How to be Competitive

Or was that NYT article about how to raise children to be successful in a competitive world? I recently read an interview with a dean of a top graduate program. One of his best points was that prospective students be themselves.

If parents foster this, that's one way to teach kids how to survive the competition.

Post-post, December:
That article, in the Sunday New York Times, was about the authors of the book "Top of the Class: How Asian Parents Raise High Achievers - and How You Can Too." Being a high achiever is not the same thing as being competitive, although (obviously) the two are related. My opinion is the same, though. If parents don't begin with recognizing how their kids' strengths are unique to those children, nobody's going far anytime soon.

If parents, say, are analytical and logical and their kid excels at being dreamy and floaty and nonlinear, then getting the kid to take dreaming seriously might be a better idea than trying to mold the kid into somebody who speaks the same logic as the parents. Dreaminess has its own logic.