I'm not a parent with kids, so feel free to toss these thought into the bin if that makes more sense...
With that disclaimer made, one thing that I'd also like to see distilled into kids in their education in addition to discipline is a sense that each one of them has the tools and agency to impact the world in a meaningful way (if not right away). In a more specific sense, as someone who primarily exercises my agency in building stuff, I think that too many kids don't think that they have the power to build worthwhile things of their own, so they never try.
It isn't the lack of desire to learn or flex their creative muscles that's holding them back, it's a message from society that individual contributions and actions are insignificant next to all the systemic and institutional power that is in force around them. The systemic lesson isn't a bad one, but probably one that should be taught AFTER a phase where kids can spend some time believing (and FEELING) that their actions and creations matter, instead of being passive players on which society acts. Kids need to understand that they have AGENCY (that's embedded in specific contexts) and it's discipline that hones and sharpens that agency into doing something meaningful.
Most kids could do better if they learned to think for themselves. Right now, it's parenting and peer pressure that shape what they become. Both of those factors in development seem to be increasingly lacking in quality.
The current generation in charge always complains that the younger generation is going to hell in a handbasket, but things usually turn out ok. True but it may be that the burden of making things turn out ok is falling on a smaller percentage of the population. Is there a tipping point?
I'm not a parent with kids, so feel free to toss these thought into the bin if that makes more sense...
With that disclaimer made, one thing that I'd also like to see distilled into kids in their education in addition to discipline is a sense that each one of them has the tools and agency to impact the world in a meaningful way (if not right away). In a more specific sense, as someone who primarily exercises my agency in building stuff, I think that too many kids don't think that they have the power to build worthwhile things of their own, so they never try.
It isn't the lack of desire to learn or flex their creative muscles that's holding them back, it's a message from society that individual contributions and actions are insignificant next to all the systemic and institutional power that is in force around them. The systemic lesson isn't a bad one, but probably one that should be taught AFTER a phase where kids can spend some time believing (and FEELING) that their actions and creations matter, instead of being passive players on which society acts. Kids need to understand that they have AGENCY (that's embedded in specific contexts) and it's discipline that hones and sharpens that agency into doing something meaningful.
Most kids could do better if they learned to think for themselves. Right now, it's parenting and peer pressure that shape what they become. Both of those factors in development seem to be increasingly lacking in quality.
The current generation in charge always complains that the younger generation is going to hell in a handbasket, but things usually turn out ok. True but it may be that the burden of making things turn out ok is falling on a smaller percentage of the population. Is there a tipping point?