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    Joined: Mar 2013
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    This reads like an onion article:-

    link to story here...


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    They are getting all Harrison Bergeron on us now ...

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    They may have been being ironic. After all lots of people think preventing the top kids advancing is a reasonable way of making the underachievers look better.

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    When the article indicates that by
    Originally Posted by article
    reading their children bedtime stories... they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children
    possibly the tail is wagging the dog.

    Rather than lowering the bar and establishing a new norm, possibly the author could consider the inverse: by NOT reading to their children, parents are creating an unnecessary disadvantage for their children. Some may say this approach appropriately places the onus on families to be their children's first teachers.

    The premise of this article seems closely related to the recent thread which linked an article which indicated
    Originally Posted by article
    The single most important factor related to children's academic achievement is the number of books they have in their home.

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    The link is to a short article by the Daily Telegraph. If you follow the link there to the original ABC article, you'll see it's a philosophical article. It asks how a society decides what's a fair and unfair advantage for certain children.

    No one in the article was proposing that parents not read to their children. Instead they were weighing the ethical differences between family-strengthening activities that confer an advantage (like reading) versus those that have no familial benefit (private school). Society should support family strengthening activities regardless of advantage, but not support advantage activities that have no family effect.

    The ABC article was interesting as philosophy. But like most modern philosophy it is in no way practical or useful. It's a thought experiment.

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    i missed that link - yes I know it was in full view. I don't think it was established that any advantage was unfair. all kids have their own strengths and weaknesses after all and some of them may be seen as unfair advantages. After watching a programme about one of NZ's horrific child abuse cases though I am inclined to say bearing of fathering a child is not the same as being a parent.

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    After reading both the original source article and the Guardian's take on it, it looks like Guardian is selectively highlighting the most incendiary bits in order to work people up and sell ad space, to the surprise of no one. The original article is a garden-variety philosophy exercise, in which the authors are in full recognition of the ways in which their holistic theory of family, which they are attempting to develop, is in concert and in conflict with tradition, human nature, and common sense.

    Originally Posted by puffin
    After watching a programme about one of NZ's horrific child abuse cases though I am inclined to say bearing of fathering a child is not the same as being a parent.

    The original ABC article indicates the philosophers agree with you wholeheartedly:

    Quote
    ‘When we talk about parents’ rights, we’re talking about the person who is parenting the child. How you got to be parenting the child is another issue. One implication of our theory is that it’s not one’s biological relation that does much work in justifying your rights with respect to how the child is parented.’

    For Swift and Brighouse, our society is curiously stuck in a time warp of proprietorial rights: if you biologically produce a child you own it.

    ‘We think that although in practice it makes sense to parent your biological offspring, that is not the same as saying that in virtue of having produced the child the biological parent has the right to parent.’

    Then, does the child have a right to be parented by her biological parents? Swift has a ready answer.

    ‘It’s true that in the societies in which we live, biological origins do tend to form an important part of people’s identities, but that is largely a social and cultural construction. So you could imagine societies in which the parent-child relationship could go really well even without there being this biological link.’


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