Parenting w/ good intentions can stifle individuality

I came across this today:

Let us beware and beware and beware...of having an ideal for our children. So doing, we damn them. ~ D.H. Lawrence

The Pygmalion Project, almost unavoidable in mating, is perhaps even more of a temptation in parenting. Most parents believe quite sincerely that their responsibility is to raise their children, to take an active part in guiding them, or perhaps in steering them, on their way to becoming mature adults. Even more than the husband-wife relationship, the parent-child relationship has this serious factor of interpersonal manipulation seemingly built into it, as though part of the job description of Mother or Father. Unfortunately, this hands-on model of parental responsibility -- well-intentioned though it may be -- all too often ends in struggle and rebellion. The truth is that kids of different temperament will develop in entirely different directions, no matter what the parents do to discourage one direction in favor of another. To manipulate growth is a risky business. In our natural zeal to discourage moral weeds from springing up we risk discouraging mental flowers from growing, our parental herbicides killing the good and the bad indiscriminately.

It's an excerpt from Please Understand Me II by David Keirsey.

You can read the rest of the excerpt HERE.

Memes, Cliches, and the Fear of Thinking Freely

LIVE THE HELL OUT OF LIFE, THEN ALL THAT REMAINS FOR US IS HEAVEN - I came up with that motto yesterday. What do you think? :-)

We are in the habit of giving to what we feel a form of expression which differs so much from, and which we nevertheless after a little time take to be, reality itself.
~ Marcel Proust

I've loved that quote from the moment I read it a couple years ago in the book How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton. How often do we continue passing on mere words that do not mean anything in and of themselves? We toss phrases around without questioning, but what do those words actually mean in a practical sense?

And about Cliches, Alaine de Botton writes:

We are obliged to create our own language because there are dimensions to ourselves absent from clichés, which require us to flout etiquette in order to convey with greater accuracy the distinctive timbre of our thought.

I apologize to those who have already heard this from me for being redundant; but honestly, aren't most of us mere followers and repeaters of what the majority believes, says, or does? We make assumptions and build belief systems based on ambiguity. If the majority claims something to be true, shall we blindly accept that to be our own truth? Do we not have our own brains?

Is it laziness? Perhaps. My mother tells me, "Most people do not have the luxury to think; they are too busy putting food on the table." Uh... okay... Then why do we exist? I ask. If, hypothetically speaking, all we were meant to do was go through the repetition of work, eat, and sleep until we die (without complaining, mind you), then why bother?

I suggest that perhaps the phrase "created in God's image" is meant to speak to our creative mind. Humans need to think and create freely. Our intelligence is what separates us from other living things. If we don't allow ourselves the freedom to use our minds to constantly ask questions, explore, and create, then we are no different than the other creatures on earth that are only motivated by their biological needs.

I insist that using our creativity is just as vital to the survival of the human race as metabolism and reproduction. What fun is life if we are not continually entertained with our own ability at making things come to life? A machine can be programmed to mimic and repeat. It takes a human being to be original and create something from nothing. Conformity will be the death of creation.

Marcel Proust also said:

Our vanity, our passions, our spirit of imitation, our abstract intelligence, our habits have long been at work, and it is the task of art to undo this work of theirs, making us travel back in the direction from which we have come to the depths where what has really existed lies unknown within us.

There is an artist, a creator, that lives in each of us. The way I see it, that makes life worth living. Let's live the hell out of life!!

Yay!

Freedom to Learn

Ah! I'm in love again! This time with this man. His name is Peter Gray, a research professor of psychology at Boston College and a specialist in developmental and evolutionary psychology. One of my readers, Allison, pointed me to his new blog (as of last month) in one of her comments.

In his first post, he writes:

Everywhere we turn these days we find pundits and politicians arguing for more restrictive schooling. Of course they don’t use the word “restrictive,” but that’s what it amounts to. They want more standardized tests, more homework, more supervision, longer school days, longer school years, more sanctions against children’s taking a day or two off for a family vacation. This is one realm in which politicians from both of the major parties, at every level of government, seem to agree. More schooling or more rigorous schooling is better than less schooling or less rigorous schooling.

Then he goes on to say:

Whatever happened to the idea that children learn through their own free play and exploration? Every serious psychological theory of learning, from Piaget’s on, posits that learning is an active process controlled by the learner, motivated by curiosity. Educators everywhere give lip service to those theories, but then go ahead and create schools that prevent self-guided play and exploration. Every one of us knows, if we stop to think about it, that the most valuable lessons we have learned are not what we “learned in kindergarten,” nor what we learned in courses later on. They are, instead, the lessons that we learned when we allowed ourselves the luxury of following through on our own interests and our own drives to play, fully and deeply. Through those means we acquired skills, values, ideas, and information that will stay with us for life, not just for the next test. And, perhaps most important, we discovered what we most enjoy, which is the first step in finding a satisfying career.

His other posts that follow are just as refreshing and invigorating. He digs into the subject of education as if I had written the exact words myself (only if I were as smart or articulate as he is.) Man, it feels good to see my thoughts and feelings in words written by someone else. And the blog is named "Freedom to Learn." How can I not love it?

Be sure to bookmark it and check it often.

I wish there was a way to get all of their (the ones I fall in love with) brains together and make something happen. I mean, really turn things upside down...