Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Well Ms. Xiao, your son will be an excellent manager...

....based on his DNA.


Photo from cnn.com


If your child is one of the 30 or so who happen to be going to a special 5 day camp in Chongqing province in China, they could come out with a lot more than pretty art projects and blue ribbons for sports.

Thanks to Shanghai Biochip Corp and this special camp, your child can have their DNA tested and go through a series of exercises/activities so as to help identify their gifts and talents. This program is specially designed to help identify what a child might be gifted at or have a special edge in; at the end the parents are advised on what their child may be the most successful at based on their DNA test results and the camp activities. In an ever shrinking world, competition is now international. In China, where most parents have only a single child, there is a strong competition and a drive to make their child the best and the most successful at whatever they do. The parents are often ambitious and want to give their child the best they can possibly give them, including education and a future.

The parents participating in this program as well as the program directors believe that this program can help them raise their child so as to best understand them and cultivate their natural gifts.

Some critics of this program say that it's pushing too much on kids too early, and forcing them to follow a path from childhood based on what their parents want them to be in the future is going to ruin their childhood and make for a whole lot of miserable kids.

Other critics say that this program is something of a scam, and that the parents are simply blinded into it by their desire for their child to be all that the can be no matter what it takes. These critics criticize the test based on its accuracy and how much it can actually predict, how useful it really is, and the reality behind how much certain genes really play a role in the child's life.



Personally, this reminds me a bit of Gattaca; a movie in which roles and jobs in society of the 'not too distant future' are determined largely based on your genes.

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