STOP - Welcome

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

We, teachers, parents, and just adults, are entrusted with the fate of children. And how we approach this difficult task depends not only on the life of a particular child, but also in the short term - the fate of our country and the world as a whole, in the management and maintenance of which our today's students will very soon join.

If we take upon ourselves the mission of educating a creative personality, then our responsibility increases significantly, since it is the creators, whether they be artists, writers, musicians or actors, who "draw" to humanity those images that will become reality in the near future. So let's figure out how we are used to teaching and educating, and are all our methods flawless?

In the process of education and upbringing of a child, a significant role is traditionally assigned to learning from negative examples. Today it is even, to some extent, a classics of pedagogy. This is how many honored teachers are brought up, this is how many parents are brought up, this is how many works of culture and art from ancient times to high-tech modern times are brought up. It is not easy to challenge generally accepted concepts, but, nevertheless, sometimes it is useful to revise "unshakable truths".

So what is the methodology for parenting on the negative? I propose to consider two of the most popular methods of presenting information.

First reception- this is a demonstration, using vivid and visual examples, what are unworthy actions, people and situations. We are methodically prepared for all kinds of problems, troubles and tragedies in the entire spectrum of their manifestation from personal to global. Is this method really flawless and effective? The experience of communicating with children and adolescents most often shows a result that is by no means expected by the methodology. To illustrate, I will cite only a few typical and widespread situations of the reaction of children's consciousness to such a system of upbringing:

*Reality is gloomy and hopeless, and it is not in our power to change it. The result is complete social apathy, pessimism, a tendency to depression, panic, and an increased sense of fear. Such a person will not be useful to himself, or to his family, or to society.

*Negativity is everywhere and in everything. So this is the norm of life. This means that there is nothing wrong or reprehensible in this. So this is the truth of life. A child who has adopted this morality, unconsciously, himself becomes a source of negativity in its various manifestations.

*The dark side of life is the power that dominates the world. This means that the best way to survive and assert your rights is to consciously accept the position of the "dark" force. Such children become street hooligans, thieves, fraudsters (both small and unobtrusive, and influential and high-ranking). This list includes terrorists, drug dealers, and … However, each of us will easily continue this list.

I would like to add one more observation to the above: seeing family dramas on the TV screen or on the stage of the theater, the child involuntarily absorbs what he saw as a model of reality, and in the future he will unconsciously begin to implement this model himself, provoke and inspire family dramas, according to the established template. If we watch films about an apocalyptic tomorrow today, we, according to the model we have read and learned, will realize our apocalypse by our own efforts and efforts. If you look closely at life, we will find a lot of evidence for this in small forms. I would like to believe that someday we will learn to learn from life.

Second receptionsubmission of information is education with the preposition "not". All of us are painfully familiar with the phrases: "Don't touch!", "Don't break!" Is it effective? Let's figure it out.

Psychologists have long known the fact that in a phrase containing negation, only the object of attention itself is well remembered, and actually the "not" itself in some mysterious way disappears from consciousness. There is a very striking classic example on this topic. If a person constantly says: “Don't think about the yellow monkey” (try it yourself!), He will just think only about the yellow monkey. Isn't that funny?

Now let's get back to real life prose and remember what we really teach children. We say: “Don't watch these films” and immediately attract the child's increased interest to this category of films. We say: “Do not be friends with these people,” and immediately these people fall into the zone of special attention of a teenager. He may remain silent or even nod obediently. But he will probably try to realize his interest, either when you are not around, or, in extreme cases, when he becomes older and more independent.

In the light of this theme, the lines of the ten biblical commandments involuntarily come to mind: "Thou shalt not kill, do not steal, do not commit adultery …". The holy book reminds us every time of theft, murder and debauchery. What is this, an unfortunate mistake of a prophet who did not know psychology? Or did Moses know that nations that have known vices are easier to rule?

Nowadays it is a very fashionable topic - the prevention of drug addiction among children … Maybe there is also a reason to think, and not to step with enviable stubbornness on the same rake? Maybe it's worth stopping and asking ourselves a question: what other unworthy thoughts and actions do we ourselves push children to?

Trouble never comes alone. And education in the "not" genre has another dangerous side. Through the described form of denial, we call the child to some actions and life positions. But the "erased" preposition alters in the depths of the subconscious all such concepts to directly opposite ones (this is obvious from the above). As a result, an insoluble internal conflict is brewing in the young man's fragile mind. The result is lies, secrecy, direct conflicts between children and parents. And this tangle of problems has also become a classic of our modern social reality.

So is the negative parenting method really good and worthy? Of course, opponents will object to me that I gave only a one-sided sample, and that there are many examples of the beneficial influence of such upbringing. Let me object to this. If doctors release some form of medicine, from which 5 percent of patients are effectively cured, and 5 percent inevitably dies, will the Ministry of Health allow the mass production of this medicine? No. Otherwise, we will have to accuse the responsible officials of the ministry of deliberately exterminating people. What about upbringing, where we consistently (and at certain periods of history - exponentially) receive a certain percentage of morally crippled children? And shouldn't we, teachers, be the first to sound the alarm and think about what to go to the younger generation with?

Indeed, with what to go to our nearest "tomorrow"? Sometimes, to see the path to the future, it is worth walking along the path of the past. If you reveal the Old Church Slavonic letters, the first thing that catches your eye is not outlandish letters and phrases. It will surprise us that in the old days people never used negative examples and pretexts. The old people taught the younger generation how to live in joy, peace and love, how to act in what situation, what to value and what to strive for. Songs and legends were composed about wonderful people worthy of imitation. Indeed, if the light side of the world is strong and convincing, there is simply no place for the dark side in it. And in nature, only one way is known to defeat darkness - it is to turn on the light. And light is a positive, these are images of goodness and justice, love and joy, peace and tranquility, greatness and eternity, heroic strength and tender beauty, which you want to reach out to, which you want to imitate, which you want to grow, give and multiply throughout the Universe …

… We adults are facing our future. What can we give this future? Today it depends on our answer whether our children will have a future. What images will we fill their souls with? What will we teach to believe? What will we aim at their dreams and fantasies? Can we now help them draw a beautiful and eternal world on a sheet of paper, so that tomorrow they can make this drawing a reality?

(publication in the journal "Education Bulletin")