I went to a teaching college -- actually next to a teaching college.
SUNY Potsdam, which has in it one of the largest schools for music teachers.That was long enough ago so that most of the people taught in that era would still be teaching and guiding young teachers.
I saw a whole lot of teacher educational culture that was badly out of synch with success in the outside world. One of the biggest misery creators I saw was that failure was seen as something to avoid, something to actually administer as a punishment.This is a huge problem for someone on the spectrum, really for anyone with ambition who buys into this idea. I knew as a career salesperson that it should take multiple attempts before I closed a prospect, and as a person from a family of inventors that you can go years between brilliant, easy to manifest ideas, and as a person from a commune that artists create a great deal of material that isn't art. We had (and have) professional, working artists in the family. That meant that there was always lots of packing material, placemats, and firestarters.
Nicholas starts his school day lately with ten caricatures -- he's an artist, he sells his comic books. None of them are expected to be marketable. When we were talking about business and taxes last night we told him that he *would* have problems sooner or later, that this was as sure as him getting hurt in Tae Kwon Do -- it wasn't a question of whether, it was a question of how to take sensible precautions and a realistic evaluation of the real risk of true injury. He just happened to get clonked on the head that night in class, hard enough to see stars.
He was able to experience a half-hour of thinking that Tae Kwon Do was a bad idea, the shock, the pain, then realising that life with an egg on the back of your skull was very nasty, but as part of the general package -- worthwhile. That's life. At the time and from what I hear still there is a culture of "no fail" and"failsafe" with failure in general seen as the enemy rather than somethingyou should expect to spend your life swimming in. There were actual courses in bulletin board brightening, and other training for teachers that implied that it was their business to create a completely supportive environment, with lots of labels for the children who found this supportive environment -- well, unsupportive.
Teachers don't see what they are doing as systematically teaching out resilience. The idea of a world that can be built without pain is very, very seductive -- I started going to that college on one superior sales pitch, but I stayed there because *that idea* was appealing.
But it's wrong. It's appealing almost like a cult mindset is -- I had taken myself out of my responsibility the duty of feeding myself, deciding what to learn, even the possibility of getting a "real job" after college where I could get retirement eventually, other people could do my thinking for me and prevent me from feeling the risk and pain of an independent life.
My son is reading the latest Time magazine on ambition, and how to encourage achievement in the young people.http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1126743,00.html If all of you can get this information by reading a newsmagazine instead of living through it that would be amazingly delightful.
The information in this article is why I homeschool, why I am encouraging Nicholas to employ himself for the summer -- the theory of the general is that if everyone would do this (or even more people would do this) the world would be a better, safer place.
The world is not a safe place -- but it's good.
The public schools teach ideas that would make the world appear to be safe -- but be neither safe nor good.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin
JulieB
SUNY Potsdam, which has in it one of the largest schools for music teachers.That was long enough ago so that most of the people taught in that era would still be teaching and guiding young teachers.
I saw a whole lot of teacher educational culture that was badly out of synch with success in the outside world. One of the biggest misery creators I saw was that failure was seen as something to avoid, something to actually administer as a punishment.This is a huge problem for someone on the spectrum, really for anyone with ambition who buys into this idea. I knew as a career salesperson that it should take multiple attempts before I closed a prospect, and as a person from a family of inventors that you can go years between brilliant, easy to manifest ideas, and as a person from a commune that artists create a great deal of material that isn't art. We had (and have) professional, working artists in the family. That meant that there was always lots of packing material, placemats, and firestarters.
Nicholas starts his school day lately with ten caricatures -- he's an artist, he sells his comic books. None of them are expected to be marketable. When we were talking about business and taxes last night we told him that he *would* have problems sooner or later, that this was as sure as him getting hurt in Tae Kwon Do -- it wasn't a question of whether, it was a question of how to take sensible precautions and a realistic evaluation of the real risk of true injury. He just happened to get clonked on the head that night in class, hard enough to see stars.
He was able to experience a half-hour of thinking that Tae Kwon Do was a bad idea, the shock, the pain, then realising that life with an egg on the back of your skull was very nasty, but as part of the general package -- worthwhile. That's life. At the time and from what I hear still there is a culture of "no fail" and"failsafe" with failure in general seen as the enemy rather than somethingyou should expect to spend your life swimming in. There were actual courses in bulletin board brightening, and other training for teachers that implied that it was their business to create a completely supportive environment, with lots of labels for the children who found this supportive environment -- well, unsupportive.
Teachers don't see what they are doing as systematically teaching out resilience. The idea of a world that can be built without pain is very, very seductive -- I started going to that college on one superior sales pitch, but I stayed there because *that idea* was appealing.
But it's wrong. It's appealing almost like a cult mindset is -- I had taken myself out of my responsibility the duty of feeding myself, deciding what to learn, even the possibility of getting a "real job" after college where I could get retirement eventually, other people could do my thinking for me and prevent me from feeling the risk and pain of an independent life.
My son is reading the latest Time magazine on ambition, and how to encourage achievement in the young people.http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1126743,00.html If all of you can get this information by reading a newsmagazine instead of living through it that would be amazingly delightful.
The information in this article is why I homeschool, why I am encouraging Nicholas to employ himself for the summer -- the theory of the general is that if everyone would do this (or even more people would do this) the world would be a better, safer place.
The world is not a safe place -- but it's good.
The public schools teach ideas that would make the world appear to be safe -- but be neither safe nor good.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin
JulieB
posted by JulieB at
9:14 AM
1 Comments:
As the article points out you cannot force ambition.
Besides, I want my sons to OVERCOME oppositions, not just be passionate about their own interests....
By
DannyHSDad, at 6:41 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home