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Lies We Tell Kids

paulgraham.com

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Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#21

Post by imp »

dgabriel wrote: post #4

My least favorite pg essay. It's too easy to generalize about parenting, and so little of this essay applies to me. 1. Raising a kid in the city, and quite happily. 2. No prohibitions on swears in my house. Just at Grandma's, and only because it would offend her, not because swearing is inherently bad. 3. He goes to a school where they only teach you how to read, write, and do basic math. Everything else is a child-l…

I'm glad there are more enlightened parents out there like you. I completely agreed with every point he made because that's how I was raised. It never occured to me that some parents might actually be honest with their kids.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#22

Post by astine »

Does it count as a 'lie' if it is believed by the parent?

The reason that parents don't want kids to swear is because they genuinely believe that it is wrong for some reason. The don't know the reason themselves, and so break the rule and become hypocrites, but they still believe that it is wrong and want their children to do better than they did.

With regard to group identity (and religion,) most parents actually adhere to that identity themselves. They share the beliefs and assumptions of that group and so would be hypocrites not to instruct their children in them.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#23

Post by nirmal »

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #5

PG: what does suburbia mean to you? You paint it in an extremely negative light, and so I'd just like some more detail of how you define that term. I know it means different things to different people.

I don't think pg has painted it in a negative light. He says it is useful at certain stages in a child's development but not all stages.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#24

Post by brlewis »

Xichekolas wrote: post #20
epi0Bauqu wrote: post #5

PG: what does suburbia mean to you? You paint it in an extremely negative light, and so I'd just like some more detail of how you define that term. I know it means different things to different people.

I'm not PG (obviously), but I also see suburbia pretty negatively and want to chime in. To me, suburbia is that neighborhood with the tree-related name that offers four different house models and three different colors of paint. All the lots are roughly the same size, all the people are roughly the same, and the streets don't particularly go anywhere. When viewed from an airplane it looks like a giant millipede wrapp…

I think "sprawl" might be a more descriptive term for what you're reacting negatively to. Boston has lots of suburbs that don't fit your description.

(BTW, suburb's etymology is not tree-related.)

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#25

Post by meredydd »

asnyder wrote: post #19

Besides being a woman, Marie Curie was the first and ONLY person to ever recieve a Nobel Prize in different sciences. Something her male counterparts have yet to do, so maybe there's something there besides her sex.

Indeed - Curie was most definitely "the shit", and that shouldn't be taken away from her.

However, it is also almost certainly true that she was taught because she was female. Now, I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing.

I would, in fact, suggest an addition to PG's categories of lies: "Making kids think things are easier than they are".

No-one knows better than PG, living in the start-up world, that Big Things are often only even attempted because the people involved didn't realise how incredibly difficult they would turn out to be. If a child had been taught, truthfully, about the obstacles to succeeding as (say) a woman in science, that could well be one of the biggest things she learns from early science lessons. Layer this up over the next five to ten years, and how likely is she to go for that physics class - or even think she wants to?

Some of these lies are to tell kids that the world is as we wish it were, in the hope that they will grow up with these expectations and thereby make it so.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#26

Post by jamess »

dgabriel wrote: post #4

My least favorite pg essay. It's too easy to generalize about parenting, and so little of this essay applies to me. 1. Raising a kid in the city, and quite happily. 2. No prohibitions on swears in my house. Just at Grandma's, and only because it would offend her, not because swearing is inherently bad. 3. He goes to a school where they only teach you how to read, write, and do basic math. Everything else is a child-l…

For their own sake, don't let your kids be vegetarian until they're at least 16, that's the worst disservice you could ever do them. I speak as a vegetarian myself, but you've got to be pragmatic.

Your kids need animal protein right up until their brains are done developing. It doesn't have to be very much animal protein, as little as a teaspoon a day does the trick, but there is no artificial or vegetable substitute yet derived that will work.

Personally, I think either letting or forcing a child to become vegetarian borders very close on child abuse. You'd be actively and artificially limiting their chances in life.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#27

Post by dgabriel »

jpeterson wrote: post #12
dgabriel wrote: post #4

My least favorite pg essay. It's too easy to generalize about parenting, and so little of this essay applies to me. 1. Raising a kid in the city, and quite happily. 2. No prohibitions on swears in my house. Just at Grandma's, and only because it would offend her, not because swearing is inherently bad. 3. He goes to a school where they only teach you how to read, write, and do basic math. Everything else is a child-l…

I predict that you are in for some rough times when he gets a little older.

So is every parent.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#28

Post by Xichekolas »

brlewis wrote: post #24
Xichekolas wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not PG (obviously), but I also see suburbia pretty negatively and want to chime in. To me, suburbia is that neighborhood with the tree-related name that offers four different house models and three different colors of paint. All the lots are roughly the same size, all the people are roughly the same, and the streets don't particularly go anywhere. When viewed from an airplane it looks like a giant millipede wrapp…

I think "sprawl" might be a more descriptive term for what you're reacting negatively to. Boston has lots of suburbs that don't fit your description. (BTW, suburb's etymology is not tree-related.)

Yeah to me suburb means tract housing. Does Boston have suburbs that aren't tract housing?

(I said tree related because every suburban neighborhood I can think of has a tree related name... "Willow Springs" "Lone Elm Estates" "Pine Ridge" etc.)

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#29

Post by robg »

I'd love to see the sequel: Lies We Tell Ourselves.

Seems like many of the things discussed have their origin in lies we continue to tell ourselves. Kids just get special versions. But if anything those instances provide a window into what we don't discuss honestly - sex, death, identity, formal education, and obeying authority.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#30

Post by johnyzee »

I'm not sure that keeping kids innocent helps their learning. I've met many kids who have 'seen too much' by accepted standards and invariably they have been by far more emotionally mature than their peers, often enabling them to do well in terms of education.

Unless there are other factors at play, such as adverse social conditions, I think kids can handle more reality than we tend to believe.

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