Are We Failing To Prepare Children For Leadership In the US?

Vulcan195 writes "Would you let your three-year-old play with a real saw? You would if you were a parent in Switzerland. Suzanne Lucas (a U.S. mom residing in Switzerland) writes about the contrasts between the U.S. and Swiss ways of instilling wisdom. She writes: 'Every Friday, whether rain, shine, snow, or heat, my three-year-old goes into the forest for four hours with 10 other school children. In addition to playing with saws and files, they roast their own hot dogs over an open fire. If a child drops a hot dog, the teacher picks it up, brushes the dirt off, and hands it back.' She suggests that such kids grow up and lead the ones who were coddled (e.g. U.S. kids) during their early years."

Comments

you're all worthless and weak

[alphatel]

No American child would be caught dead allowing a Swiss teacher to wipe dirt off their hard-earned American Hot Dogs. Freedom Dogs 4eva!

Re:you're all worthless and weak

[CanHasDIY]

No, they would just run and cry to their obese parents, who would in turn tattle to the principal, who would have the teacher brought up on sexual harassment charges for the suggestive way she brushed the dirt off that phallic foodstuff.

Re:you're all worthless and weak

[Barefoot Monkey]

No, they would just run and cry to their obese parents,

Running means exercise, which is healthy. US wins another round. Your move, Switzerland.

Re:you're all worthless and weak

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly I find the author quite condescending in the way she compares Swiss children to American children (and I'm Swiss - see where my bias is) but as somebody living in North America, I have to agree with the general point: North American culture is more "protective" of personal comfort and hygiene than most European countries. It's not always a good thing for Swiss culture to be the way it is though. I find that often in Switzerland people are left on their own and can expect zero understanding or accommodations when they have important personal problems. For example, you're very lucky if you suffer from psychological problems (e.g. depression) and your boss gives a shit - most likely he'd tell you to get your shit in order and not let it affect your job or to quit.

On the upside, people in Switzerland go to school or work if they have a cold or just a headache. You can't call in sick for that. There's also a lot less obsession about avoiding germs, and I think that's why I have a strong immune system and get sick less often than my friends in North America.
On the downside, I was made to redo an entire year in high school because I suffered from depression and missed a single exam as a result of it. The school even refused to give me a grade of 0 on that exam (I would have still passed with 0!). Forget compassion in Switzerland - that's one of the shortcomings of that culture.

Overall, Swiss culture produces efficient people who take their responsibilities pretty seriously and who are pretty down to Earth when it comes to the way they look at life. But that culture is also highly elitist and gives up on the weakest members of society very quickly, even when a little help is all that's needed. You're on your own, social support is a luxury even from family and second chances are rare, almost non-existent.

Re:you're all worthless and weak

[geekmux]

No, they would just run and cry to their obese parents, who would in turn tattle to the principal, who would have the teacher brought up on sexual harassment charges for the suggestive way she brushed the dirt off that phallic foodstuff.

And yet, it is truly disgusting that so many turn a blind (or ignorant) eye as to the real cause of this exact situation. If we wouldn't allow such nonsense into a courtroom in the first place, then we wouldn't have the joke of a litigation system we have today.

Re:you're all worthless and weak

[interval1066]

North American culture is more "protective" of personal comfort and hygiene than most European countries.

You're missing the point a bit, its not a problem with "personal comfort and hygene", nor litigation, its a problem with personal responsibility. The culture is obsessed with finding someone to pin the blame on, rather than instilling any rational sense of personal resposibility for anything. ANYTHING. Nevermind personal responsibility for having caused harm or financial loss. American children are being shown how bad it is for them to raise their hands or ask for ANYTHING, except food. Such people don't make great leaders.

Re:you're all worthless and weak

[NeutronCowboy]

On the upside, people in Switzerland go to school or work if they have a cold [...].

On the upside? When you are sick, stay home. Don't spread your very communicable disease to others. That's as much a problem in the US, btw. Drives me nuts every time I see someone coughing their lungs out at work....

Re:you're all worthless and weak

[kokako]

Actually this article is not about Europeans trying to prove they are better than Americans, its about a self-flaggellating American woman worried about how American boys are turning into technopussies rather than real men who play with knives. It's a different genre, but an easy mistake to make though. Both kinds of story are pretty popular on their respective sides of the Atlantic.

Re:you're all worthless and weak

[KhabaLox]

There is a protectionist culture in the northeast and far west, but no such shared culture in the Deep South or midwest,

Who's homogenizing now?

Re:you're all worthless and weak

[Rei]

There is a protectionist culture in the northeast and far west, but no such shared culture in the Deep South or midwest,

I grew up in Texas, went to school in Indiana, and lived in Iowa for a decade. I now live in Iceland. The way kids are raised here is nothing like the way kids are raised in the US south or midwest. It's not a "we'll call the kids inside if it starts raining" culture, it's a "we'll call the kids inside if the winds are so strong that they can't stand up anymore" culture. Not an exaggeration, by the way.

Kids here are given a great deal of freedom. Parents take them everywhere and let them do their own thing. Random example: I was at a party meeting attended by the prime minister, where the speaker was talking about the reduced unemployment rate under Samfylkingin leadership, and there were little kids running around the room playing. But I guess kids here are used to it, because while I see them often, and often doing their own thing, rarely do they come across as disruptive, whether they're at a meeting, in an office, you name it. And people involve them where not inappropriate - for example, if you see a little kid up on stage at a concert with one of their band-member parents, the kid might well end up introducing the next song.

An example, related to concerts: I was at Iceland's equivalent of Madison Square Garden - Harpa. Up on stage was Kimono, a heavy metal band headed by a transsexual rocker. And in the front row of such a concert? Little kids there with their parents, ages ranging from maybe 2-6. Between songs the lead singer even took the time to explain to the kids the names of the instruments being played. And the best part is, few people here see anything unusual about any aspect of that situation ;) Heck, one school up north held "Skálmöld Day" (Skálmöld being an Icelandic heavy metal band), where all the little kids came dressed in appropriate attire, rocked out to their music during class, etc. The educational theme of the week was violence and lawlessness, so she thought their music would fit perfectly. Of course! :)

Of course it goes without question that you'd take your kids to Hinsegin Dagur ("Queer Pride", Reykjavík's LGBT pride fest - one of if not the largest annual festivals in the country, attended by 1/3rd of the country's population). What's so weird about that?

It's not all fun and games. For example, kids often start working earlier, too. But in general, they're not sheltered from the world like American kids are, even in the south and midwest. It's a different culture over here.

And I really like it.

Re:you're all worthless and weak

[Rei]

For example, you're very lucky if you suffer from psychological problems (e.g. depression) and your boss gives a shit - most likely he'd tell you to get your shit in order and not let it affect your job or to quit.

Interesting. Iceland has a lot of the "freedom for children" aspects in Switzerland, but doesn't have that side of the picture, at least in my experience. There's a lot more "banding together". I made the "mistake" of telling one of my coworkers that I had left at meeting at one point so people wouldn't see me cry (I had had a lot of bad stuff happen in a row, the most recent at the time being watching a man nearly die of a heart attack, gasping for breath in front of me in my apartment because he overworked himself helping me move and I didn't know how to call emergency services). My coworker told my boss, who called me into his office, told me I didn't have to stick around that day, but I could if I wanted to be around people, whichever I preferred, and that he'd make sure that the company paid for a psychologist for me to see.

Is there not much bonding between members of a company, or is it just employees vs. management? Here it's like we're all on one team. The American work culture seems strange to people here where coworkers sometimes undercut each other and often don't do anything with each other when they don't have to. Here the starfsmannafélag pays for "extracurricular" company activities almost every week, whether it's a mountain-climbing expedition, "disco bowling", going to the theater or a play, going out to a nice dinner, etc. Back before the economic crisis, starfsmannafélög would sometimes do things like overseas vacations together.

Re:you're all worthless and weak

[silentcoder]

Thousands of studies have confirmed what we've known for decades: your immune system cannot learn to deal with any microbes unless it is exposed to it.

In fact your own damn example proves the point: vaccines. Deliberate infection with a weakened form of a virus to assist the body in developing an immune response before it may have to face the full-blown version.

For bacterial infections this is doubly true. More-over a few years ago a study (there was a slashdot article about it) found that Staph actually fights off other infections when it's externally on the skin (it's the most common bacteria in 'dirt') merely getting dirty reduces your risk of other infections (staph INTERNALLY on the other hand is a dangerous infection and often requires treatment - on the other hand, if you have had a few small staph infections you greatly reduce the future intensity of such infections since your body has developed an immune response to it).

HIV is the exception to the rule - the body actually DOES have an immune response to it, and the antibodies it develops fights it back just like any other virus. The problem with HIV is it attacks white-blood cells which are a crucial component of the immune system - so even as your body is trying to fight it back it's ability to fight infections in general are worsened.
Technically there is no such thing as an "AIDS" infection you can be immune to - AIDS is a condition caused by numerous possible things. The most common by far being the HIV virus but severe drug abuse for example can also cause AIDS. AIDS is simply an acquired (e.g. not born-with) immune deficiency. When you have AIDS - it's some other infection that kills you because you have no immune system to fight it off.
If a bone-marrow transplant recipient (who has had his immune system killed off by radiation) gets in contact with any microbe he will develop full blown AIDS too.

So yes, eating a dirty hotdog, getting a little dirty etc. does make your immune system stronger. Using antibacterial soaps and that kind of crap makes it weaker - because you prevent your body from getting into contact with germs. Small contact, through the skin (a wonderful protective organ) is the bodies only way to develop an immune response early - the same one it will need if it gets a severe infection.
Of course you also develop an immune response during a severe infection but the extra time for this to happen could mean you die before it's done (in the case of the diseases we vaccinate against: this is practically guaranteed), and not having had small infections greatly increase the risk that a somewhat larger infection will turn into a severe one before the body can react and learn to recognize and fight back the microbe in question.

It's not so hard to understand is it? Your body is ONLY immune to two things: the diseases you gained a genetic immunity to from your parents (very, very, very few) and the microbes you have been in contact with.

In other words, if you don't get dirty, you get dead.

Re:you're all worthless and weak

[Candyban]

Probably I'll get flamed for this ... but here goes anyway:

I'm not sure why there is such a fascination for Europeans to try to prove why they are better than Americans.

Because most of "us" (Europeans) grew up in a world which was dominated by the US and we did not really mind as we were thought by our fathers and grand-fathers you were benevolent (I am teaching my children something different ...)

Because most of "us" see (not necessarily watch) movies coming from the US which portrays the US as the land of the "Free" and "Brave" while we know it is not the case and just propaganda for the mindless masses.

Because most (but not all) of "us" see the state of the US economic capabilities (and in case you are wondering ... yes, US is in worse shape than the EU, even in this euro crisis)

Although it may sound weird and alien to you, but Europeans do care about what goes on in the world, just like you would (probably) care if your neighbor is doing something that either harms you, the community or himself. And it seems the neighbor thinks he is the best, brightest, richest, friendliest and best looking person around while in fact he is abusive, rude, dangerous, steals and destroys other peoples properties. The only way to let this guy know his behavior is unacceptable is by actually telling him. (supplying proof in some cases as he otherwise just pretends normal conversation is only an opinion)

Currently America is FAR, FAR AWAY from the utopia your founding fathers had set it out to be ... The current generation is eating up the goodwill and faith, that previous generations have built up, in a record pace and either the American population in general is being kept in the dark or they lack the mentality or intellect to see what is going on.

Your comment "Most Americans couldn't give a rat's ass" is spot on because most Americans believe they are still the biggest, best, etc, ... which clearly they are no longer (in a lot of areas).

Don't get me wrong. I do not have anything against Americans (otherwise I would have used it ... jk). But I find it a shame that a once great nation WITH good foundations (equality) has turned from its roots and only acts in its own interest screwing whomever is on or in in their way. Maybe the US once was able to get away with it, but this is becoming less and less the case.

I am not convinced there is a problem at all.

When there is only a single "warning light", you might indeed be right that there is no problem at all. But to me there are so many and Americans are constantly trying to convince us it is Christmas all year round

Path to Leadership in the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Step 1: Have a Rich Family

Not sure what the other steps are...

Re:Path to Leadership in the USA

[hodet]

Step 2: Narcissistic and psychopathic tendancies ..keep it rolling people, we can establish a framework here.

Re:Not very new.

[gameres]

Not sure about the forest kids, but my daughter did go to a montessori school in germany. she learned which end of a paring knife cuts and how to keep birds and cook breakfast. I was there when "normal" kindergarten teachers came for a demonstration. They were horrified. I do think that schools there prepare their kids better for life in general. I do like the Montessori way of raising kids.

Gap

[decipher_saint]

Gentlemen, it pains me to tell you this but, we have a lumberjack gap.

In the US they call it Scouts.

[Picass0]

They teach crafts, hard work and leadership. The problem is Boy Scouts has become stigmatized, lampooned, and in recent years depicted as homophobic. Girl Scouts spends too much time focused on selling cookies.

Public schools wouldn't put a saw or hammer in a child's hand. It would take five minutes for an upset parent or a lawyer to show up. You can thank our overly litigious society for closing doors on an idea like this. And as a parent, I can tell you I'd need a high level of trust in the instructor before I let them take my kids alone into the woods.

Re:In the US they call it Scouts.

[PPH]

Public schools wouldn't put a saw or hammer in a child's hand. It would take five minutes for an upset parent or a lawyer to show up. You can thank our overly litigious society for closing doors on an idea like this.

Football (the US variety, that is).

We don't seem to have a problem sending them out onto the field to risk suffering head injuries that will leave them a bunch of drooling idiots .....

.... so I guess we are preparing our next generation of leaders.

Re:In the US they call it Scouts.

[jedidiah]

Is that the Boy Scouts you are referring to?

Are you kidding? They are a pale shallow immitation of what they were 30 years ago. If anything they are a great example of what the original article was talking about.

The Scouts have similar failings as the public schools you're whining about.

Re:In the US they call it Scouts.

[nedlohs]

Except that the point wasn't about serious instant inury - breaking your leg when falling from a pyramid, etc.

It was about brain injuries from repeated concussions (and sure cheerleading has head injuries, but it doesn't have them at the frequency of football).
.

Re:In the US they call it Scouts.

[hey!]

Scouts and regular education have become a lot more alike over the last several decades. In school kids go to "environment camps" and there's much more hands on education (e.g. designing and building bridges to learn about engineering)

Scouts have made rank advancement (something which didn't exist in Baden-Powell's method) ever more elaborate and challenging, and focused more on citizenship and explicit moral lessons. The original Eagle Scout requirements were twenty-one merit badges. Later requirements focused on woodcraft and personal self-sufficiency. Currently six of the twelve required merit badges for Eagle rank are focused on social adjustment: Citizenship in the Community, Citizenship in the Nation, Citizenship in the World, Communication, Personal Management, and Family Life. Since the 1970s scouts have to pass both a one on one review of personal morality with an adult leader and a community board of review,

So what happened? Well, it turns out a youth program like scouting fits well with the Mormon Church's missionary training. That's true of other churches, but the Mormons took to scouting in an organized way. Consequently scouting in the USA has evolved to meet the needs of it's largest and most organized bloc, and in some cases even serving the church's ideological ends (e.g. rejecting the Unitarian religious emblem badge on doctrinal grounds and barring Wiccans from membership entirely).

So in effect Scouting in the USA is a program geared toward developing leaders consistent with Mormon views of leadership. Non-Mormon sponsoring organizations and troops just live with this, quietly ignoring bans on homosexuals, agnostics, and pagans, and sucking up Mormon oriented advancement requirements. This has spawned a "Traditional Scouting" movement, which is much more focused on scoutcraft and self-sufficiency and less on indoctrination.

totally backwards

[hort_wort]

We don't want our young cattle to grow into leadership roles, are you nuts!? Here, we make a point to keep kids docile with a mix of fluoride and Prozac.

Answer:

[PPH]

No.

Organized child abuse

[gweihir]

Well, what you Americans do looks very much like organized child abuse to the rest of the world. Not letting children make essential experiences results in stunted development, and there are not many worse things you can do to a child. Even if you think you are protecting them, what you really do is setting them up to fail more drastically later, when they are less resilient and learning is harder for them.

Re:Organized child abuse

[__aaeihw9960]

What always gets me are that the people who spout that 'think of the children' stuff are, generally, well-meaning, successful folks. Why are they successful? Because they did all of the dangerous stuff they preach against, and had a bad time. They hold onto the bad memories, and just flat out ignore the fact that all those broken arms, bb-gun battles and random kid adventures are the things that turned them into who they are.

Only safe choices?

[jcdick1]

I don't think its really an administrative decision to protect children and provide only safe choices that prevent an education like this. Its the need to protect the schools, the businesses and any other organizations involved from lawsuits. Here in the U.S., the insurance premiums necessary for any group that would allow a 3 yr old to even approach - let alone use - a functional cutting blade bigger than "safety scissors" would be astronomical.

Its like the need for all that squishy rubber surface on playgrounds these days. It isn't there to keep kids from breaking limbs falling off equipment because breaking limbs is a bad thing. Its to minimize exposure to litigation if they do.

Bubble wrapped their lives

[realsilly]

I grew up in a different time, a time when children of all ages had expectation of behavior and responsibility handed to them at a very early age, and since I've become an adult I've watched the population coddle children more and more. I remember my uncle literally bubble wrapping the edges of tables and furniture so his little girl would not take a bump to the head. I mean really, he bubble wrapped shit.

If children don't learn right away how to protect themselves they do become rather weak, and the miss very important lessons. Gone are the days when a child could take a BB gun and shoot cans in the back yard. Gone are the days when children knew not to touch a hot stove because they've already learned that lesson. Gone are the days when children would be given homework in public schools an were expected to do more than 5 mins of homework a day. Gone are the days when we expected children to learn a subject well enough that they could write an essay about their knowledge.

Our children are poor in math, poor in reading, poor in data retention, poor in knowing right from wrong. Our children don't know common sense, how can they when an education system has a zero tolerance foundation. What happened to having the ability to stand up for ones convictions and not being suspended or expelled for it.

We American adults only have ourselves to blame. We've coddled the world. But this stems back to our litigious society. We put warning labels on the most ridiculous thing because some child received a Darwin award for drowning in a bucket, or some lady wins 8 million dollars because McDonald's didn't put a warning label on the coffee cup "Caution contents are very hot". We sue if someone wrongs us, even if we failed to read directions, or to use some sound judgment.

I'm not saying all litigation is wrong, just the frivolous ones. I'm not saying some safeguards are needed, but "coffee is hot" is a bit too much. I'm not saying that all kids won't struggle to learn, most will, and it's those struggles (which sometimes end with injury or death) that we learn from the most.

Allow violence on TV. Allow kids to be kids. Stop bubble wrapping our next generations.

Re:Are we failing to prepare children for leadersh

[knappe duivel]

End of discussion.

why?

Yes

[Sinister Stairs]

My wife is a grade school teacher and sees the results of this coddling. In just one example, she played a math game with her class and gave the winner a small prize. Most of the kids had a lot of fun and learned something too; but what took her by surprise is that some of the kids began crying. She asked them why, and [paraphrased] it was because they'd been raised with the belief that "everyone's a winner." They had never "lost" before, and it was devastating to them / they didn't know how to respond.

Re:Is it really that bad?

[BigSlowTarget]

Realistically its a side effect of the work culture and the family moving from stay at home mom to dual income. Latchkey kids became common and parents slowly realized that their jobs didn't allow them to pay the same level of attention to their kids that their parents paid to them. They were ashamed and felt a need to prove that they do care about their kids, even if they don't have time to spend with them. That leads to overprotectiveness as a proof method and the precious little snowflake situation. Add that kid success is also used as a societal status claim for the parents, that our politicians have figured out that fear is a vote getter and so push the danger of crime, that we have an overabundance of lawyers and that we have a serious dislike of someone being treated better if they haven't been seen to earn/deserve it and this is the result you naturally get.

Re:Leadership?

[meta-monkey]

They're building a new school down the street from my house. I keep hearing parents talk excitedly because it's going to have all kinds of great features, like video surveillance over the entire grounds, and every kid will have a keycard that grants him access only to the areas he's supposed to be in, and can track his movements. I'm happy for the boost to my property values, and I'm glad I'll be moving before my kid would have to start school there.

It's just creepy that the first thing they want to teach these kids is that it's perfectly natural for "the authorities" to track them and watch and record their every move. That's not really a good way to teach kids how to live in a free and independent society.

Re:Not very new.

[BigT]

In other places, they have forest kindergartens, in the US, the lawsuit-driven regulations prevent trees, streams and cats at schools. http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/2011/02/12/school-inspectors-say-trees-too-dangerous/

There's a segment of Americans that want to live in a perferctly clean, safe bubble. The lawsuits they file against anybody and everbody when the world doesn't meet their expectations bring about regulations keep the rest of us from having the choice to be dirty and unsafe. The laws have changed significantly even since I was a kid. According to conventional wisdom, I should have never survived childhood.

Re:Always the same BS: 'My way is better because'

[olau]

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they allow disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children now are tyrants, not the servants of their households. [...] They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” ... attributed to Socrates.

Re:Not very new.

[Larryish]

When I was in high school in the late 80's (very rural area, graduating class less than 40) we could bring in our rifles and shotguns to woodshop and rework the stocks. We even got graded on it.

The only caveat was that they had to be unloaded and checked by the shop teacher.

Now you can get in trouble for even bringing a gun magazine into that same school.

In 30 years, "American" will be synonymous with "retard".