Little Soldiers
An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve
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Narrated by:
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Emily Woo Zeller
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By:
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Lenora Chu
About this listen
In the spirit of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Bringing Up Bébé, and The Smartest Kids in the World, a hard-hitting exploration of China's widely acclaimed yet insular education system - held up as a model of academic and behavioral excellence - that raises important questions for the future of American parenting and education.
When students in Shanghai rose to the top of international rankings in 2009, Americans feared that they were being "out-educated" by the rising super power. An American journalist of Chinese descent raising a young family in Shanghai, Lenora Chu noticed how well-behaved Chinese children were compared to her boisterous toddler. How did the Chinese create their academic superachievers? Would their little boy benefit from Chinese school?
Chu and her husband decided to enroll three-year-old Rainer in China's state-run public school system. The results were positive - her son quickly settled down, became fluent in Mandarin, and enjoyed his friends - but she also began to notice troubling new behaviors. Wondering what was happening behind closed classroom doors, she embarked on an exploratory journey, interviewing Chinese parents, teachers, and education professors and following students at all stages of their education.
What she discovered is a military-like education system driven by high-stakes testing, with teachers posting rankings in public, using bribes to reward students who comply, and shaming to isolate those who do not. At the same time, she uncovered a years-long desire by government to alleviate its students' crushing academic burden and make education friendlier for all. The more she learns, the more she wonders: Are Chinese children - and her son - paying too high a price for their obedience and the promise of future academic prowess? Is there a way to appropriate the excellence of the system but dispense with the bad? What, if anything, could Westerners learn from China's education journey?
Chu's eye-opening investigation challenges our assumptions and asks us to consider the true value and purpose of education.
©2017 Lenora Chu (P)2017 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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Ping Fu knows what it’s like to be a child soldier, a factory worker, and a political prisoner. To be beaten and raped for the crime of being born into a well-educated family. To be deported with barely enough money for a plane ticket to a bewildering new land. To start all over, without family or friends, as a maid, waitress, and student. Ping Fu also knows what it’s like to be a pioneering software programmer, an innovator, a CEO, and Inc. magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year.
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A true account as good as any Horatio Alger story!
- By Roy B. Paschal on 01-14-13
By: Ping Fu, and others
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The Boy Who Loved Too Much
- A True Story of Pathological Friendliness
- By: Jennifer Latson
- Narrated by: Heather Auden
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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What would it be like to see everyone as a friend? Twelve-year-old Eli D'Angelo has a genetic disorder that obliterates social inhibitions, making him irrepressibly friendly, indiscriminately trusting, and unconditionally loving toward everyone he meets. It also makes him enormously vulnerable. Eli lacks the innate skepticism that will help his peers navigate adolescence more safely - and vastly more successfully.
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Williams Syndrome
- By Sharlotte on 09-20-19
By: Jennifer Latson
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You Are Not Special
- ...And Other Encouragements
- By: David McCullough Jr.
- Narrated by: David McCullough Jr.
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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A profound expansion of David McCullough, Jr.’s popular commencement speech - a call to arms against a prevailing, narrow, conception of success viewed by millions on YouTube - You Are Not Special is a love letter to students and parents as well as a guide to a truly fulfilling, happy life. By acknowledging that the world is indifferent to them, McCullough takes pressure off of students to be extraordinary achievers and instead exhorts them to roll up their sleeves and do something useful with their advantages.
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The Teacher is Wise
- By E. Pearson on 09-22-16
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A Hope in The Unseen
- An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League
- By: Ron Suskind
- Narrated by: Peter Jay Fernandez
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling investigative journalist Ron Suskind based this book on his Pulitzer Prize winning articles about Cedric Jennings, a Black youth struggling to survive one of D.C.'s toughest school districts. A moving portrait of inner city life, A Hope in the Unseen offers a view of life through the eyes of someone trying desperately to make his way up from the bottom.
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Great Story
- By Adam Evans on 12-25-10
By: Ron Suskind
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Language Arts
- By: Stephanie Kallos
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Charles Marlow is a Seattle English teacher who instructs his students to expand their worlds through language. Lately, however, with one child off to college and the pressure from his ex-wife to make plans for their severely autistic son who's about to age out of the system, he prefers the company of the ghosts he turns up in the storage boxes in his crawl space.
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The beauty of the broken
- By SJ Evans on 04-27-18
By: Stephanie Kallos
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Without You, There Is No Us
- My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite
- By: Suki Kim
- Narrated by: Janet Song
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields - except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST).
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The King and I meets Mary Poppins
- By Michael on 02-22-15
By: Suki Kim
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Carly's Voice
- Breaking Through Autism
- By: Arthur Fleischmann, Carly Fleischmann
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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At the age of two, Carly Fleischmann was diagnosed with severe autism and an oral motor condition that prevented her from speaking. Doctors predicted that she would never intellectually develop beyond the abilities of a small child. Although she made some progress after years of intensive behavioral and communication therapy, Carly remained largely unreachable. Then, at age 10, Carly had a breakthrough....
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A peek inside...
- By Yolanda on 08-09-13
By: Arthur Fleischmann, and others
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Life, Animated
- A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism
- By: Ron Suskind
- Narrated by: Ron Suskind
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the real-life story of Owen Suskind, the son of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind and his wife, Cornelia. An autistic boy who couldn't speak for years, Owen memorized dozens of Disney movies, turned them into a language to express love and loss, kinship, brotherhood. The family was forced to become animated characters, communicating with him in Disney dialogue and song; until they all emerge, together, revealing how, in darkness, we all literally need stories to survive.
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Life, Animated ... is Love, Animated *****
- By Tom T. Rumble on 04-12-14
By: Ron Suskind
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Under Red Skies
- Three Generations of Life, Loss, and Hope in China
- By: Karoline Kan
- Narrated by: Allison Hiroto
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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A deeply personal and shocking look at how China is coming to terms with its conflicted past as it emerges into a modern, cutting-edge superpower.
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An intimate view of real life in China
- By Lonnie G. Hardy, Jr. on 08-15-19
By: Karoline Kan
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Street of Eternal Happiness
- Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road
- By: Rob Schmitz
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Modern Shanghai: a global city in the midst of a renaissance, where dreamers arrive each day to partake in a mad torrent of capital, ideas, and opportunity. Marketplace's Rob Schmitz is one of them. He immerses himself in his neighborhood, forging deep relationships with ordinary people who see in the city's sleek skyline a brighter future, and a chance to rewrite their destinies.
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Deserving of better audio
- By Rachael on 02-19-18
By: Rob Schmitz
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Born Bright
- A Young Girl's Journey from Nothing to Something in America
- By: C. Nicole Mason
- Narrated by: Robin Eller
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Born Bright, C. Nicole Mason's powerful memoir, is a story of reconciliation, constrained choices, and life on the other side of the tracks. Born in the 1970s in Los Angeles, California, Mason was raised by a beautiful but volatile 16-year-old single mother. Early on, she learned to navigate between an unpredictable home life and school, where she excelled. By high school, Mason was seamlessly straddling two worlds.
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Solid Book
- By Daryl on 11-06-16
By: C. Nicole Mason
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Letters to a Young Teacher
- By: Jonathan Kozol
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In these affectionate letters to Francesca, a first-grade teacher at an inner-city school in Boston, Jonathan Kozol vividly describes his repeated visits to her classroom while, under Francesca's likably irreverent questioning, also revealing his own most personal stories of the years that he has spent in public schools.
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A must read for new teachers
- By Santiago on 03-31-10
By: Jonathan Kozol
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River Town
- Two Years on the Yangtze
- By: Peter Hessler
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 14 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In the heart of China's Sichuan province, amid the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, lies the remote town of Fuling. Like many other small cities in this ever-evolving country, Fuling is heading down a new path of change and growth, which came into remarkably sharp focus when Peter Hessler arrived as a Peace Corps volunteer, marking the first time in more than half a century that the city had an American resident.
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Peter Berkrot Again?
- By Abstraction on 07-10-11
By: Peter Hessler
What listeners say about Little Soldiers
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Radar01
- 07-02-23
Insight into culture and classroom
As an American math teacher of 20 years, I have always been curious about the foundation of Chinese education. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. The narrator’s use of voice is wonderfully done; you don’t lose which character she is invoking.
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- lightweaver
- 09-09-20
lightweaver
Good book that tells the story of a family struggling to find balance and doing it. A lot to think about and a good listen.
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- Middle school
- 08-25-21
An American teacher MUST READ
From Chinese authoritarian traits in schools of China to valuable lessons of hard work and goal setting, this book helped reveal in the story of a mother how she maneuvered her way through the teachers, culture, and anxieties of sending her child through the kindergarten education system of China and what she learned from other parents in rural and urban China and America.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Dani
- 11-06-21
Very Informative
Not the type of book I thought I'd be interested in initially but it was incredibly insightful and well written. Had facts and figures but had enough personal stories and a plotline so didn't feel like reading a text book. Fair and unbiased on both ends of the spectrum. As a long time Chinese learner I also appreciated they actually found a narrator that could properly pronounce the Chinese words😅 Most other books I've found on audible that include Chinese words cannot say the same. Highly recommend for an interesting insight on east vs west education.
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1 person found this helpful
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- KZ
- 10-18-22
Amazing!
This is an amazing book with perfect narration. It will expand your horizons while keeping you completely engaged by the personal stories and perspective. Highly recommended!!
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- ShoeLover
- 03-04-18
Dallas TX Homeschool Mom enlightened and on a mission to now incorporate Chinese style education to my young children.
This book has completely changed my views about test taking and many other things. I always knew in the back of my mind my kid was and is capable of so much more. God bless you Lenora for bringing such rich and valuable information to us. You are an amazing woman to bring your own experiences to us. Thanks for making this book so funny too! I loved the part about the piñata! ~Dallas TX Momma
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1 person found this helpful
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- Tia
- 10-06-19
The story was well told and interesting!!!
I loved every chapter and learned so much about Chinese education. This book was great!!
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- Nora Wilson
- 11-12-21
Very insightful regarding Chinese education
I've lived in China for 10 years and as an American, when my kids start school here I've had a lot of apprehension. This book gave great insights, though I find the reader made the Chinese people sound overly harsh.
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- Jean
- 10-09-17
An Interesting examination of Educational Systems
The author is born in Philadelphia and raised in Houston. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in journalism. Her grandparents fled China during the Cultural Revolution and immigrated to the United States. Chu notes the irony that 50 years ago Mao conducted his anti-intellectual purge and now Shanghai schools top the world in math, reading, and science and the USA is only in the middle of the pack.
Chu and her husband live in Shanghai for his work at a news agency. They have a young son who goes to the local school. His skills in math and Chinese language excelled but Chu noted behavioral changes that lead her to examine the educational system in China and the USA.
The book is well written and researched. It is written in the journalistic style. The author noted that the Chinese schools give less attention to the poor students and spend time and resources on the high achievers. She stated the U.S. system is “No Child Left Behind”. She noted the Chinese schools are rote memorization then they allow them to explore more complex applications after they have achieved a certain level of understanding. The Chinese schools also taught obedience and self-discipline and squelched individualism and creativity from the beginning of school. I found the differences in educational techniques interesting and was wondering if there was a way to combine the best of the two systems to create a better school system. The conformity and lack of individualism and creativity really bothers me about the Chinese system. According to the author, China is in the process of changing its methods to allow for more creativity in the students.
The book is eleven and a half hours long. Emily Woo Zeller does an excellent job narrating the book. Zeller is a voice over artist and an Audie nominated audiobook narrator. She has also won numerous Earphone and SOVAS awards plus was voted Best Voice in 2013 and 2015 by Audiobook Magazine.
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12 people found this helpful
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- Sam
- 11-13-17
Accurate Portrayal of The Chinese system
I have lived in China for over 13 years now and what is depicted here offers insight into how much of Chinese society works, the good and the bad. My daughter is the same age as Rainy, so this book was particular poignant to me. Generally I agree with Lenora’s feelings on the positives and negatives of the Chinese system and this book made me more comfortable with perhaps “localizing” my daughter a bit more... with limits... “Audible 20 Review Sweepstakes Entry”
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2 people found this helpful