Friday, October 21, 2016

Teaching

Society has all kinds of weird ideas about how Bad Thing X is absolutely necessary for teaching children Good Thing Y. If they aren't subjected to X, they won't learn Y, and then they will be miserable and dysfunctional as adults!

Here's an extreme example that I've actually heard people advocate for on multiple occasions.

Kids need to learn not to steal from pet food dishes. In order to teach them this super-important lesson, toddlers should be placed in situations where they are tempted to steal pet food, then punished or otherwise dissuaded when they attempt to do so. This is very, very dangerous--since dogs are often extremely protective of their food and don't necessarily see the child as someone who is "allowed" to take their food, even nice well-behaved dogs may attack a child in this situation--but it's necessary!

No. That's stupid. It's not necessary. It's needlessly dangerous. Think of all the people who never had pets as children or who never wanted to take pet food, yet how many adults do you see going around stealing from pet food dishes? They were able to figure it out without this lesson.

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