I am not deeply offended by any means. I thought we are having a discussion. Perhaps my use of the word “silly” was not exactly what I meant. I do apologize if what I said was taken that way.

However, I do believe that you are mischaracterizing my idea of control. You are stuck on the value I put on homework and that is one tiny factor that you and I obviously disagree on. I would like to point out that I do not “emphatically reject” your opinion on homework. As you said, it is an opinion.

Let me ask you this, do you work for someone else? If so, do you do things that you feel are unnecessary? If so, why? This may or may not pertain to you, but I am quite certain that this is where many of us find ourselves. Though I have a good job, I don’t agree with some of the things they make me do. I am in a position to say I don’t agree and at times I am able to sway opinion in my favor. But still, when push comes to shove, they will win every time. What should I do? Not do it because I don’t agree with it? Seems to me that I would have a tough time keeping a job. Like I said, it may not be in YOUR experience, but I would venture to guess that this is somewhat universally true.

This isn’t limited to just your employment. You have to jump through hoops to get a drivers license, to get married, to own a business. We all do things we feel are meaningless and trivial just because someone said we had to do it that way. We may question it and work to change it, but the end result is that we will probably end up having to do it or replace it with your idea of what is valuable (which is no guarantee that it won’t be meaningless to some other segment of the population).

As far as the bigger picture of to control or not to control, when your child is an infant, you control their entire world (meaning you make all of their decisions for them). Why is this? Because they can’t. Do you ask them, “What kind of diapers do you want to wear?” Do you ask them, “Do you want to breastfeed or drink formula?” Do you ask them, “Do you want to take a bath today?” Of course not. You use YOUR judgment as to what is best for the child. YOU control THEM. However, when they start to get older, you can start to allow them to control more of their lives. What kind of underwear they want to wear. What type of foods they like to eat. My point being that control is a factor and you slowly relinquish control over to the child as their maturity level increases and they are able to make these decisions for themselves.

You may think that my son is mature enough, at 10 years old, to make lifelong decisions for himself. I do not. I doubt that any of my sons friends are able to make decisions like this for themselves either. I know I wasn’t able to make lifelong decisions for myself at 10 years old. Maybe this isn’t your experience, but it is mine.

Regardless of what you think about education, I do not necessarily share those opinions. I don’t emphatically reject your opinions on it though. I see it as your choice.

I really don’t see what you problem is. You sound deeply offended, yet reading over my posts, it’s hard to see why. Steve juxtaposed a post I made and a post you made, and therefore I further elucidated my original statement, to clarify my thoughts on this matter.

There was no hostility or condescension towards you expressed anywhere in my posts, yet now you are claiming that my posts are “silly to even mention” certain things. But I mentioned them because you brought them up, & claimed I was “judging” you to be a bad parent, when in fact I wasn’t “judging” YOU at all. I was pointing out, correctly I maintain, that just because YOU do certain things doesn’t mean ALL or even MOST parents do the same. I stand firm in my assessment that MOST parents are far too controlling and too fearful, and worry too much about report cards, as if report cards are an accurate measure of comprehension. They simply aren’t. I know this, because I was almost a straight A student (barring one subject) all through school and college, yet I never felt truly knowledgeable, since the curricula are so watered down and superficially explored these days, that an “A” is almost meaningless. If schools really are, for the most part, “worksheet wastelands,” and they most certainly are, then all the A’s in the world can’t mean anything, because getting a simply meant you devoted yourself to completing a bunch of silly little worksheets and fill-in-the-blanks. No true, deep learning can result from such banal activity.

“Concerning homework, I believe I spelled out my reasonings behind homework. It isn’t solely about the educational element. I don’t think I could be more clear.”

And I don’t think I could be more clear: as someone who NEVER skimped on homework assignments, I emphatically reject your logic. That is your opinion on the value of homework. It is an opinion I reject entirely. Nothing you have said convinces me otherwise. Homework didn’t teach me good work habits: since in fact part of life is distinguishing between valuable work, needful top priority work, and work that can be avoided because it is trivial, redundant, and unimportant. Whereas in school, you don’t decide, the teacher decides for you how you should spend your time. Separating dross from gold isn’t permitted, whereas in real life it is essential.

Whether or not this applies to your situation is irrelevant. You could be the perfect parent, and it wouldn’t have any relevance to my larger point about modern culture. The infantilization of teens I described, the pumping young people full of behavior-modifying drugs that Mithotyn so poignantly described, really does occur. I stand by all that I said about schools, and Mithotyn’s sharing of his/her painful experiences being force-fed meds with serious side effects only reinforces my convictions.

In no way would I say “In general”. This is false. I believe that most careers require you to either have a degree or some sort of specialized certificate in order to even be considered for the position. Again, this doesn’t mean that one can’t “succeed” without an education. I have never said that. It does happen. However, I would like to point out that even you mentioned that society measures through education. You said it wasn’t fair, which I agree, but the fact remains that this is the ruler we are measured. My point is that I believe in giving my children all the opportunity I can. Though a degree doesn’t guarantee opportunity (there are no guarantees in life), I believe it would give them an edge on their competition. Of course you can say that life isn’t a competition, but I my particular experience says that it is.

Secondly, what if I didn’t push my son to get a better education. Then when he gets older he realizes that he wants one of those careers that requires a degree but can’t. Where is the victory in that? At least when my son gets older he will have known me to have valued education (real education, not just a degree) and the reasons as to why I valued it. Personally, if my son found himself to be in this position, I will consider myself to have failed him. I knew better and didn’t do shit about it because I am afraid that he might not feel like he was in control.

Third, lets take this hypothetical. Say you were sick and in need of surgery. You had one of two doctors you could go to. Doctor A has a degree. Doctor B doesn’t. Both sound like they really know what is wrong with you. Both agree on the diagnosis and are willing to do the surgery. Both have really clean records, no lawsuits, etc… Which one would you go to? Maybe its your child that is sick. Which one would you take them too? Which doctor would you be willing to take a chance with?

Concerning happiness, I have never once equated happiness to education, so I am not exactly sure where you are going with this. But I would say that perhaps YOU believe marriage to have a bigger impact on happiness, but I wouldn’t say this is even remotely valid across the board. Everyone is different and it isn’t up to anyone to say what makes the other happy.

In general, a degree has nothing to with succeeding in life. However it is required to get certain jobs. Success is a definition you set for yourself. If your definition of success is getting a specific job, then I suppose getting a degree my be necessary for success.

In my mind, who you marry has a much bigger impact on your hapiness than educational attainment.

Concerning homework, I believe I spelled out my reasonings behind homework. It isn’t solely about the educational element. I don’t think I could be more clear.

Concerning teens, I also said that eventually you must start to give them more and more control over what they do as they progress in age and life experience. The student will eventually become the master. Again, I think I was fairly clear on this as well. You keep saying “teen”, when my son is 10.

Concerning blaming me for my son’s interests, that seems a bit silly to even mention who you could or couldn’t blame me for the interests of another. Logically, if I can’t make him want to do his homework, how can I make him want to play xbox?

Concerning my desire to have my child go to a university, like it or not, this is the measure our society uses. You can call it a waste of time all you want. The fact is that in order to maximize your chances at succeeding in life, that worthless piece of paper is what is required. I am not saying it isn’t possible to succeed without one, but I am noting that it maximizes one’s chances. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that education is what YOU make of it.

Whether or not my son goes to a university is inevitably up to him. However, I will not stop guiding him in that direction. Though you may consider it useless and a waste of time resulting in a worthless piece of paper, I do not. Without one, one’s chances are stifled.

No doubt our kids are over medicated. Great comment.

About this portion of your comment:

“That is exactly what I did. There is very little a parent can do about it without resorting to violence.
Ridiculously wrong.”

Did you see the context? If your kid decides to walk away from you. You can’t make them return without physically grabbing them. You could call the police, but they would have grab and restrain them as well. To me grabbing, restraining and forcibly moving a person who is just trying to walk away fits the definition of violence. In fact if someone did it to you, it would be called kidnapping.

@Edmund,

That is the exception to the self-control idea, externally imposed violence or threat of violence. If you are under constant threat of violence, which many American’s and other people around the world are, you are not free.

Sadly, the yoke is attached to more and more Americans every year. This is made possible by the fact that there are tens of thousands of pages of laws, statutes, and codes that make us all criminals. Although most of us live with the belief that we’re in a free society, there is a law somewhere that makes it possible to lock you up if one of the oppressors decides you have become bothersome.

It used to be easy to say, “if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.” Today, we are all doing crime of one sort or another.

I know this isn’t completely on topic, but it does tie in somewhat.

Blame it on anti-psychotic and anti depressant drugs. If you look at the statistics of how many children are on them and the rate of obesity associated with them, it explains the entire rise in obesity in the entire population since 1994. It’s silly and in a denial of reality to run your mind in circles around what else it could be (fast food, video games, whatever). The scientific evidence is ironclad. I wish this page would speak more about that, because the issue they are on about and child drugging go hand in hand. I tried leaving school when I was a child to try and pursue my interests in life and it’s exactly what destroyed it. 44 drugs by the time I finally got out of that system (partly) when I was 14 and by then my mind was so blown and I was going through so many tardive problems that my life was over before it even began, and now society is to chalk it up to some imaginary brain disease that the same drug pushers created.

“That is exactly what I did. There is very little a parent can do about it without resorting to violence. ”

Ridiculously wrong.

From the page: “because of the fact that childhood obesity is on the rise.”

Blame it on anti-psychotic and anti depressant drugs. If you look at the statistics of how many children are on them and the rate of obesity associated with them, it explains the entire rise in obesity in the entire population since 1994. It’s silly and in a denial of reality to run your mind in circles around what else it could be (fast food, video games, whatever). The scientific evidence is ironclad. I wish this page would speak more about that, because the issue they are on about and child drugging go hand in hand. I tried leaving school when I was a child to try and pursue my interests in life and it’s exactly what destroyed it. 44 drugs by the time I finally got out of that system (partly) when I was 14 and by then my mind was so blown and I was going through so many tardive problems that my life was over before it even began, and now society is to chalk it up to some imaginary brain disease that the same drug pushers created.

“That is exactly what I did. There is very little a parent can do about it without resorting to violence. ”

Ridiculously wrong.

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