I'm somewhat of a slow learner, and one of the main reasons I would rarely ask for help was because people are not as helpful as they think they are. Most of the time it's a lazy attempt to answer questions at the surface level only, and attempting to follow up with further question ends in frustration quickly. People think they're helpful but in fact have small amounts of patience generally speaking. This was obvious when I was student of really good teachers who made sure to answer literally any question without judgement.
Unless you're asking someone who has great confidence in their knowledge, asking a question can lead to an unpleasant situation. I've always scratched my head at this, since to me it's no problem to admit ignorance, but I've come to learn this isn't the case for most people, especially in front of others (i.e. a meeting).
IMHO, getting others to ask more questions starts by allowing others to ask you anything without thinking it has multiple layers of meaning and/or intention.
> I've always scratched my head at this, since to me it's no problem to admit ignorance, but I've come to learn this isn't the case for most people, especially in front of others (i.e. a meeting).
Leaving ego aside, there's plenty of societal conditioning that explains this too. The negative feelings you may feel by not knowing something (i.e. in a meeting, or in a class...) can certainly plausibly be connected to being reprimanded for not knowing something. It's definitely the bizarre case that not having an immediate answer for something can result in "losing" an argument. Obviously this isn't the way it should be, but it certainly is the way it is many time, whether that be in low stakes argument about a TV show in a bar or a high stakes discussion about what technology you should use. But it goes back even further than that I think. In many ways, our entire school structure is designed around the idea that your success is tied to your ability to answer questions on the spot. Political debates are the same way, right? The reality is that the answer to every question in a debate should be some version of "well, I'd go and ask my cabinet and consult experts in this area..." So I don't think it should be that surprising that it makes people uncomfortable to not know something.
I think a debate is something you can only have between parties that have similar goals (axioms) but different methods. Like a scientific debate, everyone shares the same information and same the goal of reaching understanding but they are split on the methods to interpret that information.
Usually in politics, opposing parties enter a debate with irreconcilable goals, so they are are incentivized to disagree with each other no matter what, this leads to a situation where the discussion is centered around "zingers" and rhetoric to give the impression that some side is winning and "gaining ground" against the other. The presidential debate, for example, is not really so much a debate but a platform for candidates to state their viewpoints and signal to their demographics.
Right, good point. I was being a little salty thinking of workplace environments, especially large companies where this "ask more questions" is often said, yet it's not true and can get you in trouble sometimes. I've had experiences with a boss at the time, where asking too many questions on a new task would seem like an avoidance of work or lack of confidence in getting it done. The team had a mindset of "ask anything", yet in some contexts they would interpret questions in a negative light because I guess it can seem like something is wrong and work is not getting done.
The ability to quickly answer a question is related to knowing the answer. The school system teaches students enough facts ("When Boston has been founded?") that the idea of a quick known answer sticks.
Certainly most interesting questions don't have a known answer. Some have answers that can be quickly inferred from known things; the ability to quickly come up with such reasoning chains is also prized.
But a lot of more interesting.questions can only be answered after some thought and consulting with sources. For many people, receiving such a question from a beginner is uncomfortable: they and onlookers expect beginners to ask simple questions with well-known answers.
I experience this too. People would literally rather make things up than admit they don't know or are not sure. Or they dress up a shallow/obvious response with impressive words and people accept it as a great answer.
I experienced this a lot as a kid. Adults tend to leave out a lot of context in their answers to children. Often, it seems like they don’t even try to see the question from the child’s point of view. For instance, I didn’t do well in school. When I asked adults why doing well was necessary, they would give answer along the lines of “if you don’t do well, then the only job you’ll be able to get is as a janitor.” Perhaps that’s true, (or not?) but the answer was largely devoid of meaning to me as a child.
I try to give kids honest answers, but there's a chasm of missing metacognition and unshared context that is hard to bridge.
I speak of spending a lot of time at work. And argue that developing intellectual interest and stamina that supports one feeling good during that time is one of the most viable / likely paths to live a happy, fulfilled life.
It's still a huge leap of imagination. How can you tell a kid what being in a dead-end job that you hate is like? It may not sound too unlike what you're asking them to do, burying themselves in their studies.
So we can talk about finding the interesting parts of studies--- interesting subjects. History as stories. Writing as imagination. Math as trying to figure things out. It's immediate and also hits the important part of the argument. As Csikszentmihaly said, “Of all the virtues we can learn no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge.”
And now that I'm a teacher, I try to run classes that have a whole lot of the things that I liked best in other work, and to share them with kids.
Adults tend to leave out a lot of context in their answers to anyone.
Even knowing this, I constantly have to step back, sometimes a number of times, to explain the background of the background before then getting into the actual details of the "thing" I'm supposed to be explaining.
Working on a project for X months and then having to compress and abstract that knowledge into a 30 minute introduction to a group of people staring from a clean slate is a gig that requires more preparation than expected or allowed for.
yah, after a while, asking for help feels like reaching frontline tech support (or first-page google results) over and over and getting the "did you restart?" answer. it's often not only not helpful, but a real drag on finding a useful answer.
in daily life, folks intrinsically tend to curate others who give them good answers (information), and that's how such 'masters'[0] gain real esteem. typically you realize through experience what questions these 'masters' can answer well and what they can't, leading to genuine social bonds (trust is the real social currency but trust and good information tend to go hand-in-hand). this esteem is so valuable that others game our social systems to get it falsely, which is why social media is such a shitshow (not because of poor moderation as many seem to believe, since moderation doesn't actually change what people believe, except maybe at the margin, but esteem does).
basically, people who can answer questions well deserve esteem. the social awkwardness you describe come from people who don't deserve the esteem but want it (or worse, think they deserve it) anyway. and incidentally, the prevalence of this awkwardness is a dependable sign of social degradation (low-trust to low-ethics vicious cycle), as people generally have no problem admitting ignorance in high-trust environments.
[0]: i resist the term 'expert' for being thoroughly subverted by fake esteem seekers and mediopolitical propagandists.
This first happened to me in school. I had the misfortune of many rather incompetent teachers. Asking them genuinely interested follow-up questions would more often than not be met with an annoyed generalization. Still persisting to extract an answer reliably put them in punishment mode, so I quickly learned not to do that. Consequently, I lost all respect for them and the system. I was being punished for being curious.
A similar dynamic plays out everywhere, to this day. It can easily become a paralyzing minefield, especially when “safe spaces” are involved.
When I find myself in a potentially uncomfortable position like this, I remember the single most useful advice I’ve ever gotten from a sales coach: whenever you’re in the spotlight answering questions, be well prepared but remember that you cannot know everything. If you don’t know something this instant, say so. Compliment on the question if it’s a good one, offer to find out, then follow up personally. Instant pressure reliever, professional conduct and wise guy filter all in one.
Admitting ignorance has political impact in many organization. If you’re not playing much of the political game it’s not an issue.
If you’re trying to put yourself in a pedestal and gain influence without going the long way of building trust though consistent delivery, successfully getting away from situations where you have to admit powerlessness or ignorance is a valuable skill.
Seems like you're describing a lack of integrity. I think it important that we remember, people / institutions / things that lack integrity tend to fall apart.
> since to me it's no problem to admit ignorance, but I've come to learn this isn't the case for most people, especially in front of others (i.e. a meeting).
I do not think this is case. Most people are perfectly fine saying "I don't know" in a professional context. At least that's my experience.
The only times I can remember when someone seemed to be uncomfortable admitting some lack of knowledge is when we get new team members, because doing so requires a certain amount of trust. As an older member, highlighting your own ignorance will put others at ease within minutes though. "What have you been working with before? Ah! Never got to use it myself." or even just pretending you don't know some technical detail, quickly looking it up during a call.
I struggle to picture what working with software developers would be like if we couldn't admit ignorance. It would probably be a complete disaster.
I don't think this is what you're talking about, but sometimes I purposefully leave out key details that I know a child can figure out. It's a little puzzle for them, and teaches them to think for their answers instead of just expecting them from someone else, fully formed.
Yet another example of trying to solve psychological/emotional issues through cultural changes. The root problem is low self-esteem; it's internal, not external; it takes deep inner work, not a change in social norms and teacher behavior. It affects some kids deeply, and some not at all. It's not "caused" by the culture or the environment, but by parenting.
Psychology is stuck in a weird place. Most cultural knowledge of "self-esteem" comes from self-help crap, when it should be coming from psychologists. What if we lived in a world where everyone knows how to recognize low self-esteem, how to interact with insecure people effectively, and how to help them build their self-esteem durably, as opposed to these proto-team-building-exercises they're proposing here? The traditional thinking is that you fix emotional issues through therapy sessions; but if we changed the culture to become more emotions-aware, people would know how to help each other and themselves far better. The fact that so many pop-psychology books sell so much, is proof that there's a deep need for this.
Some studies say 70-80% of people have some degree of low self-esteem. Depending on the study, 50-70% of the whole population have an attachment disorder, and literally lack the ability to form healthy emotional bonds. You don't fix that through culture. "Instructors could create activities in which each student becomes an 'expert' on a different topic"? Come on man. They have to let go of the old DSM-5 model of "10-15 of the population is crazy, everyone else is perfectly fine". Psychologists have a far bigger role to play in society than they currently do.
Fixing psychological and emotional problems through cultural change just doesn't solve anything. Fix the root cause. You would literally fix both the low self-esteem that inhibits people from asking questions, and the bullying that results from being seen as "dumb".
Um, if 70% to 80% of people have "low self-esteem", isn't that just "normal" self-esteem?
Please don't take my comment as snark, I'm asking this in all seriousness. When most people possess some psychological trait, perhaps we should ask ourselves if this is just the way people are? And perhaps the cure is worse than the disease?
Is it possible that encouraging typical people to have "higher self esteem" will result in increased narcissism, entitlement or overconfidence? And maybe that overconfidence, when it hits the reality that they are not, in fact, better (along some arbitrary axis) at something vs most other people, their ego shatters? I don't know, but...
To be clear, I'm not trying to assert a position here. I'm open to being very wrong about the thesis behind the above questions.
I like those questions. "Normal" just means norm, so yes, it's the norm to be relatively-to-significantly emotionally unhealthy. That doesn't mean that it's impossible to achieve a world where 80-90% of the world has secure, high self-esteem, and treats the remaining 10% of people with kindness and patience.
> Is it possible that encouraging typical people to have "higher self esteem" will result in increased narcissism, entitlement or overconfidence?
Absolutely; that's what the "self-esteem movement" in U.S. schools last century did, which is now widely denounced as harmful, and it's a perfect example of bad cultural change that wasn't deeply informed by psychology but instead on emulating behaviors. Low self-esteem is in the unconscious mind. You can try to think and behave like a confident person, but it's all a facade, a new set of learned coping mechanisms, unless you develop deeper self-awareness of your psyche and "do the inner work."
"Good" cultural change means promoting true psychological awareness and inside-out change. Here's a more detailed example if you want:
Pleasant emotions occur when our emotional needs are satisfied. Unpleasant (not "negative") emotions point to unmet emotional or physical needs (that include shame, i.e. low self-esteem). All emotions are useful since they tell you what your emotional needs are and how well they're satisfied. If you're mostly unhappy, you either have low self-awareness (of your thoughts, emotions, and needs at any given time), i.e. you have difficulty consciously identifying what your needs are; or, you can identify them but lack the (learnable) problem-solving skills to satisfy these needs. There are superficial emotional needs, and you can learn to "dig down" to the primary emotional needs that cause them. Sometimes, part of your unconscious can still feel deep unworthiness despite objectively impressive real-world achievements; that can be fixed by integrating that part of your subconscious that is stuck in the past, and bringing it back in line with the rest of your unconscious through inner work. Children have developmental emotional needs, which most of them, most of their teachers, and most of their parents are unaware of, and teaching these needs to all of them would help them do better. Groups (families, classrooms, companies) range from high-nurturance (helps people satisfy their emotional needs) to toxic (prevents people from satisfying their needs); high-nurturing groups (e.g. classrooms) have many traits in common. Group toxicity is generally caused by group leaders being emotionally unhealthy, i.e. having a poor ability to satisfy their own emotional needs effectively.
If the culture was promoting these ideas, I don't think that would be a cure worse than the disease. Going back to the article: building confident children means improving families' nurturance levels, teaching kids how to recognize their own needs and their child's developmental needs, and how to meet them; building children that do that inner work, and who then won't be afraid of "looking dumb" in the first place; and will be secure enough that they won't feel shame if someone dislikes them, and can try to achieve mutual respect with whoever dislikes them without losing their integrity or boundaries. Sounds far deeper and more meaningful than what the article proposes, no?
I suspect that percentage varies significantly between geographic and cultural regions.
Further, "normal" typically means that not only is a status common, but that it does not interfere with daily life. Even if 100% of kids have low self esteem, it is "low" and not "normal" because, by definition, it interfers with common social interactions and daily tasks.
This is deeper than self-esteem issues. It very much has to do with cultural norms.
I wrote more in another comment, but just a few examples:
- Dr. Carol Dewek has studied the difference between kids with "growth mindset" and "achievement mindset". The kids with "growth mindset" do not have the same kind of relationship with failure than the ones with "achievement mindset". Framed this way, it might be more accurate to say that kids with achievemement mindset are afraid to ask for help as early as 5 years old.
- Indigenous families, and other cultures like Japan, cultivate independence in their toddlers. The indigenous families incorporate a toddler's natural inclination to help into building skills for chores, with real stakes. Knowing tha their contribution actually matters, they develop both intrinsic motivation as well as a self-esteem that is internalized rather than requiring validation from something outside of them.
- Montessori emphasizes developing a child's capacity to be independent
These are all different than the mainstream modern culture in the US. For example, a modern parent in the US might feel time-pressure and so it is easier to do the household chores instead of taking the time to incorporate the toddler.
My toddler is not yet 2, and is already helping me feed the dogs and cats. He not only wants to do this, he gets upset when he can't. What's surprising for me is that, doing those chores with him turns those chores from something mechanical to something that's enjoyable for me. It's very much possible to do for a modern family.
So yes, I think this very much is something in the culture, with the poor self-esteem being a symptom of the culture.
Some cultures are more aware of emotional health than others, and some cultural practices favor good emotional health while others favor emotional neglect. No question.
But all the examples you give, I'd put in the "psychological change" category, not the "cultural change" category. Those are the things I support; and there's not enough focus on them. I'll admit my wording causes confusion; see my other reply.
I think what you're highlighting is extremely different from what I refer to as cultural change, like let's say the "body positivity movement", where people have pre-existing low self-esteem, which leads to self-neglect and emotional eating, which leads to weight gain, and they're focused on the superficial problem (feeling embarrassed by being fat) rather than the core issue (being fat because of low emotional health). "Every fat cell is an unshed tear." That perfectly highlights the ineffectiveness of superficial cultural change, over deep psychology-based change like the examples you give.
And to address your last point: low self-esteem is caused mostly by poor parental emotional health; you can put kids in Montessori schools, but if they don't develop healthy attachment to their parents, it'll only help on the margin. The change needs to be even deeper than that.
The article we're commenting on doesn't mention kids' self-esteem as being a factor at all; or the obvious observation that some kids are afraid of being judged, while some aren't. It treats it as a cultural problem that's easily solved by culture, rather than a deeper psychological/emotional problem that can be addressed long-term by deeper cultural change; really, it ignores the psychological dimension completely. Clearly, most academic psychologists are missing the mark here.
> but if we changed the culture to become more emotions-aware, people would know how to help each other and themselves far better.
> Fixing psychological and emotional problems through cultural change just doesn't solve anything.
By my reading, the two quotes are in direct opposition to one other. It sounds like you are advocating for cultural change - just a different type/approach than is currently used?
Cultural change that addresses behaviors or focuses on other external factors can't work; that's outside-in cultural change.
But if you want to fix issues on a systemic, national, or worldwide level (which is the goal here), you do need some kind of cultural change.
Cultural change that focuses on inside-out psychology (not the movie) is what I call "psychological change"; the cultural element is just the "trojan horse" through which any systemic change must happen.
Example:
- banning magazines that show excessively thin models, because girls "become insecure when they look at them", is the thinking I denounce. If they had high self-esteem they couldn't be affected by a magazine cover. If they have low self-esteem, they will be. But the magazine is blamed, and legislation and activist momentum focuses on that. The self-esteem problem doesn't get solved, just displaced. Exactly the same with the "Instagram harms teen girls' mental health" viewpoints. That's only a problem because 80% of the population has low self-esteem and is unaware of it. Shouldn't that be fixed?
Implement a culture where people, for example:
- know the signs of low self-esteem
- know exactly how to address it in themselves, without pop-psych quakery or needing to pay for therapy sessions
- know how to address it in others
- know what assertiveness looks like, and how to do it
- know how to problem-solve personal or relationship problems
- know how to effectively interact to defensiveness, depression, argumentativeness, egotism, insincerity, power struggles, irresponsibility, prejudice, whatever; without getting upset at the other person; how to assert boundaries when faced with people like that, and how to help them
- how to evaluate others' emotional health, so people can make more informed choices in mates and spouses
- know how to evaluate if their relationships are healthy, and what to do about it if they're not
- how to grieve effectively
- could go on, and on.
So many of society's problems come from psychological illiteracy. Again, people's obsession with pop-psychology proves that people see a big need in learning more. Sadly, the pop-psychology craze mostly focuses on superficial things like self-talk, or on trying to, for example, "spot" signs of Narcissism or psychopathy in other people, to try to "protect oneself" from these people; it's not deep enough and doesn't get people to actually understand themselves and each other better; just to project various medical labels onto others and themselves (self-diagnose). What I'm proposing is outside that framework of "mentally ill vs normal" and focuses on empathically learning more about oneself and others and ultimately being able to help each other.
The cultural change is just meant to address that; it's a change in awareness and knowledge, not in behavior.
> by the culture or the environment, but by parenting.
uhm, so much of our culture and education comes directly from schools and media, not from our parents.
in fact, it's likely that most people learn not to ask question in a school-setting. hence we're (hoping that not anymore) in a culture that causes such low-self esteem by means of its educational institutions.
interactions with institutionally defined authority figures whose job is to teach (i.e. to parent you without the emotional bonds of your real parents) are a root cause.
the root cause is this culture which induces such problems with its relentless hirearchical control (authority) logic.
Anything related to psychological or emotional are never that black and white. Every thing mentioned in the article could on a spectrum. Teachers and classmates could range from supportive to downright mean and it could change across every school/class/individual basis. The atmosphere at home matters a lot too. So establishing a base cultural norm is not a bad thing. Issues like this are already difficult to solve at a group level so as a society these norms will help us establish a base expectations in terms of norms and that would make it a little better to theorize.
> Yet another example of trying to solve psychological/emotional issues through cultural changes. The root problem is low self-esteem; it's internal, not external; it takes deep inner work, not a change in social norms and teacher behavior. It affects some kids deeply, and some not at all. It's not "caused" by the culture or the environment, but by parenting.
I think it can be both. Surely our cultural influences and practices in childrearing (including by societal mechanisms like schooling) matter.
There's a huge pop in anxiety among youth, that no one quite knows the causes of (climate worries? increased academic pressure? social media? collapse of portions of the social fabric?). This massive rise indicates there's some degree of underlying change causing it, and raises the prospect we could change back or change to be even better.
> Some studies say 70-80% of people have some degree of low self-esteem. Depending on the study, 50-70% of the whole population have an attachment disorder, and literally lack the ability to form healthy emotional bonds.
It's worth asking who gets to decide what "low self-esteem", "attachment disorder", and "healthy emotional bonds" are.
Self esteem can be fixed by simple things like being more attractive, more intelligent and/or more popular. We should just use genetic engineering to achieve these things as soon as possible.
I assume (hope?) that this is tongue in cheek, but it’s worth pointing out that there are tons of insecure people who are also beautiful, intelligent, and popular with their peers.
One important thing to realize is that none of those things actually exist; beautiful and intelligent are entirely relative. They can also be sources of friction; people get bullied for being smart, there’s a strong stereotype that beautiful people are actually stupid but that people tell them they’re smart because they’re hot, etc. There’s also the Ivy League problem; when your self esteem is based on being smarter than everyone else and then you get surrounded by other smart people it can tank your self confidence.
Self esteem is about realizing that your value is not derived from other’s opinion of you. That’s why it’s called self esteem.
Self-esteem is also influenced by height, colour, gender, ethnic background, religious background, etcetera.
OP seems to think not only that good parenting can beat external social influences, but that perfect parenting is simply a matter of deciding to be perfect. OP probably blames parents for all negative psychological outcomes for children: “It's not ‘caused’ by the culture or the environment, but by parenting”.
As an adult: it's not that I'm afraid of appearing incompetent in front of peers. I don't care about that. I just know that my peers are also having their own troubles and I don't want to add my trouble to theirs.
When I am truly stuck on something and can't guess what the problem is, then yes I will ask for help. I've found that probably 60% of the time (guesstimate), my peers would guess the same things that I already tried, tested, and failed. In doing so, they've duplicated the time spent trying to solve the problem. Maybe 20% of the time, while doing so, they might spot something that I missed. Maybe another 10% of the time, they'll think of something I hadn't. And the last 10%? Well, that just means it's time to refactor the problem set to avoid what can't be solved.
That of course changes if I enter a new problem domain. At that point, I most certainly ask peers for documentation and examples. If I hit a snag then I ask what I did wrong. Most often the cause ends up being inaccurate documentation.
As an adult: it's 80% because I'm afraid of looking incompetent in front of my peers.
It can be pretty painful to see people systematically dismiss anything you say, or always seek out a second opinion, for no other reason that they have a hard time believing anything reliable can come out of your mouth.
Not saying this is you but this reminded me of two types of people I've witnessed over the years. One of them I would look at as you say `incompetent`, while the other I'd say is `smart`.
You're new to something? Ask for pointers if you can't find something relatively quickly yourself. That's `smart`. You're new, the documentation might be inaccurate, out of date or not in the place you'd expect it unless you've already been at the company and learned their structure etc.
You're stuck on something and can't figure it out? Ask for some help to double check your own logic. Run them through all of the things you've already tried. This shows that you're not incompetent but have in fact already tried all those obvious things they'd ask you about. Also do actually run them through those steps, don't just talk about you having done them already. Sometimes you've overlooked something the first 2 times and showing it to someone else makes you notice (also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging if you'd like to first use a non-human just in case). You wouldn't believe the amount of times where I've been the helper and all I had to do to help was to ask them to run me through what they had already tried and the above happened. They showed me something as "and see I tried this and then it doesn't ... oooh" ;)
Do not ask for help on the exact same thing 5 times in a row. That definitely makes me think you're `incompetent`. Happens way too often too unfortunately.
In my case, it's not even fear of appearing incompetent. It's fear of being accused of or treated as if I'm incompetent when I'm clearly not. This past couple few decades the average population have become more and more downright vicious, cruel, and absolutely sure of themselves, even when they're utterly wrong about something they say or do, and as that problem grows, I become less able / willing to open myself up to that sort of potential abuse. I've got things rough enough already without that additional stress.
In addition, there's what a previous commenter said about knowing that others also have their own things they're dealing with, and I kinda don't wanna be the guy who adds to that any if I can avoid it (just in case they're not that other type of person I mention here).
This feels a bit like shouting directly into a brick wall, but the problem is school. Every year, millions of young children are abandoned by their families [1] far before they learn self-control and placed into the care of jailers [2] who teach them day in and day out that the laws of the Institution trump their needs and desires. Anyone who tries to change self-esteem or fear of collaboration without challenging the practice of giving information to children via the teacher-to-30-student-classroom method will never solve anything at scale, ever.
[1] The fact that there exist no good or pragmatic solutions to the abandonment does not mean the abandonment is not occurring. One of the earliest lessons that newly sentient modern children is "you need to leave your home and go to a place where you don't matter".
[2] The fact that some fraction of teachers are well-intentioned, and that some sub-fraction of those teachers are actually competent, does not change their role as wardens of controlled and numbered children.
I think the hyperbole is unhelpful. School can be a place of learning and discovery and joy (most of the time: nowhere is joyful 100% of the time). I admit most of our schools don't attain this.
Your answer doesn't leave any room for the improvement of school, merely to castigate the very idea of putting children together in classes.
At my school, kids are excited to show up Monday morning-- interesting things are happening in our classes. They come see me and play with robots and do real engineering. They get to see their friends and do sports and coursework that "feels real".
Sure, by the time Friday afternoon comes around, we're all done... but we'll be pretty excited to start it all again next week.
I think we just ran into each other just recently when I posted "The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher", but some other guy started talking your ear off and I didn't feel like stepping in to offer my own opinions.
If you look at my response to another sub-commenter, you'll see a few of the things I'd like to add to school, some of which may appear more palatable to you than the abolition of the entire model.
Ultimately, I'm gratified that you're a good teacher, but regrettably not only are you one of the few, you also are kept far back from the actual effect you could be having on kids by confining your expertise to the schooling model. You sound more like a mentor that could clearly steer a high number of kids through life from early to late ages, and you could run events and study plans that go late into the night and through the summer. If you were unconstrained by the rules of the school and unbound by the need for a retirement savings account and health insurance, you could run your own always-open institute where you teach whatever you want to whoever is willing to come and listen. The results you'd see under such a model would wildly outstrip the ones you see in school.
My goal is to create a society filled with people like you--but that takes individuals who are parented well, and it can't be done under the factory schooling model, where the primary lesson learned is obedience to the institution.
The other thing I'd like to point out is that none of the activities you mentioned require school to exist for them to be performed. People visited, played sports and music, and investigated science well before every single child went to school. The difference then was that it didn't "feel real", it "was real". School only provides an age-segregated simulation of greater society, and the more time you spend in greater society the more inaccurate that simulation seems.
Regarding the hyperbole, I don't consider it to be hyperbole. Schools are constructed using the same techniques that prisons are constructed, the social cliques run similar to prisons, and in neither place are you allowed to leave or meaningfully challenge or change the rules of the institution. When you are in a school, you are not part of a thriving society, you are a subject that is managed according to the needs of the administration.
Assuming we all agree that kids need education and to learn necessary skills what do you suggest?
Here in Sweden the school system is not perfect but it does offer a "slow start" for young kids, kindergarten class at the school building and the first few years without exams or homework.
Regrettably, none of my answers work in a modern western-style economy. However, if I am forced to keep everything else the same--taxes, healthcare, student loans, etc.--here are a few things that could help:
- slow start like you mentioned (also was done in famously education-forward Soviet Russia)
- allow schools to expel children
- increase availability and desirability of night school or other free public school for adults
- mandate school and district administrators to have experience teaching
- ban homework and introduce periods of time during school when work is expected
- remove all art and sports from school and reform them as independent free clubs to be participated in after or before school (unfortunately impossible in poorer districts)
- increase teacher salary
- more separation of students by skill level (tons of research showing that kids learn better when they're placed in small groups at a similar skill level, also easily observed anecdotally.) This should also be accomplished by mixing ages.
- ban grades, introduce final exams in specific subjects at the end of school that can be retaken indefinitely (perhaps once per year). If you want to go to college, perform on these tests
If we're looking at societal changes that would allow us to really move away from the school model, we also need:
- more public transportation to enable kids to go to schools other than the ones they live next to
- widespread reforms in prison and sentencing that makes it safer and less life-ending
- industry must return to western countries to allow low- and medium-skilled people important labor jobs
- healthcare reform so it's not tied to employment
- better cultural stewardship, small business startup loans, and continental rail so young talented people aren't as incentivized to leave their smaller cities and towns
Ultimately, a strong society that could move safely away from the school model needs an economy with many opportunities for short-duration (6-24 months) employment, lots of vacation time, and the ability for one parent to stay at home a large fraction of the year.
"Homeschooling" is an imperfect solution to the problem. Even the best-equipped parents have only a fraction of knowledge and experience necessary to prepare someone to build a robust and healthy society. However, one-on-one academic attention creates outstanding results in most students, which is why people hire tutors when they're falling behind, and why many of the most aristocratic in the past had private tutors for a majority of their lives.
"Until relatively recently, psychologists assumed that children did not start to care about their reputation and peers' perceptions until around age nine."
I mean, these psychologist did grow up and spend time as a child, right?
Only relatively recently did someone pay money to prove that yes, in fact, circumcision hurts. Before that the 'common wisdom' was that babies don't process pain. Said no parent, ever.
There's a lot of patronizing that goes on in organized medicine/psychology, and juvenile medicine seems to get a double helping of it.
I believe they used to perform major surgery on babies using the same non-evidence-based reasoning. I think the real reason is the combination of 1) tortured babies can't file lawsuits but 2) Parents whose babies die from anesthesia can file lawsuits. So, follow the money as with everything in medicine.
I have received this comment a few times in my career, "why don't you ask for help more"?
Usually there is a simple reason: I am not having the same problem for very long, but whenever things are going smoothly they get done very quickly. The other, very common reason is that in the process of gathering the information I need to ask the correct question, the answer usually presents itself.
The final reason is force of habit. I went through a school system where the teachers spend all of class, apart from presenting the material, helping the weak students keep up.
For example, Dr. Carol Dewek studied kids with "growth mindset". Kids with such a mindset see failure as a path to more growth, whereas kids with "achievement mindset" do not.
I also think about things like:
- https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/09/6169288... ... Note here that the kids at the ages of 5, 7, etc. discussed in the article, will brag to each other about how helpful they are. However, their parents have been building their skills when they are toddlers and try to be helpful.
- There is an in-depth article about implementing the "old enough to run errands" in America. Again, the author did not just throw their kid out on the street. They invested a lot of time skill-building.
- The Montessori method, which emphasizes developing the capacity to be independent. Failure happens often
- A study on toddlers and babies, and the effects of seeing how long adults struggle on how much they will continue to try something before giving up
- Fred Rogers, commenting on leaving in footage where adults struggle and fail, and things don't go according to plan.
My son is 20 months old, and my wife and I have been incorporating ideas from above. I might show him that it is possible to do something, and let him try (and at times, fail, and learn from the failure). We also prompt him by asking him if he wants help.
Or put it another way: curate the environment, like you would when designing a video game levels to teach how to play, and smoothly increase the difficulty.
> - There is an in-depth article about implementing the "old enough to run errands" in America. Again, the author did not just throw their kid out on the street. They invested a lot of time skill-building.
I often think about the chores and trips I took with my dad growing up, and how he slowly and cleverly worked me up to doing things.
For instance when we would stop at a gas station, unless I had to go to the bathroom I had to stay in the car as it was dangerous, I might get hit by a car etc. But I could help by gathering any trash and handing it to him. Then as I got older, I could help by getting out and washing the side mirrors, then the door windows and finally the windshield once I could reach. The genesis really was that it was boring to sit in the car and I wanted to do something, and he capitalized on that.
Same thing when we would take the recycling to the drop off point. First I had to stay in the car (you'll note a consistent theme here: I couldn't just stay at home at my leisure while chores were going on) and watch, then I could help with the light things like the cans, then the newspapers, then the glass.
....I'm still salty that I had to mow all 2 acres with a push mower for years and years, and he only bought a tractor with a giant mower deck after us kids moved out, though. The cheeky old bastard.
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Unless you're asking someone who has great confidence in their knowledge, asking a question can lead to an unpleasant situation. I've always scratched my head at this, since to me it's no problem to admit ignorance, but I've come to learn this isn't the case for most people, especially in front of others (i.e. a meeting).
IMHO, getting others to ask more questions starts by allowing others to ask you anything without thinking it has multiple layers of meaning and/or intention.
Leaving ego aside, there's plenty of societal conditioning that explains this too. The negative feelings you may feel by not knowing something (i.e. in a meeting, or in a class...) can certainly plausibly be connected to being reprimanded for not knowing something. It's definitely the bizarre case that not having an immediate answer for something can result in "losing" an argument. Obviously this isn't the way it should be, but it certainly is the way it is many time, whether that be in low stakes argument about a TV show in a bar or a high stakes discussion about what technology you should use. But it goes back even further than that I think. In many ways, our entire school structure is designed around the idea that your success is tied to your ability to answer questions on the spot. Political debates are the same way, right? The reality is that the answer to every question in a debate should be some version of "well, I'd go and ask my cabinet and consult experts in this area..." So I don't think it should be that surprising that it makes people uncomfortable to not know something.
I think a debate is something you can only have between parties that have similar goals (axioms) but different methods. Like a scientific debate, everyone shares the same information and same the goal of reaching understanding but they are split on the methods to interpret that information.
Usually in politics, opposing parties enter a debate with irreconcilable goals, so they are are incentivized to disagree with each other no matter what, this leads to a situation where the discussion is centered around "zingers" and rhetoric to give the impression that some side is winning and "gaining ground" against the other. The presidential debate, for example, is not really so much a debate but a platform for candidates to state their viewpoints and signal to their demographics.
Certainly most interesting questions don't have a known answer. Some have answers that can be quickly inferred from known things; the ability to quickly come up with such reasoning chains is also prized.
But a lot of more interesting.questions can only be answered after some thought and consulting with sources. For many people, receiving such a question from a beginner is uncomfortable: they and onlookers expect beginners to ask simple questions with well-known answers.
I speak of spending a lot of time at work. And argue that developing intellectual interest and stamina that supports one feeling good during that time is one of the most viable / likely paths to live a happy, fulfilled life.
It's still a huge leap of imagination. How can you tell a kid what being in a dead-end job that you hate is like? It may not sound too unlike what you're asking them to do, burying themselves in their studies.
So we can talk about finding the interesting parts of studies--- interesting subjects. History as stories. Writing as imagination. Math as trying to figure things out. It's immediate and also hits the important part of the argument. As Csikszentmihaly said, “Of all the virtues we can learn no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge.”
And now that I'm a teacher, I try to run classes that have a whole lot of the things that I liked best in other work, and to share them with kids.
Even knowing this, I constantly have to step back, sometimes a number of times, to explain the background of the background before then getting into the actual details of the "thing" I'm supposed to be explaining.
Working on a project for X months and then having to compress and abstract that knowledge into a 30 minute introduction to a group of people staring from a clean slate is a gig that requires more preparation than expected or allowed for.
in daily life, folks intrinsically tend to curate others who give them good answers (information), and that's how such 'masters'[0] gain real esteem. typically you realize through experience what questions these 'masters' can answer well and what they can't, leading to genuine social bonds (trust is the real social currency but trust and good information tend to go hand-in-hand). this esteem is so valuable that others game our social systems to get it falsely, which is why social media is such a shitshow (not because of poor moderation as many seem to believe, since moderation doesn't actually change what people believe, except maybe at the margin, but esteem does).
basically, people who can answer questions well deserve esteem. the social awkwardness you describe come from people who don't deserve the esteem but want it (or worse, think they deserve it) anyway. and incidentally, the prevalence of this awkwardness is a dependable sign of social degradation (low-trust to low-ethics vicious cycle), as people generally have no problem admitting ignorance in high-trust environments.
[0]: i resist the term 'expert' for being thoroughly subverted by fake esteem seekers and mediopolitical propagandists.
A similar dynamic plays out everywhere, to this day. It can easily become a paralyzing minefield, especially when “safe spaces” are involved.
When I find myself in a potentially uncomfortable position like this, I remember the single most useful advice I’ve ever gotten from a sales coach: whenever you’re in the spotlight answering questions, be well prepared but remember that you cannot know everything. If you don’t know something this instant, say so. Compliment on the question if it’s a good one, offer to find out, then follow up personally. Instant pressure reliever, professional conduct and wise guy filter all in one.
If you’re trying to put yourself in a pedestal and gain influence without going the long way of building trust though consistent delivery, successfully getting away from situations where you have to admit powerlessness or ignorance is a valuable skill.
I do not think this is case. Most people are perfectly fine saying "I don't know" in a professional context. At least that's my experience.
The only times I can remember when someone seemed to be uncomfortable admitting some lack of knowledge is when we get new team members, because doing so requires a certain amount of trust. As an older member, highlighting your own ignorance will put others at ease within minutes though. "What have you been working with before? Ah! Never got to use it myself." or even just pretending you don't know some technical detail, quickly looking it up during a call.
I struggle to picture what working with software developers would be like if we couldn't admit ignorance. It would probably be a complete disaster.
Or are ready to admit they don't know and will look for the answer with you.
Psychology is stuck in a weird place. Most cultural knowledge of "self-esteem" comes from self-help crap, when it should be coming from psychologists. What if we lived in a world where everyone knows how to recognize low self-esteem, how to interact with insecure people effectively, and how to help them build their self-esteem durably, as opposed to these proto-team-building-exercises they're proposing here? The traditional thinking is that you fix emotional issues through therapy sessions; but if we changed the culture to become more emotions-aware, people would know how to help each other and themselves far better. The fact that so many pop-psychology books sell so much, is proof that there's a deep need for this.
Some studies say 70-80% of people have some degree of low self-esteem. Depending on the study, 50-70% of the whole population have an attachment disorder, and literally lack the ability to form healthy emotional bonds. You don't fix that through culture. "Instructors could create activities in which each student becomes an 'expert' on a different topic"? Come on man. They have to let go of the old DSM-5 model of "10-15 of the population is crazy, everyone else is perfectly fine". Psychologists have a far bigger role to play in society than they currently do.
Fixing psychological and emotional problems through cultural change just doesn't solve anything. Fix the root cause. You would literally fix both the low self-esteem that inhibits people from asking questions, and the bullying that results from being seen as "dumb".
Please don't take my comment as snark, I'm asking this in all seriousness. When most people possess some psychological trait, perhaps we should ask ourselves if this is just the way people are? And perhaps the cure is worse than the disease?
Is it possible that encouraging typical people to have "higher self esteem" will result in increased narcissism, entitlement or overconfidence? And maybe that overconfidence, when it hits the reality that they are not, in fact, better (along some arbitrary axis) at something vs most other people, their ego shatters? I don't know, but...
To be clear, I'm not trying to assert a position here. I'm open to being very wrong about the thesis behind the above questions.
* The healthy level of self esteem. (Normal as in ideal)
* The median level of self esteem. (Normal as in compared to others)
So we probably need better words. "SubOptimal" "Optimal" vs "Average" "Above Average" etc.?
A good comparison is what is the normal amount of sugar to consume per day? What is the healthy amount?
> Is it possible that encouraging typical people to have "higher self esteem" will result in increased narcissism, entitlement or overconfidence?
Absolutely; that's what the "self-esteem movement" in U.S. schools last century did, which is now widely denounced as harmful, and it's a perfect example of bad cultural change that wasn't deeply informed by psychology but instead on emulating behaviors. Low self-esteem is in the unconscious mind. You can try to think and behave like a confident person, but it's all a facade, a new set of learned coping mechanisms, unless you develop deeper self-awareness of your psyche and "do the inner work."
"Good" cultural change means promoting true psychological awareness and inside-out change. Here's a more detailed example if you want:
Pleasant emotions occur when our emotional needs are satisfied. Unpleasant (not "negative") emotions point to unmet emotional or physical needs (that include shame, i.e. low self-esteem). All emotions are useful since they tell you what your emotional needs are and how well they're satisfied. If you're mostly unhappy, you either have low self-awareness (of your thoughts, emotions, and needs at any given time), i.e. you have difficulty consciously identifying what your needs are; or, you can identify them but lack the (learnable) problem-solving skills to satisfy these needs. There are superficial emotional needs, and you can learn to "dig down" to the primary emotional needs that cause them. Sometimes, part of your unconscious can still feel deep unworthiness despite objectively impressive real-world achievements; that can be fixed by integrating that part of your subconscious that is stuck in the past, and bringing it back in line with the rest of your unconscious through inner work. Children have developmental emotional needs, which most of them, most of their teachers, and most of their parents are unaware of, and teaching these needs to all of them would help them do better. Groups (families, classrooms, companies) range from high-nurturance (helps people satisfy their emotional needs) to toxic (prevents people from satisfying their needs); high-nurturing groups (e.g. classrooms) have many traits in common. Group toxicity is generally caused by group leaders being emotionally unhealthy, i.e. having a poor ability to satisfy their own emotional needs effectively.
If the culture was promoting these ideas, I don't think that would be a cure worse than the disease. Going back to the article: building confident children means improving families' nurturance levels, teaching kids how to recognize their own needs and their child's developmental needs, and how to meet them; building children that do that inner work, and who then won't be afraid of "looking dumb" in the first place; and will be secure enough that they won't feel shame if someone dislikes them, and can try to achieve mutual respect with whoever dislikes them without losing their integrity or boundaries. Sounds far deeper and more meaningful than what the article proposes, no?
Here's a resource that might interest you: http://sfhelp.org/site/premises.htm and http://sfhelp.org/cx/skills/dig.htm (the whole site looks very old; but it was recommended to me by someone on /r/Buddhism years ago and is filled with gems).
Further, "normal" typically means that not only is a status common, but that it does not interfere with daily life. Even if 100% of kids have low self esteem, it is "low" and not "normal" because, by definition, it interfers with common social interactions and daily tasks.
I wrote more in another comment, but just a few examples:
- Dr. Carol Dewek has studied the difference between kids with "growth mindset" and "achievement mindset". The kids with "growth mindset" do not have the same kind of relationship with failure than the ones with "achievement mindset". Framed this way, it might be more accurate to say that kids with achievemement mindset are afraid to ask for help as early as 5 years old.
- Indigenous families, and other cultures like Japan, cultivate independence in their toddlers. The indigenous families incorporate a toddler's natural inclination to help into building skills for chores, with real stakes. Knowing tha their contribution actually matters, they develop both intrinsic motivation as well as a self-esteem that is internalized rather than requiring validation from something outside of them.
- Montessori emphasizes developing a child's capacity to be independent
These are all different than the mainstream modern culture in the US. For example, a modern parent in the US might feel time-pressure and so it is easier to do the household chores instead of taking the time to incorporate the toddler.
My toddler is not yet 2, and is already helping me feed the dogs and cats. He not only wants to do this, he gets upset when he can't. What's surprising for me is that, doing those chores with him turns those chores from something mechanical to something that's enjoyable for me. It's very much possible to do for a modern family.
So yes, I think this very much is something in the culture, with the poor self-esteem being a symptom of the culture.
But all the examples you give, I'd put in the "psychological change" category, not the "cultural change" category. Those are the things I support; and there's not enough focus on them. I'll admit my wording causes confusion; see my other reply.
I think what you're highlighting is extremely different from what I refer to as cultural change, like let's say the "body positivity movement", where people have pre-existing low self-esteem, which leads to self-neglect and emotional eating, which leads to weight gain, and they're focused on the superficial problem (feeling embarrassed by being fat) rather than the core issue (being fat because of low emotional health). "Every fat cell is an unshed tear." That perfectly highlights the ineffectiveness of superficial cultural change, over deep psychology-based change like the examples you give.
And to address your last point: low self-esteem is caused mostly by poor parental emotional health; you can put kids in Montessori schools, but if they don't develop healthy attachment to their parents, it'll only help on the margin. The change needs to be even deeper than that.
The article we're commenting on doesn't mention kids' self-esteem as being a factor at all; or the obvious observation that some kids are afraid of being judged, while some aren't. It treats it as a cultural problem that's easily solved by culture, rather than a deeper psychological/emotional problem that can be addressed long-term by deeper cultural change; really, it ignores the psychological dimension completely. Clearly, most academic psychologists are missing the mark here.
> Fixing psychological and emotional problems through cultural change just doesn't solve anything.
By my reading, the two quotes are in direct opposition to one other. It sounds like you are advocating for cultural change - just a different type/approach than is currently used?
Cultural change that addresses behaviors or focuses on other external factors can't work; that's outside-in cultural change.
But if you want to fix issues on a systemic, national, or worldwide level (which is the goal here), you do need some kind of cultural change.
Cultural change that focuses on inside-out psychology (not the movie) is what I call "psychological change"; the cultural element is just the "trojan horse" through which any systemic change must happen.
Example:
- banning magazines that show excessively thin models, because girls "become insecure when they look at them", is the thinking I denounce. If they had high self-esteem they couldn't be affected by a magazine cover. If they have low self-esteem, they will be. But the magazine is blamed, and legislation and activist momentum focuses on that. The self-esteem problem doesn't get solved, just displaced. Exactly the same with the "Instagram harms teen girls' mental health" viewpoints. That's only a problem because 80% of the population has low self-esteem and is unaware of it. Shouldn't that be fixed?
Implement a culture where people, for example:
- know the signs of low self-esteem
- know exactly how to address it in themselves, without pop-psych quakery or needing to pay for therapy sessions
- know how to address it in others
- know what assertiveness looks like, and how to do it
- know how to problem-solve personal or relationship problems
- know how to effectively interact to defensiveness, depression, argumentativeness, egotism, insincerity, power struggles, irresponsibility, prejudice, whatever; without getting upset at the other person; how to assert boundaries when faced with people like that, and how to help them
- how to evaluate others' emotional health, so people can make more informed choices in mates and spouses
- know how to evaluate if their relationships are healthy, and what to do about it if they're not
- how to grieve effectively
- could go on, and on.
So many of society's problems come from psychological illiteracy. Again, people's obsession with pop-psychology proves that people see a big need in learning more. Sadly, the pop-psychology craze mostly focuses on superficial things like self-talk, or on trying to, for example, "spot" signs of Narcissism or psychopathy in other people, to try to "protect oneself" from these people; it's not deep enough and doesn't get people to actually understand themselves and each other better; just to project various medical labels onto others and themselves (self-diagnose). What I'm proposing is outside that framework of "mentally ill vs normal" and focuses on empathically learning more about oneself and others and ultimately being able to help each other.
The cultural change is just meant to address that; it's a change in awareness and knowledge, not in behavior.
I don't think you can treat people's parenting behavior as being a non-environment-influenced thing.
uhm, so much of our culture and education comes directly from schools and media, not from our parents.
in fact, it's likely that most people learn not to ask question in a school-setting. hence we're (hoping that not anymore) in a culture that causes such low-self esteem by means of its educational institutions.
interactions with institutionally defined authority figures whose job is to teach (i.e. to parent you without the emotional bonds of your real parents) are a root cause.
the root cause is this culture which induces such problems with its relentless hirearchical control (authority) logic.
I think it can be both. Surely our cultural influences and practices in childrearing (including by societal mechanisms like schooling) matter.
There's a huge pop in anxiety among youth, that no one quite knows the causes of (climate worries? increased academic pressure? social media? collapse of portions of the social fabric?). This massive rise indicates there's some degree of underlying change causing it, and raises the prospect we could change back or change to be even better.
Isn't the way people parent something mainly determined by culture and the environment?
(sorry, I know I'm not supposed to be glib and off topic, but I can't resist a good reference to The Front Fell Off)
It's worth asking who gets to decide what "low self-esteem", "attachment disorder", and "healthy emotional bonds" are.
One important thing to realize is that none of those things actually exist; beautiful and intelligent are entirely relative. They can also be sources of friction; people get bullied for being smart, there’s a strong stereotype that beautiful people are actually stupid but that people tell them they’re smart because they’re hot, etc. There’s also the Ivy League problem; when your self esteem is based on being smarter than everyone else and then you get surrounded by other smart people it can tank your self confidence.
Self esteem is about realizing that your value is not derived from other’s opinion of you. That’s why it’s called self esteem.
OP seems to think not only that good parenting can beat external social influences, but that perfect parenting is simply a matter of deciding to be perfect. OP probably blames parents for all negative psychological outcomes for children: “It's not ‘caused’ by the culture or the environment, but by parenting”.
When I am truly stuck on something and can't guess what the problem is, then yes I will ask for help. I've found that probably 60% of the time (guesstimate), my peers would guess the same things that I already tried, tested, and failed. In doing so, they've duplicated the time spent trying to solve the problem. Maybe 20% of the time, while doing so, they might spot something that I missed. Maybe another 10% of the time, they'll think of something I hadn't. And the last 10%? Well, that just means it's time to refactor the problem set to avoid what can't be solved.
That of course changes if I enter a new problem domain. At that point, I most certainly ask peers for documentation and examples. If I hit a snag then I ask what I did wrong. Most often the cause ends up being inaccurate documentation.
It can be pretty painful to see people systematically dismiss anything you say, or always seek out a second opinion, for no other reason that they have a hard time believing anything reliable can come out of your mouth.
I won't let that happen again.
You're new to something? Ask for pointers if you can't find something relatively quickly yourself. That's `smart`. You're new, the documentation might be inaccurate, out of date or not in the place you'd expect it unless you've already been at the company and learned their structure etc.
You're stuck on something and can't figure it out? Ask for some help to double check your own logic. Run them through all of the things you've already tried. This shows that you're not incompetent but have in fact already tried all those obvious things they'd ask you about. Also do actually run them through those steps, don't just talk about you having done them already. Sometimes you've overlooked something the first 2 times and showing it to someone else makes you notice (also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging if you'd like to first use a non-human just in case). You wouldn't believe the amount of times where I've been the helper and all I had to do to help was to ask them to run me through what they had already tried and the above happened. They showed me something as "and see I tried this and then it doesn't ... oooh" ;)
Do not ask for help on the exact same thing 5 times in a row. That definitely makes me think you're `incompetent`. Happens way too often too unfortunately.
In addition, there's what a previous commenter said about knowing that others also have their own things they're dealing with, and I kinda don't wanna be the guy who adds to that any if I can avoid it (just in case they're not that other type of person I mention here).
[1] The fact that there exist no good or pragmatic solutions to the abandonment does not mean the abandonment is not occurring. One of the earliest lessons that newly sentient modern children is "you need to leave your home and go to a place where you don't matter".
[2] The fact that some fraction of teachers are well-intentioned, and that some sub-fraction of those teachers are actually competent, does not change their role as wardens of controlled and numbered children.
Your answer doesn't leave any room for the improvement of school, merely to castigate the very idea of putting children together in classes.
At my school, kids are excited to show up Monday morning-- interesting things are happening in our classes. They come see me and play with robots and do real engineering. They get to see their friends and do sports and coursework that "feels real".
Sure, by the time Friday afternoon comes around, we're all done... but we'll be pretty excited to start it all again next week.
If you look at my response to another sub-commenter, you'll see a few of the things I'd like to add to school, some of which may appear more palatable to you than the abolition of the entire model.
Ultimately, I'm gratified that you're a good teacher, but regrettably not only are you one of the few, you also are kept far back from the actual effect you could be having on kids by confining your expertise to the schooling model. You sound more like a mentor that could clearly steer a high number of kids through life from early to late ages, and you could run events and study plans that go late into the night and through the summer. If you were unconstrained by the rules of the school and unbound by the need for a retirement savings account and health insurance, you could run your own always-open institute where you teach whatever you want to whoever is willing to come and listen. The results you'd see under such a model would wildly outstrip the ones you see in school.
My goal is to create a society filled with people like you--but that takes individuals who are parented well, and it can't be done under the factory schooling model, where the primary lesson learned is obedience to the institution.
The other thing I'd like to point out is that none of the activities you mentioned require school to exist for them to be performed. People visited, played sports and music, and investigated science well before every single child went to school. The difference then was that it didn't "feel real", it "was real". School only provides an age-segregated simulation of greater society, and the more time you spend in greater society the more inaccurate that simulation seems.
Regarding the hyperbole, I don't consider it to be hyperbole. Schools are constructed using the same techniques that prisons are constructed, the social cliques run similar to prisons, and in neither place are you allowed to leave or meaningfully challenge or change the rules of the institution. When you are in a school, you are not part of a thriving society, you are a subject that is managed according to the needs of the administration.
Here in Sweden the school system is not perfect but it does offer a "slow start" for young kids, kindergarten class at the school building and the first few years without exams or homework.
- slow start like you mentioned (also was done in famously education-forward Soviet Russia)
- allow schools to expel children
- increase availability and desirability of night school or other free public school for adults
- mandate school and district administrators to have experience teaching
- ban homework and introduce periods of time during school when work is expected
- remove all art and sports from school and reform them as independent free clubs to be participated in after or before school (unfortunately impossible in poorer districts)
- increase teacher salary
- more separation of students by skill level (tons of research showing that kids learn better when they're placed in small groups at a similar skill level, also easily observed anecdotally.) This should also be accomplished by mixing ages.
- ban grades, introduce final exams in specific subjects at the end of school that can be retaken indefinitely (perhaps once per year). If you want to go to college, perform on these tests
If we're looking at societal changes that would allow us to really move away from the school model, we also need:
- more public transportation to enable kids to go to schools other than the ones they live next to
- widespread reforms in prison and sentencing that makes it safer and less life-ending
- industry must return to western countries to allow low- and medium-skilled people important labor jobs
- healthcare reform so it's not tied to employment
- better cultural stewardship, small business startup loans, and continental rail so young talented people aren't as incentivized to leave their smaller cities and towns
Ultimately, a strong society that could move safely away from the school model needs an economy with many opportunities for short-duration (6-24 months) employment, lots of vacation time, and the ability for one parent to stay at home a large fraction of the year.
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I mean, these psychologist did grow up and spend time as a child, right?
There's a lot of patronizing that goes on in organized medicine/psychology, and juvenile medicine seems to get a double helping of it.
https://dilbert.com/strip/2003-08-07
Usually there is a simple reason: I am not having the same problem for very long, but whenever things are going smoothly they get done very quickly. The other, very common reason is that in the process of gathering the information I need to ask the correct question, the answer usually presents itself.
The final reason is force of habit. I went through a school system where the teachers spend all of class, apart from presenting the material, helping the weak students keep up.
For example, Dr. Carol Dewek studied kids with "growth mindset". Kids with such a mindset see failure as a path to more growth, whereas kids with "achievement mindset" do not.
I also think about things like:
- https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/09/6169288... ... Note here that the kids at the ages of 5, 7, etc. discussed in the article, will brag to each other about how helpful they are. However, their parents have been building their skills when they are toddlers and try to be helpful.
- There is an in-depth article about implementing the "old enough to run errands" in America. Again, the author did not just throw their kid out on the street. They invested a lot of time skill-building.
- The Montessori method, which emphasizes developing the capacity to be independent. Failure happens often
- A study on toddlers and babies, and the effects of seeing how long adults struggle on how much they will continue to try something before giving up
- Fred Rogers, commenting on leaving in footage where adults struggle and fail, and things don't go according to plan.
My son is 20 months old, and my wife and I have been incorporating ideas from above. I might show him that it is possible to do something, and let him try (and at times, fail, and learn from the failure). We also prompt him by asking him if he wants help.
Or put it another way: curate the environment, like you would when designing a video game levels to teach how to play, and smoothly increase the difficulty.
I often think about the chores and trips I took with my dad growing up, and how he slowly and cleverly worked me up to doing things.
For instance when we would stop at a gas station, unless I had to go to the bathroom I had to stay in the car as it was dangerous, I might get hit by a car etc. But I could help by gathering any trash and handing it to him. Then as I got older, I could help by getting out and washing the side mirrors, then the door windows and finally the windshield once I could reach. The genesis really was that it was boring to sit in the car and I wanted to do something, and he capitalized on that.
Same thing when we would take the recycling to the drop off point. First I had to stay in the car (you'll note a consistent theme here: I couldn't just stay at home at my leisure while chores were going on) and watch, then I could help with the light things like the cans, then the newspapers, then the glass.
....I'm still salty that I had to mow all 2 acres with a push mower for years and years, and he only bought a tractor with a giant mower deck after us kids moved out, though. The cheeky old bastard.