Motto

Life isn't fair, but people can be.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

This will piss off a lot of parents...

This rather long post is going to piss off a lot of people, especially over-indulgent parents, educators and experts in child care.

"Are You Raising a Douchebag" is the title of an interesting Details magazine article written by David Hochman. The article takes aim at those parents who are providing their kids with far more than the basic necessities of life and are also trying to be their kids' "best friends".

Here's a paragraph:

"We create parenting blogs that transform our preschoolers into fetishized celebrities. We subscribe to magazines that suggest buying a 5-year-old a $400 Marc Jacobs cashmere hoodie. We think it's cute when our kids learn to text message (until we realize POS means "parent over shoulder") and quietly rejoice when they can tell which Ramone is Dee Dee and which one is Joey."

The article offers the idea that over-indulging kids is a bad idea and that our society has gone too far in that direction. I agree wholeheartedly.

Do a search on "helicopter parents" and you come up with thousands of articles that blast the concept further, including an eye-opener from Canadian Business to Business magazine from 2006. The article reveals that parents are, well, here are the pertinent paragraphs:

"Managers are getting phone calls from parents asking them to hire their 20-something kids. Candidates are stalling on job offers to consult with their parents. Parents are calling hiring managers to negotiate pay packages."

"Over-involved parents meddle in college registration and interfering with students' dealings with professors, administrators and roommates. Students who get frustrated or confused during registration have been known to interrupt their advisers to whip out a cell phone, speed-dial their parents and hand the phone to the adviser, saying, "Here, talk to my mom.""
(www.super-solutions.com/helicopterparents_boomerangkids.asp)

I have personally seen the latter happen at the UPS store that I worked at this summer when a parent helped their twenty-something kid fill out a registration form prior to shipping it out.

These are but two of the many articles that tackle a growing problem: twenty-somethings, teenagers and kids who feel that they are entitled to everything that they ask for.

Where do we put the blame, if there is any to be put?

I blame the legions of so-called experts who, over the past 35 years, have seen fit to interfere with thousands of generations of parental wisdom to prevent parents from doing what they once did best: instill in their kids a sense of moral and ethical values.

I blame the endless ranks of pediatricians, child psychologists and child psychiatrists who routinely diagnose medical and psychiatric/psychological problems where they really don't exist. If a child isn't playing according to the un-writtend "corporate norm for play", that's perfectly all right. If a child isn't socializing like his/her type 'A' personality peers, that's OK. If a child isn't able to learn at the same rate as fellow students, that's OK, too.

I blame the education systems that use the recommendations of these experts to change the shool systems of North America (meaning the US and Canada) into social promotion and self-esteem academies. They ignore basic education in favour of a multitude of "feel good" coursework so as not to hurt their 'precious snowflakes'' chances at being happy. (See this month's Skeptical Inquirer article on our obsession with happiness for a good take on that subject.)

In many school districts, children are not allowed to fail any course or grade so as not to hurt their self-esteem or lag behind their peers. More importantly to the schools, it boosts their graduation rates beyond what they should really be. Since many school boards get funding based on these numbers, is it any wonder that education often panders more to the kids than to anyone else?

When otherwise normal teenagers cannot hand-write their name on a bank form, then we are in deep trouble. An Alberta MLA witnessed this happen just this past year.

I blame the politicians for over-legislating family law so much so that kids are now able to sue their parents over such trivial things as curfews. They have also hampered law enforcement officers by removing real punishments for kids who are violent or repeat offenders.

I blame the social agencies that constantly hamper their own best intentions by over-regulating their workers in the interests of avoiding lawsuits.

I blame media that en-nobles gangsters through old-school rap, movies, TV and other forms of entertainment that tends to glorify criminal behaviour.

I blame the kids who hold these thugs and criminals in high esteem.

Above all, I blame ourselves for holding onto this ideal that our kid's lives are supposed to be more comfortable and happier than our own childhoods were. While that may be something to wish for, we have to let our kids make that happen for themselves. We cannot hold their hands and keep them kids forever. Sooner or later they must grow up.

It is largely my generation of 50-somethings that has enabled this over the past 25 to 30 years, ever since they became parents.

What are we teaching kids if we let them pass courses without them ever doing any real work to pass them?

What are we teaching our kids about right and wrong if the consequences for committing crimes are non-existent (I am speaking primarily of Canadian legislation that slaps kids on the wrist for committing crimes)? Or if we cannot set boundaries for them or discipline them when they are very young?

What are we doing when we allow kids to make decisions for the household on a regular basis?

We are setting our society up for failure.

Failure to understand the ethics and values that has made our society perhaps the most free and educated in the world. Failure to show kids that parents will not always be there. Failure to let our kids grow up as mature, responsible citizens.

Children are learning from these examples that there are few boundaries in life that they cannot overcome merely because of who they are. They get an overpowering sense of entitlement far beyond what they have earned or truly deserve.

This goes beyond what people would call common sense into the realm of madness.

Quite a while ago I read an article where a parent asked why she felt uncomfortable when her 4 year old was awarded a certificate for sitting on the carpet in pre-school class. The kid was being rewarded for doing what is common sense: to behave properly. It seemed to expose all of the faults of over-induglent parents, educators and modern society in a nutshell.

Here were teachers trying to instill self-esteem by over-rewarding kids with something that is meaningless. Given a dozen of these pieces of paper over the course of a month and the effects are reduced as the rewards pile up. Over the course of the average child's education, the perhaps hundreds or thousands of stickers, stars, trophies, citations and certificates will mean nothing to the kids.

You cannot impose self-esteem on children from without. The self-esteem comes from accomplishing things on your own.

You cannot educate children by avoiding the consequences of failure to do the work and passing them regardless of what they have accomplished. As an aside, it also encourages lazy or incompetent teachers by skewing graduation results.

You cannot legislate morality. It comes from the ability of parents to set reasonable boundaries on their kids and discipling them from a young age according to the general norms of society.

So how do we fix this?

By returning education back to the basics of what is needed to succeed as an adult, not education for the sake of getting students to the next grade or to make them "feel good" about themselves. Education is about furthering education today, not about equipping children to survive a somehwat hostile or indifferent world when they are adults.

By educating children about "respecting others, respecting themselves and respecting learning" as Barry Schwartz put it in February 2009. Parents can do this by being respectful of these things themselves.

By letting parents, not child-rearing "experts" determine reasonable discipline methods and boundaries for their kids.

By calling the shots when you are a parent and trusting your instincts. For countless generations, parents have used their instincts to raise their kids without the need for expert advice.

This over-reliance on experts is nonsense that merely keeps those experts in business. We only need experts in cases where things are either too extreme to handle or too ambiguous to understand. Most behaviours and events in a child's life are neither. Are you listening, you parents of ADD/Autistic kids?

Being a parent today means being overwhelmed by countless experts telling you how to be what should come naturally.

Being a parent today means giving up your rights and letting these same strangers tell you how, what, and why you do things for your kids.

So call the shots, set boundaries that are reasonable for the age of your kids and let them know that failure to get something or to learn something doesn't mean the end of the world, but is an opportunity to learn and grow up.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Why use more credit?

Recently, the Canadian government released radio commercials outlining the new credit card rules http://actionplan.gc.ca/initiatives/eng/index.asp?mode=5&initiativeID=47 ). What struck me as odd was that the current financial crisis, which doesn't show any signs of going away soon, was essentially caused by over-use of credit tied to the US housing market.

The following is a quote from the Wikipedia article on the financial crisis that sums up what happened:

 "Steadily decreasing interest rates backed by the U.S Federal Reserve from 1982 onward and large inflows of foreign funds created easy credit conditions for a number of years prior to the crisis, fueling a housing construction boom and encouraging debt-financed consumption.[13] The combination of easy credit and money inflow contributed to the United States housing bubble. Loans of various types (e.g., mortgage, credit card, and auto) were easy to obtain and consumers assumed an unprecedented debt load.[14][15] As part of the housing and credit booms, the number of financial agreements called mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and collateralized debt obligations (CDO), which derived their value from mortgage payments and housing prices, greatly increased."

You will note that I highlighted "encouraging debt-financed consumption". Thats for good reason.

The only people who benefit from credit and debt are the lenders and their associates in any economy and that means the banks, financiers and brokers. They benefit by adding service fees, commissions and other charges such as interest (for lenders) to what can be seen as imaginary money.

Its imaginary, because the borrowers and purchasers of loans, mortgages, etc. have to earn the money in the future to pay to the lenders what they purchased.

Tied to this imaginary money are thousands of what I call monetary performance instruments. Others call them financial instruments. They consist of hedge funds, GICs, RESPs, IRAs, 401(k)s, pension funds and dozens of similar items worldwide. Big businesses use these to finance their mega-projects which in turn employs thousands of people. In itself, this is probably a good thing, since employing people keeps the money flowing and workers from losing their homes.

But when this borrowed money ceases to flow, then things collapse as it did in 2007-2008. It creates a top-heavy debt load on the savings which lenders are allowed to use as seed money for the loans. For every dollar put into a savings account, banks can loan a certain amount per dollar for others to use. The same goes for money invested in monetary performance instruments. It spirals the debt upwards and upwards until thousands of corporations and investors can have money tied up in everyone else's pies.

So what is the connection between this and the new credit card rules in Canada?

Plenty, since the government sees fit to encourage more debt loads onto consumers, which is the large "c" conservative mindset in a nutshell. Spend, spend, spend is all they understand of the economy.

I propose that we use our savings, that means using already earned income, to purchase goods and services. While it would be difficult for businesses of the size of major construction firms or manufacturers to do this, it would improve the economy immensely if the average Joe did it. After all, it wasn't until around 40 years ago that consumer credit became easier to obtain for the average person. Until then, most people saved what they earned to purchase things. Credit cards and loans were rare.

In this time of Christmas spending, when shoppers can go over-board with gifts, this is wise counsel.

This is your ever-loving curmudgeon signing off for the day. Have a great weekend.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

When life isn't fair, I start thinking.

"Lie isn't fair" has been a statement that I have heard more times than I can count. It means that things may not always go our own way and that life generally sucks some of the time. I fully understand and accept that.

The motto at the top of this blog has added "but people can be" to the phrase for good reason. Since people have created this society and civilization and it's rules, people have the opportunity to right wrongs and make the world a better place. It throws the onus back on people to at least try and make this world a better place to live.

Notice how I said "make the world a better place" and not "make people better". Like Malcolm Reynolds in the movie Serenity, I don't hold that making people conform to what others believe is "better" can solve the world's ills. I propose that we change how we do things is the better alternative.

So when things go wrong, I start thinking. I begin with the question: Why is this the way it is? and work from there with the limited resources and understanding of the world that I have. Then I run it around in my subconscious or wherever these things go to come up with solutions. They may not always work, but then, I figure that I can be "more right than wrong" to suit my understanding of the problem. When others tell me otherwise, then I will change the idea.

In my experience, people have more common wisdom than the "experts" will ever want to admit. And those with a moderate amount of common sense can make this world a "better place" without having to get permission from these same experts.

It happens all the time: parents will have a child that has some difficulty with life and the first thing they do is go to the "experts" who will plan out strategies, lessons and other time-intensive work just to make things better. More often than not, medication is also involved. What usually ends up happening is that the parents are out hundreds or thousands of dollars, the experts have their theories validated and the situation really never changes. Sometimes the kids are worse off than before.

Or take another example: traffic control. Planners will make studies, monitor daily traffic volumes and then suggest to city council that x, y and z changes must be made in order to make traffic flow smoother. The usual end result is more of the same: traffic snarls and lost time waiting for some line of cars to move forward 50 feet in 20 minutes.

In both examples, parents and drivers are generally pushed aside to make room for the experts and their book-based theories to do their thing.

Whats wrong with the picture is that common sense and the wisdom of generations of parents and drivers gets ignored.

With this blog, I intend to set the balance in favour of common sense. I will infuriate readers, confound them and give them something to think about using their critical thinking skills. I will also try to inspire as many of the speakers at TED.com inspire me with ideas and suggestions on how to make this world a better place for all of us.

Life isn't fair, but people can be"" is a challenge to get up and do something to right the daily wrongs we face. Because we need more right, less wrong in our lives.