Why raise your boys like orphans?
The orphanage was a great innovation in the Roman Empire, considering that the alternative for children was death by exposure (a sort of non-invasive alternative to abortion). Christians used to gather up abandoned children and raise them.
Institutions are efficient for children who don’t have parents, but hey, your children do have them. So the author of Mommy Life points out that you don’t need to homeschool little boys the way they’re taught in public school. Public schools work better when little boys behave like little girls. But little boys act like little boys because they have hormones that you don’t want to eliminate. Trust me. Testosterone is useful in the life of a man.
Instead (writing from her Montessori background), she says, “The most important things the young child needs to learn are the ability to concentrate, to exercise independence in a constructive way, to keep order in the environment, to know the difference between right and wrong, to develop self-control and to serve others.”
That’s what I’m emphasizing with my son. He doesn’t need to learn to sit still yet. He’s learning to concentrate for longer periods of time. He’s learning how to express his disagreement with his parents in a respectful way. And he’s learning self-control.
Dominion Family has an intriguing thought about a common institutional educational tactic: “That is preparing the child for more education rather than gifting them with a lifelong love of poetic knowledge.”
November 12th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
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