There's an erroneous understanding that the influence of parents and teachers last forever. There is actually a point in the life of children when the influence of the outside world, social media, advertising, outside friends takes precedence and may replace the teachings of good parents. This should be taught to parents and educators alike.
So, they don't become shocked when a person raised in a happy household with all necessities provided become a killer of their own spouse due to domestic turmoil.
Plenty of doctors, white collar executives, teachers have committed unimaginable criminal acts.

[Thanks for contributing.

quote="L'éléphant;1006735"]There's an erroneous understanding that the influence of parents and teachers last forever. There is actually a point in the life of children when the influence of the outside world, social media, advertising, outside friends takes precedence and may replace the teachings of good parents. This should be taught to parents and educators alike.[/quote]

There is a lot of truth in what you say. I experienced that kind of disjunction as a gay man. I moved from small town/rural life, oriented around heterosexuality and traditional lifestyles, to an urban environment, and was greatly influenced by the norms of the liberationist gay male community of the late '60s and early 70s.

However, as unlike a gay lifestyle was from growing up in Podunk, MN, a lot of the values and behaviors of my parents remained.

The influence of school experiences is probably weaker than it is thought to be. The multiplication tables I learned have endured. Ditto the grammar and spelling lessons. The largest part of my school experience was being socialized to an externally regulated work day. I resented it then and I still resent it. I don't know what school is teaching these days.

So, they don't become shocked when a person raised in a happy household with all necessities provided become a killer of their own spouse due to domestic turmoil.
Plenty of doctors, white collar executives, teachers have committed unimaginable criminal acts. — L'éléphant

We often have too little information about a violent person's childhood to make a connection. But in a significant number of cases, (I believe) bad childhood experiences contributed to bad adult behaviors. However, a lot of people with pretty bad upbringing manage to NOT re-enact their childhood trauma on others.

Teachers aren't social workers and schools aren't community support systems. They are for educating kids. — Hanover

This is true, up to a point. Schools are not social service providers. No surprise. What might be more surprising is that "educating kids" is calibrated for their future in the economy (or lack of it).

There are good schools which do educate children well. I'd say that 20% of school age children are in these good schools. A lot of these children will go on to college and take on professional work. At the other end of the spectrum there are, just for symmetry, another 20% of school children who are in dysfunctional schools. Their families, their communities, and their schools are consistently poor. That leaves a big middle which ranges from fairly good to poor.

Why is this the case? 'Society' needs a cadre of well and properly educated people to manage its affairs. There are excellent schools (public and private) which deliver.

'Society' also recognizes that there is a cadre of people who do not have much of a future in the economy. Excellence in education for this group would be a wasted effort. The larger population in the middle, the 60% of children, have a broader future in the economy, and receive such education as is required. A lot of these people in the middle will be respectable members of the 'working class'; they will have jobs, families and be major contributors to the economy, but they do not need elite skills.

I don't like it, but that seems to be the way it is. Raising up the underclass and the less skilled members of the working class isn't an educational function. Even if the schools were funded and prepared to deliver excellent education to every child, it would not match the needs of the existing national economy.

And it is that, the existing national economic structure, that would have to be reorganized to provide a good job -- a raison d'être -- to every adult in the country. Production of goods would have to be re-shored, be almost entirely domestic. The economy would need very strong central direction from the government to accomplish this. A significant redistribution of wealth would have to come about -- much less concentrated at the top, more dispersed throughout. And so on.

It's not going to happen, but such huge changes might accomplish what some people are asking schools to do.

It's not going to happen, but such huge changes might accomplish what some people are asking schools to do. — BC

Yeah, and my response was motivated by my wife being a public school administrator. There's the never ending pull to make schools the universal social security system for every child. Teachers already have an impossible job, and none of them are trained in social work.

I have an answer, from someone else.

"The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it, you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, all around, and it has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly colored, and it's loud, and it's fun for a while.

Many people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to wonder, 'Is this real, or is this just a ride?' And other people have gotten off the ride, and they come back to us and say, 'Hey, don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.'

And we kill those people. 'Shut him up! I've got a lot invested in this ride! Shut him up! Look at my [money]! Look at my [money]!' It's just a ride.

But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter, because it's just a ride.

And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to believe that there is an uncrossable line of separation. The eyes of love see that there is no line.

And now, here's the kicker: The choice to be in love, to be in joy, is already yours. The choice to be in peace is already yours. The choice to be in gratitude is already yours. This is your birthright.

So, let go of the fear. Be love. Be peace. Be joy. Be grateful. Be here now.

It's just a ride."

- Bill Hicks, while dying of pancreatic cancer at the age of 32.

Not to mention that social workers can't solve every problem either! The fact is society is not fair, and those who suffer most from unfairness are usually screwed and there isn't much that can be done to undo the damage.

I was helped a great deal by one (1) teacher who referred me to a state program which enabled me to go to college instead of taking the first clerical job that came along. It was a strategic intervention on her part, for which she was unfortunately never thanked. No other teacher, no administrator, and no counselor (did we have one back then in '64? Don't know) saw any reason to steer me towards something better.

I'm not complaining. The teachers at Podunk High School taught their subjects well, indifferently, or badly. Nothing more than teaching was, or should have been, expected. After all, no one expects the butcher, the baker, or the body shop to solve people's larger problems.

Teachers aren't social workers and schools aren't community support systems. They are for educating kids.

I say this even if I bought into your idea that the government should offer such a high level of support for families. That is, if you want the government to do all this, do that, but don't ask teachers to do things other than teach. They didn't sign up to raise other's kids or fix the world's problems. — Hanover

You seem to think you represent teachers. What justifies that?

What do you think of grade school textbooks before 1958, when we changed the purpose of education?

Sara H.Fahey spoke about Public Schools and American Patriotism at the 1917 National Education Association Conference about why an institution for making good citizens was also good for making patriotic citizens. She was proud of preparing the young to unionize. She was proud of educating immigrant children about American values, and that the immigrant children would learn from their parents.

My grandmother was a teacher at the time, and she felt so passionate about defending democracy in the classroom she was in her 80s, before she stopped teaching. When she had to retire, she joined VISTA and worked with migrant children. Then she volunteered in schools. When she died, I wanted to know the set of values every child learned, so I started buying old textbooks and books about education. I know, from the health textbook, the math textbook, and the reading books, that children were taught to be respectful of others, and to be considerate, and family values, and virtues, and character values.

In 1917, education for technology and vocational training were added to education, but education for good moral judgment and good citizenship remained the priority of education until 1958.

There is a lot of truth in what you say. I experienced that kind of disjunction as a gay man. I moved from small town/rural life, oriented around heterosexuality and traditional lifestyles, to an urban environment, and was greatly influenced by the norms of the liberationist gay male community of the late '60s and early 70s.

However, as unlike a gay lifestyle was from growing up in Podunk, MN, a lot of the values and behaviors of my parents remained. — BC

Good. You tried to assert what you truly were, a gay man. But in doing so, you were aware that your values were not necessarily at odds.

There's an erroneous understanding that the influence of parents and teachers last forever. — L'éléphant

They do and they don't, both good and bad. There are those families caught in cycles of poverty, poor education, and violence, and others with long term successes. That's from learned behavior. No question I see my parents in my own behavior and I see myself in my kids' behavior.

This isn't to say other people and events haven't affected me or that I've not made my own decisions. Regardless of where my behavior comes from, I'm held responsible for it.

But my point is that your childhood influences don't always wither away.

Generally speaking I think parents assume the part they play in how their children turn out is vastly overestimated. That is not to say that parenting does not effect them, but the parent's job is most important in the first few years of development.

That is a cultural problem more than a 'school' problem I would say. Symptoms of a deeper underlying problem. I do not accept that 'guns' are the main cause they are merely a convenient tool to express a hidden societal problem.

What do you, Philosophers, tell prospective parents about how to raise (Old Norse, raisa) their children so that they will be good citizens, good parents themselves, and good thinkers?

So you haven't reared (Old English, rǣran) so much as a hamster, children are the future and how they are brought up (OE) matters to everyone, parents or not. — BC

Teachers aren't social workers and schools aren't community support systems. They are for educating kids.

I say this even if I bought into your idea that the government should offer such a high level of support for families. That is, if you want the government to do all this, do that, but don't ask teachers to do things other than teach. They didn't sign up to raise other's kids or fix the world's problems. — Hanover

We might want to know something about the history of education. Education began at the dawn of our use of language, around the campfire, when we thought of ourselves as members of a tribe and were not as individualistic as we are today. We have such tribal people today. Our individualism and family units, rather than tribal units, began with farming and owning land separate from everyone else's. Rather than the hunter-gatherer organization, without no concept of separate property rights. I am trying to convey a different consciousness than we assume today. The point is that the first thing we learn in the tribe is how to behave. We learn our tribe's myths and why we do things as we do. Everyone in the tribe reinforces the behaviors of the tribe and the reasoning of their myths. This is what is natural to our species, and I want to stress that EVERYONE REINFORCES THE WAYS AND REASONING OF THE TRIBE.

Much later, the Romans were organized by family order, and the father was responsible for training the sons, while the mother trained the daughters. Eventually, they had schools, but it is not until the Greeks that education got really interesting. Before this, Sparta was communal and had a tribal education led by the leaders and focused on war. Males learned to fight, and females learn how to keep things going while the men were gone to war giving them more equality than Athenian females had. On the other hand, Athens had education for individuals, and later Hellenism was adopted by the Roman schools.

I want to throw in Genghis Khan. He made it unquestioned that his people should never settle down and start accumulating things like the city people do, because the city way of life, with its division of rich and poor people, leads to immorality.

Even assuming you've accurately described humanity's educational odyssey from the cave until today in those few paragraphs and you've deciphered with accuracy "what is natural to our species," take a look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

Generally speaking I think parents assume the part they play in how their children turn out is vastly overestimated. That is not to say that parenting does not effect them, but the parent's job is most important in the first few years of development. — I like sushi

You are right, and I want to add some thoughts that support that.

Each generation is different. Another term we can use is "cohort". A cohort is everyone who comes of age at the same time. A cohort is defined by its time in history. I am a baby boomer. Most of our parents hated war, and Beatniks came out of that, then greasers, then hippies, and for my son and daughter, it was meth that determined the flow of history. Good luck to the parents who try to prevent their sons and daughters from going with the movement of their time. And is that really what we want? Our lives are changing faster and faster. Do we want our children to cling to the past?

I am thinking of a troop of apes trying to survive hard times do to climate change. Those who are not flexible and willing to try new things are the least apt to survive. It is in our genes to adapt to change, and it is too bad if our parents perish because they can not make the change. Young people are much more apt to try new things, because if they die, they are easy to replace. But biologically, our brains become more resistant to change because nature can not afford to lose its breeding populations, and sometimes the old and tried ways are best.

Sometimes, many years of life experience lead to wisdom, so we should all follow the health rules, including exercise, just in case someone might benefit from our memory of the past and gained wisdom.

↪Athena Even assuming you've accurately described humanity's educational odyssey from the cave until today in those few paragraphs and you've deciphered with accuracy "what is natural to our species," take a look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature — Hanover

:lol: :rofl: That is hilarious. Just try to go against nature and see how well that works.

It is really curious to me why anyone would think ignoring nature is a good idea. Lacking knowledge of nature is a good thing, why? Modern people want to believe they are very smart, but I don't think ignorance or denial of nature leads to that. :joke:

hat is hilarious. Just try to go against nature and see how well that works. — Athena

Very well. Sketch your best guess about how we evolved and then insist we stay true to that course else be punished by Mother Nature.

someone might benefit from our memory of the past and gained wisdom. — Athena

I think this is something we should be more concerned about that adaptation. We can only step forward confidently once we appreciate what happened before us. This is likley why human progress tends to take the form of 3 steps forwards then 2 steps back.

Very well. Sketch your best guess about how we evolved and then insist we stay true to that course else be punished by Mother Nature. — Hanover

I do not just make up thoughts. What I think, is the result of learning. If you think my facts are wrong, tell me which facts and what you think is correct with better information. That is how philosophy started. Coming from Athens, it is essential that we get our beliefs right. This is not equal to arguing mythology. It is science with facts that either are or are not true.

think this is something we should be more concerned about that adaptation. We can only step forward confidently once we appreciate what happened before us. This is likley why human progress tends to take the form of 3 steps forwards then 2 steps back. — I like sushi

I am not sure what we need to know about the past, but I do think it is possible we are in the resurrection, and it is archaeology, geology, and related sciences that are resurrecting the past, and it is our purpose today to assimilate all this knowledge and rethink everything.

rethink everything. — Athena

This is the kind of thinking I find most scary. There is something to be said for conservative values as much as there are for liberal ones.

Very well. Sketch your best guess about how we evolved and then insist we stay true to that course else be punished by Mother Nature. — Hanover

It would not be my guess, but the sciences that determine facts. Anthropology is one of the main sciences, and the study of DNA is another, and math plays a part in this, too. Many books are written on the subject, and it does not reduce to a post. However, you might want to start a thread about evolution versus the God who made us of mud. I don't think the discussion belongs in this thread.

What have I said bout human nature regarding parenting and growing up that you disagree with?

This is the kind of thinking I find most scary. There is something to be said for conservative values as much as there are for liberal ones. — I like sushi

That could be an interesting thread. I am kind of shocked that we appear to disagree about the need to rethink everything. At what time in history did people think the way you believe we should think? Are you good with justifications for slavery and justifications for moving native Americans off their land and intentionally turning their children against them? How about exploiting the poor to accumulate national wealth. When were our thoughts well-informed and just, rather than something we need to rethink?

quote="L'éléphant;1006735"]There's an erroneous understanding that the influence of parents and teachers last forever. There is actually a point in the life of children when the influence of the outside world, social media, advertising, outside friends takes precedence and may replace the teachings of good parents. This should be taught to parents and educators alike. — BC

There is a lot of truth in what you say. I experienced that kind of disjunction as a gay man. I moved from small town/rural life, oriented around heterosexuality and traditional lifestyles, to an urban environment, and was greatly influenced by the norms of the liberationist gay male community of the late '60s and early 70s.

However, as unlike a gay lifestyle was from growing up in Podunk, MN, a lot of the values and behaviors of my parents remained.

The influence of school experiences is probably weaker than it is thought to be. The multiplication tables I learned have endured. Ditto the grammar and spelling lessons. The largest part of my school experience was being socialized to an externally regulated work day. I resented it then and I still resent it. I don't know what school is teaching these days.

So, they don't become shocked when a person raised in a happy household with all necessities provided become a killer of their own spouse due to domestic turmoil.
Plenty of doctors, white collar executives, teachers have committed unimaginable criminal acts.
— L'éléphant

We often have too little information about a violent person's childhood to make a connection. But in a significant number of cases, (I believe) bad childhood experiences contributed to bad adult behaviors. However, a lot of people with pretty bad upbringing manage to NOT re-enact their childhood trauma on others.[/quote]

I like the discussion you are having. What motivates us to right or wrong? I have walked through hell. We all must go to hell from time to time to get a sense of meaning. But we should not go there without the help of the gods, because we can so easily get lost in hell. That means depression or even psychotic events. The gods are concepts that can help us find our way.

I was in hell because of being traumatized when I was a year old. It was a medical thing and no one knew of post-stress syndrome back in the day, and no one ever thought that a medical problem would interfere in my life so much. I was lucky to come across an explanation of post-stress syndrome and also a book about traumatized children, and I gave this information to a counselor I was seeing, and he knew how to fix the problem once he knew what caused it. The rest of my explanation of hell and gods comes from mythology and became very important to my reasoning.

Joseph Campbell was the guru of mythology. He believed humans need a shared mythology and that when we do not have that, we are forced to create our own mythology using the people in our lives as the gods and monsters of our private mythology. That is where psychogly comes in.

The psychologist Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., wrote Goddesses in Everywoman and a book for males, Gods in Every Man. She says the gods and goddesses are prototypes. Her books are fascinating as she tells how different childhood experiences affect the different prototypes.

Oh, oh one more thing that strongly influences us; our position in the family. If we are the first child, middle child, or last child, it matters.

I hope someday we break free from the mythology that has dominated most of our lives and come up with a better understanding of our human existence than the one religion gives us.

If we had already gotten everything wrong we would not be here today. Tilt too far into conservatism or liberalism and it will result in distaster. History has shown this and life experience has shown me this personally too on an individual level.

Society' also recognizes that there is a cadre of people who do not have much of a future in the economy. Excellence in education for this group would be a wasted effort. The larger population in the middle, the 60% of children, have a broader future in the economy, and receive such education as is required. A lot of these people in the middle will be respectable members of the 'working class'; they will have jobs, families and be major contributors to the economy, but they do not need elite skills.

I don't like it, but that seems to be the way it is. Raising up the underclass and the less skilled members of the working class isn't an educational function. Even if the schools were funded and prepared to deliver excellent education to every child, it would not match the needs of the existing national economy. — BC

That was not our reality when my grandmother was a teacher, and the priority for education was good citizenship and helping each child discover his/her talents and interests. We are talking about the enlightenment and the death of it. We are talking about the very meaning of the democracy we inherited and the Military Industrial Complex that has replaced it.

The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that sought to improve society through fact-based reason and inquiry. The Enlightenment brought secular thought to Europe and reshaped the ways people understood issues such as liberty, equality, and individual rights. Today those ideas serve as the cornerstone of the world’s strongest democracies.
https://education.cfr.org/learn/reading/what-enlightenment-and-how-did-it-transform-politics

The Enlightenment placed its hope in the power of human reason and scientific inquiry to improve society and individual lives. This period emphasized individual rights, progress, and the potential for human betterment through rational thought and knowledge. Thinkers like René Descartes and Thomas Hobbes explored the role of reason and hope in shaping human action and understanding. AI

Why is it better for me to use the first quote and against the rules to use the second one? I much prefer the second quote.

But to your thoughts on education, what are your education concerns? Supplying the employers with trained employees and securing economic goals. The Greek philosophers would choke on such materialistic goals, but those goals are ideal for the Military Industrial Complex. The most important element of our liberty is having good moral judgment and we prepared the young for that without religion until the 1958 National Defense Education Act left moral training to the church.

Why is money so important? The only people with less income than I have are the people who have no income. But my life is rich and full, thanks to self-education and the internet that connects me with people who share my interests and concerns. :lol: I have to laugh at myself. I feel so strongly about being okay with material poverty, but not okay with intellectual poverty. What are we not going to teach all the children who are not college material?

↪Athena If we had already gotten everything wrong we would not be here today. Tilt too far into conservatism or liberalism and it will result in distaster. History has shown this and life experience has shown me this personally too on an individual level. — I like sushi

What an interesting statement. How does liberalism threaten us? Can a liberal such as myself have good moral judgment?

The Greek philosophers would choke on such materialistic goals. — Athena

Contemporary society would choke Greek philosophers in ever so many ways.

Look, I'm not proposing that we toss Greek philosophers into the fire, but they didn't exist in a world of 8 billion plus people, AI, automation, atomic weapons, mass media, and more, much more.

Yes, I do want schools to educate students so that they can be employed and prosper in the economy of the 21st century. I don't know to what degree even this goal is practical. AI and automation are serious challenges to employment -- and not just for semi-skilled workers. Some very good students who just graduated with degrees in computer science are finding themselves irrelevant.

You have a fetish about the National Defense Education Act. I can't help you with that.

I agree with you entirely about the military-industrial-complex. It is flourishing and is a malignant influence, in distorting military policy, government budgets, domestic production, and world trade (in weapons, particularly).

I have to laugh at myself. I feel so strongly about being okay with material poverty, but not okay with intellectual poverty. — Athena

I sympathize with you. I spent many years poor for the same of pursuing intellectual goals. I'm 79 now, and am very glad that I still have a (reasonably) agile mine and not too many material concerns--knock on wood.

I just don't see a past golden age in North American education, as experienced by the 90%+ of the population who were neither part of the elite nor had any likelihood of joining the elite. The elite received what I think you would consider a very good education -- heavy in the humanities, Greek, Latin, etc. For boys going into business, (even law, until relatively recently) higher education was of little use.

I'm thinking here of the later 19th century, mostly. As society, industry, business, etc. became more complicated, greater education was needed for success. Andrew Carnegie was well-self-educated, with some basic education received in Scotland. He did well. J. P. Morgan graduated from Boston's English High School, learned French and German at university in Europe (1 year), then returned to the US and began as an apprentice banker. He did well.

During the 20th century, college education became a requirement for more types of work. In 1960, according to Statista, 7.7% of the population had at least a bachelor's degree, and 40% completed high school. Today it is about 37% and 91% respectively. The increase from 7% to 37% over the last 65 years has been quite gradual. The steepest increase was between 1960 and 1990, rising from 7.7% to 21.3% of the population.

I was lucky to be able to complete college in 1968, thanks to a state program. Had it not been for that, I would have been among the 40% with only high school, and not prepared for much of anything.

I said either is dangerous in the extreme. There is nothing unusual about that. Changing everything is an extreme thing to suggest -- dangerous!

I said either is dangerous in the extreme. There is nothing unusual about that. Changing everything is an extreme thing to suggest -- dangerous! — I like sushi

Okay, but how should we react to the danger? Several times in history, we have faced major changes. I am fixated on the cause and result of passing the 1958 National Defense Education Act and turning the whole of our nation into a Military Industrial Complex. If this continues, we have fought every war for nothing. But that is just one of several life-changing changes.

Oh, oh, China intentionally prevented change. Change was considered a danger that needed to be avoided. Confucianism was very conservative, and some Christians, Muslims, and Jews are conservative.

Okay, but how should we react to the danger? — Athena

Any danger. Cautiously and with consideration of what effects it may have. If we start literaly changing everything about how we live unforeseen problems will arise. Revolutions are revolutions because they cause severe upheaval.

For example, in today's world people complain about how the economy is bad and their quality of life has fallen without fully understanding this is not at all true for the vast majority of the population around the world who have seen an increase in their quality of life.

I am kind of shocked that we appear to disagree about the need to rethink everything. — Athena

You must be using hyperbole? We do actually constantly rethink things all the time, but thankfully we do not act on them because all people have some conservativism too.