your local school as well as reading other titles, such as these recent ones.

Alpha Girls by Julian Guthrie

ALPHA GIRLS by Julian Guthrie profiles four women who succeeded in the male dominated culture of Silicon Valley, specifically in venture capital, “an industry that is not well known but has enormous influence.”  Guthrie shares events - both professional and personal - at various times in these women’s lives.  She begins in the 1980s when they were studying engineering or business at elite universities like the University of Virginia, Stanford, Purdue, Harvard, and Brown. The women’s backgrounds are different: Theresia Gouw’s family is from Jakarta, Indonesia, Magdalena Yeşil grew up in Turkey and is fluent in four languages, Sonja Hoel Perkins had worked briefly at the London Stock Exchange and later joins Menlo Ventures, and MJ Elmore is from the Midwest but stays in Menlo Park, California after getting a job at institutional Venture Partners (IVP) also on Sand Hill Road. The next section of the book deals with the mid to late 1990s and the opportunities that technology and the Internet offered. Guthrie injects a great deal of “name-dropping” and life style description (e.g., annual Hawaiian getaway for women of venture capital).  She also stresses how over time, and for various reasons, each woman struggles with belonging. The text continues through 2018 and Guthrie makes additional observations in her author’s note, saying, “research shows that companies with more diversity, particularly with more women in leadership, offer higher returns on capital and greater innovation.” 

Guthrie defines an Alpha Girl as “a woman of any age who refuses to give up on her dreams.” As a reader, it is interesting to observe the inter-generational differences and the author’s “surprise” at how hard it was for these women to share. Guthrie and the even younger women who are just starting out today do face discrimination, but thanks to the many conversations and changes that have occurred, their more recent experiences are certainly different - and hopefully less lonely - from those faced by the “pioneers” profiled in ALPHA GIRLS. It is fascinating to look at the changes that have occurred and to continue the discussions about future change: to view more about “The Women Upstarts Who Took on Silicon Valley's Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime” see the videos and interviews which are available on Julian Guthrie’s web site. I will be recommending this text (and Melinda Gates’ The Moment of Lift) as a possible independent read for our business classes, although its main audience will be older. ALPHA GIRLS contains some photographs and a helpful index, but no bibliography.     

Unauthorized: Portarits of Latino Immigrants

UNAUTHORIZED: PORTRAITS OF LATINO IMMIGRANTS is written by two professors, Marisol Clark-Ibáñez and Richelle Swan, at California State University San Marcos where they have supervised “dozens of master’s theses on issues related to inequality and the Latinx or immigrant communities of San Diego.”  The authors describe the “singular mission” of this book as “honoring and sharing the contemporary experiences of undocumented Latinx immigrants in the United States.” They refer to “scholar Elvira Pulitano [and her assertion] that the stories behind undocumented immigration ‘need to be heard if the United States intends to live up to its founding principles of dignity and respect for all people.’”  

Recognizing that this is a sensitive and emotional topic, they raise myths and make attempts at myth busting. As in their classes, Clark-Ibáñez and Swan “stress the use of scholarly research, documentary film, and community voices to best understand the issues.” For example, did you know that “the majority of unauthorized immigrants in the United States have lived here for more than ten years (66 percent) and a minority have lived here for less than five years (14 percent)?” That is from work by PEW Research which is also cited separately in order to remind readers that “the estimated eleven million unauthorized immigrants in the United States make up a total of 3.5 percent of the country’s total population.” And, according to a report by the California Immigrant Policy Center, “in terms of the undocumented Latinx population in general, about 81% live in households with citizens.” Those statistics are all from UNAUTHORIZED’s first chapter which provides background, numbers and definitions, plus an overview of the entire text. 

Each subsequent chapter by Clark-Ibáñez and Swan begins with a brief portrait of an immigrant. This is truly a multidimensional work; individual chapters deal with media portrayal, labor, education, healthcare, legal issues, resistance and recommendations. Numerous examples and detailed explanations are provided in a clear and accessible manner. Many of the resources to which the authors refer are linked at UndocuResearch, another project of Clark-Ibáñez’s. Notes and an index make up roughly forty percent of UNAUTHORIZED, a text which will definitely be of interest to our teachers and student researchers.