Teach Your Children Not to Fear the Possibility of Failure | Alison Gopnik
- 6 years ago
Developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik has done more than just 'think of the children', she wrote a book – and it rules favorably for free play and the end of scholastic parenting. Gopnik's latest book is "The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us about the Relationship Between Parents and Children" (http://goo.gl/3E0Ti2).
Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/alison-gopnik-on-parenting-and-what-kids-need-most
Follow Big Think here:
YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink
Transcript - One of the problems that we always have is the kind of culture in which say children evolved it's hard to replicate in our current culture. So I always say sort of ideally what you'd have is a six to one ratio where you'd have six grownups taking care of each child. Maybe a better way of putting it is that you'd have a community of parents, you'd have a community of the caregivers. The children are there as part of that community, it's not as if anybody is sitting there and doing a bunch of special things that are just directed at the child. So the vision that we have from school there's someone who's got this special responsibility of shaping the education of the child is the vision of that is often imported into being a parent. So there's some special set of things you should do, some flashcards or video or something other than what you would normally do that's the thing that you are supposed to do to educate the child.
And what the data, the research shows is that children are learning from just observing and participating in the every day things that people are doing in an incredibly subtle and powerful way. The irony is that the unconscious things that you do when you're interacting with children are much more likely to shape and effect of the way they think than any of the things that you actually consciously decide to do. And I think we have some lovely models, for example, my personal favorite is cooking. So my grandchildren come and cook with me. Children love cooking. They love being involved. There's nothing that seems more interesting to them then an adult who's actually trying to do something, actually trying to bring something about and integrating them into that work. So in a sense in the village the line between here's work and here's children just wasn't there. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/VCV3d0.
Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/alison-gopnik-on-parenting-and-what-kids-need-most
Follow Big Think here:
YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink
Transcript - One of the problems that we always have is the kind of culture in which say children evolved it's hard to replicate in our current culture. So I always say sort of ideally what you'd have is a six to one ratio where you'd have six grownups taking care of each child. Maybe a better way of putting it is that you'd have a community of parents, you'd have a community of the caregivers. The children are there as part of that community, it's not as if anybody is sitting there and doing a bunch of special things that are just directed at the child. So the vision that we have from school there's someone who's got this special responsibility of shaping the education of the child is the vision of that is often imported into being a parent. So there's some special set of things you should do, some flashcards or video or something other than what you would normally do that's the thing that you are supposed to do to educate the child.
And what the data, the research shows is that children are learning from just observing and participating in the every day things that people are doing in an incredibly subtle and powerful way. The irony is that the unconscious things that you do when you're interacting with children are much more likely to shape and effect of the way they think than any of the things that you actually consciously decide to do. And I think we have some lovely models, for example, my personal favorite is cooking. So my grandchildren come and cook with me. Children love cooking. They love being involved. There's nothing that seems more interesting to them then an adult who's actually trying to do something, actually trying to bring something about and integrating them into that work. So in a sense in the village the line between here's work and here's children just wasn't there. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/VCV3d0.