【Native Speaker每日综合训练—45系列】【45-15】children

cyndichiang

内容：cyndichiang 编辑：cyndichiang

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Part I: Speaker

What adults can learn from kids

Source: TED
http://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitak

[Rephrase 1, 08:12]

cyndichiang

Part II: Speed

The Princess Trap
By David Auerbach  | DEC. 2 2014

[Time 2]
When my 4-year-old told me the other day that she was “ready for princesses,” part of me died. Not just because the day had finally arrived when that virulent meme had infected her, but also because of how utterly powerless I was to contain it. Let me be clear: These weren’t progressive princesses like Adventure Time’s Lumpy Space Princess and Doctor Princess (that’s just her last name). This kind of princess forced my programmer wife and me to do what we swore we’d never do to our child, which is deny our daughter a book. The one my kid picked up in the bookstore spent more pages describing its characters’ future husbands than the princesses themselves, and when a book about girls for girls fails to pass the Bechdel test, something is pretty wrong. Other princess books she looked at weren’t much better. Exemplary, idiosyncratic female role models, like Turtle from The Westing Game or Rat from The Snarkout Boys & the Avocado of Death, were nowhere to be found.

Getting more women into science and technology fields: Where’s the silver bullet? While I might get more hits by revealing the One Simple Trick to increase female participation in the sciences, the truth is there isn’t some key inflection point where young women’s involvement drops off. Instead, there is a series of small- to medium-sized discouraging factors that set in from a young age, ranging from unhelpful social conditioning to a lack of role models to unconscious bias to very conscious bias. Any and all of these can figure into why, for example, women tend to underrate their technical abilities relative to men. I know plenty of successful women in the sciences, but let’s not fool ourselves and say the playing field in the academic sciences or the tech world is even. My wife attributes her pursuit of programming to being a loner and pretty much ignoring wider society while growing up: “Being left alone with a computer (with NO INTERNET TO TELL ME WHAT I COULDN’T DO) was the deciding factor,” she tells me.
[345 words]

[Time 3]
While our daughter is already addicted to tablets, she can pick any career she likes. What we want is for her to grow up with no preconceptions of women as less talented or capable than men, which is why we try to foster an environment in which our daughter can imagine herself doing anything.

But that means every day is a minefield of tiny yet potentially catastrophic gender signifiers—at least if your mind is as unhealthily obsessive as mine. Her animal toys, for example: Which are male and which are female? Trying to avoid pronouns drove me insane, and I can’t bear using a singular “they.” So a few years back, I arbitrarily decided that of her three dinosaurs, the stegosaurus and triceratops are female and the apatosaurus is male. But as the animals piled up, my memory failed me. While my daughter tends to default to making the animals male (with some exceptions, like a noisome stuffed green dinosaur named “Smelly”), I’ve taken to swapping pronouns to try to even the balance. I can’t remember exactly when I do this, so some animals have switched genders multiple times. My daughter seems to roll with it.

Things get trickier outside the apartment. Our local toyshop is neatly divided into two aisles, one with building sets and model trains and games, the other with Barbies and princess dresses. It’s not that dress-up and dolls are inherently terrible, just that an exclusive focus on stereotypical-girl interests severely limits the scope of unstructured play, which is so important to creative development. When we visit the shop, we try to minimize our involuntary sighs, but our child notices when we get more excited about the boys’ side. Not that she’s realized it’s the boys aisle—because it’s not. It’s a kids aisle.
[299words]

Source: Slate
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/12/women_in_tech_and_the_sciences_how_to_make_sure_your_daughter_knows_she.html

If you are a boy, dress up like Elsa
By Kate Cohen  | OCT. 31 2014

[Time 4]
It is not easy to scare people on Halloween these days. In 2014, rivers of blood course through network television; serial killers have been downgraded from stomach-churning monsters to TV bad boys; and the public is bombarded with zombie movies, vampire novels, and CNN Ebola updates. A mask of The Scream just isn’t going to cut it.

But there is one image that retains the power to terrify: A boy dressed as a girl.

Every year, about this time, the Internet buzzes with parental panic: My boy wants to be a princess—or Daphne from Scooby Doo or Wendy from Peter Pan—what should I do?  Would you let your son be Frozen’s Elsa for Halloween? Care.com reports that 65 percent of people it surveyed (1,654 out of a total of 2,548) said “no” to letting a boy wear a princess costume.* Or, as a CaféMom commenter put it, “NO WAY AND HE WOULDN’T WANT TO ANYWAY.”

I wish I could dismiss the horror-struck momosphere with sympathetic condescension—man, it must be hard to live in a red state—but I can’t. My dining room table is a progressive enclave within a liberal bastion within the state of New York, and yet, it was there that my 5-year-old son’s declaration that he wanted to be Wonder Woman for Halloween was met with the shocked gasps and nervous laughter of our dinner guests. No one spoke. And then a friend—trembling but determined, like the one kid in the horror movie brave enough to move toward the scary sound behind the door—ventured, “Wouldn’t you rather be Spiderman?”

A couple of years ago, ABC News did an installment of What Would You Do? in which they staged an argument between a mom and a son in a costume store. The son wanted to be a princess; the mom said “no.” And the other customers helpfully tried to give him ideas of things he could be—policeman, firefighter, ninja—while agreeing with the fake mom that she should “nip it in the bud.”
[341 words]

[Time 5]
But what is “it” and why does it need to be nipped?

Why are grown-ups so terrified by the thought of a boy in a Belle costume? Do they take literally the expression, “What are you going to be for Halloween?” Do they, missing some fundamental understanding of the concept of costume, believe that if you dress as a girl, you’ll stick that way?
No one appears concerned that, say, a child who dresses as a yellow crayon will be consigned to a life of monochromatic coloring. Or that a child in an alien costume will ultimately have to return to the home planet. There are no feverish blog posts along the lines of Should I let my son dress as a Martian? Children are regularly permitted—even encouraged—to dress as zombies, spiders, and Rubik’s cubes. Which means, I guess, that if you’re a boy, it’s worse to become a girl than ... pretty much anything.

If people aren’t actually afraid that wearing a dress could turn a boy into a girl, perhaps they fear that it could make a boy gay. You know, the way wearing a football uniform makes you straight. Granted, it seems unlikely—it’s 2014, and “Born This Way” seems fairly well-established—but as a careful reader, I think I can detect a hint of old-fashioned homophobia in Facebook comments like, “If u want them to be gay then go right a head.”
Some claim not to let their boys wear girl costumes simply to protect them—from bullying, from a bad reputation, from “gender confusion.” They might even scoff at the idea that clothes determine sexual orientation ... while secretly believing that clothes reveal it. That their boy is dressing as a girl for the day because he really wants to dress as a girl all the time and Halloween is his one chance to go full Elsa. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being gay—as long as it’s someone else’s kid.
[329 words]

[Time 6]
My son did not, in the end, go full Wonder Woman that Halloween. He decided on Batman. It turns out that his annual Halloween ambition is not to frighten, but to ingratiate. He once told a succession of neighboring homeowners that they each had the best Halloween decorations on the street. When he dressed as a Miami Dolphin he told all the Giants fans that the Giants were his second favorite team, and mysteriously ended up with more candy than either of his younger siblings.

As someone who believes Halloween should be about terror, not Twix, I feel that my son—leaving his Wonder Woman costume in the toy bin, never wearing in public the skirt he got for his fifth birthday—missed a big opportunity. An opportunity my daughter, for one, will never have. Girl-dressed-as-boy is just not scary. On top of which, it’s actually very difficult for a girl to dress as a boy: when a girl dresses as Batman or Han Solo, she is dressing up as the main character, the hero. Whereas when her brother wants to be Pepper Potts or Princess Leia, well that’s obviously just frightening.

Maybe when enough popular heroes are female, then we won’t see their femaleness as their primary characteristic. I’m pretty sure that when choosing his favorite character from the Justice League, my son was thinking not boobs vs. pecs butinvisible plane vs. Batmobile. Enough female heroes—hell, enough female characters with character—and maybe grown-ups will be able to think that way, too.  

Until then, as a society, we will continue suffer from a pervasive irrational fear that we can neither fully explain nor entirely squelch. So tonight, boys, if you really want to scare the crap out of your neighbors, you know what to do. Might I recommend something in pink tulle with a sweetheart neckline?
[308 words]

Source: Slate
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/family/2014/10/halloween_fright_boys_dressed_as_girls_are_still_really_scary.html

cyndichiang

Part III: Obstacle

Rebalancing your sourcing strategy
By Diana Divecha | December 3 2014

[Paraphrase 7]
Americans are obsessed with parenting advice. Bloggers, magazines, whole Web sites urge us to do more. Or less. Be more Chinese, they implore. Or more French.

But despite this constant flow of advice, we have very little idea how to make kids happy. Quantitative measures show that American children areamong the most miserable in the developed world, and there’s a growing gap between our kids and those in other nations. America’s teens “trail much of the world on measures of school achievement, but are among the world leaders in violence, unwanted pregnancy, STDs, abortion, binge drinking, marijuana use, obesity, and unhappiness,” according toadolescence scholar Larry Steinberg.   

At their core, a country’s policies and practices are driven by belief systems. And while other developed countries are taking a supportive attitude toward their future citizens, America seems mired in the ancient, dehumanizing beliefs about children that will continue to hold our kids back, and eventually the country as well.

For most of human history, there was no time of life known as “childhood.” Children simply went from being immature humans to being miniature adults as soon as they could dress, feed, and toilet themselves. They were considered sub-human: depraved, filled with the devil, incapable of feelings like fear, pain, or terror. As a result, child maltreatment was the norm, perfectly legal and widely practiced. Infanticide was widespread, and children were “civilized” with force—regular beatings, physical and emotional violence.

There was a revolutionary shift in the treatment of children during the Age of Enlightenment. Philosopher John Locke argued that a child was a “tabula rasa,” a blank slate upon which the environment etched the form. Jean-Jacques Rousseau said children were inherently good, and if protected and treated with kindness they would naturally flourish.

Reforms in education and parenting followed, and between the 18th and mid-20th centuries, education and parenting shifted in Western countries from subjugation to “socializing”—less conquering of the will, more guiding and teaching. Children were increasingly seen as precious and sacred.
The past century has brought some protections and rights to children in recognition of their vulnerable developing status, including limits on labor, outlawed infanticide, protection from abuse, and mandatory education. But echoes of these earliest beliefs still haunt American policies and practices today.

Take, for example, the American value on the sanctity of the family. America and Somalia are the only countries in the UN that have refused to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, an agreement that ensures children’s basic rights, and urges states to place children’s needs at the center of policy-making. Protesting a “nanny state,” American conservatives have blocked ratification, objecting to government intrusion into their family autonomy and fearing that children’s rights might trump those of adults.

A similar objection is raised when it comes to spanking. Recently, Minnesota Vikings player Adrian Peterson made the news for “disciplining” his 4-year-old son with a tree branch, injuring the child’s back, thighs, and a testicle. In spite of research that shows that spanking is ineffective as a disciplinary method and can harm children’s future health and well-being, Peterson is, in fact, among the majority of Americans: At least three-quarters of families still approve of spanking and have spanked their children at least once; and corporal punishment is still legal in 19 states. Other countries, though—43 so far, in Europe, Latin America, and Africa—have stepped up to protect children by banning spanking and corporal punishment. America clings to the sanctity of parents’ right to determine the fate of their own children, including the right to hit them.
Secondly, we seem unfazed by the current level of violence against children.

Since 1963, 166,500 children have been killed by guns. That’s more than the number of American soldiers killed in action abroad in the Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars combined. American children are 17 times more likely to be killed by a gun than children in 25 other rich countries combined. There have been 74 school shootings since Newtown, when politicians promised never again.

Congress passed a federal law on child protection in 1974, yet a quarter of children are still traumatized in their own home. Research shows that trauma disrupts children’s brain development and impairs their later health and well-being. And America’s bullying rates stubbornly remain in the top third among developed countries. Even our infant mortality rates areamong the highest in the developed world—only Slovakia, Latvia, and Romania are worse.

Current research shows that when we engage constructively with children’s feelings, they have better psychological health, better relationships, and higher achievement.

But instead, we drug our kids and teens. According to Steinberg, though ADHD rates are roughly similar around the world, he says, Americans use 75 percent of the all ADHD medication taken on the planet. We are fourth from the bottom in educational attainment among developed countries.Other countries treat the psychosocial context of the child, offering therapy and working with the families.  Or we punish or expel children from school—preschoolers are being expelled in record numbers, and zero toleranceprograms are reducing children’s educational achievement, increasing their contact with the criminal justice system, and failing to improve schools overall. Almost two-thirds of our high schools have armed security guards.

Research shows that children come into the world with a positive bias—they are prepared to be empathic and show kind behaviors toward others as soon as they are able to—but we are squandering that potential. UNICEF ranks American children 26th out of 29 rich countries on overall measures of well-being, and American kids rate themselves in the bottom quartile on measures of happiness. Our teens are more stressed than adults and feel less supported than teens in other countries. One study found that teens today are five times more likely to meet the cutoff for significant psychopathology than teens were 75 years ago, using the same measure of psychological health. Youth suicide attempts are more frequent here than in most other countries, resulting in about 4,600 deaths a year.

Of course, many American individuals and organizations work hard on behalf of children’s well-being. But it’s not enough. Developmental scientists now believe that child outcome depends upon how well the goals of the larger environment—from families to neighborhoods, to culture and the economy—align to support their development.

Other countries are moving on with progressive attitudes and policies, cultivating the best in their future citizens and economic producers. They provide preventative health services, invest in early childhood education, support parents to stay home with newborns and sick kids, offer free education, and protect children from known risks, to name a few. Meanwhile, American attitudes depress our kids well below our international competitors on many crucial measures. Nelson Mandela said, “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” It’s time for America to take a hard look at its own soul.
[1153 words]

Source: Washington post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/03/americans-are-obsessed-with-parenting-advice-so-why-are-our-kids-so-miserable/

cyndichiang

Speaker
Examples of adults' irrational behaviors and of children's achievement.
Children have some merits that adults don't have,eg. chasing prefection, hopeful thinking
Adults often restrict children's behaviors and underestimate their ability.
The speaker is a child writer who published many books
Finally, she argues that children are the future leaders and that adults can learn from children.

Obstacle: 5'48''
American parents even pay more attention on parenting than do some other countries' parents .
In ancient time, no period was call childrenhood and then many revolutionary shift occured in the treatment of children, leading to children right-related laws such as children protection
There are many problems such as children safty, childhood trauma and children drug-taking
It is the hight time for organizations to find a way to cultivate the best future individuals

smallchange306

thanks fo sharing!!!
speed
02'50
02'26
02'10
02'06
04'14
obstacle
7'31
American childern are more misreble than other countries'
we should do sth to protect them
     spanking should be prohibited. The number of student be shooted is more than soldier
we should less pressure on them
     give time to adult to take care of newborn and sick child.

吐槽猪

time2. 5:26.32
I am a little confused about this topic ,so spend much time in figuring out what it expressed.
Maybe——
A pareny found it hard to find a edcuated book relating to princess for his daughter.And he also blamed the lack of
women in science field for the impostive discription in these books.
virulent meme swore
time3. 2:20.58
Author try to vague the diapartiy of ablities between women and men ,so he encouraged his daughter to anyting she could.
But he also had face many problems related to discrepacyies either  home or outside.
time4. 2:13.14
More boys tend to dress up as princesses in costume party.This fact arose the public attention.
condescension  trembling
time5 2:21.94
Author says it is unreasonable that parents don't allow boys to dress like a girl,because dressing does not determine
fully what children will be like in the future.
time6 2:08.21
The girl dressing like a superman is not strange,but a boy who wants to dress like prince is unacceptable.
If there are more women heros in the fiction or the film,maybe dressing like a girl is not striking for boys.
time7 8:43.52
A history of concept of children.
US has a less healthful environment among developed countries for children.Goverment should try to address it .

Hendy

Oh my god, duplicate cortical
掌管 5        00:01:33.21        00:10:47.07
掌管 4        00:01:36.95        00:09:13.86
掌管 3        00:02:03.09        00:07:36.90
掌管 2        00:02:47.62        00:05:33.81
掌管 1        00:02:46.18        00:02:46.18

sumy217

Speed

1.
2"19'
My daughter told me she wanna be a princess and I felt bad， some factor makes women fall short of being evenly in the field of science as men.

2.
2"10'
I try to foster an environment for my daughter in which she can try anything she wanna without feeling girls are less talented than boys.

3.
2'10"
Lots of boys wanna dress up as a pincess on Halloween.

4.
2'08"
People are afraid of their children dressing up as girls for they believe clothes reveal sexual orientation.

5.
1'50"
Boys can not dress up as girls since there are not enough women heroine characters.

obstacle

8'40"

1. Americane children ranked at the bottom among wealthy contries of feeling happy.

2. Americane is a contry that kids' rights make room for adults， people in U.S.
believe that parents have rights to decide their kids' lives.

3. Infants mortality in US ranked ahead among wealthy contries and there are still plenty of kids dead for gun shot every year.

4. We should do more to protect our kids.

mozhiwanjia

cyndichiang 发表于 2014-12-7 22:12
Part III: Obstacle

掌管 6        00:17:00.53        00:35:20.49
掌管 5        00:03:06.00        00:18:19.96
掌管 4        00:03:13.40        00:15:13.96
掌管 3        00:04:46.33        00:12:00.55
掌管 2        00:03:12.42        00:07:14.21
掌管 1        00:04:01.79        00:04:01.79

画画2013

Speaker
People use childish to describe irrational things, however, the horrible things all done by adults! Irrational thinking is waht our world needs. Kids do not have limitation in creating, that is different between adults.
Adults alwasy underestimate children and have low expectations. People should give children opportunities, then they can grow up to become better adults.
Time 2'17
idiosyncratic 特殊的；异质的
meme 文化基因
The author deny to give a princess book to her daughter, because all those princesses are not progressive. These books describe princesses in a wrong way. Women always believe they have less techinical abilities relative to men, but this is not the truth.
Time3 1'53
The author and his wife try to build an environment, which contains no gender discrimination, to help their daughter to believe that she can grow to become what she wants.
However, things do not goes so much easy. Firstly, the author needs to tell his daughter which one of her toys is boy and which one is girl, but his memory are always confused and make his little girl roll with it. Plus, toy stores try to define girls' interest is on the barbies and princess stuff/ Infact, both of these toys belongs to all kids.
Time4-Time6
这是以前万圣节主题的文章，重复了就不做了。
this article talks about people's prejudice on the phenomenon that boys wear girls' clothes, scaring most parents.
However, girls who dress like boys do not make any problem. People tend to combine dressing as girls with gay stuff. One more thing, girls cannot perform female heros is just because that there are few female characters like that.
Obstacle 8'15
implore 恳求，乞求
dehumanizing 使失掉人性
Infanticide 杀婴
subjugation 征服，镇压
spanking 打…的屁股
main idea: Americans need to reconsider the methods that they use to treat chidren, because American chidren become the most unhappy grops over the world, according to the survey.

American families do not want to children rights pass over theirs. What is more, most Americans still believe that planking is working on children, and most states of America still allow planking. Education of school does not treat kids in right way. Finally, American kids consider they are not happy and become more stressful than kids in other countries.