There are two dominant ways to help parents try to mature their children. I am obviously a proponent of the one less utilized.

What Education Ends Up Doing

There are things that schools are good at:

• transmitting a body of information in a structured way;
• testing if information has been retained by a student;
• inculcating various prescribed social purposes.

Teachers are the functionaries of making these activities happen. They are trained primarily in pre-packaged lesson delivery, effective transmission techniques, classroom management, and the improvement of aggregate test scores at the classroom and school levels.

Public school teaching has been puffed up as the most noble profession by social leaders interested in dismantling families and controlling future society through the compulsory school environment. Powerful social engineers task teachers to enact various social reforms through curricular and teaching college manipulations, often without a teacher's knowledge or realization of what is happening. Teachers are either not meant to ponder or think beyond their “exalted” station: they are meant to apply their learned skills in service to the institution and its masters, or they are wholly enthralled by the societal drive.

Child Development is Different

The purposes and goals of child (human) development come from a different place:

• The proper development of children into adults is the chief pursuit of parents and the culture that those parents choose.
• Under certain conditions, the development of children is given over to caregivers chosen predominantly by parents.
• Ideal development is child centered - what is unique about each child and how do we encourage (individual) and capitalize (family/society) on it.

The personal development role should be in the hands of parents when a person is a child, transitioning to the leadership of each person over themselves and their chosen spirituality beginning in young adulthood. Too many people, continuing the schooled model, look to external sources for guidance instead of turning internally to their trusted selves and their “higher source”.

“Early childhood educators” straddle the worlds of child caregivers and public school teachers. Although they can always attempt to employ elements of child development, the structures of schooling don't allow much personalization, especially in a child-led way.

-- JasonNemrow - 08 Apr 2024