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Entertaining Humor What's Funny?
Donald M. Huffman
1 The joy of laughing at a funny' story is universal, probably as old as language itself. But, what is it that makes a story or a joke funny?
2 As one who had enjoyed humor since I first recognized it, I've made an attempt to explain and discuss humor with students in such diverse cultures as Latin America and China. I've done some serious thinking about funny stories. It has been a labor of love!
3 why is it that several students in a class will fall out of their chairs laughing after I tell a joke while the rest of the students look as if I've just read the weather report? Obviously some people are more sensitive to humor than others. And, we recognize that some people tell jokes very well while others struggle to say something funny. We've all heard people say, "I like jokes, but I can't tell one well, and I can never remember them." Some people have a better sense of humor than others just as some people have more musical talent, mathematical talent etc. than others. A truly funny person has a joke for every occasion, and when one is told, that triggers an entire string of jokes from that person's memory bank. A humorless person is not likely to be the most popular person in a group. It is reasonable to say that the truly humorous individual is not only well liked, but is often the focus of attention in any gathering.
4 Even some animals have a sense of humor. My wife's mother often visited us for extended stays. She normally didn't like dogs, but she fell in love with Blitzen a female Lab we have, and the relationship was mutual. Even when young, Blitzen would tease Grandma by very selectively carrying one of her bedroom slippers into the living room where Grandma sat in her favorite, comfortable chair. Blitzen pranced just beyond the reach of Grandma until Grandma was tempted to leave her chair to get the slipper from Blitzen. When Grandma left her chair, Blitzen would quickly jump into the chair, flashing her Lab smile from sparkling brown eyes which clearly said, "Aha, I fooled you again.
5 Typical jokes or humorous stories have a three-part anatomy that is easily recognized. First is the SETUP (or setting), next is the BODY (or story line), and these are followed by the PUNCH LINE (an unexpected or surprise ending) which will make the joke funny if it contains some humor. Usually all three parts are present, and each must be clearly presented. It helps if the story/joke teller uses gestures and language which are well known to the audience.
6 Humor, as a form of entertainment, can be analyzed in order to discover what makes a funny story or joke seem funny. Here, for example, are some of the most common types of humor. They range from the most obvious humor to the more subtle types.
7 "SLAP-STICK" is the most obvious humor. Its language is simple, direct, and often makes fun of another person or group. Slap-stick was and is the technique of the stand-up comedian and the clown. It
appeals to all ages and all cultures. Nearly every English-speaking comedian in this century has used the following joke in one form or another. One man asks another, "Who was that lady I saw you with last night?" The other replies, "That was no lady, that was my wife." The humor lies in the fact that the second man is saying that his wife is not a lady. In other words, she is not a refined woman. The joke is no less funny because it is so often used. The audience knows in advance what will be said, because it is classic humor, and any audience values it even more because of its familiarity.
8 Chinese "cross-talk" is a special type of slap-stick in which two Chinese comedians humorously discuss topics such as bureaucrats, family problems, or other personal topics. Cross-talk can be heard anywhere from small village stages to the largest Beijing theatres, and to radio and television. It is clearly a traditional form of humor well understood by Chinese people.
9 A PLAY ON WORDS is not so obvious as slap-stick, but it is funny because of misused or misunderstood language. My favorite example is the story of three elderly gentlemen traveling by train in England. As the train slowed for a stop the first man asked, "Is this Wembley?" "No," said the second, "It's Thursday." "So am I," said the third man. "Let's stop for a beer." We know that older people often do not hear things clearly, so the misunderstanding of both Wednesday (for Wembley) and thirsty (for Thursday) make a nice setup for the punch line delivered by the third man.
10 The famous Chinese cartoonist and humorist Ding Cong is a master of word play. In one of his funny cartoons, a teacher says, "How come you completely copied somebody else's homework?" The young student replies, "I didn't completely copy it. My name on the page is different." In another classic Ding Cong cartoon, an irritated father asks, "Tell me, what's one plus two?" The son says, "I don't know." The impatient father then says, "For example, you, your mother, and I altogether are how many, you idiot?" The son proudly answers, "Three idiots." Whether these stories are cartoons, jokes told by a slapstick comedian, or a cross-talking team, they appeal to people everywhere as funny stories because they have a note of reality to them, and the unexpected punch line is quite funny. 11 PUNS are even more subtle forms of word play. They use the technique of similar sounding words or alternative meanings of the same word. Puns are thought by some critics to be the lowest form of humor, but I disagree with this. Puns require more subtle and sophisticated language skills than most humor forms, but even the very young can use them in their simpler forms. For example, the "riddle" or trick question often uses a pun in the setup, the story line, or, more often, the punch line. Puns are the first type of humor I learned, and at about 5 years of age I remember hearing the following riddle. One person asks, "What is black and white a
nd red all over?" The other person usually cannot answer the riddle, so says, "I give up. What is the answer?" The riddler replies, "A newspaper." This is the obvious answer if one knows that "red" is pronounced the same as "read" in English, but the meanings are clearly different.
12 DOUBLE-ENTENDRES (French for double meanings) are special variations of puns in which words or phrases have double meanings. Frequently the two meanings are very different, and one is quite proper while the second is often, but not always, vulgar. I like the somewhat mild story of a school teacher and a principal of a high school who are concerned because some boys and girls have been seen kissing on the school playground. The teacher says to the students, "The principal and I have decided to stop kissing on the school playground." Hearing some laughter, she senses her message was not altogether clear, so she adds, "What I mean to say is that there will be no more kissing going on under our noses". This clarification, of course, does nothing to correct the first statement and the double meaning of the joke becomes even more laughable.
13 Some professional humorists think too much of today's humor is not very intelligent or sophisticated. They dislike the suggestive or vulgar language used too frequently, and they feel that most humorists are not very creative. It is true that some of today's humor is rather shocking, but I don't think humor is to be blamed for that. Humor is alive and well, and it will persist simply because there are funny things happening every day. Some humorous people see and hear these funny things and are able to make them into funny, entertaining jokes and stories.

Fatal Attraction
1 The "Queen" of British murder mystery writing is, without doubt, Agatha Christie. Although the writer herself died over 20 years ago, her 78 "Whodunit" novels continue to sell in huge numbers. They have been translated into more than a hundred languages and they have sold over two billion copies.
2 The appeal of Agatha Christie's books, both in Britain and abroad, is not hard to understand. Each book is cleverly constructed. She uses characters that are easily recognizable and her plots develop almost like clockwork. But most importantly, all her stories set a puzzle for the reader.
3 Nearly all of Christie's books start with a murder, forcing the reader to ask the question, "whodunit?", and all of them end with a solution. The fun for the reader is in following the clues hidden in the story and trying to reach the correct solution before the author reveals it. This formula appeals to the strongest of human instincts curiosity and its popularity shows no sign of going away.
4 Many of the mysteries are solved by one of the Christie's regular investigators, like the very confident Belgian, Hercule Poirot, or the apparently harmless little old lady, Miss Marple. She also created a special setting for her stories which has become as familiar as some of her c
haracters. It is England between the two World Wars, where close-knit communities live in quiet villages or rich city folk assemble for weekends at grand country houses.
5 This world is ruled by a rigid social hierarchy. The owners of the country houses, probably members of the aristocracy, are at the top, then there are the professional classes: doctors, lawyers and businessmen. At the bottom are the common people, who normally appear in the books as servants, cooks and gardeners. When a murder is committed, there's no shortage of suspects to be investigated.
6 Agatha Christie's world is not quite a real world, which is one of the reasons why her books have not become dated. This is a world which is safe and predictable until a murder shatters people's lives. The crime must be solved so that the murderer can be arrested, but also, so that calm can be restored.
7 During most of Agatha Christie's life, England had the death penalty for murder. So, once the crime in her books is solved and the murderer identified, that is the end for him or her. There are no loose ends and the reader can sleep peacefully in his or her bed.
8 In the real world, of course, things don't happen quite like that. Criminals go unpunished, people are wrongly convicted and there are miscarriages of justice. In short, the real world is not a safe place. It is for this reason that so many readers like to bury their heads in an old-fashioned detective story with a safe and predictable ending.
9 The kind of whodunit Agatha Christie wrote is certainly old-fashioned. Few contemporary crime writers are producing this kind of book. The modern crime novel is more morally and psychologically complex, often adding to "whodunit?", another question: "whydunit?". Modern writers are more interested in understanding the criminal's mind and what drives a person to kill. They explore a world of crime that is much darker than anything imagined by Agatha Christie. Instead of being comforting, most contemporary crime novels unsettle their readers.
10 But Britain's affection for what the Americans call the "cosy" school of crime fiction has not died. Murder is still considered to be entertainment and the television schedules are full of detective dramas which end with a murderer safely under arrest.
11 Another sign of how popular whodunits have become are "Murder Mystery Weekends", offered by hotels. Guests take on the characters of classic whodunit suspects and spend a weekend trying to find out who among them is the "murderer". Or there are murder dinner parties, at which groups of friends get together to solve a crime over the dinner table, using specially prepared information about their character and their whereabouts. If murder with your meal doesn't appeal, there are a range of popular board games and computer games to test your powers of detection.
12 But for some people it can become an obsession. Letters still get sent to "221b Baker Street, London", home of Sherlock Holmes, pe
rhaps the most famous fictional detective of all, asking for his help in solving a variety of mysteries. So many letters arrive for the great detective, that the company which now occupies that address employs someone with the special job of answering them.
13 So long as human beings remain curious, there seems no doubt that the whodunit, in all its various forms, will continue to exert its fatal attraction.

Wow, Would I Love to Do That
1 I was 16 years old when I became interested in juggling. I saw a television commercial in which two guys began tossing cans of frozen orange juice back and forth in a juggling pattern.
2 Wow, would I love to do that! I imagined myself performing before a clapping audience.
3 Fat chance. Even if I knew how to juggle, I was scared to death of standing in front of an audience. But then a strange coincidence occurred, the kind of thing that makes you think it's an answer to prayer, even when you haven't actually prayed. A few days later, my older brother, Jeff, and I were visiting some friends when a boy of my age said, "Hey, you should see what my brother learned to do." He took me to his brother's room, where the older boy was showing Jeff how to juggle golf balls.
4 "I want to learn too," I said.
5 In no time I was hooked. Even though I dropped a lot of balls at first, I was amazed how easily I caught on. First, I just tossed a single ball up in the air from one hand to the other. Then I tried two balls, one from each hand, letting them pass in the air.
6 Finally I was ready for three balls. The pattern was simple: I held two golf balls in my right hand and one in the left. Tossing one of the balls from my right hand into the air, I waited till it reached the top of its arc. Then I tossed up the ball from my left hand, so that the two balls passed each other. And before that one came down, I sent up the ball that had remained in my right hand. I caught and tossed the balls, back and forth, back and forth. When I dropped one, I started over. By the end of the evening I could make 10 tosses before dropping a ball.
7 It was a challenge; I had to perfect this skill. The next day I got three tennis balls and practiced in the garage until I could make 20 tosses before dropping a ball. I practiced with a vengeance. I wanted to be as good as those guys on TV.
8 As I got better, I began to add tricks, tossing the balls so that one went over the top of the others, or under the others, or I bounced one off my head or elbow and still kept the pattern going.
9 Funny thing is, I thought I was making up all those tricks. But one day at the library I discovered a book on juggling, and there were all the tricks I was doing! The basic three-ball pattern was a cascade, juggling the balls in a circle was a shower, and throwing one ball over the top was a half-shower.
10 I bought a set of juggling clubs, and my parents bought me a set of juggling rings. I performed for my family and a few friends, but I never thought of
myself as an entertainer. Entertaining meant getting up in front of an audience. Impossible! I couldn't do that.
11 Then five years later, when I was 21, my mother called me aside one day during the Christmas season and said, "Dan, how would you like to juggle for the Salvation Army dinner this year?" For the past two years Mom and her boss had helped at the annual dinner.
12 "There will be other entertainment," she hastened to add. "All you need to do is stand at one side of the auditorium and juggle during dinner."
13 Two days before Christmas, as people streamed into the auditorium, there I was, juggling on a small stage at one side of the hall. I was nervous, but somehow the tension gave me courage. I began doing my tricks, including one I'd recently mastered: juggling behind my back. Then I juggled the clubs, and finally a bowling ball and two small balls. Kids crowded around the stage, laughing. People applauded.
14 Suddenly I felt an elation I had never experienced before. I was performing for an audience, and they loved it!
15 At home I kept practicing. I began juggling cigar boxes, knives and torches. And when an uncle gave me his unicycle, I learned to ride it and juggle at the same time.
16 I began to think about becoming a professional. I knew I'd have to do more than just tricks; I'd have to speak, make jokes and so on. That's what the books said. So I prayed about it. When I next juggled in front of my family, I added some jokes. I hoped that trying them out on my family would help me feel more comfortable doing the same thing in public.
17 My chance soon came. I was asked to juggle torches at a fashion show with a Polynesian theme. I went barefoot and bare-chested, dressed in silly-looking shorts, with black stripes across my face. As I was about to go on, I was handed a list of announcements. 'Please read these when you finish your act," the mistress of ceremonies said. It was too late to back out.
18 Was I ever nervous! I dropped the torches-three times! But not wanting the audience to know how nervous I was, I tried to make my mistakes look like part of the act. I danced over the torches crazily, making jungle sounds, until I could pick them up and resume my juggling. The people applauded. They liked my act. And somehow I got through reading the announcements.
19 The following month I received a phone call from the principal of a local elementary school. An old performer had asked for a sick leave. Could I fill in? And include a message? "Sure," I said.
20 Three weeks later I was standing before a couple of hundred eager children. Using my juggling practice as an example, I began my message. When I started to juggle, I let the balls drop. I picked them up, started, and dropped them again.
21 "That's what it's like when you start," I said. But then, as the program progressed, I began to do more and more tricks, juggling while riding a unicycle and while lying on my back, getting back up to my feet without dropping a b
all.
22 Forty-five minutes later I ended the performance with my final word of advice to the children: "If you want to succeed, at juggling or anything else, you have to keep trying. You can do it. Just never give up."

The Power of a Note
1 On my first job as sports editor for the Montpelier (Ohio) Leader Enterprise, I didn't get a lot of fan mail, so I was intrigued by a letter that was dropped on my desk one morning.
2 When I opened it, I read: "A nice piece of writing on the Tigers. Keep up the good work." It was signed by Don Wolfe, the sports editor. Because I was a teenager (being paid the grand total of 15 cents a column inch), his words couldn't have been more inspiring. 11 kept the letter in my desk drawer until it got rag-eared. Whenever I doubted I had the right stuff to be a writer, I would reread Don's note and feel confident again.
3 Later, when I got to know him, I learned that Don made a habit of writing a quick, encouraging word to people in all walks of life. "When I make others feel good about themselves," he told me, "I feel good too."
4 Not surprisingly, he had a body of friends as big as nearby Lake Erie. When he died last year at 75, the paper was flooded with calls and letters from people who had been recipients of his spirit-lifting words.
5 Over the years, I've tried to copy the example of Don and other friends who care enough to write uplifting comments, because I think they are on to something important. In a world too often cold and unresponsive, such notes bring warmth and reassurance. We all need a boost from time to time, and a few lines of praise have been known to turn around a day, even a life.
6 Why, then, are there so few upbeat note writers? My guess is that many who shy away from the practice are too self-conscious. They're afraid they'll be misunderstood, sound sentimental or insincere. Also, writing takes time; it's far easier to pick up the phone.
7 The drawback with phone calls, of course, is that they don't last. A note attaches more importance to our well-wishing. It is a matter of record, and our words can be read more than once, savored and treasured.
8 Even though note writing may take longer, some pretty busy people do it, including George Bush. Some say he owes much of his success in politics to his ever-ready pen. How? Throughout his career he has followed up virtually every contact with a cordial response a compliment, a line of praise or a nod of thanks. His notes go not only to friends and associates, but to casual acquaintances and total strangers like the surprised person who got a warm pat on the back for lending Bush an umbrella.
9 Even top corporate managers, who have mostly affected styles of leadership that can be characterized only as tough, cold and aloof, have begun to learn the lesson, and earn the benefits, of writing notes that lift people up. Former Ford chairman Donald Peterson, who is largely credited for turning the company round in the 1980s, made it a practice t
o write positive messages to associates every day. "I'd just scribble them on a memo pad or the corner of a letter and pass them along," he says. "The most important ten minutes of your day are those you spend doing something to boost the people who work for you.
10 "Too often," he observed, "people we genuinely like have no idea how we feel about them. Too often we think, I haven't said anything critical; why do I have to say something positive? We forget that human beings need positive reinforcement in fact, we thrive on it!"
11 What does it take to write letters that lift spirits and warm hearts? Only a willingness to express our appreciation. The most successful practitioners include what I call the four "S's" of note writing.
12 1) They are sincere. No one wants false praise.
13 2) They are usually short. If you can't say what you want to say in three sentences, you're probably straining
14 3) They are specific. Complimenting a business colleague by telling him "good speech" is too vague; "great story about Warren Buffet's investment strategy" is precise.
15 4) They are spontaneous. This gives them the freshness and enthusiasm that will linger in the reader's mind long afterward.
16 It's difficult to be spontaneous when you have to hunt for letter-writing materials, so I keep paper, envelopes and stamps close at hand, even when I travel. Fancy stationery isn't necessary; it's the thought that counts.
17 So, who around you deserves a note of thanks or approval? A neighbor, your librarian, a relative, your mayor, your mate, a teacher, your doctor? You don't need to be poetic. If you need a reason, look for a milestone, the anniversary of a special event you shared, or a birthday or holiday. For the last 25 years, for example, I've prepared an annual Christmas letter for long-distance friends, and I often add a handwritten word of thanks or congratulations. Acknowledging some success or good fortune that has happened during the year seems particularly appropriate considering the spirit of the Christmas season.
18 Be generous with your praise. Superlatives like "greatest," "smartest," "prettiest" make us all feel good. Even if your praise is a little ahead of reality, remember that expectations are often the parents of dreams fulfilled.
19 Today I got a warm, complimentary letter from my old boss and mentor, Norman Vincent Peale. His little note to me was full of uplifting phrases, and it sent me to my typewriter to compose a few overdue letters of my own. I don't know if they will make anybody else's day, but they made mine. As my friend Don Wolfe said, making others feel good about themselves makes me feel good too.

All the Good Things
1 He was in the first third-grade class I taught at Saint Mary's School in Morris, Minnesota. All 34 of my students were dear to me, but Mark Eklund was one in a million. Very neat in appearance, he had that happy-to-be-alive attitude that made even his occasional mischievousness delightful.
2 Mar
k also talked incessantly. I had to remind him again and again that talking without permission was not acceptable. What impressed me so much, though, was his sincere response every time I had to correct him for misbehaving. "Thank you for correcting me, Sister!" I didn't know what to make of it at first, but before long I became accustomed to hearing it many times a day.
3 One morning my patience was growing thin when Mark talked once too often, and then I made a novice-teacher's mistake. I looked at Mark and said, "If you say one more word, I am going to tape your mouth shut!"
4 It wasn't ten seconds later when Chuck blurted out, "Mark is talking again." I hadn't asked any of the students to help me watch Mark, but since I had stated the punishment in front of the class, I had to act on it.
5 I remember the scene as if it had occurred this morning. I walked to my desk, very deliberately opened the drawer and took out a roll of masking tape. Without saying a word, I proceeded to Mark's desk, tore off two pieces of tape and made a big X with them over his mouth. I then returned to the front of the room.
6 As I glanced at Mark to see how he was doing, he winked at me. That did it! I started laughing. The entire class cheered as I walked back to Mark's desk, removed the tape, and shrugged my shoulders. His first words were, "Thank you for correcting me, Sister.
7 At the end of the year I was asked to teach junior-high math. The years flew by, and before I knew it Mark was in my classroom again. He was more handsome than ever and just as polite. Since he had to listen carefully to my instructions in the new math", he did not talk as much in the ninth grade as he had in the third.
8 One Friday, things just didn't feel right. We had worked hard on a new concept all week, and I sensed that the students were growing frustrated with themselves and edgy with one another. I had to change the mood of the class before it got out of hand. So I asked them to list the names of the other students in the room on two sheets of paper, leaving a space between each name. Then I told them to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down.
9 It took the remainder of the class period to finish the assignment, but as the students left the room, each one handed me the papers. Charlie smiled. Mark said, "Thank you for teaching me, Sister. Have a good weekend."
10 That Saturday, I wrote down the name of each student on a separate sheet of paper, and I listed what everyone else had said about that individual. On Monday I gave each student his or her list. Some of them ran two pages. Before long, the entire class was smiling. "Really?" I heard whispered. "I never knew that meant anything to anyone!" "I didn't know others liked me so much!"
11 No one ever mentioned those papers in class again. I never knew if they discussed them after class or with their parents. But it didn't matter. The exercise had accomplished its purpose.
The students were happy with themselves and one another again.
12 That group of students moved on. Several years later, after I returned from a vacation, my parents met me at the airport. As we were driving home, Mother asked the usual questions about the trip, the weather, my experiences in general. There was a slight lull in the conversation. Mother gave Dad a sideways glance and simply said, "Dad?" My father cleared his throat as he usually did before saying something important. "The Eklunds called last night," he began.
13 "Really?" I said. "I haven't heard from them for several years. I wonder how Mark is.
14 Dad responded quietly. "Mark was killed in Vietnam," he said. "The funeral is tomorrow, and his parents would like it if you could attend." To this day I can still point to the exact spot on I-494 where Dad told me about Mark.
15 I had never seen a serviceman in a military coffin before. Mark looked so handsome, so mature. All I could think at that moment was, Mark, I would give all the masking tape in the world if only you could talk to me.
16 After the funeral, most of Mark's former classmates headed to Chuck's farmhouse for lunch. Mark's mother and father were there, obviously waiting for me. "We want to show you something," his father said, taking a wallet out of his pocket. "They found this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might recognize it."
17 Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped, folded and refolded many times. I knew without looking that the papers were the ones on which I had listed all the good things each of Mark's classmates had said about him. "Thank you so much for doing that," Mark's mother said. "As you can see, Mark treasured it."
18 Mark's classmates started to gather around us. Charlie smiled rather sheepishly and said, "I still have my list. It's in the top drawer of my desk at home." Chuck's wife said, "Chuck asked me to put his in our wedding album." "I have mine too," Marilyn said. "It's in my diary. " Then Vicki, another classmate, reached into her pocket-book, took out her wallet and showed her worn and ragged list to the group. "I carry this with me at all times," Vicki said without hesitation. "I think we all saved our lists."
19 That's when I finally sat down and cried. I cried for Mark and for all his friends who would never see him again.

Mother Tongue
Amy Tan
1 I am a writer. And by that definition, I am someone who has always loved language. I am fascinated by language in daily life. I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of language the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth. Language is the tool of my trade. And I use them all all the Englishes I grew up with.
2 Recently, I was made keenly aware of the different Englishes I do use. I was giving a talk to a large group of people, the same talk I had already given to half a dozen other groups. The natur
e of the talk was about my writing, my life, and my book, The Joy Luck Club. The talk was going along well enough until I remembered one major difference that made the whole talk sound wrong. My mother was in the room. And it was perhaps the first time she had heard me give a lengthy speech, using the kind of English I have never used with her a speech filled with carefully constructed grammatical phrases, burdened, it suddenly seemed to me, with nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases, all the forms of standard English that I had learned in school and through books, the forms of English I did not use at home with my mother.
3 Just last week, I was walking down the street with my mother, and I again found myself conscious of the English I was using, the English I do use with her. We were talking about the price of new and used furniture and I heard myself saying this: "Not waste money that way." My husband was with us as well, and he didn't notice any switch in my English. And then I realized why. It's because over the twenty years that we have been together I've often used the same kind of English with him, and sometimes he even uses it with me. It has become our language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk, the language I grew up with.
4 You should know that my mother's expressive command of English doesn't reflect how much she actually understands. She reads financial reports, listens to Wall Street Week (a TV financial news program), converses daily with her stockbroker, and reads many types of books with ease. Yet some of my friends tell me they understand only 50 percent of what my mother says. Some say they understand 80 to 90 percent. Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But to me, my mother's English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It's my mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world.
5 Lately, I've been giving more thought to the kind of English my mother speaks. Like others, I have described it to other people as "broken" English. But I shrink with pain when I say that. It always bothered me that I can think of no way to describe it other than "broken", as if it were damaged and needed to be fixed, as if it lacked certain wholeness and soundness. I've heard other terms used, "limited English", for example. But they seem just as bad, as if everything is limited, including people's perceptions of the "limited" English speaker.
6 I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mother's "limited" English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say. That is, because she expressed them imperfectly her thoughts were imperfect. And I had plenty of empirical evidence to support me: the fact that p
eople in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her.
7 My mother has long realized the limitations of her English as well. When I was fifteen, she used to ask me to call people on the phone to pretend I was she. In this guise, I was forced to ask for information or even complain and yell at people who had been rude to her. One time it was a call to her stockbroker in New York. She had cashed out her small stock portfolio and it just so happened we were going to go to New York the next week, our very first trip outside California. I had to get on the phone and say in an adolescent voice that was not very convincing, "This is Mrs Tan."
8 And my mother was standing in the back whispering, "Why he don't send me check, already two weeks late. So mad he lie to me, losing me money.
9 And then I said in perfect English, "Yes, I'm getting rather concerned. You had agreed to send the check two weeks ago, but it hasn't arrived."
10 Then she began to talk more loudly, "What he want, I come to New York tell him front of his boss, you cheating me?" And I was trying to calm her down, make her be quiet, while telling the stockbroker, "I can't tolerate any more excuses. If I don't receive the check immediately, I am going to speak to your manager when I'm in New York next week."
11 Why are there not more Asian Americans represented in American literature? Why are there so few Asian Americans enrolled in creative writing programs? Why do so many Chinese students go into engineering? Well, these are broad sociological questions I can't begin to answer. But I have noticed in surveys that Asian students, as a whole, always do significantly better on math achievement tests than in English. And this makes me think that there are other Asian-American students whose English spoken in the home might also be described as "broken" or "limited". And perhaps they also have teachers who are steering them away from writing and into math and science, which is what happened to me. Fortunately, I happen to be rebellious in nature and enjoy the challenge of disproving assumptions made about me. I became an English major my first year in college, after being enrolled as pre-med.

Gender Roles from a Cultural Perspective
1 Over the past few decades, it has been proven innumerable times that the various types of behavior, emotions, and interests that constitute being masculine and feminine are patterned by both heredity and culture. In the process of growing up, each child learns hundreds of culturally patterned details of behavior that become incorporated into its gender identity. Some of this learning takes place directly. In other words, the child is told by others how to act in an appropriately feminine or masculine way. Other details of gender behavior are taught unconsciously, or indirectly, as the culture provides different images, a
spirations, and adult models for girls and boys.
2 Recently, for example, a study of American public schools showed that there is a cultural bias in education that favors boys over girls. According to the researchers, the bias is unintentional and unconscious, but it is there and it is influencing the lives of millions of schoolchildren every year. Doctors David and Myra Sadker videotaped classroom teachers in order to study gender-related bias in education. Their research showed that many teachers who thought they were nonsexist were amazed to see how biased they appeared on videotape. From nursery school to postgraduate courses, teachers were shown to call on males in class far more than on female students. This has a tremendous impact on the learning process for, in general, those students who become active classroom participants develop more positive attitudes and go on to higher achievement. As a matter of fact, in the late 1960s, when many of the best all-women's colleges in the northeastern United States opened their doors to male students, it was observed by professors and women students alike that the boys were "taking over" the classroom discussions and that active participation by women students had diminished noticeably. A similar subordination of female to male students has also been observed in law and medical school classrooms in recent years.
3 Research done by the Sadkers showed that sometimes teachers unknowingly prevented girls from participating as actively as boys in class by assigning them different tasks in accordance with stereotyped gender roles. For instance, one teacher conducting a science class with nursery school youngsters, continually had the little boys perform the scientific "experiment" while the girls were given the task of putting the materials away. Since hands-on work with classroom materials is a very important aspect of early education, the girls were thus being deprived of a vital learning experience that would affect their entire lives.
4 Another dimension of gender-biased education is the typical American teacher's assumption that boys will do better in the "hard", "masculine" subjects of math and science while girls are expected to have better verbal and reading skills. As an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy, American boys do, indeed, develop reading problems, while girls, who are superior to boys in math up to the age of nine, fall behind from then on. But these are cultural, not genetic patterns. In Germany, for example, all studies are considered "masculine", and it is girls who develop reading problems. And in Japan, where early education appears to be nonsexist, both girls and boys do equally well in reading.
5 The different attitudes associated with the educational process for girls and boys begin at home. One study, for example, showed that when preschoolers were asked to look at a picture of a house and tell how far away from the house they were permitted to go, the boys indicated a mu
ch wider area than the girls, who generally pointed out a very limited area close to the home. Instead of being encouraged to develop intellectual curiosity and physical skills that are useful in dealing with the outside world, as boys are, girls are filled with fears of the world outside the home and with the desire to be approved of for their "goodness" and obedience to rules. These lessons carry over from the home to the classroom, where girls are generally observed to be more dependent on the teacher, more concerned with the form and neatness of their work than with its content, and more anxious about being "right" in their answers than in being intellectually independent, analytical, or original. Thus, through the educational process that occupies most of the child's waking hours, society reinforces its established values and turns out each gender in its traditional and expected mold.

Boys Are Teachers' Pets
1 The classroom is a man's world, where boys get two-thirds of the teachers' attention even when they are in a minority. They are allowed to tease the girls and they receive praise for sloppy work that would not be tolerated from girls. Boys are accustomed to being teachers pets, and, if girls get anything like equal treatment, boys will protest and even disrupt lessons.
2 These claims are made in a book out this week, written by Dale Spender, a lecturer at the London University Institute of Education. She argues that discrimination against girls is so typical of co-educational schools that single-gender classes are the only answer.
3 Her case is based on tape-recordings of her own and other teachers' lessons. Many of them, like Spender, had deliberately set out to give girls a fair chance. "Sometimes," says Spender, "I have even thought I have gone too far and have spent more time with the girls than the boys."
4 The tapes proved otherwise. In 10 taped lessons (in secondary school and college), Spender never gave the girls more than 42 percent of her attention (the average was 38 percent) and never gave the boys less than 58 percent. There were similar results for other teachers, both male and female.
5 In other words, when teachers give girls more than a third of their time, they feel that they are depriving the boys of their rightful share. And so do the boys themselves. "She always asked the girls all the questions," said one boy in a classroom where 34 percent of the teachers' time was allocated to girls. "She doesn't like boys, and just listens to the girls," said a boy in another class, where his gender got 63 percent of the teacher's attention.
6 Boys regarded two-thirds of the teacher's time as a fair deal and when they got less they caused trouble in class and even complained to a higher authority. "It's important to keep their attention," said one teacher. "Otherwise, they behave very badly."
7 According to Spender's research, double standards pervade the classroom. "When boys ask questions, protest, or challenge the
teacher, they are often met with respect and rewards; when girls engage in exactly the same behavior, they are often met with criticism and punishment."
8 A boy seeking attention will quickly get a response from a teacher. "But girls can be ignored; their hands can be held up for ages, and their often polite requests for assistance are disregarded as the teacher is obliged to remain with the boys."
9 One girl, talking about a male teacher, commented: "You wouldn't want to have your hand up to tell him there was a fire, if you were a girl. We'd all burn to death before he asked you what you wanted to say.
10 Boys' written work, too, is judged by different standards, says Spender. When she asked teachers to mark essays and projects, the same work got better marks when teachers were told that it came from boys. "When a boy decides to make a thing of it, there's not a girl that can match him," one teacher said of a project on inventions. But, in fact, the work had been done by a girl.
11 Neat and tidy work from girls was treated with some contempt. "I think she could have spent more time on getting some facts than on making it look pretty, was one comment. "Typical, isn't it? All that effort just to make it look nice YOU can't beat girls for being concerned with appearances," was another. But when Spender indicated that the work came from a boy, the tune changed dramatically.
12 Spender concludes that, in mixed classes, the girls are at a disadvantage. If they are as noisy and ambitious as the boys, they are considered "unladylike"; if they are quiet and passive, they are ignored.
13 A few schools have introduced single-gender groups for math and science, says Spender, and have found significant improvements in girls' results. Separating boys and girls within schools for certain subjects rather than a return to single-gender schools is the most hopeful solution she suggests.

What Kind of Brain Do You Have?
Simon Baron-Cohen
[1] Are there essential differences between the male and female brain? My theory is that the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy, and that the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems.
[2] Empathising is the drive[N] to identify another person's emotions and thoughts, and to respond to these with an appropriate emotion. Systemising is the drive to analyse and explore a system, to extract underlying rules that govern the behaviour of a system; and the drive to construct systems.
[3] A person (whether male or female) has a particular "brain type". There are three common brain types: for some individuals, empathising is stronger than systemising. This is called the female brain, or a brain of type E. For other individuals, systemising is stronger than empathising. This is called the male brain, or a brain of type S. Yet other individuals are equally strong in their systemising and empathising. This is called the "balanced brain", or a brain of type B.
[4] A key
feature of this theory is that your sex cannot tell you which type of brain you have. Not all men have the male brain, and not all women have the female brain. The central claim of this new theory is only that on average, more males than females have a brain of type S, and more females than males have a brain of type E.
[5] So are females better at empathising? This theory rings true[N] at an anecdotal level. For example, we've always known that people choose different things to read in the newsagent on the railway platform or in the airport departure lounge. Women are more likely to go to the magazine rack featuring[N] fashion, romance, beauty, intimacy, relationship advice, and parenting. Men are more likely to go to a magazine rack featuring computers, cars, boats, photography, DIY, sport, hi-fi, guns, and tools.
[6] But the E-S theory goes beyond such anecdotal evidence to pull together the scientific evidence, and investigate the origins of these differences.
[7] The evidence for a female advantage in empathising comes from many different directions. For example, studies show that when children play together with a little movie player that has only one eye-piece[N], boys tend to get more of their fair share of looking down the eye-piece. They just shoulder the girls out of the way. Less empathy, more self-centred.[N] Or if you leave out a bunch of those big plastic cars that kids can ride on, what you see is that more little boys play the "ramming" game. They deliberately drive the vehicle into another child. The little girls ride around more carefully, avoiding the other children more often. This suggests the girls are being more sensitive to others.
[8] How early are such sex differences in empathy evident? Certainly, by 12 months, girls make more eye contact than boys. But a new study carried out in my lab at Cambridge University shows that at birth, girls look longer at a face, and boys look longer at a suspended mechanical mobile. Furthermore, the Cambridge team found that how much eye contact children make is in part determined by a biological factor: prenatal testosterone. This has been demonstrated by measuring this hormone in amniotic fluid.
[9] All this adds up to a large amount of evidence for a female advantage in empathising, with at least some biological determinants. What about the claimed male advantage in systemising?
[10] Boys, from toddlerhood onwards, are more interested in cars, trucks, planes, guns and swords, building blocks, constructional toys, and mechanical toys systems. They seem to love putting things together, to build toy towers or towns or vehicles. Boys also enjoy playing with toys that have clear functions, buttons to press, things that will light up, or devices that will cause another object to move.
[11] You see the same sort of pattern in the adult workplace. Some occupations are almost entirely male. Think of metal-working, weapon-making, crafting musical instruments, or the construction in
-half-old son, Benjamin, and I lived there for a month in the spring of 1987 while we were studying arts education in Chinese kindergartens and elementary schools. The key to our room was attached to a large plastic block with the room number printed on it. When leaving the hotel, a guest was encouraged to turn in the key, either by handing it to an attendant or by dropping it through a slot into a container. 1 Because the key slot was narrow and rectangular, the key and the block had to be inserted carefully so as to fit into the slot.
2 Benjamin loved to carry the key around, shaking it vigorously. He also liked to try to place it into the slot. He would move the key to the vicinity of the slot and then try to push it in. Because of his young age, lack of manual dexterity, and incomplete understanding of the need to orient the key "just so", he would usually fail. Benjamin was not bothered in the least. He loved to bang the key on the slot and probably got as much pleasure out of the sounds it made, and the physical feelings it gave him, as he did those few times when the key actually found its way into the slot.
3 Now both Ellen and I were perfectly happy to allow Benjamin to bang the key near the key slot. We were usually not in a hurry, he was having a good time, and this "exploratory behavior" seemed harmless enough. But I soon observed an interesting phenomenon. Any Chinese attendant nearby and sometimes even a mere Chinese passer-by would come over to watch Benjamin. As soon as the observer saw what our child was doing, and noticed his lack of initial success at the appointed task, she (or, less often, he) attempted to intervene. In general, she would hold onto his hand and, gently but firmly, guide it directly toward the slot, reorient it as necessary, and help Benjamin to insert the key. She would then smile somewhat expectantly at Ellen or me, as if awaiting a thank you and on occasion, would frown slightly, as if to criticize us as parents.
4 Unfortunately, even for the sake of Chinese-American friendship, we were not particularly grateful for this intervention. After all, it was not as if Benjamin were running around wildly or without supervision; clearly we were aware of what he was doing and had not ourselves intervened. But it also became clear to us that we were dealing with totally different attitudes about the preferred behavior for children and the proper role of adults in their socialization.
5 Spending a good deal of time with a baby in China, we had plenty of opportunity to compare Benjamin with Chinese babies and to observe the relationship that generally occurs between adults and young children. Time and again, adults would approach Benjamin, sometimes just to say "Hello" or to play with him (actions encountered the world over), but often with a particular agenda in mind. Sometimes adults would tease Benjamin, pretending to give or to show him something, but then withdrawing the promised reward. More often, these adul
ts would aid Benjamin with some task retrieving a ball with which he was playing, helping him to sit straight in his seat, fixing his shirttail or his shoes, directing him away from a dangerous spot, or guiding the stroller he was awkwardly pushing around.
6 It became obvious to us that for some Chinese, babies are "fair game". Some adults (and even adolescents) feel little hesitation about intervening in the child-rearing process. Now it might be thought that Benjamin's appearance he is Chinese, and we adopted him in Taiwan encouraged this intervention; but similar intrusive interventions are reported by Westerners whose children do not look the least bit Chinese. It was equally clear that these Chinese agree on what is right or wrong in child rearing; in casual encounters with Benjamin and other Western children, they were exhibiting their shared beliefs.

A Long March to Creativity (II)
1 I soon realized that this incident was directly relevant to our assigned tasks in China: to investigate the ways of early childhood education (especially in the arts) and, more broadly, to illuminate Chinese attitudes toward creativity. And so before long I began to include this "key-slot" anecdote into my talks to Chinese educators. I would tell audiences about what had happened and seek their reactions. Some of my Chinese colleagues displayed the same attitude as the attendants at the Jinling Hotel. Since adults know how to place the key in the key slot (they would say), since that is the ultimate purpose of approaching the slot, and since the toddler is neither old nor clever enough to realize the desired action on his own, what possible gain is achieved by having the child flail about? He may well get frustrated and angry certainly not a desirable outcome. Why not show him what to do? He will be happy (those around will be happier), he will learn how to accomplish the task sooner, and then he can proceed to more complex activities, like opening the door or asking for the key.
2 We listened to such explanations sympathetically. We agreed that sometimes it is important to show a child what to do, and that we certainly did not want to frustrate Benjamin. But, as I have said, he was rarely frustrated by his fledgling attempts: "delighted" would be a more appropriate word to describe him. We went on to suggest that many Americans held quite different views about such matters.
3 First of all, we did not much care whether Benjamin succeeded in inserting the key into the slot. He was having a good time and exploring, two activities that did matter to us. But the critical point was that in the process, we were trying to teach Benjamin something: that one can solve a problem effectively by oneself. Such self-reliance is a principal value of child rearing in middle-class America. So long as the child is shown exactly how to do something whether it be placing a key in a key slot, drawing a rooster, or apologizing for a misdeed he is less likely to figure out hi
mself how to accomplish such a task. And, more generally, he is less likely to view life as many Americans do as a series of situations in which one has to learn to think by oneself, to solve problems on one's own, and even to discover new problems for which creative solutions are wanted.
4 In retrospect, it became clear to me that this incident was indeed key and key in more than one sense. It indicated important differences in the educational and artistic practices in our two countries. Even more to the point, this apparently little episode revealed important issues about education, creativity, and art that have interested thinkers around the world.
5 Dating back to the time of the Greeks, as Philip Jackson has pointed out, one can discern two contrasting approaches to educational issues. One dominant approach is the "mimetic" one, in which the teacher (and "the text") are seen as the unquestioned sources of knowledge. Students are expected to memorize information and then, on subsequent occasions, feed back the information that has been presented to or modeled for them. Opposed to this tradition is a "transformative" approach, in which the teacher is more of a coach, attempting to elicit certain qualities in her students. The teacher engages the student actively in the learning process, asking questions and directing attention to new phenomena, in the hope that the student's understanding will be enhanced. One might say that in the "mimetic" tradition, the cultivation of basic skills is primary; whereas in the "transformative" approach, the stimulation of the child's expressive, creative, and knowing powers is most prized.

Athletes Should Be Role Models
Karl Malone
1 I love Charles Barkley like a brother, and except for the times when we're hanging and pushing each other under the boards in games between my team, the Utah Jazz, and his, the Phoenix Suns, we're great friends. We don't necessarily like the same things: Charles loves golf so much he would play at halftime if he could, but I think a golf course is a waste of good pasture-land. One of the reasons we get along so well, though, is that we both say what's on our minds without worrying about what other people are going to think which means we disagree from time to time. Here's an example of what I mean: I disagree with what Charles says in his Nike commercial, the one in which he insists, "I am not a role model." Charles, you can deny being a role model all you want, but I don't think it's your decision to make. We don't choose to be role models, we are chosen. Our only choice is whether to be a good role model or a bad one.
2 I don't think we can accept all the glory and the money that comes with being a famous athlete and not accept the responsibility of being a role model, of knowing that kids and even some adults are watching us and looking for us to set an example. I mean, why do we get endorsements in the first place? Because there are people who will follow our lead and
buy a certain sneaker or cereal because we use it.
3 I love being a role model, and I try to be a positive one. That doesn't mean I always succeed. I'm no saint. I make mistakes, and sometimes I do childish things. And I don't always wake up in a great, role-model mood. There are days when I don't want to pose for a picture with every fan I run into, when I don't feel like picking up babies and giving them hugs and kisses (no matter how cute they are), those are the days I just try to avoid the public.
4 But you don't have to be perfect to be a good role model and people shouldn't expect perfection. If I were deciding whether a basketball player was a positive role model, I would want to know: Does he influence people's lives in a positive way away from the court? How much has he given of himself, in time or in money, to help people who look up to him? Does he display the values like honesty and determination that are part of being a good person? I wouldn't ask whether he lives his life exactly the way I would live it or whether he handles every situation just the way I would handle it.
5 I do agree with Charles on one thing he says in his commercial: "Just because I can dunk a basketball doesn't mean I should raise your kids." But sometimes parents need a little assistance. There are times when it helps for a mother and father to be able to say to their kids, "Do you think Karl Malone or Scottie Pippen or Charles Barkley or David Robinson would do that?" To me, if someone uses my name in that way, it's an honor. Sure, parents should be role models to their children. But let's face it, kids have lots of other role models teachers, movie stars, athletes, even other kids. As athletes, we can't take the place of parents, but we can help reinforce what they try to teach their kids.
6 Parents just have to make sure they don't take it too far. Sometimes they put us on a pedestal that feels more like a tightrope so narrow that we're bound to fall off eventually. This is not something I'm especially proud of, but I've had parents in Utah say things to me like, "You know, Karl, in our family we worship the ground you walk on. In our house your picture is right up there on the wall beside Jesus Christ." Now, that's going too far. Is it any wonder some athletes don't want to be role models? Who wants to be held up to that kind of impossibly high standard? Imagine someone putting a lifesized picture of you on a wall and saying things to your picture before they go to bed. That's scary.
7 Constantly being watched by the public can be hard to tolerate at times. I am sorry that Michael Jordan had to deal with the negative publicity he received about gambling. I don't think most people can imagine what it's like to be watched that closely every minute of every day. I was told once that it wouldn't be that bad for me because no one would know me outside of Utah, but that's not true. Ever since I played on the Dream Team in the Olympics, I can't go anywhere w
ithout being the center of attention, and that's very confining at times. For instance, there have been occasions when I've felt like buying a big Harley-Davidson motorcycle and riding it down the street. First, the Jazz would have a fit and say it's too dangerous. Second, everyone would be watching to see if I wore a helmet, if I was obeying the speed limit, if I was taking turns safely you name it. The first time I didn't measure up to expectations, I would hear, "What kind of example is that to set for other people who ride motorcycles?"
8 But the good things about being a role model outweigh the bad. It's a great feeling to think you're a small part of the reason that a kid decided to give school another try instead of dropping out or that a kid had the strength to walk away when someone offered him drugs. But one thing I would encourage parents to do is to remind their kids that no matter which athletes they look up to, there are no perfect human beings. That ways if the kid's heroes should make mistakes, it won't seem like the end of the world to them.
9 I would never criticize someone for saying what he thinks. If Charles doesn't consider himself a role model, that's certainly his right. But I think he is a role model and a good one, too. And if he gets that NBA championship ring, I might just make him my role model.

Athletes Should Not Be Role Models
1 These days there are so many stories about the criminal activities of athletes that sports pages are beginning to look like police reports. What's going on? American sports fans ask over their morning toast and coffee, What's happening to our heroes?
2 It's not difficult to understand our desire for athletes to be heroes. On the surface, at least, athletes display a vital and indomitable spirit; they are gloriously alive inside their bodies. And sports do allow us to witness acts that can legitimately be described as courageous, thrilling, beautiful, even noble. In an increasingly complicated and disorderly world, sports are still an arena in which we can regularly witness a certain kind of greatness.
3 Yet there's something of a paradox here, for the very qualities a society tends to seek in its heroes selflessness, social consciousness, and the like are precisely the opposite of those needed to transform a talented but otherwise unremarkable neighborhood kid into a Michael Jordan. To become a star athlete, you have to have an extremely competitive outlook and you have to be totally focused on the development of your own physical skills. These qualities may well make a great athlete, but they don't necessarily make a great person. On top of this, our society reinforces these traits by the system it has created to produce athletes a system characterized by limited responsibility and enormous privilege.
4 The athletes themselves suffer the costs of this system. Trained to measure themselves perpetually against the achievements of those around them, many young athletes develop a sens
e of what sociologist Walter Schafer has termed "conditional self-worth". They learn very quickly that they will be accepted by the important figures in their lives parents, coaches and peers as long as they are perceived as "winners". Unfortunately they become conceited and behave as if their athletic success will last forever.
5 Young athletes learn that success, rather than hard and honest play, is what brings rewards. And for those successful enough to rise to the level of big-time college sports, the "reward" is often an artificially controlled social environment, one that shields them from many of the responsibilities other students face. Coaches whose own jobs, of course, depend on maintaining winning programs protect their athletes to ensure that nothing threatens their eligibility to compete. If an athlete gets into trouble with the law, for instance, a coach will very likely intervene hiring an attorney, perhaps even managing to have the case quietly dismissed. In some schools, athletes don't even choose their own classes or buy their own books; the athletic department does all this for them. It's not unheard-of for athletic department staff to wake up athletes in the morning and to take them to class.
6 Given this situation, it's not too surprising that many young American athletes lack a fully developed understanding of right and wrong. Professor Sharon Stoll of the University of Idaho has tested more than 10,000 student athletes from all over the country, ranging from junior high to college age; she reports that in the area of moral reasoning, athletes invariably score lower than non-athletes and that they grow worse the longer they participate in athletics.
7 Overprotected by universities, flattered by local communities, given star status by the public, rewarded with seven or eight-figure salaries, successful athletes, inevitably develop the feeling that they are privileged beings as indeed they are. The danger arises when they think that because they are privileged they can have anything they want.
8 Mike Tyson, of course, is the most obvious example of this phenomenon. Having been taught as a young man that he was special his trainer, Cus D'Amato, had one set of rules for Tyson and another, more demanding, set for all his other boxers and having lived his entire adult life surrounded by a team of admiring "slaves", Tyson eventually came to believe, like a medieval king, that all he saw rightfully belonged to him. Blessed with money and fame enough to last a lifetime, he spent his time outside the ring acquiring and discarding the objects of his desire: houses, automobiles, jewelry, clothes, and women. As a result of the publicity surrounding his rape trial, countless women have related stories of Tyson asking them for sexual favors and then, upon being refused, saying with surprise, "Don't you know who I am? I'm the heavyweight champion of the world." Needless to say, not all athletes are Mike Tyson; there are plenty of athlet
es who recognize that they have been granted some extraordinary gifts in this life and want to give something back to the community.
9 Some remarkable individuals will always rise above the deforming athletic system we've created. After retiring from football, Alan Page of the Minnesota Vikings became a successful lawyer and established the Page Education Foundation, which helps minority and disadvantaged kids around the country pay for college. Frustrated by the old-boy network by which Minnesota judges were always appointed, Page challenged the system in court and was eventually elected judge in the Supreme Court. He thus became the first black ever elected to a statewide office in Minnesota. Thankfully, there will always be some legitimate heroes (or, to use the more contemporary term, role models) to be found among professional athletes.
10 Still, it's probably misguided for society to look to athletes for its heroes any more than we look among the ranks of, say, actors or lawyers or pipefitters. The social role played by athletes is indeed important (imagine a society without sports; I wouldn't want to live in it), but it's fundamentally different from that of heroes.

Playing to Win
1 My daughter is an athlete. Nowadays, this statement won't strike many parents as unusual, but it does me. Until her freshman year in high school, Ann was not really interested in sports of any kind. When she played, she didn't like to move around, often dropped the ball, and had the annoying habit of laughing on the field or the court.
2 Indifference combined with another factor that was not a good sign for a sports career. Ann was growing up to be beautiful. By the eighth grade, nature and dental work had produced a 5-foot-8-inch, 125-pound, brown-eyed beauty with a wonderful smile. People told her, too. And as many young women know, it is considered a satisfactory accomplishment to be pretty and stay pretty. Then you can simply sit still and enjoy the unconditional positive reward. Ann loved the attention and didn't consider it insulting when she was awarded "Best Hair," female category, in the eighth-grade yearbook.
3 So it came as a surprise when she became an athlete. The first indication that athletic indifference had ended came when she joined the high-school cross-country team. She signed up for the team in early September and came third within three days. Not only that. After one of those 3.1-mile races up and down hill on a rainy November afternoon, Ann came home muddy and bedraggled. Her hair was wet and the mascara she had applied so carefully that morning ran in dark circles under her eyes. This is it, I thought. Wait until Lady Astor sees herself in the mirrors. But the kid with the best hair in eighth-grade went on to finish the season and subsequently letter in cross-country, soccer, basketball, and football.
4 "I love sports," she tells anyone who will listen. So do I, though my midlife quest for a doctorate leaves me little time for e
ither playing or watching. My love of sports is bound up with the goals in my life and my hopes for my three daughters. I have begun to hear the message of sports. It is very different from many messages that women receive about living, and I think it is good.
5 My husband, for example, talked to Ann differently when he realized that she was a serious competitor and not just someone who wanted to get in shape so she'd look good in a prom dress. Be aggressive, he'd advise. Go for the ball. Be intense.
6 Be intense. She came in for some of the most severe criticism from her dad when, during basketball season, her intensity decreased. You're pretending to play hard, he said. You like it on the bench? Do you like to watch while your teammates play?
7 I would think, how is this kid reacting to such advice? For years, she'd been told at home, at school, by countless advertisements. "Be quiet. Be good. Be still." Teachers had reported that Ann was too talkative, not obedient enough, too superficial. I had dressed her up in frilly dresses and told her not to get dirty. Ideals of femininity in ads were still, quiet, cool females whose empty expressionless faces made them look elegant and mature. How can any adolescent girl know what she's up against? Have you ever really noticed intensity? It is neither quiet nor good. And it's definitely not pretty.
8 In the end, her intensity revived. At halftime, she'd look for her father, and he would come out of the bleachers to discuss tough defense, finding the open player, improving her jump shot. I'd watch them at the edge of the court, a tall man and a tall girl, talking about how to play.
9 Not that dangers don't lurk for the females of her generation. I occasionally run this horror show in my own mental movie theater: An overly polite but handsome lawyerlike drone of a young man sees my Ann. Hmmm, he says unconsciously to himself, good gene pool, and wouldn't she go well with my BMW and the condo? Then I see Ann with a great new hairdo kissing the drone "goodbye honey" and setting off to the nearest mall to spend money with her beautiful friends.
10 But the other night she came home from softball tryouts at 6 in the evening. The dark circles under her eyes were from exhaustion, not makeup. "I tried too hard today," she says. "I feel like I'm going to be sick."
11 After she has revived, she explains. She wants to play a particular position. There is competition for it. "I can't let anybody else get my spot," she says. "I've got to prove that I can do it." Later, we find out that she has not gotten the much-wanted third-base position, but she will start with the varsity team. My husband explains to her how coaches often work and tells her to keep trying. "You are doing fine," he says. She gets that I-am-going-to-keep-trying look on her face.
12 Of course, Ann doesn't realize the changes she has made, the power of her self-definition. "I'm an athlete, Ma," she tells me when I suggest participation in the

invading-荒的拼音

功率因数是什么-一往无前的近义词

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原理的近义词-气馁的读音

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