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.
The giving of love and understanding is an education in itself.
I would also suggest that any aspiring writer begin with short stories. These days, I meet far too many young writers who try to start off with a novel right off, or a trilogy, or even a nine-book series. That's like starting in at rock climbing by tackling Mt. Everest. Short stories help you learn your craft.
Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have "essential" and "long overdue" meetings on those days.
From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.
Learning is acquired by reading books; much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various editions of them.
The best method for a given teacher is the one which is most familiar to the teacher.
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