The New Yorker: Parents embracing the mystery

[Kalinoche buenanoche]

Any takes on parents being informed about what happens at school? The The New Yorker wonders whether parents should embrace the mystery



Link to article

Charming excerpt:

How was school? “Fine.” What did you do today? “Um, not much.” Did anything exciting happen? “Well. . . .” For some parents, it can feel as if their children’s school is a kind of black box, inside which daily mysteries unfold. And kids, as travellers from this shadow world, often leave much to the imagination. But, as Jessica Winter writes in a new essay, this situation may be better than the alternative extreme, in which parents are bombarded with too much information from teachers and administrators about the lives their children lead at school. Winter explores the ways in which remote learning during the pandemic caused a spike in tensions between parents and teachers, and how the return to classroom learning fed many parents’ worries about being away from their kids. “They think that the more information they have, the better their child’s school journey is going to be,” a child psychologist and school consultant explains. “That hunger for information becomes, at times, rapacious. Teachers know that. They’re giving them information to feed the beast.” For many anxious parents, there may be a better way—and it starts with embracing the mystery.

[rizz]

I love it when teachers speak about their sexuality to kids. Like, why train kids' brain when you can talk talk talk about bs bs bs and it makes you a pervy creep.

[FreelancePoliceman]

I think parents and children should live mostly separate lives. Obviously the parent should take care of the child, make sure he's doing well, even talk with and have fun with him sometimes. But the child should have his own life. You don't HAVE to know every detail of your child's or spouse's or whoever's life, and you shouldn't. The only way to possibly care so much about their life is to not have one yourself. I think most of the behavior the article is criticizing is parents (namely mothers) using their kids as personal immortality projects, and that has bad consequences for the kids. I think it's also getting more common.

OTOH schools have been getting shittier and I think it's reasonable to be concerned about what their kids are and aren't learning. But at some point you have to decide boundaries, where you're going to stop caring. You either trust the school system or you don't.

[Kalinoche buenanoche]

I think parents and children should live mostly separate lives. Obviously the parent should take care of the child, make sure he's doing well, even talk with and have fun with him sometimes. But the child should have his own life. You don't HAVE to know every detail of your child's or spouse's or whoever's life, and you shouldn't. The only way to possibly care so much about their life is to not have one yourself. I think most of the behavior the article is criticizing is parents (namely mothers) using their kids as personal immortality projects, and that has bad consequences for the kids. I think it's also getting more common.

OTOH schools have been getting shittier and I think it's reasonable to be concerned about what their kids are and aren't learning. But at some point you have to decide boundaries, where you're going to stop caring. You either trust the school system or you don't.

Thank you. I feel this is an interesting and necessary discussion pole. I sense that the take came from your mind and not your heart because you used male pronouns for the child.

[FreelancePoliceman]

Thank you. I feel this is an interesting and necessary discussion pole. I sense that the take came from your mind and not your heart because you used male pronouns for the child.

Mind, heart; what's the difference. I don't know. I said more or less the first thing that came to mind. "To mind," whatever that means. I haven't gotten much sleep.

"It" seemed unnatural, the singular "they" has never sat right with me, and I have a penchant for slightly archaic turns of phrase. "He" and "him" used to be the standard pronoun for indeterminate sex. I don't think I follow entirely what you mean, but -- that's all there is to it.