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The article is subjective and expresses the personal opinion of the author.
Recently, I tried to convince my son to go for a run with me. He refused, I insisted. “Are you forcing me to do this?” He said, opening his mouth in indignation. It can be seen that in his view it was something illegal.
I got lost. Actually, yes, I force it, I wanted to say. I am a mother and can sometimes afford. For example, after the third reminder or fifth begging. Or even after reading psychological advice about the dangers of coercion - it doesn't matter here. I still try to kick the little passengers to charge, push them to clean the room or sit down to study. But why do I feel so guilty every time? This is illogical, because I have a lot of arguments to justify coercion.
First of all, this is honest. I do not come up with arguments, I have no time. I do not come up with threats. Once again. I do not invent sophisticated and non-obvious advantages like strong muscles in 15 years, because I'm already in sneakers.
Secondly, it is a way to show credibility. I’m in charge here, I’m responsible for all this shop, and if something goes wrong with the children, all the questions will be with the parent. And he is me. (Looking back, yes, for sure - I).
Thirdly, this is for their own good. Where would all the famous athletes, violin virtuosos, ballet dancers of the Bolshoi Theater be, if there were no man with a serious face and the phrase: “Yes, I force it. What did you want? We have a ballet school actually ... ".
It is unclear how the parents of Olympic medalists and participants in the competitions “Young master of gammas” can calmly read psychological advice with humanistic ideas.
Like a famous phrase voiced in the book “Summerhill. Education by freedom "by Alexander Neill:" If you leave him (the child) alone, without any pressure from the adult, he will develop to the extent to which he is able to develop at all. " That is, we now forced him to go to the swimming section, where the coach will make an athlete out of him. But if we left the guy without valuable coaching instructions, a Nobel laureate in physics would have grown in his place.
Science in the person of Stephen Pinker, a Harvard professor of psychology and a well-known cognitive scientist, argues with Alexander Neill, saying that children themselves are not eager for learning, which, as you know, is light. Well, good: they are torn to kitchen explosions, but not to the proofs of theorems from textbooks.
There is an analogy that progressive educators often cite: a child seeks to know the world, he learns to walk, talk, crawls into all sockets, and his love for more complex cognition is beaten off at school, crushed by coercion by his parents. Pinker hints that the analogy is unsuccessful.
It's one thing to get into a power outlet, and another is painstaking mastery of the letter. The scientist refers to the structure of our brain: it is formed by evolution, and therefore it is quite natural for people to learn to run, communicate, and remember the characteristics of friends themselves. But memorization of historical dates, although simpler, but still not quite natural event for us.
Arithmetic, writing and abstracts on natural science - these things were invented recently. Not enough time has passed: our species has not yet evolved to master them with excitement. That is, education is not about giving people the opportunity to flourish without any interference, but "a technology that tries to compensate for what the human brain was initially unsuccessful."
Here it would be to grab the child by the shoulder, to seat him by the task, to help evolution move towards textbooks. But the burden of psychological articles read is crushing.
Coercion (with the promise of gifts or punishments) is ineffective because it:
- Stimulates external activity without deep passion. The child does something to just get rid of. Or just depicts an activity, sweeping for a look. Remember how at school you, at first glance, diligently solved the problem, but actually played a naval battle. Do not hesitate, your children can do that too.
- Creates toxic memories for the child. The man on the couch of a psychoanalyst will recall many years later how dad swore and tormented him. It is not a fact that then the child will add: “But, thanks to my father, now I have money for a therapist, thank God, I graduated from school ...”. This is the last phrase that everyone usually forgets.
- It undermines self-esteem and can lead to learned helplessness. A person who is constantly pressed on, at some point, stops trying to take a book on their own. Everything is meaningless, I'm nobody, mom knows better ...
- It destroys cognitive activity. Yes, maybe this activity has not yet touched the collection of problems in geometry, but in the right environment, it serves as a guarantee of interest in something more. The child’s attempts to mutilate the dishwasher make us understand that he is daring, that he is interested in something in life. Already bread.
- It makes it difficult to do something truly exciting. You may not believe in video blogging, but maybe this is what the child really needs right now. Parents, especially on the eve of exams, can hardly see the true potential of the child. No, no, I’m not at all hinting that your future e-sports champion is growing. But this also happens.
- Hopelessly spoils the relationship with the parent. It is difficult to have a heart-to-heart talk with the person whom you half an hour ago invited to do homework under the fear of all celestial punishment.
In the end, even Pinker has no conclusion that technology that compensates for our brain deficiencies must be sadistic or overwhelming. Forcing worked well in totalitarian societies, was somehow explainable in the industrial era. But today, it seems, we are not without reason surrounded by psychological articles and are afraid to inflict psychological harm on children with a sloppy word.
The guys who advocate returning to the Soviet school forget a little that the world has changed. Today, at the point where we find ourselves, such strange things as the habit of asking questions and building castles in the air can turn out to be much more in demand than the ability to transfer the drawing of the engine in three projections to the whatman.
For many, the manner of specialists working in advanced IT companies is amazing. No one tells programmers what to do specifically. They move between groups leading some fantastic developments, and decide for themselves where to join, how they can be useful, and sometimes they prefer to do their own thing in the end.
In the IT sphere, they believe in a person’s ability to choose a sphere for the application of forces and development, and in the field of education, only “sit down at your desk!”
Executive and obedient child - mother's joy, passed on five - may be out of work. An initiative bully with ideas is to succeed. Of course, in such a vague world, we are scared to harm a person: unfortunately, much more is understood about how to grow a gagged hard worker, than about how to help a gifted one.
And if those same progressive educators are not mistaken? If all of us and all children have amazing talents? And it’s important not to bother them ...
As a result, I did not force. My son never went for a run with me. But he went to the football section. There, they say, an environment suitable for developing abilities.
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