Slashdot Mirror
Consumer Electronics Causing 'Death of Childhood'?
An anonymous reader writes "Top children's authors, including best-seller Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials), have written an open letter to the British Government claiming that consumer electronics have brought about the death of childhood. They say that children desperately need 'real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen-based entertainment), first-hand experience of the world they live in'. The letter writers also state that children have lost their imaginations because they are, 'pushed by market forces to act and dress like mini-adults and exposed via the electronic media to material which would have been considered unsuitable for children even in the very recent past.' The article asks, 'is modern life too fast for the supple human mind? Do children have a rev counter we're red-lining by exposing them to so much input?'" So what does Slashdot think? Are kids growing up too fast nowadays because of them new-fangled technologies?
Short answer: No
Long answer: Yes
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
Well, LEGOs would solve your problem right there. How many geeks grew up with Legos and got into DIY projects?
It's easy to see why parents, assaulted by the constant barrage of news items on paedophile attacks, terrorism and murder, encourage their children's seclusion in the hermetically sealed confines of a softly carpeted room with a plasma TV and Xbox 360.
I personally think that parents who make this decision are failing their children. The child needs to be aware of what's going on in the world. That's why I love school classes that have current events, I encourage my child to read and / or watch the news. If they're secluded from everything, they're going have no clue what's going on when they hit the real world.
But sincerely,
Every generation has some aspect that is supposedly going to bring utter ruination to the future. And every generation manages to cope. I think we will be allright as long as parents bring some healthy balance to thier kids activities. When has that concept ever been new and fresh? It has always been that way.
My humor is probably your flamebait
Children play at what they will be doing when they grow up, in order to learn. When people were doing mostly manual labor, physical play was important. Now that more and more work is mind-work done one computer and electronic equipment, it makes sense for children to play with electronic toys and games, using their minds more than their bodies.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Yes I know this is a troll...
But how many people out there were claiming we wouldn't be having any new low-level programmers because kids these days grow up with Windows and Macs rather than Apple IIe and C64's?
The reason that kids are growing up too quickly has to do with the parents encouraging kids to just watch TV by placing them in front of it instead of actually paying attention. This behavior becomes habit -
-also, as we over protect our children, we seperate ourselves more and more from the rest of the community. This splits our kids away from the available social networks and playmates - encouraging further isolation.
So, it's not the technology - but the fact that we don't teach or give our children any other options.
TRHOnline - Staggering Towards Brilliance
It's not a matter of the "corruption" or "degeneracy" or youth in the sense that the kids are rebelling. That is the perennial complaint. Rather, it's a example of parents responsibly asking themselves if they are meeting the needs of their children.
It's also electronic content. A kid should not be raised by proxy in front of a video screen, whether he/she has a controller (or a mouse and/or keyboard) or not. There's more to growing up than that.
One should also be actively and physically engaged as well. Playing outdoors, running around, playing with physical objects (whether they be Legos or whatever).
Being raised is a matter of mind and body.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
My daughter has a computer (a Macintosh running Mac OS 9). The only games she has are educational with no killing. She has a simple word processor, a complex drawing program, and other programs that create, not simulate destruction. We use Tivo Kidzone to record only programs with positive messages. So far, she doesn't watch much at the neighbor's kid's houses. We have a garden that she helps in, two dogs, and she spends most of her none school time running around outside, so I'd say, no, her childhood isn't being destroyed by consumer electronics. Your Milage May Vary.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
A few months back, I went to a local model rocket launch. It was on a farm in a beautiful chunk of Oregon (See the background of this: http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones/hustler_pose .jpg). Dozens of geeks and their families were there, launching model rockets big and small into the sky.
More than a few of the kids present were squatting on the ground, or in car seats, blank expressions on their faces, banging away at portable game machines.
How pathetic.
Someday these kids will need to take special classes to learn how to walk on dirt.
I've seen this problem first-hand in my stepson. He grew up absolutely addicted to video games and he constantly throws himself into the video game world. He has difficulty in coping with the real world. Until we started getting him some help, he was even uncomfortable paying for something at a store counter. His sister, who never shared his video game addiction, grew up to be very okay and completely independent. But now that he's almost 23, coping with real life is a skill he's having to work at. He still lives at home, has had difficulty holding a job. He's starting to turn around -- he's in school and getting A+ certification training (hey, it's a start!) But he's got a long way to go.
My blog
Top children's authors, including best-seller Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials), have written an open letter to the British Government claiming that consumer electronics have brought about the death of childhood.
what exactly does he expect the government to do?
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
Kids live longer today than they did before, so let's not all start talking about going back to the "simple life" where all the farm girls look like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
It's all well and good to have an opinion on something. However, like the saying goes, opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and they all stink. I can't tell where this guy's opinion ends and real unbiased scientific scrutiny and experimentation begins. TBH, I would have to disagree wholeheartedly with the statement "death of childhood". Childhood may be changing, perhaps in many different ways, but that does not mean it's dying.
Part of me wants to dismiss his entire argument as nonsensical luddite ramblings. Another part of me wonders if he might have at least a small point. But it's where those two parts of me meet and ask "where's the proof?" that I finall come to the conclusion there is nothing to see here, move along.
At least, from the children I know and observe, I don't see them suffering developmentally from the fact that they can play their PSP all day. What I mean is, don't blame the PSP. The fact is, I think through simple, good, old fashioned parenting, a child can have a better upbringing today than ever before, as long as the parent is able to understand and integrate today's technology, within moderation, with the raising of their child(ren).
Maybe too many parents are becoming lazy, thinking technology can replace them in areas of parenting where it should not. But like I said above, about opinions.....
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Fortunately my kid's too poor for all that crap. 200 pound per hour therapists? His only indulgence is slashdot.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
Hey, I'm a childless adult so according to all the "parents" I've spoken with my opionions do not count. Okay, so here is my observation:
Kids nowadays spend all their time in front of video games, don't even know how to ride bikes (my nephew just learned at age 13 to ride a bike and so did his friends), never play ball in their yard and have schedules or routines that plan out their times at school, after school and at home on the weekend. Everything is planned and scheduled instead of impulse.
My observation is that this is fucked up.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
What cause kids to grow up, society pressures. If the child feels he is outcast because he doesn't have a mySpace account then he will want one, and because he want one when he gets on he will try to assimilate to the mySpace culture as well as he can. If the child enjoys playing with old toys and he gets pressure that people his age shouldn't be playing with such toys he will strive to play with what peers and society thinks he should be playing with. T.V. and Internet Adds tend to create false society pressures on these children to get them to want products that they will not necessarily want. Because society wants them to do this so much they will do it as far if not farther then society demands. I remember the Cell phone add with the Girl who was said to be a teenager (probably just 13 or 12) who kept on talking and talking, using the cell phone minutes. This add wasn't for the parents who buy the phone and plan, it was for kids who are 10-14 who should normally be to young to have a cell phone, but the add makes it seem like it is normal for kids to have them. So Kids get them... With global advertising that are advertising children they are trying to make kids become more grown up. As a kid my father had a "Cell Phone" (a large box with a phone in it) I though it was cool and such but I had no desire to have one for myself, why because not of the kids had them. I wanted the Nintendo or Sega like the other kids. As well as He-Man action figures, Transformers and GI-Joe. Because that was the social norms. While my parents generation were happy with toy cars, and balls (more generic things) . The reason was because that is what other kids in their area had and played with. It is not technology but the marketing of the technology and the stupid parents who buy the kids this crap because they actually believe them when they say they need it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The Nothing is devouring Fantasia. ATREYUUUUU!!!!!!
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
I would say it is the opposite. People are waiting longer to form family units and have children. The education cycle is stretching out. According to my insurance company, no one is an adult until they are 25. Just some thoughts.
Don't waste time... procrastinate now!
Children must have at least some exposure to the crass and cynical consumer world, with a loving parent at their side to explain what all those fancy commercials are really about.
I had a friend in high school who did not have a TV growing up, and as nice a fellow as he was, he was a hopeless rube that at the age of 18, still believed that wrestling was real and would purchase the bridge you had for sale at the drop of a hat.
I think he could have benifited from a few hours of TV per day, with an audio tape loop in the background repeating "None of this is real... None of this is real..."
I think many people would say we need to move faster. The young mind should be free to learn and absorb at the rate it needs. I for one welcome the explosion of information, I think in the past it hasnt been accessable enough to the young mind. And of course it is up to the parent to moderate what kinds of information the child gets, as each family has separate belief systems. But all in all the young mind will soak up things quickly, give it to them. When I was younger I was fortunate enough to have an encyclopedia. Now everyone has one at their fingertips. You can get answers quickly now rather than waiting for the bi-weekly trip to the library.
Second, just because a child doesnt experience "Your" childhood, doesnt mean that they are not a child. Play may be different now, it is always changing. Just because a child now at age 7 has the knowledge of a 15 year old isnt a bad thing. We are starting to see people in their 20s, and even in their teens with more knowledge than people in their 50-90s. This, I think, is a good trend. The accellerated intellect will allow us to advance our civilization quicker and better than ever in history. Just check out the last 50 years, even the last 15. It is quite impressive. However it is causing a lot of stife in workplaces and life in general as we have intellect vs wisdom everywhere. Give it another 30 years and we will see an amazing culture as long as we dont stifle it.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
No, they're growing up too fast (and often in unhealthy ways) because of poor parenting and poor education systems.
It is not rocket science that a child left unsupervised with an unrestricted TV, Internet-enabled computer and PlayStation n in their bedroom is likely to spend an unhealthy amount of time in front of a screen, and come into contact with less than suitable material for someone their age. The also-not-rocket-science solution to this problem is... not to give kids all the toys and the chance to use them unsupervised all the time.
Likewise, it's easy to let the kids buy junk food on the way to and from school, and to eat school meals with poor nutritional value and drink soda, and then to throw a quick microwave meal or frozen pizza in for dinner. And then we wonder why more of our kids are seriously overweight and developing health problems than any time in recent history. The revolutionary solution to this is... giving kids real food and drink at meal times.
Of course, it's much easier for parents to leave little Jonny and Suzy to play with their hi-tech toys and then cook them frozen pizza for dinner than it is to take an active part in their upbringing by, I dunno, talking to them, reading to them, having dinner with them, and taking them to see and do interetsing things. The work-life balance in many western countries is now so far left of stupid that many parents see the easy option as the only option, however.
Similarly, one has to wonder at "education" systems that spend more time worrying about whether 7-year-olds can pass formal examinations than worrying about 7-year-olds learning to interact with other 7-year-olds, make friends, and play together. And yet, this is exactly where we're headed.
Society needs a wake-up call, particularly if it thinks it's worked this one out. Hi-tech toys are just the symptom, not the cause of the problem.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
IMO, the key is balance. Exercising only the mind or only the body is unhealthy in a child, and in an adult.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
We can't just blame technology for the trends. There are many factors that, IMHO, seem to be going into this.
Growing up in my hometown 5-10 years ago, I remember kids being outside all the time, playing whatever, chasing each other around. I loved playing street hockey with my friends, for example. However, you go back now, and even on the most beautiful spring day the neighborhood is practically devoid of kids just playing outside (organized sports are still popular, or course, but I mean jusy *play*). Instead, most of them are inside watching TV, playing video games, or, as is more and more the case these days, they are simply trying to do everything and anything to get into a good college (that's put simply of course, but that seems to be the gist of it). Kids aren't allowed to be kids anymore, due to pressure to do everything, due to media influence, etc. "Playing" seems to be considered a waste of time.
Another thing I've noticed is fear in the parents. I used to play outside and get hurt, dig around, get sick, etc. My parents would keep an eye on me but they didn't stop me from playing.
Anyway, just my 2 cents...It's funny, really. My dad was a computer programmer by profession before I was born, but we didn't even have a home computer until I was eight and had been exposed to them in school. As a young kid I played tee-ball, soccer, and volley ball, played with Legos, Construx, Hot Wheels, Tonka Trucks, etc, and was fairly limited in the TV that I was allowed to watch for some time. Eventually I graduated into slightly more mature cartoons and television shows like Perfect Strangers, and slowly evolved away from Hot Wheels and Tonka Trucks into car models and model rocketry, and eventually into computers.
We never had cable TV, except for one month when we moved and the previous owners' cable hadn't yet been disconnected. I remember that the month after that was very difficult as we had started to gravitate toward TV a lot more than we were before, and readjusting was hard.
Today I don't even have an antenna, let alone cable TV. And while I collect movies (and have more than 300 on Laserdisc, and about 100 more on DVD and VHS) I don't just let random crap come broadcasting into my home. I self-censor because I have better things to do with my time than sit there and watch TV for several hours a night.
Choose what you're going to experience, don't just passively sit there and let others choose it for you.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
"The reason that kids are growing up too quickly has to do with the parents encouraging kids to just watch TV by placing them in front of it instead of actually paying attention. This behavior becomes habit -"
Often the reasons that happens is both parents work or it is a single parent home. Plus there is so much mind numbing entertainment that our culture now expects to entertained all the time. I can not tell you how many times I have seen kids watching DVDs in the car when they are just driving around town! Adults are no better, we have games and TV on our cell phones, and movies on our IPods. One wonders what we could do with that time if we where not being entertained.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The key is balance, isn't it? My 6-year old son has an old PII Sony Vaio (running SuSE Linux 8.1, of course), a digital camera (old Sony Mavica (writes to a floppy disk)), and an old videogame console (original PlayStation). He enjoys playing with them quite a bit.
However, I also try to get him and his sister up into the woods each weekend to play in the dirt, eat wild clover and look at the banana slugs. We try to get some time in at the park every day after school. We draw frequently with pencil, crayon and paper.
We watch movies and videos on DVD, but we don't have cable or satelite TV at home. We also try to read each night.
Both my children have very fertile and active imaginations--my son is working on writing and illustrating his first book and, last week started a "math book". The problem isn't the electronics, it's relying on them too much.
I probably spent too much time as a child reading books. I'd probably be better adjusted socially if I'd have been out playing with other kids more instead.
Nothing interesting to say...MUST...NOT...REPLY...ohtheheckwithit.
Every generation has some aspect that is supposedly going to bring utter ruination to the future. And every generation manages to cope. I think we will be allright as long as parents bring some healthy balance to thier kids activities. When has that concept ever been new and fresh? It has always been that way.
But how many generations had their kids sitting in front of, essentially, puppet-shows (or some other analog equivalent) all day, every day? In fact, one could argue that the loonier offspring of the "idle" artistocracy and their highly entertained (but not so very challeneged, physically, etc) kids were the precursor to what we're seeing now, but across much larger swaths of the society: flacid minds, a sense of entitlement, no sense of causality or critical thinking... sort of the Caligulazation of a much wider population.
Basically, the standard of living for most of modern western society is now so high that most of us are living like (or better than) the aristrocracy of the not very distant past.
Yes, we all assume that our current generation's kids are the ones that will wreck civilization, but there's actually something TO this one, I think, at least a bit.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2006/09/12/njunk112.xml
my password really is 'stinkypants'
-also, as we over protect our children, we seperate ourselves more and more from the rest of the community. This splits our kids away from the available social networks and playmates - encouraging further isolation.
When you have the mass media constantly scaring people about sexual predators that prey on children, is it small wonder why parents nowadays are absolutely scared about letting their children go out and play in the neighborhood? Small wonder why the only time you see children at a playground nowadays is with very strict parental supervision....
Up until widespread schooling began in the 17th and 18th centuries, the modern concept of childhoood, as a time of play and learning lasting well into your teens, didn't really exist. "Real" childhood, that period where you are more of a burden than a help to your agrarian family, only lasted until you were old enough to start doing chores around the farm. By the time you were in your teens, you were probably starting to think about starting a family of your own.
While there is some controversy about whether modern childhood was "invented" in the 18th century, it certainly changed quite a lot. The changing standard of childhood is a little better understood in Japan, where the concept of modern childhood was largely introduced by globalization in the 19th century, and was thus studied a little more rigorously than in Europe and America, where it was a more organic process.
What many of us now consider "childhood" (school and play, with hardly any work until late teens) is really a 20th century phenomenon - once the West de-ruralized and mechanized, the amount of work needed to be performed on a daily basis dwindled to the point where child labor, at home or away, wasn't really needed or desired. The Western 1950s-70s were the absolute high-water mark for a childhood of outdoor leisure - not surprisingly, exactly the time when Pullman (and I, and a large chunk of Slashdot) grew up.
As with any nostalgia trip, Pullman (mis)remembers all the highlights of these times, but not the downsides like the often crushing boredom of having absolutely nothing to do on a rainy weekend (unless, like us, your were a geek and read a lot).
Maybe playing Madden 2007 on a rainy day leads to less creative thought than reading "The Mad Scientists Club" for the fifth time, but I don't think Pullman convincingly makes that case.
So much variety. Encourage a rounded upbringing. And if technology leads to a narrowing of focus then that is bad. But tech can lead to a widening of focus, that is good.
No easy path through these waters, GPS guidance installed or not.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
> Now, my kids have cable, computer with the net and half a dozen consoles. I work on limiting it, but it is tough.
Yep - constant availability of gaming consoles, flash and other online games and television is like putting racks of candy bars all over your house. Six year olds shouldn't be eating a non-stop diet of chocolate and fried potatoes all day, nor should they be sitting on their asses playing video games and watching television all day. The challenge is that in some communities (especially suburbs) a couple of hours of this kind of play a day is the norm. And in that situation restricting your kids has got to be tough.
But I know of many households that restrict kids to four or less hours of electronic games & television a week. In my household we ditched television broadcasting (cable, dish, antenna) fifteen years ago and have *never* regretted it. We rent dvds a couple of times a month, that's it.
Sure, it means that kids don't get to watch their MTV when they were eight years old, but they did read "The Wind in the Willows" instead, they did learn how to play musical instruments, juggle, explore the local trails, wrestle, play with the dog, play with their friends, etc. All far better ways for kids to spend their time.
The teacher of said dirt-walking class will have to be rated as "highly qualified," i.e., possess at least a bachelors degree and pass a state test demonstrating knowledge of the subject.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
I have recently acquired stepchildren. Suddenly I'm a parent to two adolescents.
Through trial and error, I have found that what kids NEED is what they crave: Parental attention. These kids love doing nearly anything that involves me helping them out. Whether its schoolwork, some little art activity, building something (I DO have a big box of LEGOs), taking a walk, made-up games, whatever. They are ecstatic that someone will spend time and attention on them.
So if their your kids, your stepkids, your neices and nephews, your friends kids, whatever. Just listen to them, play a game with them (spontaneous made-up games are a favorite), teach them something cool. They'll grow up all right, and you'll be that really cool person who they admire from their childhood.
The increase in ADD, ADHD, Asperger's, and Autism would seem to indicate that children are being "revved" beyond their abilities.
I don't think it's the "fault" of electronic entertainment, but rather the incessant push to not merely succeed, but to excel. Those children with a variety of educational/entertainment/sport activities end up more balanced, but are still stressed.
Another part of the problem is that parents and authorities would rather push pills for ADD/ADHD than punish a child. When we twitched around in our seats in school, we got punished and learned to pay attention (sort of.) Now they flag a "problem" and stuff the kid full of pills.
The truly scary thing is that statistics are now showing that the ADD/ADHD "patients" grow up to suffer an increase in cocaine and meth addiction problems. Not surprising when you realize that ADD/ADHD medications are speed, so they're just trying to maintain the addiction developed by the educational and medical systems that would rather drug children than deal with the problems.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
With a post like this, here you will just attract hordes of unwashed sociopaths who will tell you that your daughter is so fucked because she doesnt chainsaw people in half. And how this will inhibit her personal growth.
Which of course means you are exactly right.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
my child was raised to educate himself through playing video games alone in his room from a young age. my wife and i feel that many modern parents spend far too much time trying to entertain their children, who themselves would rather be defining their own identities by using technology. this is often because the parents themselves do not have much in their lives and are bored.
our son is growing into a well-adjusted and emotionally literate young man. the skeptical may wish to view this home video of him relaxing and playing unreal tournament.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
If "modern" life is too harsh for children, I sugest sending up
chimneys, down coal mines and out onto the streets to beg for
food.
Why, in my day, we lived in a cardboard box and had to eat lumps
of coal!
return 0; }
- Children's books authors are complaining about children not reading enough books.
- Rather than take responsibility for their falling sales, said authors complain to the government about their competition.
- Perennial computer addicts on
/. debate about children and video games.
- A lucid poster suggests parents take responsibility.
Dost mine eyes detect a recurring theme?@HbFyo0$k8 tH!$
I struggle with this. Raising kids is hard. The hardest part is figuring out how exactly you fit this whole other person into your life.
I think most people have trouble fitting themselves into their lives. They just don't have enough time to work, socialise, and relax to their own satisfaction. When you add a child on top of that, all kinds of mess comes out of it - and ultimately, your own self-interest carries more weight, so the children often end up on the losing end.
At some point, things need to be reduced and removed to make room. What screws that up is the general inability of most people to make real sacrifices... it's one thing to say you put your child first, but it's quite another to actually do it when you're down to your last few dollars. Even though this level of desperation is rarely an issue for most parents, there are innumerable little ways that parents deprive their children in ways mom and dad might not even notice: you can't afford the $4 bag of cookies your child wants, but you buy an $18 bottle of wine later in the same trip. Could you have perhaps gotten a $12 bottle of wine instead, and used the savings to buy cookies? Of course. The child sees and understands this, even if you don't, and by adolescence there's a massive buildup of frustration from it.
The message we give our children is that as adults, we get to do what we want, and children have to shut up and make do with what we deign to provide them. This doesn't just make our family lives difficult when the kids hit their teenage years, it also raises essentially infantile adults - they've been trained to be selfishly indulgent their whole lives.
I don't think there's an easy answer to this. I think you have to actually understand what you do and how it looks to your children, which unfortunately requires you to think about how other people view your behavior... and a lot of people just seem incapable of that.
Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
I know my sister does a good job so far. She spends time with her little girl and they do craft projects all the time together. She plays with dolls and toy trucks and all sorts of other real toys.
My sister is lucky. Her husband works long hours and they both go with out so she can stay home with their child. She is also a former teacher so she has some major advantages over a lot of people.
I would say that parents don't have to buy PS2s, Gamecubes, or put a TV in every room.
That might be a good start.
When they are little you do have control over what they see and do.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Our mass-media (meme-propagation system) has increased in efficiency tens or hundreds of times faster than our context-supplying instincts.
We evolved in loose groups of 150-250 individuals. If you heard about someone getting eaten by a tiger then, chances are you should watch out because he was likely only a few hundred metres over that way, so the danger to you was very real.
Then we started to hear about things that happened to someone at the other end of the country, and suddenly it seemed like there were murderers and rapists and nutjobs everywhere, because barely a day went past when we didn't hear of someone getting killed in an inventive or gruesome way.
Now we've got the web, and e-mail, and satellite TV, and blogs, and we hear about it if a mouse farts in Buttfuck, Antarctica. And now it's not even safe to let your kids walk to school for fear of them getting molested, you can't get on a 'plane for fear it'll be bombed out of the sky, and you can't visit the toilet in your own house without getting abducted and beheaded by terrorists.
The only way to tackle this is by recognising what's going on and overruling your instincts. They served you well ten thousands years ago when you lived in a tree and had to avoid tigers, but now we're living in condos and keep small tigers in the house as pets.
Try my patented Lightning Test: Look up the statistics of whatever the latest mania/terror/panic is about, and worry about it if it's more likely than.. oh... say... getting hit by lightning.
Try terrorism - look up the number of deaths form terrorism each year, then look up the number of people who get hit by lightning.
Now if someone's advocating taking away civil rights because of terrorism, or locking up our children because of paedophiles, you can apply the simple test: Are they also advocating the compulsory wearing of earthed metal hats and rubber gumboots?
If not, then their little pet crusade is clearly disproportionate and can be safely ignored.
This has been a Public Service Announcement from the Lets All Get A Fucking Grip Society. Have a nice day.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Like anything, it depends upon specifics....
I got an Apple ][ back in 1978 when I was 10. It had only a couple of crappy text games on it, and I wished I had more. So I taught myself to program.
Fast-forward 28 years, and I am still programming, making mid-six-figures in salary, and I never finished college.
Would I take away my early exposure to computers? Um, hell no. Will I give my 3-year-old a computer when he is ten? That depends upon whether or not I can "restrict" his usage to "productive" tasks and harmless media. So, probably.
But will I give him a Nintendo when he is ten? Absolutely not. My parents would never buy me an Atari console as a kid, making me save my lawn-mowing money up to buy one when I was sixteen. And you know what? By the time I bought that thing, I really didn't even play it that much because programming was so much more engrossing.
And I still thank my parents for being so discerning between types of electronic media. It makes all the difference. There's a good chance that if they had bought me an Atari at age ten instead of an Apple ][, I'd probably be a college dropout working at Starbucks instead of a highly recruited UI engineer.
So, like anything else, it depends. Bottom line: parents are around for a reason. Namely, to make the correct decisions involving the upbringing of their children. Sure it's easier to just buy them a console and plug them in for a few hours a day. But that's not what parenting is about at its core.
I'm sure Paris and Nicole will look just fine at 50 thanks to the wonders of modern technology, but what about the rest of the US's children, who are driven one block to school, even in the best of neighborhoods, and will be fat and diabetic by the time they are 30? I'm not putting my money on increasing life expectancies especially when the fattest and most diabetic are the ones least likely to have access to top shelf medical care.
If I had kids they could play all the video games they wanted, but the hardware would be powered off deep-cycle batteries charged by a stationary bicycle. You play, you ride.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
was harsh and brutal for many people.
My great-uncle became "man of the house" at age ten, when his father died in a farm accident. Today, he'ld be given counselling; then, he was given a household full of siblings and a farm to take care of. And he did it, because that was his duty as a man. Today, nineteen year old men are still considered "kids". They've had the luxury of growing old without growing up.
Two of my dad's eight siblings died during or shortly after childbirth. Most of my parent's family ended up with farm related injuries and scars. My uncle is missing a leg from where it got caught in a baling machine. My cousin died down a well, trying to fix it so that his family could have clean drinking water.
We don't want the simple life back. It would kill half of us, and lead the other half back to an early grave. Kids today aren't being "forced to grow up too fast". Try taking on adult experience at age 14. Try getting through life with a grade 3 education, because your Dad made you go to work to earn money for the family before you even finished grade school, like happened to my Dad's father.
Then try whining to me about how kids are growing up "too fast" compared to their forefathers. I don't see it. To me, they're barely growing up at all.
If you have, then you know the whole trilogy focuses on two children, both running from violent, dangerous adults out to steal their souls essentially. They don't have any time to BE children, they're too busy saving the world(s). What's he trying to prove?
Children are the last minority. A child can be tried for murder as an adult at 12, but cannot get a job or a means of taking adult responsibility. In Houston, the schools are already starting to look like prisons; fences, guards, security systems, etc.. With curfew, they are under House Arrest from 10:00PM 'til 6:00AM, thus making their incarceration more complete.
d _paradox.htm The rest of the site is pretty interesting also.
I lied about my age and joined the Army back in the '60's, and two months later had an Army GED. The State of Alaska granted me an actual Diploma when I turned 18. People used to laugh at people with GED's, but now you have to take a GED test before they will let you graduate (in Texas they call it TAKS), and it's not even as hard as the one I took back in the '60's! But if some kid showed up for his Freshman year of High School and passed the TAKS, do you think they'd let him graduate and get a job? NO! He still has to serve the rest of his sentence!
Just wait. The population of the US is getting older. It won't be too long before they lower the age at which young people can go to work to support the old folks on Social Security.
Check this out: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/multimedia/jtgsoun
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
- Age: 11 (starting 6th grade)
- Number of months in his life, total, with TV in the house: 24 (last two years)
- Number of months in his life, total, with cable TV: 1 (I just got cable to watch CNN)
- Number of videogame systems (PS, XBox, etc) in the house: 0
- Number of computers in the house: 2
- Average number of different sports teams he plays on in one year: 5
- Average number of books checked out of the library at any given time: 3
It's not that he's technologically deficient - he has his iPod and as well as a cell phone. He uses the computer to check his email, do homework, and play games on Miniclip.com. When homework is done, we're outside playing catch (football, baseball, etc), or talking a walk in the park with his mother, or snowball fights when it's cold.When it comes to his friends, I encourage them to do outside activities. Since my son gets bored with TV and video games, he's chosen his friends (obviously) who have similar interests.
It's not that hard - all it takes is some focus from the parents. Of the time I spend away from my son, I spend >90% of it in front of a computer doing work or surfing the web. I'm much more nerdy that he is. When I was his ago, I had an Atari 2600, then later an Apple IIe, so I had my share of geek toys to play around with. But I also played outside, played with toys (Lego), played sports. My parents enforced some balance to my life, and I try to do the same for him.
Well, see, that's just the thing.
So you found one thing to support the idea that _this_ generation of kids is in trouble. But that's actually the whole funny thing: so did the previous generations. Every single generation had their own bogeyman they waved around as the downfall of the next generations. Every single generation found some X that they didn't have and the new generation has, and latched onto it as _the_ thing that will doom us all. Pretty much no matter how far you could go in time, you'd find generation N-2 whining, bitching and moaning about generation N. And if you went two more generations back, you'd find the N-2 generation presented as the decadent and doomed ones by generation N-4. And so on.
So you think that this one is certainly _the_ one that finally is a real threat. Funny thing is, so did they. They were invariably wrong. What makes you so sure, then, that your bogeyman is any different?
Even your argument that "Basically, the standard of living for most of modern western society is now so high that most of us are living like (or better than) the aristrocracy of the not very distant past." isn't actually that new. The same could be said at any point in time before. And probably some old fart at the time actually said it.
I can think of a _lot_ of inventions and changes in the past (starting with the fire, the wheel, pottery, animal husbandry, irrigation, etc, all the way to modern stuff like antibiotics) which had exactly the effect you describe: the resulting standard of living was better than even aristocracy lived before that.
In fact, most of those had bigger effects on the standard of living back then than consumer electronics have now. E.g., I bet that the effects of a tribe's discovering the fire were a lot bigger than the effects of the iPod. We're not just talking "it kept them warm", but cooking also allowed them to eat a _lot_ more vegetables than ever before. In a nutshell, yes, in one fell swoop, it raised the standard of living to a point that their grandfathers couldn't have even imagined before.
So it's happened before. And it's a safe complaint that someone has voiced the same complaint at the time. "Bla, bla, bla, people have it too easy these days, they're growing weak, flacid, weak-minded, obese, etc." I can just imagine an old caveman bitching all day about how these young hoodlums staying warm and cooking vegetables on fire lack the mental stimulation of _having_ to track an antelope through the snow. Uphill both ways. And we liked it that way. How the whole civilization will grow weak and stupid because of relying on fire instead of solving problems the old fashioned ways. How people will become loners and unable to function in society because they can just sleep near the fire instead of having to huddle together to stay warm in winter. Etc.
Or take weaponry. _Millions_ of years the primitive hominids had to basically play a game of stealth, and figure out ingenious ways to get a dead gazelle from the sabertooth tiger without becoming the second course for the tiger. Just because they had no natural weapons to actually kill either the tiger or the gazelle. And then suddenly one of them goes and invents a stone-tipped spear or knife, and everyone has all the meat they can hunt _and_ a means of self-defense, with no mental challenge whatsoever involved. Just hold the blunt end and thrust the pointy end at the prey or tiger. Gee, surely that will make the next generations stupid and weak.
But, again, the funny thing is that all that never actually happened. There have been bigger changes, bigger jumps in the life standard, and none of them actually made humanity become weak and stupid. In fact, some of the things I've mentioned (fire, stone tools, etc), we actually have evidence that they resulted in a _higher_ brain capacity. What makes you so sure that yours will be any different?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I have two children, one 7 months old and one just starting kindergarten a month or so shy of his 5th birthday. Essentially the only broadcast TV Boy#1 sees is PBS cartoons (we have basic cable plus Netflix), and we often feel like granola eating luddites compared to a lot of our friends. He has seen mainstream cartoons and movies at friends' houses (and we have the usual Pixar crowd plus some movies, which he likes although he usually wants to fast forward the scary parts), along with Playstation and Nintendo, and so far he has accepted that other families do things differently from his own.
He plays outside, paints, draws, runs, jumps, rides his bike, knows basic math (addition and subtraction with numbers less than 20 or so, and I am not sure how high he can count anymore). He knows his letters, and can recognize a bunch of words and is certainly "ready" to read, as the jargon has it. He loves to help me "build". He designed and I constructed a wooden garage for him out of off-cuts, and he got me to buzz round the edges of the roof with my router to give it a nice edge (he knew what the router was for, and could visualize the finished product), and I am trying to find tools he can safely use -- he constructs huge sculptures from offcuts and glue, which he calls "Star Wars things" and then spends several sessions painting them. He goes sledding, swims, jump off the diving board, eats all kinds of foods, and knows that any good breakfast wil have protein, carbs and some fruit.
He also knows Spiderman's real name is Peter Parker, can identify Batman at about 100 yards (as well as Batcat and Batdog, minor deities he and his preschoolmates include in the pantheon on the same footing as Batman himself), and can hum a passable rendition of the Star Wars theme, despite never having been provided with this information by his parents. And he went off to his first day of school with a Superman backpack -- so far as I can see his room has only one other superman, but about four spidermen and a couple of batmen... He can operate a digital camera (he took a lovely shot of his Mum and Boy#2 the other day -- and she tells me that he carefully asked to her to move as he composed the shot on the screen), and work the DVD player.
Bringing up kids is almost always about flexibility and compromise -- in the end, you have to live in your culture and times, even as you try to give your kids the tools they will need to navigate through the world. But a lot of what my son loves to do would not be a part of his life if he spent too much time in front of a screen -- and in the long run, it is much better to experience the natural world first hand than it is to watch it via some electronic simulacrum, as we learn through touch and smell, as well as just sight and sound.
But what I have seen is this. Kids we know with similar backgrounds to us who watch a lot of TV or spend a lot of screen time, are almost always more "jumpy" than kids who don't -- and I am not implying that Boy#1 is any sort of angel (he threw a fit in the supermarket over the weekend that had people turning and staring from a couple of ailses away, and I explained to him that behaving badly wouldn't get him what he wanted -- namely some sugary cereal with a cartoon character on the box), and more likely to initiate violent play -- which my kid will cheefully join in with, at least until he gets hurt.
And if you want to rail against the corruption of modern life, TV is not the only issue -- avoiding shitty convenience food is a huge part of raising happy and healthy kids. I never expected to be a nutrition nazi, but loading kids with sugar does terrible things to their attention span and plays havoc with their emotions as they come down from the rush...
The other thing I have noticed recently is that Boy #1 is completely unable to make a distrinction between a nature program and a commercial (and he certainly does learn from some of the TV he watches) -- he happily told me that "Peanuts is the best video ever" parroting a trai
Great story. Thanks for sharing it.
The simple reality is that people have different interests, and if you want to encourage your children to put down their gameboys you have to find activities that they find interesting, not activities you find interesting and simply want to force them into enjoying. So lay off [d]espairing at their lack of interests when you don't even know what their interests are.
I think it's important to also note that the government's compulsory schooling system treats all children the same, no matter their interests. John Holt realized while team teaching in the 1950's that most of his students were bored and frightened - bored because they didn't care about the current lesson, and frightened because the authority figure was making demands of them. According to Holt, the children were intent only on trying to figure out what the teacher wanted, and whether they should try to give it to them.
Holt wrote a couple books - How Children Fail (1964!), How Children Learn, What Do I Do Monday?, etc. At first he tried to fix the schools. Then he gave up, and became an advocate of "unschooling", where the child chooses what and how they want to learn. Doesn't work for all children, but it does work spectacularly well for many.
I myself was tied down for years in "school" - 11 years of government schools, 2 years of private high school, 3.5 years at the university. On the one hand, I'm kinda bitter about all the time I was locked up, but on the other, I realize that it's hard to appreciate spring without a long, cold winter.
Also see Gatto's Seven Lesson Schoolteacher: "The third lesson I teach kids is indifference. I teach children
not to care about anything too much, even though they want to make it
appear that they do. How I do this is very subtle..."
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Until having a kid myself, I thought the same thing. I thought that parents should spend more time supervising their kids rather than plopping them in front of the TV/PC without supervision...
Now I realize that this was too unrealistic for most people, including myself and my wife.
In order to maintain a reasonable standard of living, many couples both have to work now. It wasn't like this before the 70's. Care to guess what happened? Women's lib. Women working put pressure on wages such that now, basically women have to work for the family to have the same standard of living they would have had before with only the man working. This began a slippery slope because the more women worked, the more wages came to only reflect half of a family income, and thus the more other women had to work.
Needless to say, this puts a strain on everyone, and leaves little time or energy for playing with and supervising the kids. Without a social stigma attached to working women, the market will force most families to have both parents work. The only way out is a movement pushing married people to have one spouse of the two stay at home, which I don't see happening.
You know, this has got to be said, but for most of the human history, "kids" just stopped being kids at various ages between 12 and 16.
E.g., in ancient Egypt, the age of marriage was 12 for girls and 15 for boys. That's it. That was the age when you'd be supposed to be mature enough to care for your own family, not just for an iPod. Forget having your mom pack you lunch and watch you playing with dolls. At age 12 as a girl you'd be supposed to cook lunch for your husband, and raise your own real kids, not dolls.
And you can find examples where even more responsibility was bestowed upon people at such ages. Ivan The Terrible IIRC became tzar at the age of 16. (Although that's just the age when he took a new title. He was Grand Duke of Muskowy earlier.) At 16 years old Alexander The Great was left a regent, i.e., someone with the full powers of a King, as his father went abroad to war. Etc. There are plenty of generals and kings and admirals that got their power and shaped the destiny of nations even earlier than that, a lot of them as early as 12 or 13.
So basically what I'm saying is that:
1. If all that consumer electronics do is getting some people to act like adults in their teen years... GOOD! Biologically the _are_ adults, and have the brain and body of an adult. (It's not even a human-only thing. Any other species of mammal is the same: the age at which the body becomes fertile is the age when the brain and body have evolved, and the animal is perfectly capable of fending for itself and raising its own offspring.) Forcing someone to keep behaving and thinking like a kid at that age, is more detrimental than having them start acting like an adult.
2. If all the evil adult stuff there is that they get to watch TV and listen to music on an iPod... GOOD! Compared to what humans had to do in their teen years for _millions_ of years, that's still a pampered existence.
The modern aberration of artifficially forcing someone to be a kid until their 20's, is just a speck at the scale of human existence. Even looking back only 10,000 years, to the time of the first cities, a century of redefined "childhood" barely covers 1% of that time. For the other 99% of that time interval, that "kid" would be at the age where he gets to raise his own family, work in the fields, and occasionally take arms and fight for his country. Not just mock combat with toy swords, but real combat with sharp steel swords. Deadly stuff. So if all the dangers of the modern era are an iPod, a cell phone, and a Nintendo DS, heh, I don't see that much harm coming from that.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I don't think there's an easy answer to this. I think you have to actually understand what you do and how it looks to your children, which unfortunately requires you to think about how other people view your behavior... and a lot of people just seem incapable of that.
I think what you're mentioning here (perhaps accidentally) describes a little theory I've developed. For a long time now teachers and parents have been pounding the "you're special" and "just be yourself" messages into kids until they've developed this "I don't care what anyone else thinks, I'm me and I'm pursuing happiness" attitude. We celebrate attitudes like that in adults, too. I think this is a perversion of an idea that was supposed to make you always comfortable enough to do the right thing, regardless of outcome, into an idea that you don't owe anyone anything and anyone who expects anything of you (most of all sacrifice) is trying to prevent you from "being you".
I think we owe everyone arounds us something. I owe it to my neighbors to take my garbage out, keep my music down to a sane level and return their dog if I see him running down the street. I owe it to my parents to come help move furniture when they call. When I have kids, I'll owe it to them to make sure they get what they need, when they need it. In turn, each one of these people has certain responsibilities.
In an effort to bolster childrens sense of self-worth by ridding them of shame or guilt, we've thrown out responsibility with the bath water. I think we SHOULD care about what people think of us, and might have to start teaching kids that.
Just a thought I had.
I have to wonder... with playgrounds shrinking, becoming safer, more padded, and less featured, with recess periods where kids literally stay indoors in a long, plain room and run back and forth for exercise, where anything potentially dangerous from firecrackers to sparklers to cap guns to water guns get banned... in a world where we don't let kids leave our sight or even try anything potentially dangerous... ...if we don't let them play video games, then exactly WTF can they do? I mean, most forms of play that were popular when any of us were growing up are considered "too dangerous" now, are we supposed to just put the kids into a safe, quiet, triple-armor-plated sensory deprivation tank until they hit 18, then dump them out and say "ok... go find a job and start working for a living!"
I think we've spent enough time as a society worrying about what we should keep our kids from doing. Guidelines are great for those who need them, but if anything is in danger these days, I'd say it's common-sense parenting.
... so it IS the same old complaint, then?
1. The same things could be said and _have_ been said before.
E.g., a Pope actually considered the crossbow to be such a devastating new weapon that he forbade, upon penalty of excommunication, the use against fellow christians. I'm sure someone somewhere was feverishly praying that people have the mental agility and cultural perspective to not use such a destructive new weapon wrong.
E.g., someone thought that the Armageddon is nigh if the good Christians don't appease God by freeing His tomb from the infidels' occupation. It proved quite a popular idea too, as the exodus of people to join the first Crusade showed. I'm sure a lot of people prayed that others have the wisdom and cultural perspective to do the right thing there... i.e., take arms and prevent the end of the world at the hands of a pissed-off God.
Sometimes they were even right too. The consequences, for example, of greed to get the wares out of a ship before the quarantine ended, has caused a Black Death outbreak in Marseille that wiped out some 75% of the city and the whole county it was in. So, yeah, consequences for bad judgment could be dire in old times too.
Humanity has somehow survived anyway.
2. Again, the "connecting the dots" has been before, at least for the last 3000 years. Probably longer, but that's how long we have written records about it. Someone felt the dots connecting when starting from all sorts of other stuff. E.g., there's been quite some heavy-duty dot-connecting that caused the aforementioned Crusades. Don't take it as an insult. Connecting dots is, after all, a human trait and one of the big advantage the species has. But then again, in this particular domain it's invariably been wrong before, so I'm still not too concerned.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
When I visited Europe a few years ago I was struck by how many Europeans treated raising and parenting the younger generation as a group activity. I saw grown-up strangers correct the behavior of children in public places and the children respected this correction.
This form of communal parenting is not even close to acceptable in the United States. For over two years I've been walking my dog, twice a day, in some fields next to my house. A neighbor of mine has sent her young grandchildren to play in that same area (after I cleaned up all the broken glass). That neighbor wanted me to stop walking there now that her grandkids play there because I am a "stranger". When it was clear I wasn't going to stop walking my dog, she forbid her grandkids from speaking to me.
I talked with the grandmother and even gave her my card so she would know my name, address, and phone number in case, god forbid, something happened to her grandkids and she was worried I was somehow involved. My intent was not to convince her I was not a pederast ("I am not a liar") but to ease some of her fears since I sure wasn't going to stop walking my dog just for her.
I much prefer not being bothered with interacting with those kids when I'm out walking but I'm struck by the extremely different attitudes toward raising children I've seen in Europe and America.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Hear hear!
All of you blowhards spouting off about "shoot 'em, who needs crack heads anyways?" should go rent the DVD of City of God. It's about these exact same problems in Brazil, in the worst cocaine-fueled gun-filled neighborhoods. But don't bother watching the movie (well, okay, it's a good movie, but it's just entertainment). Instead, watch the documentary under the extras menu. I know, I know, all those subtitles are just such a burden, pause it and you can keep up.
They interview and tell the stories of a street cop, various kids/drug dealers (of which there are an infinite amount), and the chief of police for the city. He plainly states that after his years of watching this problem from both the street side and the political side, the whole reason drugs are illegal is to keep the poor under control. No other reason at all.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon