11 ms·

Yeah, I don't really know what I'm going to do if/when I'm a parent. Academia is calibrated around kids doing this "hoop-jumping" as early as possible, so do I

by JFlash 11y ago

Yeah, I don't really know what I'm going to do if/when I'm a parent. Academia is calibrated around kids doing this "hoop-jumping" as early as possible, so do I push my theoretical children into this race or do I let them eat into precious time to figure things out?

x5n1 11y ago
The funny part is you could easily accelerate the figuring out part by doing some life stories. You could help kids figure out what they want out of life by giving them case stories about other people's lives as accurately as possible. Instead none of that knowledge or relationship skills are taught in schools. Instead they teach mostly useless technical skills, harass kids in physical education, allow a small percentage participation in sports, give a little information about having sex... and send them on their merry way to trial and error. Society priories are as screwed as they were in religious-based ideologies. Instead of it being about God it is now all about production and consumption. Not how to know what you want out of life and how to get it. Many people who are on the accelerated path end up losers in the game of life just as many who get their own their own time.
- lumpypua 11y ago
  Studs Terkel - Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working:_People_Talk_About_What_They_Do_All_Day_and_How_They_Feel_About_What_They_Do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working:_People_Talk_About_Wha...
zappo2938 11y ago
Both my parents have PhD's from Ivy League schools. My mom ended up doing research at MIT and my dad at Harvard. I joke too bad Ivy League schools don't teach people how to be good parents. The place I think people get crushed is when kids are the smartest person in their class in high school at the top and then arriving at an Ivy League college are of average ability in comparison. Their self esteem is propped by being the best at academic subjects while their peers excel in sports or in a social hierarchy. All of a sudden, they are not the smartest kid in the class. My parents were so upset when I decided I didn't want to go to college out of high school. I was doing minipreps, isolating DNA, PCR chain reaction, and making gels, in my dad's genetics laboratory at an Ivy League school which is basically cooking. I liked cooking so much I decided to be a chef. That is when the yelling and screaming started. I should have stayed in the career closet. The worst part was after 8 years and a successful career cooking with my parents accepting my choice I decided I wanted to do other stuff. Now my parents were upset at me again and refused to pay for school. Really? We are going to start this again?
- maneesh 11y ago
  why would you expect for them to pay?
  - superuser2 11y ago
    That's how it works in the US. Schools cost what they believe your parents can afford until you are 26.
  - dawnbreez 11y ago
    Edit: I misinterpreted the context here. My bad.
    - chris-pb 11y ago
      I don't think the above comment is disputing that someone should pay for his education, just suggesting that it should be him rather than his parents.
      - dawnbreez 11y ago
        Edited my comment, because I did not read the parent comment.
- myle 11y ago
  Aparrently, now being on hackernews I guess you study/studied something in STEM. How did it work eventually? Do you think taking some time off this predefined track helped you make wiser decisions about your life or was it wasted time?
  - zappo2938 11y ago
    I worked in the number 1 and 2 top rated restaurants on the Zagat survey in San Francisco in the late 90s. I was earning a base rate of $5.35 an hour being paid for 12 hours a day working 16. My dad's lab was lead by a noble prize winner. The post docs were making less than I was working more hours. No matter what we decide to do we all have to pay our dues. That is the hardest thing for me right now, I'm not 21 anymore and I still have to pay the dues in a new career. After years of being at the top of a hierarchy mostly because of hard work a some natural talent, I now find myself at a bottom of a different hierarchy.
threatofrain 11y ago
I don't think you need to focus on all of the academic hoop jumping, most of which is a bit toxic for intellectual development, especially on the English & literature for K-12. Your kids will learn to jump the hoops and hopefully forget it once they graduate. Rather, I would focus on a narrow range of activities, such as only math, reading and outdoors activity (sports / outdoors organization like scouts). The rest of their time would be up to them. If they wish to enroll in more activities, and your income so permits, then so be it. If they wish to meet with friends, then so be it. Too many upper-middle class parents attempt to raise renaissance children, and I've found that most of my peers never really reach anywhere with their rennaisance skills. Their piano is whatever. Their kung fu is whatever. Their Chinese is whatever. Their art is whatever. Yes, art, music, dance, foreign language school, martial arts, crafts, etc, can all be interesting. But there's also opportunity cost. When you're learning Chinese you're not learning math. When you're learning math you're not hanging out with friends. In sum: Don't make a renaissance child. Focus on a few things and give the rest of the time to your children, preferably for outdoors or social time.
dawnbreez 11y ago
Your kid needs to find something that they will do with their life. It has to be something that they can do for a living, but there are no other restrictions. They don't really have to know this until they're old enough to starg working (the sooner the better, though). Let them play, but--and this is key--play with them, and notice what they like playing with. Learn what their dream is, because that's the best thing to be successful at.
aaronem 11y ago
Option three: do your kids a favor and don't have any.
- taliesinb 11y ago
  "Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence" http://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265 http://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/01... Haven't read it, but the author taught a class I attended and it was great fun.
  - aaronem 11y ago
    Your erstwhile instructor seems to be a professional troll, which is probably good work if you can get it, but I'm not joking. GP's comment casts the options available to him in the following duality: either 1. push [his] theoretical children into this race, or 2. let them eat into precious time to figure things out. Whatever my opinion of the article under discussion, I can only agree with its author that option 1 is a horrible mistake whose consequences for his children may accurately be called lifelong impairment. Option 2 is no better, and it only even seems that way if you don't think about it too hard. It implicitly accepts the premise, not that childhood is precious (which it is), but that childhood is precious because, and in the way that, academia claims it is. That's toxic as hell, and it will poison any parenting that proceeds from it. Specifically: He won't be able to relax around his kids, because he'll always have that nagging ambivalence that he's doing wrong by them, failing to equip them to compete as functional adults in a world which does not care about them, and that will come through in his actions. It can't not, and his kids will pick up on it, because a young child's parents are by far the most important things in her world which are not actually her, and she notices everything about everything they do. She won't intuit any of the paragraph I just wrote, of course, because you have to be old and jaded and cynical for that. She'll just know her daddy is never happy or comfortable or relaxed when he's around her, and with the unconscious, inevitable egotism of the very young, she will assume that's because of something to do with her. And she'll almost certainly never get over that. I don't know that I agree with David Benatar that bringing a child into the world is invariably harmful to the child. But I certainly have a hard time arguing other than that it's harmful to bring a child into the world to endure the kind of parenting I've just described -- hence my advice to GP. A better third option, if anyone's interested, would be to opt out of the entire nonsense and raise your kids without reference to it. The trouble is that you are not more powerful than the society in which you exist, and it is interested in your kids whether you like it or not. You might find or make an enclave, and a method, in which to raise them without having them be too badly stunted by its more pernicious influences; people have done it before, are doing it now, and will no doubt continue to do so. Perhaps you will be among them. But it's not implausible that your notional kids are better off never having existed at all, if you're not even equipped to recognize the need to be willing to make the attempt.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

by JFlash 11y ago

x5n1 11y ago

The funny part is you could easily accelerate the figuring out part by doing some life stories. You could help kids figure out what they want out of life by giving them case stories about other people's lives as accurately as possible. Instead none of that knowledge or relationship skills are taught in schools. Instead they teach mostly useless technical skills, harass kids in physical education, allow a small percentage participation in sports, give a little information about having sex... and send them on their merry way to trial and error. Society priories are as screwed as they were in religious-based ideologies. Instead of it being about God it is now all about production and consumption. Not how to know what you want out of life and how to get it. Many people who are on the accelerated path end up losers in the game of life just as many who get their own their own time.

lumpypua 11y ago
Studs Terkel - Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working:_People_Talk_About_What_They_Do_All_Day_and_How_They_Feel_About_What_They_Do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working:_People_Talk_About_Wha...

zappo2938 11y ago

Both my parents have PhD's from Ivy League schools. My mom ended up doing research at MIT and my dad at Harvard. I joke too bad Ivy League schools don't teach people how to be good parents. The place I think people get crushed is when kids are the smartest person in their class in high school at the top and then arriving at an Ivy League college are of average ability in comparison. Their self esteem is propped by being the best at academic subjects while their peers excel in sports or in a social hierarchy. All of a sudden, they are not the smartest kid in the class. My parents were so upset when I decided I didn't want to go to college out of high school. I was doing minipreps, isolating DNA, PCR chain reaction, and making gels, in my dad's genetics laboratory at an Ivy League school which is basically cooking. I liked cooking so much I decided to be a chef. That is when the yelling and screaming started. I should have stayed in the career closet. The worst part was after 8 years and a successful career cooking with my parents accepting my choice I decided I wanted to do other stuff. Now my parents were upset at me again and refused to pay for school. Really? We are going to start this again?

maneesh 11y ago
why would you expect for them to pay?
- superuser2 11y ago
  That's how it works in the US. Schools cost what they believe your parents can afford until you are 26.
- dawnbreez 11y ago
  Edit: I misinterpreted the context here. My bad.
  - chris-pb 11y ago
    I don't think the above comment is disputing that someone should pay for his education, just suggesting that it should be him rather than his parents.
    - dawnbreez 11y ago
      Edited my comment, because I did not read the parent comment.
myle 11y ago
Aparrently, now being on hackernews I guess you study/studied something in STEM. How did it work eventually? Do you think taking some time off this predefined track helped you make wiser decisions about your life or was it wasted time?
- zappo2938 11y ago
  I worked in the number 1 and 2 top rated restaurants on the Zagat survey in San Francisco in the late 90s. I was earning a base rate of $5.35 an hour being paid for 12 hours a day working 16. My dad's lab was lead by a noble prize winner. The post docs were making less than I was working more hours. No matter what we decide to do we all have to pay our dues. That is the hardest thing for me right now, I'm not 21 anymore and I still have to pay the dues in a new career. After years of being at the top of a hierarchy mostly because of hard work a some natural talent, I now find myself at a bottom of a different hierarchy.

threatofrain 11y ago

I don't think you need to focus on all of the academic hoop jumping, most of which is a bit toxic for intellectual development, especially on the English & literature for K-12. Your kids will learn to jump the hoops and hopefully forget it once they graduate. Rather, I would focus on a narrow range of activities, such as only math, reading and outdoors activity (sports / outdoors organization like scouts). The rest of their time would be up to them. If they wish to enroll in more activities, and your income so permits, then so be it. If they wish to meet with friends, then so be it. Too many upper-middle class parents attempt to raise renaissance children, and I've found that most of my peers never really reach anywhere with their rennaisance skills. Their piano is whatever. Their kung fu is whatever. Their Chinese is whatever. Their art is whatever. Yes, art, music, dance, foreign language school, martial arts, crafts, etc, can all be interesting. But there's also opportunity cost. When you're learning Chinese you're not learning math. When you're learning math you're not hanging out with friends. In sum: Don't make a renaissance child. Focus on a few things and give the rest of the time to your children, preferably for outdoors or social time.

dawnbreez 11y ago

Your kid needs to find something that they will do with their life. It has to be something that they can do for a living, but there are no other restrictions. They don't really have to know this until they're old enough to starg working (the sooner the better, though). Let them play, but--and this is key--play with them, and notice what they like playing with. Learn what their dream is, because that's the best thing to be successful at.

aaronem 11y ago

Option three: do your kids a favor and don't have any.

taliesinb 11y ago
"Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence" http://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265 http://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/01... Haven't read it, but the author taught a class I attended and it was great fun.
- aaronem 11y ago
  Your erstwhile instructor seems to be a professional troll, which is probably good work if you can get it, but I'm not joking. GP's comment casts the options available to him in the following duality: either 1. push [his] theoretical children into this race, or 2. let them eat into precious time to figure things out. Whatever my opinion of the article under discussion, I can only agree with its author that option 1 is a horrible mistake whose consequences for his children may accurately be called lifelong impairment. Option 2 is no better, and it only even seems that way if you don't think about it too hard. It implicitly accepts the premise, not that childhood is precious (which it is), but that childhood is precious because, and in the way that, academia claims it is. That's toxic as hell, and it will poison any parenting that proceeds from it. Specifically: He won't be able to relax around his kids, because he'll always have that nagging ambivalence that he's doing wrong by them, failing to equip them to compete as functional adults in a world which does not care about them, and that will come through in his actions. It can't not, and his kids will pick up on it, because a young child's parents are by far the most important things in her world which are not actually her, and she notices everything about everything they do. She won't intuit any of the paragraph I just wrote, of course, because you have to be old and jaded and cynical for that. She'll just know her daddy is never happy or comfortable or relaxed when he's around her, and with the unconscious, inevitable egotism of the very young, she will assume that's because of something to do with her. And she'll almost certainly never get over that. I don't know that I agree with David Benatar that bringing a child into the world is invariably harmful to the child. But I certainly have a hard time arguing other than that it's harmful to bring a child into the world to endure the kind of parenting I've just described -- hence my advice to GP. A better third option, if anyone's interested, would be to opt out of the entire nonsense and raise your kids without reference to it. The trouble is that you are not more powerful than the society in which you exist, and it is interested in your kids whether you like it or not. You might find or make an enclave, and a method, in which to raise them without having them be too badly stunted by its more pernicious influences; people have done it before, are doing it now, and will no doubt continue to do so. Perhaps you will be among them. But it's not implausible that your notional kids are better off never having existed at all, if you're not even equipped to recognize the need to be willing to make the attempt.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]