Why education mostly goes wrong
As we know from research in the field of child and adolescent psychology, early experiences shape thinking and guide the individual in a certain direction in which he or she makes further experiences, draws lessons from them and establishes convictions and beliefs.
Unfortunately, most people who play a key role in this early learning, including most parents, are terrible teachers. This is mainly because they themselves have been brought up completely wrong.
STOP your reflexes for a second and her me out, please.
It is by no means my intention to blame anybody here, as the effect is systemic.
The natural way to grow up, in the truest sense of the word, would be for parents to have their children around them in their work, and to give them tasks and thus learning opportunities to grow from. For 300.000 years humans lived as hunter and gatherer and did exactly that. But as farming developed as dominant lifestyle as recently as 12.000 years ago, division of labor, specialisation and finally factories made this impossible.
Kindergartens and schools are still places of learning and small successes that promote self-confidence. And sport and art play an important role in the development of a healthy psyche.
But the people that should drive the development are usually not equipped to do the right things. Quite the opposite. Most so called education methods are not helpful for the child, many are harmful. Let alone real physical and physical abuse that is everywhere. Official sources report 1 in 7 children where experts in the field see that ratio above 50%.
But the damage caused without even being noticed by “perpetrators” and “victims” is just as big a problem. People just don’t feel right in their lives but have no idea, what went wrong. Learn more about it from Stefanie Stahl.
Besides the social network in the childhood there are numerous sources for human prosperity and suppression.
Attention, Recognition and Connectedness
They are all linked to three important concepts of the individual psyche: Attention, Recognition and Connectedness (bonding) . The self esteem depends on the amount of attention and recognition some gets from the environment and to what extend someone feels connected in a social context.
Since individual learning takes place in a neural network (the brain), early experiences (training) have more influence than later encounters. This is what makes early caregivers like family members, nannies or teachers so important. But parents stand out, even if their interactions are limited. Once a child learns that he or she was literally made of parts of the parents and literally came from the mother’s body, the psychological bond becomes unique.
But what creates a positive relationship between parent and child?
There are several aspects to it: First, parents need to be accepting of their child’s thoughts and feelings, so that he/she learns that they are valid and valuable. Second, parents should set clear boundaries for their child, to create a firm sense of security. And third, parents themselves should demonstrate their own high levels of self-esteem so that children can learn from them as role models. Unfortunately “bad” parenting goes on for generations and many parents might struggle with that for reasons their parents have caused.
If parents make their children believe that something is wrong with them, low self-esteem will quickly set in. For example, imagine you are five years old and your mother says: “Clean your room or I’ll put you in the oven”. This child, whom I met as a grown woman, was so horrified that she never recovered from it for the rest of her life.
Luckily, children who haven’t developed a healthy self-esteem in their early years have a second chance at school. A teacher that builds confidence in a child can have an incredible, positive influence. In fact, research shows that a teacher’s expectations can be self-fulfilling prophecies. If a teacher has faith in the child’s ability to master a particular skill, this belief often becomes reality. Unfortunately, most of us have experienced that this has only happened to the teachers’ favourite students.
Teachers succeed when they nurture a reality-based self-esteem. The key to this approach is making the child feel acknowledged, so that their thoughts and actions are recognised and valued. This is achieved through positive constructive feedback that encourages them as they grow and succeed.
The reality is horrible
Besides exceptional excesses the teachers are not to blame for their behaviour as they were mistreated children themselves and serve a system that serves the modern economy and not the children. The systemic reason why education or upbringing goes wrong is modern life itself. The basic psychological equipment of a human is build for a life in a horde in nature with physical threads as only challenges. The parents and the wider family are around all day and learning hunting and gathering is a natural process while growing up.
Since the beginning of farming and the division of labour children were systematically mistreated. Separated from their parents, alienated from nature and equalised in a unified care and education system.
Imagine how a child of a so called primitive people tribe would be traumatised, when brought to a New York kindergarten. The shocking truth is that all children are equipped with the same basic psychological equipment and are traumatised in the same way. It only happens in “baby steps” so that it is not noticed.
Have you ever watched children coming the first time to their nursery school? You can observe the sheer horror of loosing their most important connection and the insecurity about whether you have done something wrong because you are abandoned by your parents.
Sure, almost all children enjoy their time with peers and love to go there after a while. And almost all institutions and care takers do a great job often not adequately paid and recognised. But here we take the perspective of the individual child who is irritated why his parents leave him alone.
And going forward it get worse. The older the children grow the more they are exposed to shifting strangers who exercise a certain control over them and unfortunately all too often abuse them. This is not only about sexual assault but also about neglect, humiliation and psychological abuse.
Of course, every act is one act too many and must be prosecuted and punished. The point here, however, is not individual guilt, but the systemic error that we must recognise and acknowledge in order to clear the way for change.
The loooong way out
The starting point should be a scientific and then a social consensus that all people are affected by this systemic error.
Many have experienced it themselves and everyone deals daily with people whose lives are overshadowed by a “difficult childhood”. Victims” become “perpetrators” because a beaten child is much more likely to become a beating father.
To break this cycle, we need to apply first principles thinking to growing a healthy person and start changing the system. The child needs attention, recognition and attachment (bonding) and we need to create a system that gives them all of that.
Allowing parents as much time together as possible in the first years of the child’s life is a good start that is already being worked on. Maternity protection and parental leave as time off from work without agonising material worries for the first months and years of a child’s life is good.
Working from home and the acceptance of colleagues that a child can sometimes interfere with a video call, as with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, also helps. For others, more kindergarten places are needed, preferably in a company kindergarten.
For further education, the centuries-old school system needs a major overhaul. And my hubris is not enough to draft this. But if you imagine a child would have an almighty dialog partner like ChatGPT, you can imagine which way I would go here.
But besides these institutional improvements, the mindset change of how we think about childhood and how we treat our offspring needs to be fundamental.
The child comes pretty much as a clean slate in this world and is physically and psychologically prepared for a very clear world of plants and animals. Before they can enter the complexity of social networks and virtual worlds, they need to develop a stable identity and a healthy self-esteem.
Parents must be able to support this. Otherwise, it would often be better for these people, their children and society not to have children. The earth has no shortage of people. But the earth is full of people who suffer from their lives.
In this day and age, it is absurd to talk about parents already knowing what to do with children. They often don’t even know how to deal with themselves. Parents should start with questioning their own upbringing. A good way to this is to read Stefanie Stahls books mentioned above.
Once they have identified the roots of their own challenges they might be able to take the right decisions and prepare for the responsibility becoming parents.
It will take generations to change the system. It is not the state or the institutions that have to take the lead. It is the responsibility of each individual to take their role. The first thing we should do is talk about it.
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This article belongs to section 7 of the Section Matrix
