Perhaps individual responsibility is one of those things that can't be instilled in children, but it can be learned. This topic was lightly touched upon during the most recent seminar when I mentioned to Uncle Ken that, by the time a child enters school, a lot of his/her behavior has already been established. Not a fact-based proven theory but just a gut feeling that well behaved children come from more positive home environments than their unruly peers. I posited that children learn a lot by mimicry; they copy their parent's behavior. If mom & dad are constantly arguing, then maybe junior will think that conflict is normal and acceptable behavior and will have problems adjusting to the structured environment of the classroom.
We learn from our parents,our social institutions, our peers, and what I will generously refer to as "outside influences," stuff we learn from various forms of media. The problem with media-based influences is that they lack direct social context. I was asked by my parents, plenty of times, "Who put that idea into your head?" "I dunno, Dad, I read it someplace." We copy stuff, sometimes because it looks cool, maybe a little dangerous and different, and likely to piss off our parents in the effort to establish our own identities. This is not new and has been going on for centuries; it's the way we are.
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My grandmother had a copy of one of those old McGuffy's Readers, maybe for the third or fourth grade. Being in the seventh or eighth grade myself, I thought it would be an easy read. Not so. That book was tough, much more difficult and complex than I had anticipated. Old school textbooks are like that, much more advanced that their modern counterparts. It's like the current educational system is designed to swiftly run the students through the process rather than teach them anything. Again, a theory not based on rigorous study, but recent college graduates don't strike me as being very smart or well educated. But they have that piece of paper that says they have an education, which I suppose they do, of sorts.
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Diversity has become a modern trigger word, used to promote all sorts of agenda. But I don't think that it should be rigidly enforced, only respected and acknowledged, and we should all have the same opportunities regardless of our gender, race, age, or whatever. Lowering qualifications to accommodate specific groups is counter productive and does no good; the chain is only as strong as the weakest link, right? I should be given the opportunity to try out for the fire department, but it is foolish for me to think that I could make the squad.
And if you even hint that some groups prefer the company of their own kind you will be labeled a racist, sexist,or some other type of bad person, which I think is nonsense. Preferring one thing does not automatically exclude other things, but some folks think it does.
When a group of kids are in the playground, aren't the boys and girls playing in their own groups, with little overlap? No, I don't hang around playgrounds but I have a good memory and that's what I recall. Same thing with family gatherings, like Thanksgiving, where it usually ends up with the men in the TV room watching football and bullshitting while the ladies are in the kitchen, discussing more meaningful issues. There is some overlap, of course, with the younger family members breaking off into their own like-minded groups.
Maybe there isn't really a glass ceiling, and that it's just that the boys want to play with the other boys, lest those icky girls give them cooties.
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