Sterling Terrell

recovering economist

People Had Been Poorly Educated

People Had Been Poorly Educated

Gosh we are poorly educated, aren’t we?

I’m not sure exactly when it started in the west – but I’m in one of those cantankerous moods – and I’m gonna blame it on the 1960’s.

Maybe not exactly when it began, but that’s sure where half the globe decided to step on the gas pedal of ignorance and pride.

This is all back to teaching children about thinking.

Heaven help us today.

We don’t teach them how to think – so they don’t end up with an intellectual leg to lean on.

And then when we do teach them what to think – it’s the wrong thing anyway.

More math. More philosophy. More writing.

And the point of the entire book: More Literature!

These arguments had little in common with one another except a conviction that the world had gone astray because its people had been poorly educated, and if the total destruction of the human world were to be averted, new ways of educating had to be found.

-Alan Jacobs, The Year Of Our Lord 1943 (Amazon)

On Giving Kids Instant Solutions

On Giving Kids Instant Solutions

I believe that giving our kids instant solutions deprives them of the best part of a struggle:

Thinking it through.

Maybe we can help point out an obstacle, by saying something like “Oh, wow. That is a problem.”

Or we can encourage critical thinking by saying: “I wonder if we could think of a few solutions to that?”

But if we give them the answers, our kids don’t even get a chance to have an original idea. And if they did have an idea, we have talked over them before they were able to share it!

This is another example of the importance of teaching our children how to think, rather than what to think.

When we give children advice or instant solutions, we deprive them of the experience that comes from wrestling with their own problems.

-Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk (Amazon)

Sterling Terrell