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Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

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Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#311

Post by andrepd »

notriddle wrote: post #156
jhanschoo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, this observation must be qualified as not necessarily generalizable to all teenagers and parents. Sometimes a person may grow up and realize that their parents were indeed quite lacking, and be right in that assessment. I think this other circumstance is important to at least mention because children of objectively lacking parents can have doubts in their mind about their own judgment. In part beca…

Older people knowing better than younger people is one of those heuristics that's almost always right [1]. It's hard to tell the difference between a stupid kid and a stupid parent, because stupid parents are rare. Yet people keep searching for stupid parents, because it's really important to find them when they exist. There's a constant rate of kids pulling false alarms on their parents, but you don't want to ignore…

You are making very sweeping claims with next to no evidence (ironically, a very un-wise thing to do!).

The more I observe the more I understand good parents are exceedingly rare. The vast majority of parents fuck up one way or another. Which shouldn't necessarily be surprising, parenting is very hard!

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#312

Post by kelnos »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #211
turkishmonky wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those types of generalization have always been troublesome for me - While I admit I was an idiot as a kid, the respect I had for my parents has decreased even further the older I get. I understand more and more how harmful their behaviors were for me as a child, and have been intentional about not falling into the same behaviors with my kids. Some parents are just really really inadequate or abusive as parents.

The heuristic can be reworded as adult parents are more knowledgeable and capable than children. Put the average child in the position of the average parent and you will see the difference. Think of how abusive the average parent is, then imagine them trying to parent with 10-20 years less development.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you suggesting that we should excuse parental abuse, because a child would be a worse parent than an adult?

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#313

Post by bee_rider »

ModernMech wrote: post #303
bee_rider wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least if it is in the assignment, you can passive-aggressively copy-paste the text of the document to them.

My favorite phrase is "As per the syllabus..."

OTOH, I've definitely taken classes with years out-of-date syllabi. It is a funny thing, where some instructors consider it to be the fundamental contract between them and the student, and others consider it to be an annoying bit of extra busywork.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#314

Post by oblio »

swat535 wrote: post #291
warner25 wrote: post #10

I've often thought the same thing about becoming an adult, especially a parent, in general. There are so many choices that I harshly judged older people for making (how to allocate their time and money, where to live, what to allow or not allow the kids to do, how to behave at work, etc.) that I now find myself making as a married guy in my mid-30s with four kids. It makes me sad, but on each point I'm like, "Oh, now…

You clearly haven't had incompetent parents. I'll give you a personal example: both my parents _completely_ failed to manage their finances, they kept on borrowing money, refinancing the house 3-4 times. Since the age of 17, as a young software engineer, I was constantly asked to help with the payments. Now that my mom has passed away, my dad has 0 income, he didn't bother to plan anything for his retirement and thus…

I'm always amazed how these kinds of folks survive. Do they luck out into well paying jobs? What do they even spend the money on? Don't they noticed the bad patterns after a while?

Soooo many questions :-)

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#315

Post by filoleg »

loudtieblahblah wrote: post #96
brabel wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's fine now, it was fine back then also.

the # if people in the US with glucose monitors says differently.

There is a difference between "for breakfast every now and then" and "all day every day". I have a feeling that those who would be putting themselves under the risk of using glucose monitors tend to fall more into the latter group.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#316

Post by oblio »

rayiner wrote: post #308
warner25 wrote: post #10

I've often thought the same thing about becoming an adult, especially a parent, in general. There are so many choices that I harshly judged older people for making (how to allocate their time and money, where to live, what to allow or not allow the kids to do, how to behave at work, etc.) that I now find myself making as a married guy in my mid-30s with four kids. It makes me sad, but on each point I'm like, "Oh, now…

Why should you feel bad about it? You’re learning from your life experience. I too cringe at stuff I believed before I was mid-30s and married with three kids. I’m also slowly becoming my dad. A lot of that’s due to having seen a lot of things that made me realize my worldview when I was young had been limited. (Freedom of choice and freedom from norms sounds great when you’re young and feel invincible and think you’…

> Freedom of choice and freedom from norms

I like to put it as: you give up some lower level freedoms (you have to wear a seatbelt) to gain other higher level ones (freedom to not die as an idiot on the way and to get to enjoy your trip to Disneyland).

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#317

Post by warner25 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #260
warner25 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The root of it, for me, is that most of my choices as I grow older are compromises for the sake of ease, or from of a sense of obligation to my wife and kids. Like I recognize that different, harder choices could make me richer, or leaner, or more accomplished, or whatever, but I'm often exhausted and such choices would often be harder on everyone else in the family too. So rather than ice cream and Lamborghinis and…

> and everybody watches too much streaming video, and sleep and exercise are things I do only after everything else is done I don't know, this kind of feels like the adult version of ice cream for breakfast. Maybe what you're describing is the difference between dreaming something and actually doing it. There's nothing forcing any of us to watch a ton of streaming video other than our own choices, although it's hard…

It's more that my kids watch too much, because my wife and I need breaks to get other things done or rest. Not way too much, and it's carefully curated content, but it's still one of those things that I thought, before having kids, I wouldn't allow. But now I get it. Once they stop napping, it really is a cheap way to buy a couple hours of peace and quiet.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#318

Post by nobody9999 »

"If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude.

See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits.

I would have the studies elective.

Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself.

The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Source: http://www.anvari.org/fortune/Miscellaneous_Collections/1175...

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#319

Post by kelnos »

swat535 wrote: post #291
warner25 wrote: post #10

I've often thought the same thing about becoming an adult, especially a parent, in general. There are so many choices that I harshly judged older people for making (how to allocate their time and money, where to live, what to allow or not allow the kids to do, how to behave at work, etc.) that I now find myself making as a married guy in my mid-30s with four kids. It makes me sad, but on each point I'm like, "Oh, now…

You clearly haven't had incompetent parents. I'll give you a personal example: both my parents _completely_ failed to manage their finances, they kept on borrowing money, refinancing the house 3-4 times. Since the age of 17, as a young software engineer, I was constantly asked to help with the payments. Now that my mom has passed away, my dad has 0 income, he didn't bother to plan anything for his retirement and thus…

I think most of what you are talking about here is your parents being incompetent people. Even if they hadn't had kids, they still would have been in financial trouble their entire lives.

I don't even think this is due to a lack of financial education on their part. Feels more like compulsive spending, something a therapist might have been able to help them through had they been willing to talk to one.

Either way, it really sucks that you and your brother had to suffer so much for their failures.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#320

Post by kelnos »

fungiblecog wrote: post #300
warner25 wrote: post #10

I've often thought the same thing about becoming an adult, especially a parent, in general. There are so many choices that I harshly judged older people for making (how to allocate their time and money, where to live, what to allow or not allow the kids to do, how to behave at work, etc.) that I now find myself making as a married guy in my mid-30s with four kids. It makes me sad, but on each point I'm like, "Oh, now…

Maybe I'm weird. I've brought up my kids without applying the dumb rules i hated as a kid and they're both happy and well adjusted. And i'm happier too because i've avoided all the usual stupid family arguments that would otherwise result. I see other parents repeatedly inflicting on their kids rules and behaviours that are completely unnecessary but they think it's "the right thing" i see this as truly stupid and a…

I'm not a parent, but this really resonated with me. My childhood was full of dumb rules that I hated. After complaining, my parents would feed me platitudes like "you'll understand and appreciate this when you're older" (sometimes with "... and have your own kids" appended to the end).

Today (at age 40) I still believe these rules were dumb and pointless, and actively harmful to my childhood development.

I do expect that, not being a parent myself, I might be judging some of these things more harshly than I otherwise would. But certainly not all things, and I certainly would have turned out just as ok (and possibly more ok-er) had many of these dumb rules not existed in the first place.

(Don't get me wrong, I still have a fairly good impression of my childhood, and I don't think these dumb rules did any permanent damage. But they were still dumb, and created more strife between my parents and me than was necessary when I was young.)

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