Tuesday 14 September 2010

Letting children choose...

A few days ago I wrote about the idea of giving children and teenagers the facts about things and then letting them make their own choices. I expressed the view that this is the last thing that most parents do and that in general our idea of 'giving them the facts' means launching a ruthless and sophisticated PsyOps campaign in order to bring them into the fold and compel them to adopt our own prejudices about the world. I want today to consider the wisdom of allowing them to make choices about their long term future in the first place, whether or not they access to objective information. In other words, even when they have got hold of the facts, should they be given a free hand in choosing what to do? Should we ask our children if they wish to study for and sit examinations? Should we let them decide whether they attend school or are educated at home?

Anybody with a child or teenager will be familiar with the experience of seeing their child do something dangerous or mad and then asking the child afterwards, 'Why on earth did you do that?' The answer is usually a shrug of the shoulders and perhaps a few words of explanation along the lines of 'I don't know' or 'It seemed like a good idea'. I did any number of stupid things as a teenager. One that sticks in the memory is the day I was walking past a multi-story car-park with some friends. I was fifteen. Without any warning, I suddenly bolted from the group and ran to the car-park. I then climbed up the outside, right to the top. I could not even today, over forty years later, explain why I did this; it just seemed a good idea at the time! I am sure that adult readers will have their own cringe-making memories of doing stupid things at a similar age. These might include girls having unprotected sex with complete strangers, swallowing pills containing unknown substances, getting into a car driven by a drunk person and hitch-hiking home at two in the morning. It's what teenagers do.

The reason that children and teenagers do all sorts of silly and hazardous things is because they do not have the ability which adults have of seeing the probable or possible consequences of their actions. They act now and think later. For a twelve or thirteen year-old, the present is real and the future a vague and meaningless abstraction. A month is long time, a year is an eternity and five years in the future is an inconceivably distant point even to contemplate. This is of course very right and proper. We would not really want our children to be constantly fretting about the future; if they can't live for the present now, whenever can they? This does mean though that they are not really the best people to make plans for five or ten years in the future. We do that better because we are used to it. For us, a ten year plan is quite a manageable chunk of time. After all, it is less than half the term of the average mortgage! Asking a twelve year-old to envisage what he will be doing in ten years, on the other hand, is utterly mad. He cannot possibly know what steps he should be taking at the age of twelve to secure his long term future. We see this very clearly when children at school are choosing their options for GCSEs. Here is some advice given to thirteen and fourteen year-olds in Year 9 at a local secondary school;

' You'll be studying these subjects for the next two years, so it's important that you enjoy doing them. What could be worse than being stuck in a classroom doing a subject you wished you'd left behind?
That said, you should also try and think about the future. Do you need this subject for your future plans such as university or a job?'

This is sheer lunacy! They don't have any future plans for jobs or university at thirteen; not unless they are very weird and atypical children. What sort of factors do these kids really take into consideration when they choose their options? Here are some genuine quotations from actual children in Year 9. 'I wanted to do history 'cause my mates are doing it'. 'I'm not doing RS, I hate that Miss Jones that takes it'. 'Art's easier than geography'. 'I hate French!'.
These are children for Heaven's sake, you can't possibly expect them to make a reasoned decision, weighing up the various pros and cons, considering their future job or university course.

Now I know that we home educating parents have children who are smarter/more sensitive/sensible/thoughtful/artistic/socially aware and so on than schooled children, but all the same, their brains are still wired up in the same haphazard and irrational way as other teenagers. You can't even rely upon them to put their dirty clothes in the washing machine; how on earth can we depend upon them to make serious decisions about their adult life? These decisions are likely to have long lasting effects upon their lives. Studying or not studying for GCSEs, choosing which subjects to study, taking an OU course, that sort of thing

So If allowing our kids to decide is a little too risky, then who on earth should we expect to make choices about their future, including the nature and extent of their education? Wait! I think I know the answer to this one. That would be us as the parents and responsible adults, making the decisions on behalf of our children based upon our superior knowledge and infinitely greater ability to plan ahead. Frankly, the idea of abdicating responsibility for my child's education and allowing her to make the choices at a young age would have struck me as foolhardy and reckless in the extreme. The only sufferer from such a course of action would have been my daughter herself and that alone was good enough reason for not doing it.

19 comments:

  1. Old Webb says-should we expect to make choices about their future, including the nature and extent of their education? Wait! I think I know the answer to this one. That would be us as the parents and responsible adults, making the decisions on behalf of our children based upon our superior knowledge and infinitely greater ability to plan ahead.

    yes so i chose that i want my child to go to Eton College! lol

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  2. 'yes so i chose that i want my child to go to Eton College! lol'

    Better get off to work to earn that money, then.

    Mrs Anon

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  3. Mrs Anon says-Better get off to work to earn that money, then.

    you need a very high paying job like David Cameron parents had? or become an M.P? lord? LOL

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  4. It's interesting, isn't it? I didn't force my child to do IGCSE's and I didn't wait until they expressed an interest. An opportunity to take some, in a group of home edded kids, came up and I asked, 'Do you want to do this?' He did.

    That seemed to be the response of most, if not all, of the kids involved. Given the choice, they did seem to want to learn in groups in a structured way, working towards exams.

    It was very unexpected in many ways. They'd experienced the whole spectrum of educational approaches up to that point. Some had been AE'd, some had had a very structured education for years, other's had had a very flexible, ecclectic education but not AE. Yet these kids had all jumped at the chance of being in a group and doing exams together.

    I wonder how unique that situation is/was? Of course, I don't know how many other teens in the area had been asked and has said no. (If any.)

    Mrs Anon

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  5. 'you need a very high paying job like David Cameron parents had? or become an M.P? lord? LOL'


    Better go and get one then, Mr Williams.

    Are you not at work, yet?
    Mrs Anon

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  6. Three points spring to mind: 'I wanted to do history 'cause my mates are doing it'. 'I'm not doing RS, I hate that Miss Jones that takes it'. 'Art's easier than geography'. 'I hate French!' all suggests that the children in question probably wouldn't learn much in those subjects should they be coerced against their wishes into taking them. Which would therefore be a pointless, self-defeating exercise.

    "These might include girls having unprotected sex with complete strangers, swallowing pills containing unknown substances, getting into a car driven by a drunk person and hitch-hiking home at two in the morning. It's what teenagers do."

    Not our teenagers. Home education allows for proper supervision, doesn't it? This might seem to contradict what I'm about to say below, but our teenagers were always free to choose whether to stay in our comfortable, well-equipped, friendly and welcoming house or to go out onto the cold streets, take drugs and have unprotected sex. Not surprisingly, they all consistently chose the first option. There are major benefits to being friendly with one's children and this was just one of them for us.

    "You can't even rely upon them to put their dirty clothes in the washing machine; how on earth can we depend upon them to make serious decisions about their adult life? These decisions are likely to have long lasting effects upon their lives. Studying or not studying for GCSEs, choosing which subjects to study, taking an OU course, that sort of thing"

    Our children, now adults in their 20s, all working and living happy, industrious lives, say that one of the best thing we gave them was the freedom to make choices. Closely followed by very effective support for the choices they made. This has taught them something of which many of their contemporaries seem to be tragically unaware: that they are free to make choices, even major ones. Being well practised in so doing, the ones they make are eminently sensible.

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  7. Maybe the bad choices many teenagers make stem from lack of practice? If you have always made choices from a young age you are used to weighing up the pros and cons and tend to make good choices, in our experience anyway.

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  8. 'Maybe the bad choices many teenagers make stem from lack of practice? If you have always made choices from a young age you are used to weighing up the pros and cons and tend to make good choices, in our experience anyway. '

    Interesting point. It can certainly be the case that children sheltered from all choice sometimes go completely mad when they find that they are in control of their lives. It's a bit like those kids who have never been allowed to cross the road by themselves; when they do finally do so, they don't know how to go about it safely. This is why child casualties of road accidents peak at eleven when many children are finally allowed to go to school alone.

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  9. 'Maybe the bad choices many teenagers make stem from lack of practice? If you have always made choices from a young age you are used to weighing up the pros and cons and tend to make good choices, in our experience anyway. '

    My experience is that a child/teen's propensity for recklessness is more to do with personality. I've found, in families with more than one child, there is usually one which is more of a risk-taker than the others. These kids tend to need to make their own mistakes rather than learn from the consequences of other people's mistakes or respond to appeals to reason.

    Their parents are usually the ones going prematurely grey :-)

    Mrs Anon

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  10. 'Their parents are usually the ones going prematurely grey :-)'

    As indeed were mine! You could be right about this. Some young people are simply impulsive and incapable of seeing more than a few seconds into the future. Sometimes this can be a symptom of sociopathy; more frequently it is just that their brains are immature and they act like small children, grabbing or jumping without thinking. I'm sure we have all seen young people like this. Even apart from this though and with the most sensible and cautious child, it is still hard for children to think sensibly more than a few weeks ahead. When I was thirteen, the idea that I would one day be an adult holding down a job and raising a family just seemed too fantastic for words. I certainly didn't plan for this and adjust my wishes and lifestyle to facilitate this outcome during my teenage years.

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  11. " When I was thirteen, the idea that I would one day be an adult holding down a job and raising a family just seemed too fantastic for words. I certainly didn't plan for this and adjust my wishes and lifestyle to facilitate this outcome during my teenage years."

    You might have been different if you'd been home educated though.

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  12. 'You might have been different if you'd been home educated though.'

    Good point, except that all the evidence suggests that this impulsiveness and inability to plan far ahead is a neurological matter and not one of environment. In other words, as the human brain matures, it changes. This is why adults restrain their impulses and reflect upon the consequences of their actions in a way that children do not, even home educated ones.

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  13. From what I've just read here, http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/resources/pdf/BRAIN.pdf, it sounds as though the branching of neurons in the pre-frontal cortex
    becomes much more complex during adolescence in response to a more intricate web of information flow. If this is true, isn't this a bit like the rapid neuron growth during the first few years? If so, would limiting a teenagers choices also limit neuron growth because they need to be used to develop? Obviously teenagers still need lots of support from parents, but making their own choices may increase their brain's capacity to make choices in future.

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  14. 'but making their own choices may increase their brain's capacity to make choices in future.'

    Well of course that is perfectly true. However some decisions can have such far-reaching consequences that I do not think it fair to give teenagers the chance to screw up their lives. I am all in favour of allowing children and teenagers to make decisions and have choices. Some choices though can be very bad. The decision of a fourteen year old girl to get drunk and then hitch a lift home is an example of the sort of choice that I would probably try not to give to a child. The decision about the type and degree of further education can also have very good or bad consequences and I do not think that young people are really capable of making a clear sighted decision about this. So decisions, yes; decisions about things which could wreck their lives, probably not.

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  15. Hopefully, if they have had lots of practice in making many minor decisions during their childhood, the importance and significance of which increase as they grow, they will make the 'right' choice and not make serious mistakes that cause harm to themselves. This has been our experience with children up to the age of 21 so far. For instance, the mistake of getting so drunk they were throwing up whilst semi-conscious was made whilst they were safe at home, aged about 16. They learnt from this mistake and have always drunk in moderation outside the home (from age 18) as a result.

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  16. "So decisions, yes; decisions about things which could wreck their lives, probably not."

    But we all have to let our children make decisions about things that could "wreck their lives". That's how life works unless you want to keep them as prisoners and wreck their lives for them. The first time they pop out to the corner shop (no matter how well you might think you've judged their skills or level of development) you are taking the risk that they might "wreck" or, indeed, end their life with a moment of careless daydreaming as they cross the road.

    The fact is that none of us can ensure a particular future for our children. While they are young, all we can do is give them the best life we can and act in what we hope will be their best interests for the future. We fool ourselves if we think that anything - and certainly something as simple as the gaining of qualifications - is any kind of guarantee of future happiness.

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  17. 'We fool ourselves if we think that anything - and certainly something as simple as the gaining of qualifications - is any kind of guarantee of future happiness.'

    There are of course no guarantees of anything in life. We do however know that some circumstances are more likely to brink happiness than others. Being rich might not make people happy, but poverty certainly causes a great deal of unhappiness. An expetional woman like Helen Keller might be happy although deaf and blind, but in general blindness and deafness make for less happy lives than being able to hear and see. What we can do is steer our children in the direction of the sort of things which are more likely to produce happiness than they are misery and then hope for the best.

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  18. We fool ourselves if we think that anything - and certainly something as simple as the gaining of qualifications - is any kind of guarantee of future happiness.'

    I agree with that well said!

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  19. "Well of course that is perfectly true. However some decisions can have such far-reaching consequences that I do not think it fair to give teenagers the chance to screw up their lives."

    But this development goes on into the mid-twenties when many young people have left home and have to make their own choices. I would rather they go into the world with lots of practice at making choices and not handicapped by a brain that has not been given enough practice to enable the relevant neurons to develop as fully as possible.

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