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Raising a moral child

nytimes.com

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Re: Raising a moral child

#101

Post by nevinera »

kemayo wrote: post #43
nevinera wrote: post #39

Modern parenting literature seems largely to be about manipulating your child into being who and what you want them to be. 'Tricks' and 'techniques' abound, and every other article is about 'teaching' your child to achieve/empathize/compete. You know what works extra- extra- well? Be the kind of person you want your kids to be. Treat them like a decent person treats other decent people and that's the behavior they wi…

Yes, that's a good trick to use. The article actually covers this, note. The entire last section is about how children watch adults and decide based on their actions how they should act, paying comparatively little attention to their words.

It's not a trick. Be a good person, and treat your children like people.

Re: Raising a moral child

#102

Post by tunap »

truelson wrote: post #74
amirmc wrote: post #14

Reading this, I'm pretty sure I can apply it to adult contexts too. Think about all the cases in organisations where 'values' are touted but the behaviour of people tells you how you really get ahead. Everything here is useful if you care about the organisational culture you want to create.

Funny you should say this. The author Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist at Wharton and has a book called "Give and Take" that talks about a lot of this. And unlike most business books, it's all backed up with well researched data.

I know of three people who have been severely injured from a project I walked off last year. The Fortune 20 company's guidelines(and national safety codes) were ignored in their entirety. The project manager who was going to save $4.5 million at the risk of others' welfare is now shopping for bids to "do it by the book". Apparently his plausible deniability has sprung a leak or one or more of the injured have lawyered up. Vindication is bitter-sweet.

Re: Raising a moral child

#103

Post by blacksmith_tb »

Loughla wrote: post #91
nevinera wrote: post #39

Modern parenting literature seems largely to be about manipulating your child into being who and what you want them to be. 'Tricks' and 'techniques' abound, and every other article is about 'teaching' your child to achieve/empathize/compete. You know what works extra- extra- well? Be the kind of person you want your kids to be. Treat them like a decent person treats other decent people and that's the behavior they wi…

That's exactly right. All this parenting 'help' is just fueling our thoughts that kids aren't really people, and need to be bent to our will. That's not accurate. Kids are little people. Ignorant of many things, but they're little people. My wife reads these 'how to raise your kids' posts and books and crap, and all it does is make her feel as if she is a terrible parent because he wasn't signing at 10 months and isn…

Kids are "little people" only the in the sense that they are immature examples of H. sapiens. Letting them be kids is very good advice precisely because it doesn't suggest we should expect them to be like adults.

Re: Raising a moral child

#104

Post by notahacker »

jostylr wrote: post #88
jawns wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Wikipedia: "At a Sudbury school, students have complete responsibility for their own education, and the school is run by direct democracy in which students and staff are equals. Students individually decide what to do with their time, and tend to learn as a by-product of ordinary experience rather than through coursework. There is no predetermined educational syllabus, prescriptive curriculum or standardized ins…

The wikipedia quote is correct. Your assessment seems to be not based on anything. Ask yourself, what is harder to learn: (1) knowing who you are and how to work with others or (2) solving an algebraic equation? They pretty much all learn how to read, write, do arithmetic. Those who want to go to college (about 80%) do so without difficulty, learning what they need in a few months. They are serious, engaged students…

I can't help wondering whether the Sudbury School model would work quite so well in encouraging moral behaviour if it was filled with problem kids with gang affiliations rather than the offspring of well-to-do parents with a deep interest in finding their kid a suitable environment.

Re: Raising a moral child

#105

Post by nevinera »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #103
Loughla wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly right. All this parenting 'help' is just fueling our thoughts that kids aren't really people, and need to be bent to our will. That's not accurate. Kids are little people. Ignorant of many things, but they're little people. My wife reads these 'how to raise your kids' posts and books and crap, and all it does is make her feel as if she is a terrible parent because he wasn't signing at 10 months and isn…

Kids are "little people" only the in the sense that they are immature examples of H. sapiens. Letting them be kids is very good advice precisely because it doesn't suggest we should expect them to be like adults.

You are both right and wrong.

Children are not identical to adults, and treating them like they should be free to make all of their own decisions at 5 years of age would be negligent.

But they are like adults in many ways that we tend to ignore - they may not have a great conception of which things can hurt them how badly, but they have a sense of dignity, and they have a sense of independence. They want to make decisions for themselves, and they need to interact with adults that treat them as a rational peer to whatever degree that is possible.

Give them what freedoms you can, and respect them enough to explain the real reasons for the rules you impose. Sometimes you may find that they aren't very good ones at all, when you try to explain them - when that happens, admit that it wasn't a good rule, and work out a better one with them.

Re: Raising a moral child

#106

Post by hamburglar »

nevinera wrote: post #101
kemayo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's a good trick to use. The article actually covers this, note. The entire last section is about how children watch adults and decide based on their actions how they should act, paying comparatively little attention to their words.

It's not a trick. Be a good person, and treat your children like people.

Sounds like a trick to me. What, I'm supposed to be a good person just for my kids' sake? Yeah, right, buddy!

;)

Re: Raising a moral child

#107

Post by jostylr »

notahacker wrote: post #104
jostylr wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wikipedia quote is correct. Your assessment seems to be not based on anything. Ask yourself, what is harder to learn: (1) knowing who you are and how to work with others or (2) solving an algebraic equation? They pretty much all learn how to read, write, do arithmetic. Those who want to go to college (about 80%) do so without difficulty, learning what they need in a few months. They are serious, engaged students…

I can't help wondering whether the Sudbury School model would work quite so well in encouraging moral behaviour if it was filled with problem kids with gang affiliations rather than the offspring of well-to-do parents with a deep interest in finding their kid a suitable environment.

I think you are right that that is an issue. But what school does handle that well? Also, the value of Sudbury is community. If someone is in a gang, they already have that (I presume).

They do have experience with "troubled" kids doing just fine and thriving, but these are a small number injected into an otherwise pleasant environment.

They also do occasionally expel students. But I also remember a story from the Jerusalem Sudbury school in which one of their students left and fell into drugs, etc. Later, the founder of the school asked the kid if they had failed him. He said "failed me? You were the only ones that didn't fail me. You are the reason I sought rehabilitation instead of dying on the streets. I always carried you and the school with me, voices of support." Take from that what you will.

The most important thing is to have a good environment for students to come into. People adapt to their environments, for better or worse. If you were to take a single gang member away and put them in a strongly functioning Sudbury school, I would give them great odds of succeeding. But if you plopped a number of gang members into such a community, I bet that would be a major problem.

The hardest part for a Sudbury school is starting and dealing with huge influx of students. It takes time to assimilate to such an environment.

There is also another big question along these lines. The students at Sudbury learn the R's quite well on their own. But their parents are generally well-educated, demonstrating the value of those skills. Would kids from homes without those values do so well? Again, injecting a single kid from such an environment into a Sudbury school would be much more likely to succeed than having a majority of the school from such an environment.

But, as far as I know, no one has attempted it. Perhaps someone should.

Re: Raising a moral child

#108

Post by m0llusk »

Nurture Shock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman might be useful in looking at some of these issues. It goes into a lot of detail and refers to many studies, but in short there are ways of helping children to develop executive control which in turn enables them to both decide to do the right thing and follow through.

Re: Raising a moral child

#109

Post by aaronem »

thesigil wrote: post #36

Hi, I am not a parent, but I think I have to put across this point of the way of looking at morality being independent of "free will", because "free will" is an illusion and the illusion of "free will" is also an illusion. The non-existence of free will should not be confused with fatalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatalism . Morality and love and compassion can still be quantified without free will. What goes aw…

Either you're doing a lousy job of putting Harris's thesis across, or the thesis itself is gibberish. Whichever is so, you would've added more to this discussion by not posting this comment at all, than by doing so in its current state.

(And, having just spent a year in academia and seen "methods of science" firsthand, I can only assume the suggestion they be applied to questions of morality represents a blatant grab for funding on the part of Dr. Harris, who no doubt envisions himself as a PI presiding over such investigations. On the other hand, if he were all that good a grant writer, I doubt he'd have gone to the trouble of publishing in the popular press.)

Re: Raising a moral child

#110

Post by jessedhillon »

benmathes wrote: post #66
jessedhillon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or could you say they're enacting a tit-for-tat strategy?

Get back to traveling.

Inside jokes, or humor of any kind, have no place on HN, Ben. May you be stripped of all your imaginary internet fun points, so that you learn not to be such a light-hearted and well-adjusted individual.
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