
When the Culture War Comes For the kids - bkohlmann
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/10/when-the-culture-war-comes-for-the-kids/596668/
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ZhuanXia
Bryan Caplan’s Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids is worth a read for anyone
who is taking parenting too seriously.

Developmental psychologists have brainwashed the public into thinking children
can be ruined by insufficiency dedicated parenting. But for generations
developmental psychologists were Lysenkoist hacks who didn’t realize their
studies were confounded by basically all mental traits being extremely
heritable.

The most important influence parents have on their children is at conception.
If you want a smart kid, choosing a very smart mate is far more effective than
any amount of mostly ineffective enrichment activities.

If you really care so much about the social status of your future children,
marry well to a person high in the traits you value, preferably from a family
high in said traits. Then have a lot of kids. Chances are one of them will
achieve something!

Don’t get caught in the extracurricular signalling racket/cargo cult. Let the
kids do what they want within reason. Public school will be fine. If you don’t
want to ferry your kid around to various enrichment activities, don’t. Your
time has value too. You care for your children; you do not serve them.

In most cases the kids don’t want to to do them anyway and will develop their
own interests they will be far more enthusiastic about.

~~~
ashleyn
Neither of my parents are particularly "bright" and today I work as a computer
programmer. I'm skeptical of this premise.

~~~
deogeo
A source for the heritability claim, to allay your scepticism:
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/06/heritability-...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/06/heritability-
of-behavioral-traits/)

It shows the heritability of intelligence at age 26 as 88%. Perhaps you're one
of the 12% (forgive the statistically meaningless phrase - you get the idea).
Or perhaps you underestimate your parents.

~~~
AstralStorm
Likely the latter. Do not conflate renumeration or political views with
intelligence, curiosity or just street smarts.

All of these forms of intelligence are genetically valid, but phenotype is
determined by environment. You may get a great farmer, or you might get a
researcher depending on environmental conditions...

So yes, they do matter a lot on outcome. If you haven't found a computer
early, there could be a problem of you being outmatched and not proceeding
alongside that path.

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epx
When people come to me with this kind of preoccupation I remember them Steve
Jobs dropped out of college. Heck, my BIL dropped out of high school and makes
twice as much as me as a commercial pilot. The most difficult way to suceed is
trying to go the same "proven" path as everybody else. And crying over your
privilege instead of putting it into good use doesn't help anybody, either.
The racist that helped put a man on the Moon helped more people than a million
SJWs.

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gedy
It seems like the educated, power-couple types who obsess about pre-schools,
private schools for young children would be capable of and better served by
one parent not working full time and participating in their child's education
themselves.

~~~
AstralStorm
This does not work, a parent rarely has skill in enough of the curriculum to
do it. It is extremely hard even in one subject for a qualified teacher...

~~~
bonerman69
Right. Yep, confirmed. There are no parents on Earth who have skills enough to
teach elementary children 1 on 1 as well as the average teacher can teach 20
kids at once.

~~~
lurquer
yea, yes. Indeed, the more kids the better. 25, 30, or even 35 kids to a
single teacher is far better than 1-on-1. It's like homeopathic drugs...
sometimes just the barest infinitesimal trace of a medicine is better than
than a full dose.

Ha

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antisthenes
What an incredible article.

I'm really stunned at the depths of lunacy of NY educators- I guess the
problem is worse than I thought when kids themselves are asking parents wtf
the educators are doing (and why they are focusing on anything but knowledge
of how things are).

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RhysU
Read long enough for this:

> “Isn’t school for learning math and science and reading,” [our son] asked us
> one day, “not for teachers to tell us what to think about society?”

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mattrp
The power couple / private school saga was only the first part of a very long
article. Keep reading - it gets worse. Way worse.

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Causality1
This obsession with childhood min-maxing is not helping them. Stop worrying
about getting your kid into the most private school and getting them a career
where they make the most money and start thinking about how you can make them
the happiest, and how you can raise them so they make other people happy too.
There are enough ambitious assholes who had to wear a necktie to elementary
school in the world. We need more kids who like themselves and more adults who
don't hate everyone else.

~~~
chachachoney
If those parents stopped obsessing over their offspring's social and
institutional metrics, they'd likely have to confront their own psychological
and existential voids.

~~~
RhysU
"[C]onfront[ing] their own psychological and existential voids" is a luxury in
which parents should indulge only after making sure their children are all
right.

When you have a kid, the first duty is for the kid to be alright. Navel-gazing
is only constructive for the kid when it improves the kid's situation.

~~~
chachachoney
What's the deal with the use of brackets in [C]onfront[ing]?

I don't disagree with your comment, but I think you're taking something that
was said descriptively as if it were prescriptive.

~~~
RhysU
Ah, my bad, I'd read prescriptive. The brackets were because I couldn't figure
how else to make the quote read sensibly in a sentence.

