So there was a piece on CNN talking about kids working in a garden. The reporter asked the lady what they learn. The reporter talks about how they learn to work together, how to organize and plan, etc…
The one thing she doesn’t mention is that they learn how to grow their own food. They learn a valuable survival skill, and yet for some reason this doesn’t warrant a mention. The way they were talking about it they could’ve been learning to play Basketball.
Why is self-esteem considered so valuable, but basic survival not worth mentioning?
I don’t remember the last time I was required to garden for survival. I have grocery stores all 'round. I garden for fun, fitness, and, yeah, self-esteem. I love being able to hand a big bowl of freshly grown 'maters to my neighbor with a smile, probably even more than I like to eat them myself.
Yeah, why do all those little old ladies in knitting circles think they are bonding sharing companionship and passing time when what they are really doing is honing their clothes making skills for after the war that destroys all the clothing stores?
I see where you’re coming from. However, I think it’s an upwards move in the culture of self-esteem. I remember when we were supposed to boost kids’ self-esteem just because they existed. (You’re all wonderful and special people! Hugs!!) Now, we’re actually boosting their self-esteem by having them do something valuable? Good move.
A sense of being someone special just because someone tells you so = fake self-esteem, brattiness, sense of entitlement.
A sense of accomplishment from doing something = real, genuine self-esteem.
Personally, though, I wish they’d mentioned the health benefits of fresh fruits and vegetables, though. Kids need to hear that as often as possible!
It’s also nice for kids to know where food actually comes from. A week or two in a remote Kenyan village would do wonders. I really miss the Worlds Apart show on the National Geographic channel. Kids (and adults) went away as spoiled brats, and came back with a healthier self-esteem and a grounded sense of proportion.
And:
Smoking is bad for you
Drugs are bad
Milk builds strong bones
Sun rises in east.
I think they all KNOW that veggies are good for them. The problem is the easy availability of junk food in general, and carbonated sugar water in particular. They’re kids, not hummingbirds. Parents: feed your kids something other than crap! Hell, it’s even cheaper.
The simple answer to this IMO, is that basic survival techniques can be
learned from a decent hand-book, whereas self-esteem, or self- worth,
whatever your term is for making people feel good about thierself, can
only come about through practical interaction.
I disagree. You cannot learn to garden from a book. You learn to garden by doing it. The book can help facilitate the process in that regard, but until you actually garden you don’t know how, no matter how many books you’ve read.
Basically my point was that our society is so obsessed with how kids feel, that it’s not even worth mentioning that you are teaching them valuable survival skills. It keeps them from becoming modern savages who think that vegetables grow on grocery stores. I think it would be good for our culture’s self-esteem as a whole if we all knew better how we would survive if there was an economic collapse. Or even just knowing how to grow some 'maters in our back yard and give them to our neighbors for healthier eating.
It’s not that they mentioned the self-esteem that irks me, it’s that the practical application of what they were doing was irrelevant.
I see what you’re saying. I guess I’m hearing it through the lens (there’s a mixed metaphor for ya) of a city girl. Quite frankly, if we were to have a catastrophic economic or farming related collapse tomorrow, all my mad gardening skillz wouldn’t do jack. Here in Chicago, even the best community garden plots are simply adjunct food sources - almost literally “garnish”. Nobody has more than 200 square feet of gardening space. There’s no way I could rescue my nuclear family, much less anyone else, with my two containers of tomatoes - still more than a month away from harvest - and three pots of basil, y’know? If I tried to get a grant by writing a goal about teaching important survival skills through gardening, I’d get laughed out of the park district. For us city folk, gardening isn’t at all about survival, period. It’s just a fun hobby, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with teaching it as a fun hobby, just like skateboarding or vandalizing city buses.
(Joking about that last one.)
Organizing, planning and working together IS practical application. Children are learning these skills that almost certainly going to be useful to them in the future.
Survival gardening is, and I’m being charitable with my description, a extraordinarily unlikely scenario, and one which the skills they’re learning may not even be applicable.
Frankly, having good self esteem, and being able to work well with others is a far more valuable survival skill in our society than learning how to garden.
Yup. We’re a Montessori family, here, so for us this is old hat. Like, 100-years-old-this-year old hat The best way to build confidence and self-esteem is to set goals for yourself and then work to reach those goals.
All that talk about praising and rewarding everything the kid ever does? Not only did it not help, it probably hurt. Kids who get a trophy for showing up for more than half of their soccer practices, or a “good job” every time they don’t spill their milk or they put their socks in the hamper, learn to do things for the praise/reward rather than for their own sakes, and all that phony positive feedback makes it harder for kids to recognize and value the real thing.
But harvesting vegetables you’ve grown yourself, after learning new skills, working hard, and practicing delayed gratification? Now that’s real.
Because there would be fewer people ? Granted, too much is a bad thing, but too little is the sort of thing that causes people to kill themselves. People who feel good about themselves aren’t likely to shoot themselves, short of something like a painful terminal disease.
And even if someone with low self esteem doesn’t suicide, they are likely to just give up on life. Why try to do better if you “know” you can’t succeed ? Why ask a girl for a date if you “know” she’ll turn you down and publically humiliate you ? Why try to make friends if you “know” nobody likes you ? Why go to college if you “know” you can’t hack it ? Why leave someone who’s abusing you if you “know” you deserve it ?
I agree. Not only is false praise apparent to even small children, and leads them to distrust the person doling it out and doubt themselves, but even very simple experiments with reward systems shows that intermittent reward schedules are far more effective at producing the desired outcome. If you train a bird (or dog or child) by giving it a reward every single time, then one day you’re out of rewards, the subject may try a few more times, but then stop. (You can practically see them thinking, “Oh, well, guess that gravy train’s left the station! No more of that, then.”)
If, on the other hand, rewards are doled out only some of the time, ideally on a random schedule, then you stop giving the reward, the behavior persists. The subject “knows” that the behavior doesn’t always yield the reward, but it does sometimes. “Maybe now? No…hmmm. Now? Now? Now?” and they’ll keep it going for much longer.
See: slot machines.
So while consistency in maintaining boundaries and punishments (if you’re into that sort of thing) is important as a parent, generous but *inconsistent *rewards yields better results than consistent rewards, and much, much better results than consistent yet false rewards.
So…yeah. The first time your kid puts her socks on herself? Yay, hooray! That IS an accomplishment. The 340th time? Not so much. You know it, she knows it, and it’s time to tackle something a little more challenging.
