How to Educate Children

1. Un/Wanted

Is the child “wanted” or unwanted? Is the child an accident? Does the parent(s) detest, resent, and hate his/her own child?

2. Genes

Intelligence is the greatest Human inheritance, surpassing all wealth, and pervading throughout all aspects of life. Intelligence is the best indication of “superior breeding choices” or in other words, familial lineage. Thus the second point and question is, how intelligent (genetically gifted) is the child? Very much? Average? Or not at all, retarded or mentally ill?

3. Environment

Where does the child live? Inner-city ghetto? Suburbs? Rural countryside? The environment of a child directly impacts his/her upbringing. It also flows into the final point.

4. Socialization

Is the child being socialized well, or, being bullied and outcast? As recently mentioned, bullying, abuse, and neglect can occur directly as the result of point #1, being an ‘unwanted’ child. Unwanted/bullied/abused/neglected children will suffer and develop many illnesses and diseases which will manifest throughout their “adult and mature” years. I quote that remark, because, neglect/misery actually stunts growth in every way. Thus there are people who look physically aged or an adult, but, retain the minds of teenagers, adolescents, children, or worse.

Next steps:

From these premises and points, a general idea of “education” can occur. Obvious there is a range and degree of children by aptitude, breed, environment, background, and personality. Some children come from a loving home, others do not. Some children’s parents can afford a luxurious and high priced private school, most others can not. Some children are broken, abused, bashed, raped, and life is a living hell, other children have life much easier.

So taking all factors and context into account (as any philosopher should be doing presumably anyway), the “general” education of children will be much different than tutoring them. Tutoring is a high class and privileged method of education. Instead of 1 teacher per classroom of 30 students. A tutor offers direct education, 1 to 1. Some richer and upper class homes even provide several tutors for their child, so 7 teachers to 1 student.

Tutoring DEALS could be made even by the lower class parents who had less readily available finances in a barter type system and with younger tutors. Say a poor single-mother could make some kind of swap/trade with a junior high student or high school student for her children to receive a more premium one-on-one instruction.

Prestige and Class:

Essentially a ‘superior’ quality education is evidenced, directly and obviously, by the teacher-to-student ratio. The more teachers a student has, almost always, the better education/nurturing that child receives. Thus 10 teachers to 1 student will produce the highest quality and nurtured individual. Such an individual would move about life most efficiently and with great dignity compared to all other students with a lesser ratio. The 1-to-1 is still rare. In the u.s. the average child has a 1:30 ratio. So about 1 teacher per 30 students. This would constitute an ‘inferior’ quality education.

There are exceptions, like a student who is self-motivated and driven to learn, in spite of his or her circumstances and opportunities, or in spite of qualified and focused teachers. These exceptions only enhance the general points. Because hypothetically, if an exceptionally gifted student were focused upon, 1:1 or 10:1, then that would produce the highest type and quality of “human being”.

Low class, public-state education, is more a free-for-all. Like a family of children fighting, competing, and vying between themselves for the attention and affection of a parent. The same occurs in every classroom throughout general education. The students fight and compete for the favoritism of specific teachers. Because teachers control the grades. And “being stupid” is often compensated by other factors. The school football quarterback, alpha jock, is going to get special favoritism and leniency from teachers, so that he can “focus on the game” rather than studying as much as other students. Problematic and disruptive, resentful and/or stupider students, will be punished accordingly and disfavored by the teachers.

These ‘disfavored’ students eventually grow resentful against “the system” and turn against it, a degree of anti-social behavior. Those who “cannot make the cut” in adolescent years, carry such attitudes for the rest of life. However, as expected, average students and most people are “pro-system” and support the status quo, by the specific ways in which they graduated their general public schooling.

Some poor families, and especially rural-country-conservative families, use elders, grandparents, uncles and aunts, family friends as fill-ins for baby-sitting, care, and other educational means. This would constitute types of “private” schooling and education. Some families do not need to hire a tutor at all when the familial, tribal, or clan patriarch (grandfather/godfather) serves such a role, and passes on critical information to progeny.

I have my fat for that purpose, Wendy.

You guys are taken in by the child victim cult. You are not giving them even a chance (I do resent you just writing off orphans away). Even 200 years ago, children’s lives were a lot worse off. Did all of them grow up as messed up adults? Should I start posting historical photos of children working in factories and sweatshops, and then you can tell me how none of them grew up to be succcessful? These things are still happening in other parts of the world and you already treat them (as adults) as some kind of subhumans or permanently messed up people just because their living conditions or upbringing did not live up to your 1 st world standards. These same people probably know more about the realities of life than any ‘cultured’ educated person who came from a well-to do family.

Just so know, understandings of expressions like ‘child abuse’ and ‘child neglect’ vary greatly across the world. Nowadays, you make a seven year old work in the field and and you could be charged with ‘child abuse’. You leave your kid home alone for a day or so and you may be charged with child neglect and have the kid taken away from you. (However, it seems okay to let your kid play video games all day every day). Today’s kids are growing up with entitlement complexes. Have you seen a kid throwing a tantrum just because he didn’t get the last edition of a video game he wanted? There are kids in the world who still don’t have clean drinking water and they don’t complain this much.

I hear ya Pandabear. People with more complain more because they have things to complain about. The people with nothing have nothing to complain about.

Where’s the quality in this type of education? No, the poor and rural still have options that are better than family or neighborly rejects. Come on, most family and friends will not be highly intelligent, highly gifted individuals with specific in-depth understanding of higher math, science, foreign languages, specialized artisans, philosophy, music, sports. Family is mostly good for teaching manners, values, and basic how-to stuff. If you’re lucky the men won’t scratch their balls profusely or spit indoors and the women won’t adjust their boobage often or pick their noses.

Same as anything else. Just as some public schools are exceptional and you want to send your kid there, so too are there some nobler families who actually raise children better than others. Exceptionalism is hard to find.

What I’m talking about has more to do with modern society. The traditional family unit retained and respected elders. And from elders, could pass on knowledge and wisdom to their children and grandchildren. Although modern people seem to hate the idea or reality of tradition and “gender normative” families.

I’m not talking about average people, white trash, and poor people who are daftly stupid. Average people and families, probably should not take an active role in general education. That’s what public schools are for, for them. Average humans hand their children over to institutions, to raise, because the institutions tend to raise them than the parent could.

After all, how many parents know calculus and can teach that to their children? That’s right…

You’re a moron who’s denying the fact that parents can create problems and that these problems have to be resolved by thinking about them.
This means by identifying and eliminating their causes.

And yes, children without parents are less likely to succeed in life.
Especially if they were abused by their so-called parents.
This is why we have families.
Why do you think we have families? Because it’s fun to have them?
How much of reality are you going to deny in order to make yourself feel better about yourself?

But success is a relative thing.
If you’re an animal, which judging by everything you say I am sure you are, then your standards would be pretty low.
And simply being alive would be good enough for you.
Normally, since that’s all you had anyways.

I’m glad that Pandora brought the matter of moral responsibility to this topic, as that is essential to any real ‘education’ of a child. How do children become responsible? Do all become so? Aren’t many adults irresponsible? Shouldn’t many adults not have children in the first place, but do anyway? What is moral responsibility anyway? Are we beholden to others? Why? How?

Magnus makes a lot of good points. It’s irrational and outright stupid to pretend that children can “do it on their own”. Not really. Many some exceptional, rare children, can “do it on their own” without instruction. Maybe that would entail a self-learning child. But I disagree, even with the most exceptional and individualistic child, guidance and nurturing is still required.

Children associate problem-solving with pain-pleasure responses. Thus problems are split into three categories: to solve a problem to prevent pain, to solve a problem to invite pleasure, or both at the same time. Pain is more obvious. If a child burns his or her hand then instinct and reflex, hardwired into the nervous system, yank the hand back and the child cries. Thus there are many instinctive “self-learning” mechanisms within humans, and all lifeforms. Pleasure is more complex. Offering a candy to a group of children in kindergarten is motivating so that the children compete and struggle to attain that candy. But what if a child doesn’t want candy? Pleasures come in many shapes and sizes.

“Being right”, Righteousness, is a form of pleasure. This comes from “arguing for the sake of arguing”. This is another example, of a more complex pleasure/luxury.

Thus everybody is driven by particular motivations. I would say the “grand reward”, philosophically speaking, is wisdom. The reward and pleasure of doing hard work, reasoning out the world, identifying causes, and the causes within yourself that many people lie about or bury down deep, and applying all of it, can be rewarding when realized and brought about. For example, a great architect draws up plans for a beautiful house. He accomplishes the outline. But that’s not good enough. He builds the house next. It is a lot of hard work, from the designing process all the way to putting up the walls and roof. In the end, his “reward”, his “privilege”, is living in a sheltered, comfortable location. And also the Pride of doing it himself.

So Pandora is wrong with simplifying everything down to “do it on your own”. It’s not as simple as that. Morality implies society. People interact, and are forced to “deal” with each other daily. Many people have likes and dislikes that cross. But people get along, publicly, whereas they would not privately.

Building a skyscraper, a huge bridge, an aircraft carrier, all achievements like this require a tremendous amount of Morality, of subservient workers and laborers to carry out the orders of those who impose them, and those that drew up the plans for them.

I’d say that moral education is advanced, and crosses over into real “Culture”. That’s what culture is, at heart, morality. It is the ways in which people interact, master-slave relationships are formed, also referred as “the dominance hierarchy”, and then society “progresses” according, most of all, to the desires of those who are most dominating and domineering. There’s a difference between leaders and followers. Children express such differences too. Societies are mostly comprised of followers, the more ‘feminine’ disposition. A more masculine society would be more infighting, chaotic, violent, and socially unstable, anti-social.

You’re just shifting away the responsibility for your own life into someone else - and you are perpetuating a victim mentality. It’s someone else’s fault! Who said life is fair, or even should be fair? Alright, I’ll be an animal like moron just so that you can feel justified in defending your own hurt feelings about life.

Pandora, how does one become autonomous, not a victim in life?

Are some, rarer people, merely “born that way”? Is it random? Can it be taught, or educated? You aren’t validating your claims with reasoning or demonstrations.

While I agree with premise, that victimizing yourself is wrong, moral agency has to begin somewhere and somehow. So the onus is on you, by your own admission (you are responsible), to prove how and why that is true. And another question, can a victim ever become “not a victim”? Don’t some people become morally responsible, forced into facing consequences of their own actions?

Modern civilizations and societies have many safety nets in place. An average person isn’t “allowed to fail” too much (law and order, crime and punishment systems). For example, suicide is illegal. The very fact that suicide is illegal, proves my points, that “the system”, the state, society, directly interferes with personal, individual moral autonomy. If society takes away your “right” to life and death then obviously you cannot be completely responsible, as you claim to purport.

Shouldn’t suicide be legal? Aren’t religious people wrong to say you’ll go to hell if you commit suicide? Are they wrong, or are you wrong?

I was talking about the attitude one adopts when things are not going his way. I am not saying you shouldn’t be unrealistic about where you stand but the next action is still behind you, or you are defined by your actions, regardless of circumstances. And yes, I believe that some people are born fighters and others are natural born whiners who would blame everything and everyone under the sun for the way they are, in other words, for their incompetence.
Oh, so your mom didn’t tuck you into bed for the night, and tell you how special you are so you were bullied at school because you lacked that self-confidence to stand up for yourself (something you believe that should have been given to you on a silver platter with warm milk and cookies like the rest of the kids in the neighborhood). And so what do you do now? Blame your mom for everything that’s gone wrong in your life?

This is the same reason why people are now into self-help books; because they want others to give them all the answers to how they should be in this world, the best that they can be. They want the opinions of experts and results of accredited studies. People who know better. Personal Trial and error is just too troublesome and time consuming, apparently. Just give me the answers and tell me what to do so I can just cruise through life!

The problem is that you’re an imbecile.
An arrogant imbecile.

Your psychoanalysis is incorrect.
All it does is it makes you blind to reality.

I never said or implied that life is fair, you cretin.
Nor did I say that it should be fair.
You imagined that I did.
You imagined it because you are self-absorbed.
Which is typical of narcissists.

You need to start paying attention to what other people are saying and stop confusing them with people from your past (presumably ex-boyfriends who spent all of their time doing nothing but playing video games and who frustrated the fuck out of you because they did not do what you wanted them to do.)

When you’re hit in the head, you imbecile, it’s not your fault for being hit in the head.
Unless it is you hit yourself in the head.
Then it’s your fault because you caused the effect through your actions.
Or if you did something that made it more likely to be hit in the head.
Then you’re partially responsible.
But if you didn’t do any of the above, then it’s not your fault.
You didn’t cause it.
Someone or something else caused it.
That’s how reality works.

Let me explain how stupid you are by giving you an analogue of what you’re doing here.
Suppose my computer is shutting down at random intervals.
I send it to some PC service and they tell me “we blame it on the power supply unit”.
I turn around and tell them “look, you’re suffering from victim mentality, you need to grow up, you need to stop shifting responsibility to others, you need to solve your problems on your own”.
What do you think their response would be?
Would do you think, imbecile?

The only relevant question is how accurate one’s interpretation of reality is.
Yours certainly isn’t since you have this very naive, delusional, idea that we are responsible for everything that happens to us.

When a narcissistic parent causes his child to be socially inept by being overly-critical then he’s the cause of his child’s problems.
He’s the one to take the blame.
Not the child itself.

When this is not so, then it is not so.
The parent is not to take the blame.

You are so retarded you can’t admit so much.

The word “victim” simply refers to someone who has been wronged or harmed by something or someone else.
When person A hits person B in the head then person B is rightly said to be a victim of the situation.
Because person B suffers the effect of the cause that is person A.
That’s all it means.

“Victim mentality” on the other hand can either refer to someone who’s frequently victimized, especially if that someone is easily hurt, or it can refer to unrealistic interpretations of causal relations.
It is difficult to say what exactly it refers to.

When someone is regularly wronged or harmed in life then he has no other choice but to feel victimized.
To see himself as a constant victim.
Because that’s what’s going on in reality.
He’s simply being honest about reality.
Unless he wants to be blind – basically dumb – which is what Pandora promotes.
Pandora is a retard, I think we can all agree on that.

It is both a Perception of Threat and separately, a Perception of Hope, PHT:

The perception of threat stems from a mental and emotional focus, for whichever cause, upon the idea of being the recipient of harm and hopelessness due to the actions of others (frankly who isn’t). It is a type of fatalism, yielding a habit of choosing the direction of perceived unavoidable failure (“Since life is going to push be down anyway, I will spend my efforts avoiding the bad rather than pursuing for the good” - habitually missing opportunities).

The perception of hope stems from a type of scapegoating after noting that sympathy, forgiveness, and profit is often granted based upon a social sense of “fair-play”, “justice”, and “righting the wrong”. The political “minorities”, Jews, Blacks, and Women conspicuously use victimization speech so as to gain profit from that social mindset. The more people focus on the idea that they have been a victim, the more instilled and habitual that idea becomes. The end result has both profit and loss consequences, depending on further circumstantial details.

Don’t become a victim of victim focus.
But then again, why lose out on the social profits to be gained by it?

The Wikipedia definition, and in fact, most other definitions, are very vague – they don’t explain anything.

EDIT:
So victim mentality means choosing to be a victim in order to benefit from it by provoking sympathy in others?
Is that what it is?

Intellect: a huge factor of intelligence is the ability for a human mind, individual, to accurately (higher probability) and efficiently (faster speeds) identify and predict Causes. Thus a higher intelligence will be able to discern the proper causes of events, of people or environment, than people who have low intelligence and either cannot identify a cause at all, or require lots and lots of time, and help with their reasoning, to discern a Cause. Causes are, metaphysically, patterns of existence.

Human history and morality tends toward Humanity, eventually claiming that objects cannot be the ‘Cause’ of anything but only subjects can be. This is implied in the premise of Divinity, of gods and “God”. Thus the majority of humanity, believers of the Abrahamic God (jews, christians, moslems) tend toward Creationism and the idea that a living-entity, a subject, “Caused” all things into existence. There is a lot of philosophical debate about this. Can objects “cause” things to happen? Or is causality reduced to subjects, only subjects can “cause” things to happen?

It’s a windy and rainy day. Due to excessive rain, there are some mudslides in the area. A person is walking below a cliff side, travelling between town and country. The person has walked this path throughout her life. She realizes that the weather conditions have changed, recently, but continues along the path. A small rock slide begins far above her, atop the cliff, knocking some small dirt and rocks aside. Then a boulder is dislodged, and starts plummeting down, directly toward the girl walking on the path.

Who is responsible for her danger, injury, or death? Is she responsible? Is the rock responsible? Is the weather responsible? Is god responsible?

Again, average and lower intelligent humans will not be able to identify nor discern Cause. Because most humans lack ‘Judgment’. Judgments are left to higher intelligent humans, to do the work for the rest of humanity. However, as an authority, what will you conclude about the Cause of death, should that boulder crush the girl and annihilate her? Who will you blame? Is it random? Is it reasoned?

What is the ultimate Cause to all things, all events?

More possibilities: the girl knew about the poor weather conditions, but an emergency, or somebody commanded her, to go anyway. Is the third-party responsible? Is the reason for going, responsible?

When it comes to causality, there are infinite possibilities. And so wisdom is required, along with intelligence, to effectively attribute Cause, and Blame (Judgment) to these situations.

Concerning the topic at hand, the victimization of a child. Children are obviously less responsible than adults, due to lack of maturity and wisdom. However some adults are immature and retain the childish mind even in old age. Therefore age is not a guarantee of wisdom, although it usually coincides with it. Most people learn, over time. And so most people become more responsible over time, and as adults. with this observation in mind, along with the intelligence factor, a conclusion becomes obvious. Very responsible (and Wise) people are rare among humanity. Instead most humanity has an average responsibility, or none at all.

There are “trust-factors” involved. Distrustful people, in whom you have no confidence, are irresponsible. You count on them for nothing. Because they are untrustworthy, weak, stupid, or anything else. There are plentiful types of this throughout humanity, whom society does not confide nor trust. Therefore trust is another factor of responsibility.

From these simple presumptions, it’s already clear that trust, maturity, wisdom, and intelligence all interact with causality, to form judgments. Some people’s judgments are superior, some inferior, but every person has limitations in identifying and attributing cause (Blame).

Pandora has not sufficiently made her case. She says and implies that children “must not be victims”. This is not explained, as of yet. Can a 5-year-old child accurately, properly, correctly blame others and judge the world? Can a toddler accurately identify causes? No, obviously not, so the entire matter of responsibility is a factor of age and maturity. It’s a process. It’s not absolute.

Morality is developed over time, over a lifetime in fact. Many people are inferior, to the average. And the average is inferior to the rarer types, the superior. When speaking about cause, blame, judgment, morality, wisdom, intelligence, and responsibility.

Most will remain ‘victims’ in life because being a victim is easy. It’s a decadent luxury, a fundamental tenet of modern liberal-leftism, to proclaim “I am a victim!!!” and gather rewards, leeching off the sympathy and pity of greater society. False victims should not be rewarded in such ways.

Magnus makes a more compelling case. Children are victims, due to lack of experience, age, wisdom, maturity. It’s not until post-puberty and adolescence, teenage years, that even western law admits to the autonomy of a teenager’s moral responsibility. Thus the average teenager is irresponsible for him/herself until about 18. This is the system’s compensation and historical judgment. Humans are forced into responsibility, whether you want to be or not, at age 18. The age is an estimation of averages. It maybe possible that some, rarer individuals mature much earlier, or much later.

Pandora addresses and responds to none of this. What should be explained is the exact ways-in-which a child could become self-responsible later on in development, and especially under a family, broken family, or corrupt system of abuse, where the child is antagonized, bullied, or crippled early on in life.

Don’t forget, some parents, step parents, foster parents, guardians, etc. beat or rape or kill their own children. To claim that those children are “not victims, but responsible” is very flawed and deeply immoral. It’s similar to condemning an innocent man to prison or death, for the crimes of another. Western history of law, judgment, order, trials, juries, and sentences all revolve around preventing such. To condemn innocence, to sacrifice a stranger, for the crime of another, the real criminal, is deeply immoral, wrong, and yes “evil”.