by Joe David
A civilized society can’t remain independent without a sound educational system. When schools succeed, they graduate doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other professionals who will lead the country forward. When they fail, the reverse occurs, and the country becomes dependent and victims of the more advanced nations.
After years of teaching, many educators have systematically mass-produced failure. Today’s graduates, hunched like cripples, survive as evidence. Many of them totally lack mature reading, writing, and math skills. Their logic is questionable. And far too few can make sensible decisions without peer or adult approval, because the majority often have been deprived of knowledge and reasoning ability needed. Seeing our youth, intellectually maimed, flounder often leaves us feeling helpless. Yet, this needn’t occur. There is something we can all do to correct the problem. It won’t bring overnight change, but it will bring change painlessly! Here are my recommendations, after 14 years of teaching:
1. Listen to your child when he speaks. His words open the door to his thoughts. It is very important to know what he’s thinking, how he’s thinking, IF he’s thinking. His thoughts provide you with a clue to the information he has accumulated. This accumulated information is often based on a collection of ideas and even faulty thoughts that he has acquired from his peers, teachers, and maybe even you. If what he says or does isn’t in harmony with what you believe, gently intervene and guide him with your adult sensibilities in the right direction. To ignore him by not addressing his errors could only reinforce failure.
2. Never reprimand him when he speaks. If you don’t approve of what you hear, you must never make him feel foolish for his innocent thoughts. This will only force him to slam the door shut on you. What you must do is help him sort through his thoughts intelligently by providing him with another view, an intelligent adult view, backed up with objective facts. By doing this, you will provide him with essential information needed for making rational decisions by himself.
3. Always try to identify the source for your child’s information. You should make every effort to know where he learns what he believes: Who planted the ideas and how? Sometimes his conclusions can be the result of faulty logic; other times misinformation. If it’s faulty logic, identify his reasoning errors so that he understands his errors. If it’s misinformation, teach him to question anything that seems to be implausible or illogical. Never forget that he is never too young to learn that some sources, despite their credentials, are not always reliable.
4. Never stop children from watching television. If his school friends watch a particular show or series, he will want to watch it too. To stop him from watching it will only anger him. What you can do are two things, you can restrict the amount of time he may watch television and, to prevent unsuitable entertainment from causing havoc with his thinking, you can sit through a program with him and guide him through the experience by identifying the silliness of the program or the irrationality of its premise or the pure vulgarity of it. To do this successfully, you should compare it to the reality he knows and understands. Your best weapon against such programming is to encourage him to appreciate the beauty and sanity in the world, not its ugliness and madness.
5. Acknowledge your child as an intelligent being. There is potential for greatness in each child, and, as a parent, it’s your responsibility to spot it and encourage it to grow. When a child reaches out to explore the world around him, don’t respond negatively. Instead, peek into his thoughts before you react and try to understand what’s happening at that moment that is leading him in a particular direction. Once you understand what he is experiencing you will be able to redirect him and guide him forward. This will help reduce the frustration of a growing child who needs adult guidance to prevent him from going astray. To discourage him to explore your adult world, guided, of course, by your adult wisdom, is to stunt his development temporarily, maybe even permanently.
6. Teach your child only what he is ready to learn. Children seek information at sensitive periods in their lives (i.e., those periods in which certain information is crucial to their needs). If you are attentive to your child, you will recognize these sensitive periods by the questions he asks or the things he does. Once his needs are identified, provide him with what he seeks on a level that’s suitable for him. His interest and enthusiasm should determine the amount you offer. Don’t expect him to absorb too much too soon. Let him grow like a plant at his own rate. Water it and give it all the sunshine you can and learn to hold back when necessary.
7. Acquaint yourself with good teaching. It is impossible to make decisions about your child’s education, if you don’t know what a good teacher is. To quote Jacques Barzun, good teachers motivate children by bringing life to their subject. They do this daily by "raising the ghost of an object, idea, or fact, and holding it in full view of the class, turning it this way and that, describing it — demonstrating it like a new car or a vacuum cleaner." (From Barzun’s book Teacher in America.) But that isn’t all. In my articles “Teaching World Literature” and “History as a Link” I go further. I explain how a teacher must connect ideas, so that a student can grasp cause and effect. Too many teachers fail because they don’t present fundamental information logically. Information to be useful must be logically presented with one idea or fact linked to the next, built on an unshakable premise. This information must be urgent and reflect primary trends. In short, a good teacher makes his subject live by carefully defining it and selecting examples carefully. In “History as a Link,” for example, I explain the importance of arranging information historically so that a student can understand how one idea leads to another idea, connecting the past to the present, and even to the future. Teachers who teach like this have great respect for a student’s mind and reasoning ability. When you meet such a teacher, support him. When you find a school that supports such teachers, embrace it, and tell your friends.
8. Reserve some time for your child. It’s very difficult to manage a home, earn a living, and still be a parent. It demands considerable time and energy. Despite the difficulty, it must be done. There is no reason why your child can’t help you with your chores — shopping, house cleaning, etc. Working together not only allows you the opportunity to teach him good work habits, but it also provides you with the extra time together needed to get to know him well. This time spent with your child, though, mustn’t be all work. You must balance it with some of life’s pleasures as well.
9. Encourage respect for others. Children today show so little respect. They are self-absorbed and totally lacking in sensitivity to others. To overcome this, parents must teach (not only by example, but by words) respect for the unique intelligence of others. As you must learn to appreciate your child’s special talents, they too must learn to appreciate such talents in others. One way to do this is to expand your child’s world and bring all types of children and adults into it. So many parents merely give their children things, not culture and exposure, because it’s easier. They don’t realize what a child often wants and needs for fulfillment is knowledge so they can feel useful in the world.
10. Help your child discover himself. I find it very sad to see graduates waste important years searching for their identity. Adults deserve the blame. For years, we have told children what they must be and think without ever permitting them to develop naturally and pursue their bent. The tragedy occurs for them when they wake up as adults, after years of being shaped by others, and they don’t like what they have become. The results are usually the same. They either live with it unhappily or they redirect their lives by pursuing new endeavors. Regardless, time is wasted, and the precious gem is never fully polished.
I strongly believe adults must stop burying children with layers of commands and must permit them to grow naturally. It will reduce years of experimenting and floundering and create in the end fully realized adults with well-defined goals. And, if their education is exact, they will have the skills to pursue what they want with ease and confidence. And, as a parent, you will have done what you’ve always dreamed of doing, you will have created another Einstein or Mozart — or a very happy adult!
After years of teaching, many educators have systematically mass-produced failure. Today’s graduates, hunched like cripples, survive as evidence. Many of them totally lack mature reading, writing, and math skills. Their logic is questionable. And far too few can make sensible decisions without peer or adult approval, because the majority often have been deprived of knowledge and reasoning ability needed. Seeing our youth, intellectually maimed, flounder often leaves us feeling helpless. Yet, this needn’t occur. There is something we can all do to correct the problem. It won’t bring overnight change, but it will bring change painlessly! Here are my recommendations, after 14 years of teaching:
1. Listen to your child when he speaks. His words open the door to his thoughts. It is very important to know what he’s thinking, how he’s thinking, IF he’s thinking. His thoughts provide you with a clue to the information he has accumulated. This accumulated information is often based on a collection of ideas and even faulty thoughts that he has acquired from his peers, teachers, and maybe even you. If what he says or does isn’t in harmony with what you believe, gently intervene and guide him with your adult sensibilities in the right direction. To ignore him by not addressing his errors could only reinforce failure.
2. Never reprimand him when he speaks. If you don’t approve of what you hear, you must never make him feel foolish for his innocent thoughts. This will only force him to slam the door shut on you. What you must do is help him sort through his thoughts intelligently by providing him with another view, an intelligent adult view, backed up with objective facts. By doing this, you will provide him with essential information needed for making rational decisions by himself.
3. Always try to identify the source for your child’s information. You should make every effort to know where he learns what he believes: Who planted the ideas and how? Sometimes his conclusions can be the result of faulty logic; other times misinformation. If it’s faulty logic, identify his reasoning errors so that he understands his errors. If it’s misinformation, teach him to question anything that seems to be implausible or illogical. Never forget that he is never too young to learn that some sources, despite their credentials, are not always reliable.
4. Never stop children from watching television. If his school friends watch a particular show or series, he will want to watch it too. To stop him from watching it will only anger him. What you can do are two things, you can restrict the amount of time he may watch television and, to prevent unsuitable entertainment from causing havoc with his thinking, you can sit through a program with him and guide him through the experience by identifying the silliness of the program or the irrationality of its premise or the pure vulgarity of it. To do this successfully, you should compare it to the reality he knows and understands. Your best weapon against such programming is to encourage him to appreciate the beauty and sanity in the world, not its ugliness and madness.
5. Acknowledge your child as an intelligent being. There is potential for greatness in each child, and, as a parent, it’s your responsibility to spot it and encourage it to grow. When a child reaches out to explore the world around him, don’t respond negatively. Instead, peek into his thoughts before you react and try to understand what’s happening at that moment that is leading him in a particular direction. Once you understand what he is experiencing you will be able to redirect him and guide him forward. This will help reduce the frustration of a growing child who needs adult guidance to prevent him from going astray. To discourage him to explore your adult world, guided, of course, by your adult wisdom, is to stunt his development temporarily, maybe even permanently.
6. Teach your child only what he is ready to learn. Children seek information at sensitive periods in their lives (i.e., those periods in which certain information is crucial to their needs). If you are attentive to your child, you will recognize these sensitive periods by the questions he asks or the things he does. Once his needs are identified, provide him with what he seeks on a level that’s suitable for him. His interest and enthusiasm should determine the amount you offer. Don’t expect him to absorb too much too soon. Let him grow like a plant at his own rate. Water it and give it all the sunshine you can and learn to hold back when necessary.
7. Acquaint yourself with good teaching. It is impossible to make decisions about your child’s education, if you don’t know what a good teacher is. To quote Jacques Barzun, good teachers motivate children by bringing life to their subject. They do this daily by "raising the ghost of an object, idea, or fact, and holding it in full view of the class, turning it this way and that, describing it — demonstrating it like a new car or a vacuum cleaner." (From Barzun’s book Teacher in America.) But that isn’t all. In my articles “Teaching World Literature” and “History as a Link” I go further. I explain how a teacher must connect ideas, so that a student can grasp cause and effect. Too many teachers fail because they don’t present fundamental information logically. Information to be useful must be logically presented with one idea or fact linked to the next, built on an unshakable premise. This information must be urgent and reflect primary trends. In short, a good teacher makes his subject live by carefully defining it and selecting examples carefully. In “History as a Link,” for example, I explain the importance of arranging information historically so that a student can understand how one idea leads to another idea, connecting the past to the present, and even to the future. Teachers who teach like this have great respect for a student’s mind and reasoning ability. When you meet such a teacher, support him. When you find a school that supports such teachers, embrace it, and tell your friends.
8. Reserve some time for your child. It’s very difficult to manage a home, earn a living, and still be a parent. It demands considerable time and energy. Despite the difficulty, it must be done. There is no reason why your child can’t help you with your chores — shopping, house cleaning, etc. Working together not only allows you the opportunity to teach him good work habits, but it also provides you with the extra time together needed to get to know him well. This time spent with your child, though, mustn’t be all work. You must balance it with some of life’s pleasures as well.
9. Encourage respect for others. Children today show so little respect. They are self-absorbed and totally lacking in sensitivity to others. To overcome this, parents must teach (not only by example, but by words) respect for the unique intelligence of others. As you must learn to appreciate your child’s special talents, they too must learn to appreciate such talents in others. One way to do this is to expand your child’s world and bring all types of children and adults into it. So many parents merely give their children things, not culture and exposure, because it’s easier. They don’t realize what a child often wants and needs for fulfillment is knowledge so they can feel useful in the world.
10. Help your child discover himself. I find it very sad to see graduates waste important years searching for their identity. Adults deserve the blame. For years, we have told children what they must be and think without ever permitting them to develop naturally and pursue their bent. The tragedy occurs for them when they wake up as adults, after years of being shaped by others, and they don’t like what they have become. The results are usually the same. They either live with it unhappily or they redirect their lives by pursuing new endeavors. Regardless, time is wasted, and the precious gem is never fully polished.
I strongly believe adults must stop burying children with layers of commands and must permit them to grow naturally. It will reduce years of experimenting and floundering and create in the end fully realized adults with well-defined goals. And, if their education is exact, they will have the skills to pursue what they want with ease and confidence. And, as a parent, you will have done what you’ve always dreamed of doing, you will have created another Einstein or Mozart — or a very happy adult!
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