From: Evan Brown (rebrown@ucsd.edu)
Date: Sun Feb 20 2000 - 17:01:12 MST
----- Original Message -----
From: Spike Jones <spike66@ibm.net>
To: <extropians@extropy.com>
Sent: Sunday, February 20, 2000 12:54 PM
Subject: teaching appropriate values to the young
> Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>
> > Could even lead to some degree to the "privitization " of NASA (as
the real
> > clever folks exit stage left for the stock option arena).
>
> Using a comment by Robert as a departure onto a new thread,
> I wish to ask a question I and my friends have been pondering
> for some time: How do we teach children born in the 90s values
> appropriate to their times?
Ye gods, good question.
I think the key concept to teach the children of today is that of
change. Its power, its importance, and particularly its inevitability.
We've seen how much opposition is created to a new idea, not out of
concern for the merit or danger of an idea, but merely from the fact
that it threatens a well-entrenched worldview. It seems we ought to be
teaching children to be expecting change, and to be able to modify or
even discard their worldview if the situation warrants it. In this, it
seems we shouldn't be teaching our children so much as directing them.
Child-rearing seems to be so much defining of how the world works, and
when the world works differently five years later, the worldview
conflicts with reality. I would think we might have more success
teaching them how to deal effectively with the world, in whatever
iteration, rather than simply explaining the rules. The whole
conception vs. equation idea, where conception can take one farther in
dealing with a problem than the mere descriptive equations.
And Sesame Street. Lots of it.
-Evan-
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