I often re-read my own posts. Actually, I don't, but I saw the file that goes with this post from 2013 that I could not remember having written, and I read it. Forgive me for being shocked and impressed with my own writing, but I simply must post this again. [Warning: there is absolutely no relevance to the present disasters we are facing.]
The America that we know is so diverse that almost any generalization
anyone makes is likely to be largely untrue. This is particularly so
with statements about Education, and about bringing up children. There
are thousands of people out there who have what I think is the right
attitude towards Education, either because it worked for them, or
because they brought it here from The Old Country: Education is good.
But for many, their belief is that
Education will make me rich, maybe, and that's all they
care about.
Modern America is based on two principles:
Simplification, and
Generalization.
These principles have worked well for such a long time that when they
stop working we’re not really able to recognize the fact. Precisely
because they
do work in so many instances, applying the generalization
principle, we go on the assumption that they work in
all
instances. Yet it is only human to try and simplify one’s dealings with a
variety of things, be they situations, people, or produce: we sort them
into broad categories, and use rules of thumb. This is called
stereotyping, when people want to denigrate it, but who can do without it?
So when I say that people today do a very poor job of bringing up their
kids, I’m making a big generalization, and I’m sure practically every
parent will claim that he or she is an exception.
When I say that education today is (somewhat of) a failure, that too is a
broad generalization that is likely to have just as many exceptions,
but people are likely to agree with
that sentiment, simply because it is human nature to
point the finger at another culprit rather than to take some of the
responsibility ourselves! But, in my opinion, the failure of education
is partly a result of our failure in child-rearing.
Why have things come to this pass? It all began in the early part of
the twentieth century, with the introduction of the assembly-line,
mass-production, and the economies of scale. Standardization is a good
thing in many ways —consider that we can use any compact disc in any
stereo— but, again, the weaknesses of generalization rears its ugly
head. Using industrial methods to mass-produce educated citizens has
negative consequences.
What do we expect out of education? Clearly the expectations vary wildly
from person to person.
The most common expectation is that education will result in a
well-paying job. That may be true, but actually, it is the converse
that holds: if you have a well-paid job, you’ve
probably had a good
education. (Or your dad might own the business.) A moderately good
education certainly increases the chances of a young person being suited
to a more responsible position, which in turn might bring a higher
salary.
Another expectation of education is that it fits a person for a
productive role in society. Unfortunately, this doesn’t resonate with
(parents who are) rugged individualists. They don’t want their kids fitting into
anything; they’re not happy with society, and they don’t want a bunch of
commies making their kids just like every other kid in the country.
But some of us realize that the world is a complex place, and whether
one likes it or not, a person’s interaction with society is complex, and
cannot be reduced to a simplistic equation of dollars and cents. Which means that building a better citizen is likely to require the effort of a team, as Hillary Clinton got laughed at for saying some years ago.
As far as I’m concerned, education is also about values; all parents
want their children to learn certain values. And they want those values
taught in school:
don’t have unprotected sex,
learn how to drive safely, learn how to
eat sensibly.
Be respectful
to people that matter, and don’t get tossed around by hoodlums. As you
can see, all these expectations are very relative, and in extreme
cases, rather crass.
These values are better taught at home.
There are other more important values that must be taught by both
parents and teachers in concert: how to work well with teams and groups;
how to lead where needed, and how to graciously take instructions from
competent peers.
The job of a school, and of teachers, has evolved greatly over time. As
society’s expectations of schools changed, their methods changed, to
process a larger number of mediocre students quickly and efficiently.
This has not been
all bad. From a high-school drop-out rate of
around 70% in the decade of the 1950s, we now have a drop-out rate of
practically less than 10%, depending on how you count it. But we have
given up a great deal to achieve this: for instance the needs of both exceptional
students, and particularly difficult students, tend to be neglected in
favor of the needs of students of average ability. But, of course,
every parent insists that his or her child must be taken care of first,
and this demand is backed up by administrators, and so a teacher’s job
is very difficult. To top everything, teachers are usually poorly paid.
Let’s turn now to the question of values and bringing up children. We
don't anymore consider sex to be a mere means of conceiving children;
rather, there are those who regard children as a somewhat regrettable
by-product of unplanned sex. No matter what our conscious opinions are,
we’re hardwired to take pleasure in children, both our own, and
those of others. In recent times, it has become fashionable to consider
children a sort of property, and therefore to consider other people’s
children
absolutely none of our business. People such as
teachers, therefore, find themselves living a sort of contradiction: the
children in their classroom are, on the one hand,
none of their
business, and on the other hand,
entirely their business. As far
as I’m concerned, all children are everybody’s business, but obviously
I’m not going to waltz into someone else’s home and tell them what to
do. I’m doing it here, instead.
The five day week was a tremendous victory; one would have expected that
with the progress of society and more efficient means of production, we
would have come to a
four day week sometime in the twentieth
century. It didn’t happen. In fact, people are working harder than
ever, working overtime, and working second jobs. Many of the
necessities of life have become so costly that we need to step up our rate of earning more than
the increase in the cost of living would explain. (One reason for this
is that it is better business sense for a company to hire a few people,
and work them hard, than to hire a large number of people to work
shorter hours, even if they’re paid less. Another reason is that
Business and Industry has decided that there must be a
small leisure
class —wealthy stockholders— and the working population must work
very much harder to support them.)
The consequence of this is that we do not know how to bring up our kids, most of all because we
haven’t had the time to figure it out. Bringing up children is not entirely an instinctive skill. It has to be learned. In fact, it
has to be taught.
But it is too important an enterprise to be left to the tender mercies
of school teachers, wonderful though they might be. We must regard our
own children as future parents
from the word go. Every interaction must be something that that child can draw on in the future, when interacting with
his or her own children.
The most important things a parent can convey to a child are: (1) Be
willing to take on unpleasant things, for the sake of the good it might
bring. (2) Be considerate. (3) Set a good example to the younger
people in your circle. (4) Value education, even if the benefits of
particular aspects of it are not immediately obvious. (5) Be respectful
of your teacher, even if your friends regard her as an idiot. She’s
working under almost impossible conditions, because she believes in what
she’s teaching. (6) Stay away from anything that will endanger your
long-term health.
(Additional values, such as being involved in the
betterment of your community, must come from example.)
As you can see, a lot of what has to be conveyed is what anyone knows,
but it is also precisely the sort of stuff that we have been conditioned
not to talk about, so in this very article I’m violating a whole lot of
conventions!
It used to be the province of the local priest or minister to lay this
sort of thing on the people. Once religion got seriously discredited,
people jettisoned the priests and ministers, but had nowhere to go to be
reminded of the commonsense axioms that they had to fall back on in the
heat of the daily battle. Parents began to insist that teachers should
do this. This means that education experts would have to come up with a
new subject, like Sex Education, which might be called something like
Not Being an Idiot.
It is not the business of teachers to impart family values!
A teacher who is a preacher as well loses a lot of credibility with
the kids. Teachers do it, even if they get little thanks for it. But
it is the responsibility of parents, regardless of how overworked they
are. If you are a parent, remember you’re
teaching for two:
these lessons are needed for
your kids. But they’re
also needed for
your grandchildren. They’re both
content, and
methods, in Education
jargon.
Some extremists believe that Education should start at home,
and end
there as well. I don't believe that. Education is a social endeavor,
and that is its glory. But some things are best taught at home, not
least among them being how to bring up children. A child is never too
young to learn the art of conveying values, by example, and with
delicacy and imagination.
Afterword: I got so carried away I almost forgot to emphasize one of my
main points: one thing that must be taught at home is
to value and respect school, and teachers.
A child must not be taught that a teacher must
earn his or her
respect. The respect must come first, both from the child and the
parent, whether or not the teacher has demonstrated that he or she
"deserves respect." One must start with respect, and only proceed to
loss of respect under desperate circumstances. A teacher simply cannot
function if he or she is faced with an array of skeptical faces.
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