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Musings, meanderings, wonderings and wanderings about unschooling, natural parenting, sustainable living and more by Wendy Priesnitz. Archives - July, 2008What is Adult Behavior? – July 29, 2008 Then I read about his theories about maturity and his conclusion that teens are far more competent than we assume and that most of their problems stem from restrictions that artificially extend childhood…mostly by our outdated thinking about the delivery of education and their place in the workforce. That, of course, is something I’ve been talking and writing about for decades, although I extend my concerns about our lack of trust in competency to children younger than teens. Epstein told Psychology Today last year: “Our current education system was created in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and was modeled after the new factories of the industrial revolution. Public schools, set up to supply the factories with a skilled labor force, crammed education into a relatively small number of years. We have tried to pack more and more in while extending schooling up to age 24 or 25, for some segments of the population. In general, such an approach still reflects factory thinking – get your education now and get it efficiently, in classrooms in lockstep fashion. Unfortunately, most people learn in those classrooms to hate education for the rest of their lives.” So I picked up the book and, in the name of journalistic research, I took an online test he and colleague Diane Dumas created called The Epstein-Dumas Test of Adultness, which supposedly measures the variety of competencies that define adult functioning. The test was the foundation of the research that led to the book. My Total “Adultness” Competency Score was 93
percent. Aside from the fact that the test should be renamed The
Epstein-Dumas Test of American Adultness (we Canadians can act like adults
too!), the area where I was marked down the most was education. Oh,
I have enough, apparently. It’s just that I answered some questions
incorrectly regarding compulsory education and the value of schooling. Here’s
what the result said: “Education: 78%: Adults are supposed to have obtained at
least a basic education, and they’re supposed to appreciate the value of
education. They’re also supposed to know basic education laws – for example,
that young people are required to attend school until at least age sixteen or so
(depending on one’s state of residency).” I’m pretty secure in my
“adultness competency” but I guess I’ll contact Dr. Epstein about this
lack of rigor in the quiz. There is clearly an error regarding either his
knowledge of the laws about school attendance or in semantics. But, worse, the
quiz seems to contradict Epstein’s comments to Psychology Today and, according
to the cover blurb, his book on the subject. And that’s not very adult. The Most Important Topic – July 19, 2008 Um, they forgot education! Thoroughly educating ourselves and our children about global warming is not a choice anymore. It is the most important issue of our day – more important than terrorism (although they are related in some ways), more important than the economy (although, again, there are strong links). Our children are the ones who will pay for what the previous few generations have done wrong. An awareness of the problem and what each of us can do to try and fix it is crucial. So learning about the problem and seeking solutions must be a part of the everyday life of each individual and each family. We affect the world by the way we consume, travel, work and play. Lessening our environmental impact is the central challenge to humankind today – the most important topic we can think, write and talk about, no matter whether we learn at home, at school or on the street corner. Having said that, I do believe that young people who have
been given the freedom to be self-directed learners are the ones most able to
create solutions to the problem. And, as I wrote in my editorial for the
July/August issue of Natural Life, in order to create the circumstances that
will nurture a large enough number of these self-directed learners, we need to
examine our attitudes towards children and re-evaluate not only how we educate
them, but how we birth them. We need to nurture their ability to think creatively and
independently, to respect their rights, to shape their values, and to learn from their
instinctive kinship with the natural world and with each other. The need is
urgent and it is immediate. Why Are People So Angry? –
July 16, 2008 Oh, says I with my usual first reaction, maybe there’s a book here! Um, no. There already is one or two. Plug “anger” into the search line at amazon.com and you get 321,547 books and articles – everything from Anger Management for Dummies to Harriet Lerner’s wonderful Dance of Anger. Yeah, I’ve read a few of them in my time, but not the Dummies series…now there’s a book title that makes me angry, along with the Idiot’s Guides. Oh, sorry, we’re trying not to be angry here. Anyway, as Peter Wood points out in his book A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now, automakers are even making angrier-looking cars, with grills that seem to snarl at whatever gets in their way. Unfortunately, there are lots of anger books aimed at kids. But managing their anger is not what they need; they feel invisible and ignored by adults and are desperate to be seen and known, rather than taken to yet another lesson, sports activity or anger management session. But why are the rest of us so angry and impatient? Well, we’re living in anxious times, when fear about the future is hard to shake: What’s going to happen with the economy, terrorism, global warming, the energy crisis, the food crisis, the wars? And maybe we feel angry and frustrated because the problems seem too huge and we don’t know what we can do to fix them. There are other reasons, I think, or at least mitigating factors. Many of us are living life too fast, trying to cram too many things into a frantic day, too tightly scheduled to allow time for anything to go wrong or to get in our way, let alone to breathe. Plus, many of those books (that is, the ones that don’t preach the opposite) tell us that by expressing our anger we are living authentically and that swallowing it will make us sick. (As someone who lives with the auto-immune disease lupus, I know that strong emotions like anger negatively affect our health.) Beyond that, these authors might have a point. Maybe we’re not being angry and
aggressive enough. Given all the crises out there, maybe we should be out in the streets
screaming for change. New York Times writer Bob Herbert has said that
our “anger quotient is much too low.” If, by that, he means that we should pressure our leaders to
make this a safer planet, I agree. But while directing our anger in a useful
direction, we should all take a
deep breath, smile and calm down.
Sacrificing Kids to Corporate Profits – July 8, 2008 Obesity, high blood pressure and high cholesterol are just
some of the very many health conditions that are lifestyle-based. Good lifestyle
habits begin in early childhood. Even kids with genetic disposition to such
problems can avoid them if they learn how to eat a healthy diet, get enough
exercise and deal with stress. When you hear about guidelines like this one, you
can bet at least some of the physicians involved are on the payroll of the
industry – either directly or indirectly. Return
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