The Formative Years
M. Orhan Tarhan
July 17, 2009
Controlling our life depends, first of all, on the person we want to control, namely ourselves. The kind of person we are, our character, our normal behavior, our general education, and a number of other things will determine whether we are easy to control or not. But we are who we are, and we cannot change much the stuff we are made of, that is unless we are a really very young person. We have to accept ourselves the way we are and do as good a control job with it as we can..
But we can raise our children, so that, if some day they want to control their own lives, they can start with the best possible material. Thus this first chapter is different from all the other ones. While the following chapters discuss the control of our own life, the present chapter deals with the formative years of our children, so that our offspring has the best starting material when they begin the adult life.
Today it is not enough to just prepare young people for adult life; the educational process must continue during one´s entire life. My maternal grandfather, who lived between 1871 and 1956 did quite well with his high school education. He became the governor of a small province in the Ottoman Empire and did never feel the need to add to his education. Already in two generation´s time educational needs increased tremendously: I graduated from the same high school he graduated from and then had to go to six more years of higher education. However even that was not enough. I had to keep on learning, practically continuously in order to survive in my profession of chemical engineering, The rate of knowledge growth and technological change kept on being accelerated in the 20th century and as a result it is no more sufficient to educate children in their first 20 – 25 years. Human "formative years" must now last the entire life. Certainly this formation must be more intensive during the first 20 – 25 years, when the capacity to learn is much greater and must then continue at a lower rate until death. For example, most of the professional work I did during the last 10- 15 years of my career was based on knowledge that did not even exist during my university years. If I had not kept on learning after graduation, I would soon have turned into an "obsolete engineer" and could not have done any of the things that earned me a living all the way to my retirement and then in my consulting years. This English I am writing now: I learned it after the age of 24.
B r i n g I n g u p o f C h I l d r e n
It is the parents moral responsibility to do their absolute best to learn and to do the right things so that their children grow into healthy, civilized, well-educated, and well-motivated adults who have the potential of developing themselves into happy individuals and good citizens. Thus the responsibility of controlling our lives rests with our parents during our early formative years.
Two disciplines, pedagogy and child psychology, set as their goals the study related to bringing up of children. There is a wealth of accumulated knowledge available that the parents should dig and learn.. What the pediatricians tell them during their visit is not enough. There are disagreements between several child psychologists on how to treat children. Unfortunately most high schools do not teach child upbringing. Parents should use the same method they use when they are buying a car. They should talk to other parents who use a method, see their child and compare several methods and their results.
The foundation of child education is laid in the first three or four years. The education given by the mother to the child in this early period is so important, that its lack cannot be remedied in later years. This fundamental education is called "Kinderstube" in German, a term referring to the baby´s room where the character of the baby is shaped. The way we eat at the table,, the basic training for cleanliness, the way we listen or talk to people, shortly the way we behave in a civilized way is all part of the Kinderstube. If a German tells you that Herr Mueller has no Kinderstube,
You would know that Herr Mueller has no manners.
Sigmund Freud believed that the human baby is born as a savage with bad inclinations and that only proper training and education convert him to a civilized person. This view is not shared by all pedagogues. For example, Jean-Jacques Rousseau assumed that children are born with good nature and that it is the society that perverts them. He sent his five children to the orphanage because he could not take care of them. This event disturbed him all his life and on his book on child education ( Emile ou de l´Education") he wrote about the right ways of educating children. Actually, both Freud and Rousseau might be partially right. The child is born with a certain amount of programmed instincts and has to learn the rest after birth. We know from our every day experience with people around us, that every one is born with some trait of character that is inherited. There is much truth in Freud´s contention that children are born as savages, because of the tremendous amount of knowledge and training a child needs to digest, in order to really be called a civilized person.
A group of American child psychologists of the 1950´s and 1960´s have been preaching not to say "no" to one´s children, because they thought, people who eventually will be free people, should be accustomed to freedom and non-interferrence from early age on. This is called "permissive education" The opposite of it is the "disciplined system of education". Both systems of education have certain advantages and disadvantages. When applied to their fullest extent, both give catastrophic results. Anyone who brought up a child knows that children always seek the limits of what they are allowed to do. They will do all sorts of naughty things until some one has to say "no" to them. A child has to be taught from early age on to fit civilized behavior, that is the product of thousands of years of human evolution and development. This teaching obviously sets a number of limits to natural behaviors and there is no way of making of a child a pleasant civilized person without saying "no" to him on certain things. If this is not done, the result can be devastating. Children brought up by the permissive method grow to become insufferable and obnoxious savages who do not know how to respect the rights of other people and who are the slaves of their own whims and desires. Furthermore, such children never acquire the self-discipline to succeed in life. They are incapable of making the proper decisions and of sticking to them. In the "disciplined system of education" children are brought up inside narrow limits erected by the strict discipline. They are accustomed to ask for permission to do anything. In extreme cases, such children tend to become shy and un-enterprising people. Of course they are very polite and civilized persons. I believe, education must be neither fully permissive nor fully disciplinary. Children should be allowed more freedom inside a large but clearly defined limits. They should be encouraged to develop their own initiatives and motivation inside this free area, but the set limits should never be allowed to be exceeded.
Children need love almost as much as food, in all their lives. Giving love is not instinctive. It is learned. It must be given intensely but absolutely equally to all children. Love is extremely destructive when it is given out of the weakness of the mother. When mother´s love becomes an obstacle to disciplining the child, the child exploits it and remains a savage.
Most families teach the concept of responsibility to their children from early age on. They are assigned duties like setting the table, taking out the garbage, mowing the grass, etc. Children are taught that when living together every one must help. Grown up children, who are finished with schooling and still live with their parents, must go out and work and contribute to the family budget, even if the father´s earning is sufficient for the entire family. What the parents forbid to their children (smoking) they should not do it themselves. They should be a role model.
Here are a few examples of how NOT to raise children:
The parents should agree on what to permit and what not to permit to their children. Such agreements must be reached in private, and once reached , parents must support each other on the implementation of the agreed decision. Arguing in front of children, changing instructions given by the other parent,, give catastrophic results. The child may become uncontrollable.
Children must be reprimanded in private, but praised in public. I have seen parents who complained of their own children to relatives and in front of them. That scars the children psychologically and eventually they react in very unpleasant ways.
Favoritism to one´s children is extremely destructive, both to those who are favored and to those who are not. Love should never be conditioned on anything. It should never be held as punishment.
But we can raise our children, so that, if some day they want to control their own lives, they can start with the best possible material. Thus this first chapter is different from all the other ones. While the following chapters discuss the control of our own life, the present chapter deals with the formative years of our children, so that our offspring has the best starting material when they begin the adult life.
Today it is not enough to just prepare young people for adult life; the educational process must continue during one´s entire life. My maternal grandfather, who lived between 1871 and 1956 did quite well with his high school education. He became the governor of a small province in the Ottoman Empire and did never feel the need to add to his education. Already in two generation´s time educational needs increased tremendously: I graduated from the same high school he graduated from and then had to go to six more years of higher education. However even that was not enough. I had to keep on learning, practically continuously in order to survive in my profession of chemical engineering, The rate of knowledge growth and technological change kept on being accelerated in the 20th century and as a result it is no more sufficient to educate children in their first 20 – 25 years. Human "formative years" must now last the entire life. Certainly this formation must be more intensive during the first 20 – 25 years, when the capacity to learn is much greater and must then continue at a lower rate until death. For example, most of the professional work I did during the last 10- 15 years of my career was based on knowledge that did not even exist during my university years. If I had not kept on learning after graduation, I would soon have turned into an "obsolete engineer" and could not have done any of the things that earned me a living all the way to my retirement and then in my consulting years. This English I am writing now: I learned it after the age of 24.
B r i n g I n g u p o f C h I l d r e n
It is the parents moral responsibility to do their absolute best to learn and to do the right things so that their children grow into healthy, civilized, well-educated, and well-motivated adults who have the potential of developing themselves into happy individuals and good citizens. Thus the responsibility of controlling our lives rests with our parents during our early formative years.
Two disciplines, pedagogy and child psychology, set as their goals the study related to bringing up of children. There is a wealth of accumulated knowledge available that the parents should dig and learn.. What the pediatricians tell them during their visit is not enough. There are disagreements between several child psychologists on how to treat children. Unfortunately most high schools do not teach child upbringing. Parents should use the same method they use when they are buying a car. They should talk to other parents who use a method, see their child and compare several methods and their results.
The foundation of child education is laid in the first three or four years. The education given by the mother to the child in this early period is so important, that its lack cannot be remedied in later years. This fundamental education is called "Kinderstube" in German, a term referring to the baby´s room where the character of the baby is shaped. The way we eat at the table,, the basic training for cleanliness, the way we listen or talk to people, shortly the way we behave in a civilized way is all part of the Kinderstube. If a German tells you that Herr Mueller has no Kinderstube,
You would know that Herr Mueller has no manners.
Sigmund Freud believed that the human baby is born as a savage with bad inclinations and that only proper training and education convert him to a civilized person. This view is not shared by all pedagogues. For example, Jean-Jacques Rousseau assumed that children are born with good nature and that it is the society that perverts them. He sent his five children to the orphanage because he could not take care of them. This event disturbed him all his life and on his book on child education ( Emile ou de l´Education") he wrote about the right ways of educating children. Actually, both Freud and Rousseau might be partially right. The child is born with a certain amount of programmed instincts and has to learn the rest after birth. We know from our every day experience with people around us, that every one is born with some trait of character that is inherited. There is much truth in Freud´s contention that children are born as savages, because of the tremendous amount of knowledge and training a child needs to digest, in order to really be called a civilized person.
A group of American child psychologists of the 1950´s and 1960´s have been preaching not to say "no" to one´s children, because they thought, people who eventually will be free people, should be accustomed to freedom and non-interferrence from early age on. This is called "permissive education" The opposite of it is the "disciplined system of education". Both systems of education have certain advantages and disadvantages. When applied to their fullest extent, both give catastrophic results. Anyone who brought up a child knows that children always seek the limits of what they are allowed to do. They will do all sorts of naughty things until some one has to say "no" to them. A child has to be taught from early age on to fit civilized behavior, that is the product of thousands of years of human evolution and development. This teaching obviously sets a number of limits to natural behaviors and there is no way of making of a child a pleasant civilized person without saying "no" to him on certain things. If this is not done, the result can be devastating. Children brought up by the permissive method grow to become insufferable and obnoxious savages who do not know how to respect the rights of other people and who are the slaves of their own whims and desires. Furthermore, such children never acquire the self-discipline to succeed in life. They are incapable of making the proper decisions and of sticking to them. In the "disciplined system of education" children are brought up inside narrow limits erected by the strict discipline. They are accustomed to ask for permission to do anything. In extreme cases, such children tend to become shy and un-enterprising people. Of course they are very polite and civilized persons. I believe, education must be neither fully permissive nor fully disciplinary. Children should be allowed more freedom inside a large but clearly defined limits. They should be encouraged to develop their own initiatives and motivation inside this free area, but the set limits should never be allowed to be exceeded.
Children need love almost as much as food, in all their lives. Giving love is not instinctive. It is learned. It must be given intensely but absolutely equally to all children. Love is extremely destructive when it is given out of the weakness of the mother. When mother´s love becomes an obstacle to disciplining the child, the child exploits it and remains a savage.
Most families teach the concept of responsibility to their children from early age on. They are assigned duties like setting the table, taking out the garbage, mowing the grass, etc. Children are taught that when living together every one must help. Grown up children, who are finished with schooling and still live with their parents, must go out and work and contribute to the family budget, even if the father´s earning is sufficient for the entire family. What the parents forbid to their children (smoking) they should not do it themselves. They should be a role model.
Here are a few examples of how NOT to raise children:
The parents should agree on what to permit and what not to permit to their children. Such agreements must be reached in private, and once reached , parents must support each other on the implementation of the agreed decision. Arguing in front of children, changing instructions given by the other parent,, give catastrophic results. The child may become uncontrollable.
Children must be reprimanded in private, but praised in public. I have seen parents who complained of their own children to relatives and in front of them. That scars the children psychologically and eventually they react in very unpleasant ways.
Favoritism to one´s children is extremely destructive, both to those who are favored and to those who are not. Love should never be conditioned on anything. It should never be held as punishment.
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