I’m glad I finally found some time to dive into your writings, my friend

Well, you know my opinion on schooling and teaching methods, so I won’t go into detail now.

I also feel bad about young men going to school to ensure a “good job”, whatever that is. We should go to school to make ourselves “more”, in as many ways as possible. We should go there to learn, not to be taught by force.. whatever.

Nice points there

Zoli

As usual, I’m coming from what most would say is the pessimistic view. But, it is also my experience, the way I think I viewed life when I was 11 or 12. And how, in reflection, I see the ways in which my life unfolded. Specifically, what was or wasn’t self-directed.

The first thing I thought when I read the general statements of the children in the study was, conditioned. In my opinion, these children, more than likely have heard, for many years already, and repeatedly from all kinds of sources, what’s ‘supposed’ to be. Or how life is, or that’s just the way it goes. I call these ‘promises’, even though there is some bottom line realism contained in those statements, the other reality is the truisms will not necessarily fulfill one, their life or the lives of others. I also see it as another form of nurture sorely lacking.

I think the ‘comparison’ aspect begins very early. I think about kindergarten or even younger kids being asked by their teachers what they want to be when they grow up. The answer then is usually ‘hero’ related, either what a parent/caregiver does for a living, especially if the parent is actually a fireman or doctor. Alternatively, from some sort of fictional source, book, movie, etc.. However, a precedent in this young mind starts to get ‘set’. He is told he has to study hard, eat right, be good, on and on, in order to do what daddy does, including daddy promoting follow-in-my-steps instruction. What kid wouldn’t be hugely affected by that? To me, it hardly sounds different than an 11 year old parroting good grades, right education, which he’s now heard for years, equals good job and happily ever after.

Obviously you’ve touched on one more touchy subject for me. All I can hear repeating in my head is ‘stifled’. I wish I could shout it from rooftops somewhere so those 7th graders would at least have heard there may be options, truer truths, specifically their own, which they don’t have to decide on or know at age 3, 5 or 11. I think skill sets is where emphasis should be in all areas. Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and anything else an adult can see, in personal reflection, he somehow ‘missed’. There really need to options in my opinion, with a much more well rounded picture.

Off my soap box…

Barbara

I try to tell my life as my cousins would hear it – the ones who are not young adults.

It would really be relevant to the 11-year-old (as of this May) right now, and I am getting seriously ready to write The Book this year and next. And it would be good to tell it to the 2-year-old too.

As to the running race analogy: it’s already been done. What about the book Outliers? Think of what Usain Bolt do and also Oscar Pistorius. And then there is Cathy Freeman who ran barefoot and was very motivated by her (late) sister Anne-Marie to do the best she could.

(Saw something on Sunday which made me think who and what I want to be when I am 80. There were these infants and toddlers playing with octogenerians, and especially this woman who had never held or touched a baby and only came out for a little while).

When I was a small girl I wanted to be in the country. I was attracted to a sense of power and pace. My favourite nursery rhyme was “Three Blind Mice”, and my favourite fairy tale was “Chicken Licken”.