What's the most important thing that we, as a society, are NOT teaching our children?
148 RESPONSES // asked by TheAndaroo - around 2 months ago
Is it a certain value or moral? A skill or unique ability? Or even a specific mindset? What is one thing you think our children need to know that nobody seems inclined to teach them?
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That no matter what, they are important and there will always be someone who cares. Also, that they don't know everything and don't need to grow up quickly.
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How to forget. How to empty your mind completely, and then absorb the world under your own opinions. A lot of parents and children scare me though when they stick completely rigid to an opinion handed down by generations and altered slightly by the gene carries of their day. Parents who are completely unreasonable, children who refuse reason, not knowing when to admit that you're wrong. It's terrifying, ignorant rigid people.
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They will need to learn how to love each other unconditionally. The way that people are treating each other and the world is going to be the demise of the world as we know it. There are many other lessons in life allot of ideas below are wonderful. But simply lots of strong true love for each other and the earth is going to save them from all other problems. Kirstin
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that not everyone has their best interest at heart and the absolute truth. they say 'stay away from that man' and when we ask 'why' they say 'well...... because he's a bad man' they don't tell kids, ' because he's going to try to have sex with you' and, if they told kids that, they would just say, oh ok, thanks dad, i'll stay away from him. but the problem with that is that we leave it up to schools for the most part to inform other peoples kids about sex because parents are too embarrassed to say the words penis or vagina to their children. so, in the aspects of the school I would agree is critical thinking and I'd add questioning authority. but from the parental aspect, I'd say that sex education is completely the parents responsibility
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http://www.ted.com/talks/john_hunter_on_the_world_peace_game.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/john_hunter_on_the_world_peace_game.html
About six minutes into this video, the speaker, John Hunter, goes into how he came to a realization that some of the mannerisms of his teachers (and he includes his parents) came to be ingrained in him. Children learn so much by watching others. How we act as people is shown to children everyday. I have a little brother who just turned four recently and I see how he responds to my parents and how he watches them and watches me. I dropped something one day and instead of saying the normal 'sh*t' that usually slips out I managed to say 'poop' instead. But, guess what my brother's new favorite word is? You got it. Without fail, when I am at home there is not an story he can tell me without the word 'poop' finding its way in there. If there are characteristics or morals that we want to see shining through the new generations we have to some how manage to have them shine first through us.
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I don't think we are typically teaching our children how to be decent human beings, and I really hate to say that because it sounds almost offensive to parents. I just don't believe the result of the modern child's upbringing is always, or even mostly, an adulthood of morality and compassion to others. I think we're basically just teaching kids how to get by financially and how to follow rules. We do not teach the youth philosophy and humanity and logic, but work skills and a scary American-superiority complex. At least in America they do, from my observations.
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Me, being a teenager, I believe that parents aren't teaching their children or rather allowing their children the freedom and ability to express themselves. Kids are afraid to be who they really are for fear that their parents won't accept it. And also, society deprives us of a chance to go for our goals. Yeah, there's that saying "you're never too young to follow your dreams," but we are! I can't go get a job to make money to pay for what I want to do because I'm too young and inexperienced. So until I turn 16 or 18 or however old I need to be to get an actual job, I'm stuck petsitting for three bucks an hour because my parents won't let me babysit because they think I need to be CPR certified first (which costs money that we don't have). So, basically the most important thing that society is not teaching our children is that sometimes you need to go against the rules to get where you want or need to be. Even if that means going against your parents' rules or even bending the rules a bit.
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There are several things I think but I'll just list a few. :)
There are several things I think but I'll just list a few. :)
One thing that I think is highly important and sort of over arching is helping and encouraging the development of a personal identity in young people as being global citizens and concious contributors to the betterment of their communities and the world. I think the desire to make a difference is inherent in young people as they recognize the problems in the current world. That inherent desire isn't the problem but I think often instead of encouraging the questions that naturally come up and helping to guide young people through their observations hopefully to action we as a society tend to encourage a drone mentality of "Make money consume and let someone else deal with the problems because you can't possibly do anything you are to young". As a society I think our understanding of how to encourage and empower young people to take action and to take interest in the affairs of society and the world is still in its infancy. It is vital that we learn more about empowerment of young people if we are to come up with creative new solutions to the new problems that we as a world will inevitably face in the future and are now facing at present.
We also don't really teach patience. Our public school systems (in the US at least) and our basic lives are set up with the assumption that people need lots and lots of quick stimulation and frequent breaks in activity. As a result from a young age people are taught to seek entertainment and to have a short attention span even if they are inclined by nature to take time and care with tasks they are given and creative projects they take on. The important thing to teach I think is the ability and conscious choice to start a task and see it through to the end, to teach children to be contributors not just consumers. This I think too would nurture their inherent creativity and help them grow into conscious youth and adults. With the great advances in Technology and the widespread media in the US and in fact the world we have the tools to educate people in the affairs of the world in a minimally biased way yet instead today most mainstream media is used to persuade instead of inform and to shock instead of inspire. (also based on assumptions that people need to be entertained by EVERYTHING) we have to help young people understand the influence and power of these outward forces in society both their nefarious affects and their beneficial ones. they need to understand that they are not separate from their environments (that they are affected by media and social structures of society) but that they also can change their environments. both influence each-other and are not mutually exclusive.
augh I could go on and on and on. sorry for the novel XD
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At a job fair my wife's work held for warehouse positions last week, the turn out was immense, the line out the door. The wife was shocked at the amount of people wearing jammies, or sweat pants, ripped jeans, gothic apparel. I don't know, I always wore at minimum a dress shirt and slacks, when applying places, even for kitchen work. The self entitlement attitude that kids have today is outright wrong, related to the everybody wins attitude that is passed down in schools and society these days. What gives these kids that come in to a job fair the thought process that they have the same shot at work as the guy who at least took into account the way he dresses before he left the house looking for work?
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To question what they are taught. My daughter, who is 14 and in the 9th grade, is appalled at the degree to which her classmates parrot the religious, political, etc., nonsense that their parents have fed them. Some of it it horrifying, coming from children. She has one classmate, a very bright kid, a HARD CORE Mormom, who already plans to go into politics, right wing politics I should emphasize, and a 14, he already sounds like the ... what's the polite word to describe the current flock of Republicans who have presented themselves for the primaries?
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As a society we are teaching our kids what we believe in which is generally bunkum so we could stop teaching them altogether and start again as a society but it seems to me that a lot of kids are refusing to take the bunkum in anyway and are in society's eyes getting lost. lol. I think the first most important thing I ever learned was silence and awareness anf I'd never heard that taught at school. Society couldn't teach that though because it nows nothing about it but I thin that's where we are so lost.
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