I thought I'd dust off my soapbox for today and share a little of the world I work in. We see the very scary statistics of our kids today and wonder how they are ever going to make it in this world. I'm certain they said the very same thing about our generation when I was a teenager. However, there is the other extreme of our students, where what matters most has nothing to do with happiness, but test scores, grades, and nothing less than perfection....because anything less than perfection will doom their future and chances of being successful.....happiness is about pursuing the best college, the best job, the best of everything. The sad part is the pursuit never ends....and this race to nowhere engulfs any chance they have at happiness. I will be attending a screening of this documentary, Race to Nowhere, in a couple of weeks. I hope to learn how I can make some changes as an educator and as a parent to my own children. Check out this trailer and learn about the very real other side of adolescence......
2 comments:
I think you already know the trick to keeping your children on the level playing field. You enjoy your children, you allow your children to enjoy their imaginary world as well as their real world and you encourage being the best they can be not the best of the best. When you know your child has done the very best he or she can do and then you hug them and tell them you are proud of them, that is the best feeling in all the world for any child. You do your job as a parent quite well - better than the best actually! So take a bow!
wow, what are we doing to our kids?
Please share your thoughts after the film, what you take away from it. Sounds like we need a mind set change starting with us...to pass along to our kids, as well as educators. Where is the line between raising a kid who doesn't push hard enough to one that pushes too hard and loses their childhood?
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