From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Sun May 19 2002 - 06:30:58 MDT
Thanks Dossy, Alex Ramonsky, J.W. Harris, and many others for your
writings on this thread.
Would you want to live in a future with no little transhumans
running around? I sure wouldn't. Imagine the difference between
living in a culture where children are to be 'seen and not heard'
and a culture where children are adored. I think this topic for how
we are educating our young is just as important as the technical
knowledge for getting 'from here to there' for older people. Long
ago in my twenties when I was forming my core world-view, my informal
anarchocapitalist philosophy discussions included many discussions
on education for children. At that time it seemed natural, and I
think that it is equally appropriate to have discussions about that
here.
In addition, so far, I've read words about us educating our young,
but what about how our young is educating us? Even though I'm not a
parent now (and you can tell me I'm way off-base and full of pesto),
I've spent enough time around kids to know that the psychological
state I'm in when I'm with children keeps me young. Putting aside
for a moment the difficulties that having kids place in our lives,
they also can (or might) teach us that:
1) Life is simple and rather funny,
2) Life is to be played in the moment, and with gusto,
3) Curiosity about how the world works is fun,
4) Fresh, naive, and innocent perspectives are valuable,
5) My own philosophies and ethics should be reevaluated constantly,
6) My knowledge of my inner world should go alot deeper.
Dossy <dossy@panoptic.com>, Thu, 16 May 2002:
>On 2002.05.16, Amara Graps <amara@amara.com> wrote:
>> Can you say something regarding how their computer use supports a
>> child's imagination? Say, compare their youth to what you remember
>> as a child.
>> I worry that something big is missing in supporting a child's
>> imagination with the toys I see kids using today. [...]
>My daughter is fortunate enough to have an _original_ (I'm
>talking 15+ years old) Fisher Price rotary dial pull-along
>telephone. She's got an original Fisher Price record player,
>that's also probably 15+ years old. She's got a rocking horse,
>a horse-head-on-a-stick (I have no idea what the proper name
>is), nearly 30 stuffed animals, slides, a playhouse, and lots
>of kiddie musical instruments as well as a real piano and a
>guitar to play with.
>Call it nostalgia, but she's getting to play with the toys that
>we actually (literally) grew up with.
I remember those toys. The only thing that I have now from my
childhood to pass down to my hypothetical toddler is a 40-year-old
stuffed panda bear named Poki, that is so tattered and stitched up,
that I'm afraid it wouldn't be very appealing to a youngster today.
However I will let my kid have my yo-yos, slinky, ukulele, juggling
balls, crayons, watercolors, microscope, if he/she wants. Maybe
he/she might even want to go bike riding in the mud with me :-).
>Lately, her favorite toy has been her snake -- a 2.5 foot
>long fuzzy thing with googly eyes attached to the end of a
>coat-hanger and the other end is bent in a loop and wrapped
>with a leather cover.
Isn't a child's imagination wonderful? Think of what the Universe
would be like without that. Horrible thought, isn't it? I think that
it's the duty of every adult to be able to recapture their innocent
childish enthusiasm whenever it's needed (to help get through
difficult times), and whenever it's not needed too (to help the
Universe be a more enjoyable place).
>She also loves
>her newly acquired Wallace and Grommit stuffed dolls,
Did Chicken Run win any awards last year? It should have received
them _all_. I saw that movie three times ('Our wings need more thrust...!')
>Just as I can't believe people use television as a sole
>source of intellectual stimulation for kids, computing or
other technology shouldn't be, either. I don't think
>_anything_ can possibly be a suitable sole source. I
>do think that you should expose your kids to _everything_
>that can get their minds going and that certainly includes
>technology.
I'll agree with that.
Alex Ramonsky:
>I educated at home (two boys) throughout. [...]
>The only real things I learned about educating kids are: If you force
>it, what sticks is the resentment, not the lesson, and : Everybody has
>their own ideas about educating and in my experience, none of them is
>totally right. Every child is different. I think most of all what I
>noticed is that the more fun something is, the better it's remembered.
>You have to turn 'work' into play. When you manage that it's easy.
This is great. It warms my heart to know that you are and were
committed to the nth degree about your offspring; physical health as
well as psychological/educational well-being. I think that your
teaching method also says alot about to what limit it's useful to
press ones' own values and goals to another human being, and about
respect for that individual, no matter how young. Those concepts
propagate forward through the generations.
Amara
-- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "Dare to be naive." -- Buckminster Fuller
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:14:12 MST