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| Thanks for your forum on willpower, focusing on how to teach children adults' wisdom on right and wrong. I reject the premise that children are born wild into a world where their elders know better. I presume instead that children's primary role is to show us adults absurdities of prevailing wisdom in which we adults have learned to clothe ourselves, where cultural notions of right and wrong may bear renegotiation. I propose that our children are born with wisdom we adults have repressed and lost, and that it is our duty as their caretakers to laugh with them for the absurdities of the world into which we bear them, and to resist turning momentary limits we impose on one another for safety's sake into larger "therapeutic" moral lessons. Differentiating right from wrong is an unending intergenerational learning process. Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com, 519 Evergreen Circle, Worthington, OH 43085-3667, 1-614-885-6341 | ||||||||||||
Saturday, January 21, 2012
learning from our children
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I agree with you Hal, that we try as adults to impose our view of the world on children who come into this world not by their own choice, but by the choice of the adults who bear them. They are not wild, but innocent, wise and alert. It is through living with people who try to impose their will and world view on the child, that they become wild with resistance, then mellow and non-committed with frustration. I believe children can teach us about the absurdity of our concerns and societal rules. Thanks for posting this.
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