[quote=no5no5 It seems to me that you have a very particular vision of the future you want for your child...and I think that's a dangerous thing. When I think of what I want for my DD, all it is is her happiness (okay, okay, and a grandchild someday). I think my job is simply to make sure she has a happy, safe, and full childhood, not to make sure she is able to have any particular career (or type of career). The latter is her own decision and her own responsibility.
Besides which, I think we are all working off of a very likely flawed assumption; that being, that we can decide these things for our children. Does anyone here really believe that a program like Your Baby Can Read can have a significant effect on a child's future opportunities? Really? Honestly? I am sure I could force my DD to stop skipping 16 when she counts if I wanted to drill her, but I can't imagine that it could possibly have any positive effect on her potential. It would, however, surely impact our relationship and her happiness and free time. [/quote]
Well, I've bobbled the quote function somehow, but with luck, you will have mercy on my technical limitations, which are manifold, not to mention manifest!
no5no5 makes very good points, which also speak to something I have been pondering vis-a-vis the "motivation" thread: that which motivates the truly free individual, versus that which motivates those who are in some way not free. I don't think I can articulate very clearly yet those things I have been contemplating, but it seems to me that those motivating factors would be very different (i.e something like love, altruism, hope, pride in work well done, perhaps, versus fear, shame, anger, "Stockholm syndrome"...???) One tends to think in this context of the many sad posts here where a child has basically shut down in the face of inflexibility on the part of a teacher/principal/school about giving work of an appropriate level; it's essentially a response coming from a place of lack of freedom.
I am reminded of some experiments a colleague and I tried in various classes we taught: we offered our (university) students several choices of means of evaluation (exams versus projects, assigned topics versus self-chosen ones, essays versus presentations, etc.). It was exponentially more difficult to grade (and didn't lend itself to every course we taught), but we both found it so well worth it, because the students who had choices about what kind of work to do did better and more interesting work, and told us that they got a great deal more out of their courses when they were evaluated in this way.
All of which is probably a propos of nothing, so thank you for putting up with my musings....
peace
minnie
