Father of recent 3 year old. Big believer in modeling. I see other parents tell their kids to clean up, put stuff away, etc. I simply embrace cleaning up and my daughter follows suit quite often.
We also do whatever we can to enable her to participate in what we are doing (sadly computers are a big problem in that regard, much more than say chopping with a knife). Our kid is very well-behaved and cautious (except for tired/hungry breakdowns, of course).
I am also a big believer in the see-what happens school of action. Other parents are always encouraging (yelling at) their kids to share, particularly in support of aggressive children trying to take from their child. We believe in letting children experiment and realize that sharing leads to fun, greediness not so much. We demonstrate the power of choosing not to play others which is really the best way of handling unpleasant people/situations.
But at the heart of it all is simply being, authentically, the kind of person you want your child to be. They are programmed to learn actual behavior from their parents who 1) have been successful enough to reproduce and 2) have a similar genetic makeup meaning their behaviors are likely to be compatible with the kid's abilities.
So be a better person and relax. Oh, and look into Sudbury education for your kids which really teaches them how to be moral in a community.
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 instruction. This is a form of democratic education."
Hey, I'm open to using a child's own interests to help them learn ... but Sudbury takes a good thing way too far.
You say that Sudbury teaches kids how to be moral in a community. Maybe ... if that community is "Lord of the Flies."
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 in college because they know why they are there. They find college kids goofing off to be quite a mystery. They are free to become themselves when they are supposed to -- puberty. That's what that stage is for. Most schools prevent the self-exploration that is necessary to allow for that. So then it gets delayed until people's 20s.
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Visit such a school and you will see that they are much less nasty than those in a public school. Bullying is virtually unheard of. They work together as a community and take responsibility for it. They are collectively responsible for all the policing and judgement of others as well as themselves. They adjudicate quite fairly.
I saw 8 year olds wrestling with determining an appropriate punishment for their friend vs. their own desire to help their friend. They really struggled to find a balance. 8 year olds. This is an issue that a lot of adults struggle with.
They also write themselves up when they break a rule. They all buy into building a community. The school I visited was full of energy and respect.
So you can either choose to believe the fiction of "Lord of the Flies" or believe the results of forty years of actual experience with the model.
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.
We also do whatever we can to enable her to participate in what we are doing (sadly computers are a big problem in that regard, much more than say chopping with a knife). Our kid is very well-behaved and cautious (except for tired/hungry breakdowns, of course).
I am also a big believer in the see-what happens school of action. Other parents are always encouraging (yelling at) their kids to share, particularly in support of aggressive children trying to take from their child. We believe in letting children experiment and realize that sharing leads to fun, greediness not so much. We demonstrate the power of choosing not to play others which is really the best way of handling unpleasant people/situations.
But at the heart of it all is simply being, authentically, the kind of person you want your child to be. They are programmed to learn actual behavior from their parents who 1) have been successful enough to reproduce and 2) have a similar genetic makeup meaning their behaviors are likely to be compatible with the kid's abilities.
So be a better person and relax. Oh, and look into Sudbury education for your kids which really teaches them how to be moral in a community.