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
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.
In practice
In a parenting workshop discussing early childhood education.
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.
What's it like to be a baby? It's like being in love in Paris for the first time after you've had three double espressos.
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.
Lack of homework shows up in the marketplace as well as in the classroom.
There is dust enough on some of your Bibles to write 'damnation' with your fingers.
If you get down about the state of American culture, just remember there are still more public libraries in this country than there are McDonalds.
When I was research head of General Motors and wanted a problem solved, I'd place a table outside the meeting room with a sign: "Leave slide rules here." If I didn't do that, I'd find someone reaching for his slide rule. Then he'd be on his feet saying, "Boss, you can't do it."
For me, literacy means freedom. For the individual and for society.
The adolescent must never be treated as a child, for that is a stage of life that he has surpassed. It is better to treat an adolescent as if he had greater value than he actually shows than as if he had less and let him feel that his merits and self-respect are disregarded.
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