I've had three of my own children and spent my professional life thinking about children. And yet I still find my relation to my children deeply puzzling.
Alison GopnikRead
Ours is an age of pedagogy. Anxious parents instruct their children more and more, at younger and younger ages, until they're reading books to babies in the womb.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Parents today are increasingly focused on teaching their children from a very young age.
In this quote, Alison Gopnik critiques the tendency of modern parents to engage in pedagogical practices even before their children are born. It highlights a societal shift towards an intensified focus on education and preparation for life, raising questions about the balance between nurturing creativity and imposing learning at an early stage.
Themes
EducationChildrenParentingPedagogyLearning
In practice
Example use cases
In a parenting workshop discussing early childhood education.
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Adults often assume that most learning is the result of teaching and that exploratory, spontaneous learning is unusual. But actually, spontaneous learning is more fundamental.
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