Hi, everyone. Thank you again, all of you, for your work over cycle one. I enjoyed reading your posts, your responses as well as the many insights you brought to the cycle’s readings and themes.
Before I get into my own thoughts, let me briefly introduce you to your classmates. We are a relatively small bunch this semester, only thirteen of us. But within that thirteen, there is a lot of diversity. There are six of us currently working in Michigan, with three of us in the Detroit metropolitan area, one of us on the west side of the state, and the other two in the Lansing area. We also have three colleagues working in Illinois, one in Texas, one in Nebraska, and one in Florida. A neat set of locations that includes urban, suburban and rural communities.
In terms of grade levels, we have one colleague currently working in pre-school, four in kindergarten, one in fourth grade, one in middle school, four in high school, and one in a graduate program in education.
In terms of subject-area expertise at the upper levels, we are concentrated in math and Spanish (with four Spanish teachers!).
For such a small course, then, there is some neat overlap in working conditions. I hope you will seek each other out and build those meaningful professional connections!
As a parent, as a teacher, and as a keen observer of the life of children—I guess I’m still a child at heart, which is why I enjoy coaching youth sports so much:)—I find a lot of richness in these readings. They help us to realize that the incredible changes that have beset our economies over the past two decades, with the rise of globalization, are mirrored by changes in the way many children in the US are being raised.
As many of you noted, it is fascinating to speculate upon the degree to which changes in work and income are connected to the ways in which people parent. As sad as it is to ask, has the growth in income inequality and the stagnation of middle-class wages increased social anxiety to such a degree that parents no longer believe their children have a future worth inheriting?
Yet globalization has impacted national economies across the globe and it is not at all clear that “helicopter parenting” has now become the international norm. Indeed, if anything, our readings this week suggest that some cultures have been immune to the social anxiety that seems such a large part of American life.
One fascinating reflection shared by several of you relates to the decline in shared public life in the US.
No doubt, our American individualism can be a good thing. It does allow for that uniquely American experience of going of the grid—for even just a moment—of getting lost, of being alone, and of taking stock. Such moments have an Emersonian type of beauty to them and can certainly build a lot of self reliance.
On the other hand, you get the by-stander effect and the Genovese case.
A strong public culture with a sense of shared responsibility for public space has much to recommend it. In France, where I have both taught and done research, I noticed a few interesting things in this regard.
One was the lycée where I did my dissertation. Ninety minutes for lunch, with no adult supervision. Time to eat a good meal, hang out, smoke, play guitar or soccer. No teacher watching everyone eat or relax.
Why would they? They want to eat and relax too. Part of what I find so exhausting about k-12 teaching is the relentless pace and the need to monitor kids in the halls, at lunch, and on the playground. It means we can't quite spare kids the time they need to relax, and so we don't get that time, as teachers, either.
Another example from France was the park my family used to like to visit. At first, my kids would patiently wait in line to get on the tire swing. They wanted, like every polite American kid, their turn . . . to go on the swing by themselves.
But that's not how French playgrounds work. You just keep adding kids to the tire swing. It's inclusive, not individual. So finally the other kids just told them, "get on with us!"
In these examples, we can see that is the group that ensures social norms, including social norms about what is safe and what is allowed. If you want to make use of public space, then that entails being part of a group, and adapting to its implicit rules and structures.
Simply put, in such a society, there is less need for parents to supervise their children constantly.
One of the sadder points of reflecting upon these posts for this cycle is the degree to which the theme of the “two Americas” came out. Clearly, we have some children in our society who are so sheltered that there is actually a need for some infusion of danger into their lives. On the other hand, we have some children who are constantly beset by violence and the threat of violence in their lives.
Yet, at the end of the day, we must not equate risk with danger. Risk, properly understood, is the subjective assessment of a situation. It is a clear seeing of the environment in light of our present abilities.
Jumping out of an airplane would be suicidal for me, but for a well trained solider, it is almost routine.
Risk is always present in life—ah, the dreaded paper cut!—so part of growing up is learning to assess what we can do, what we can almost do (with some help), and what we cannot do. Children who live in violent and dangerous surroundings probably need as much diverse types of risk exposure in their lives as anyone else.
The question, then, is what we are adults are going to do about this?
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