Why do curious children become scared adults?

[Rami Rustom]

Monte Floyd Hancock Jr. said on facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Monte314
>
> I like children; I find that I can be myself around them without having to worry about offending someone by "talking over their heads". Nothing is over a little kid's head! Heck, you can talk with little guys about Reimann surfaces, quotient topologies, simplicial homology, Stieltjes Integrals, Borel Fields, Banach spaces... and they will have something to say about every one of them. They aren't worried about what you think; they are telling you what they think, and you can do whatever you want with it... what's wrong with that?
>
> Sometimes at church I go into the 18-24 month classroom and sit down on the floor with my research notebook. The little guys come running over because they want to write in my book. I carry ink pens that "click"... it's a miracle! It "clicks", and then it makes marks! Or, I'll spin blocks on their corners, or balance things in unusual ways; they are amazed by everything, because everything is NEW...
>
> ...not at all like my grad students. When I walk into my classroom on the first day of a new term, I can see and smell the fear. Why? Because the students have been beaten down by years of small-minded "formal education", and the amazement has been replaced with FEAR. It's a lousy trade... a trade that I will not make, nor will I allow them to make. If we can't enjoy each other, then what's the point?
>
> You know what I'd really like to do? I'd like to walk into class and gather everyone together on the floor. Then I would show them my research notebook, and hand each one a pen...

End quote.


That raises the question: Why do curious children become scared adults?

Tests are bad. Homework is bad. Forcing kids to learn things they
don't want to learn is bad. And most important of all, punishment is
bad. And all of these things play a role in causing the change some
people go through from curious child to scared adult. Without these
things, a person would go from curious child to curious adult.

Why are these things bad for children? How do these things cause
people to lose their curiosity? The answer requires an understanding
of how people reason.

Reason is how people think. Children reason too, its not just adults.
Children often notice contradictions in their parents arguments and
point them out, 'na'ah yesterday you said X but today you're saying
NOT X.' Being able to notice contradictions between ideas is the
second most fundamental feature of how people think, the first being
the ability to create ideas.

So what's the problem? What does this have to do with how people
change from curious to fearful? Well the answer has to do with how
parents react to their children when they disagree. If the parent uses
reason, then things go well. But if the parent switches to
anti-reason, e.g. punishing the child for not obeying, then things go
badly. Repeatedly treating children this way causes them to learn
anti-rational memes[1] -- these are the memes that cause people to
stop thinking, to switch from reason to anti-reason. And by the time
they are adults, they have lost their love of reason and its been
replaced with a fear of confrontation/disagreement/criticism. And its
these anti-rational memes that cause the fear emotion when they are
presented with criticism, or when they think they might be mistaken,
or when they know that learning something means that they might make
mistakes.

Note that by punishment, I'm talking about a lot more things than just
spanking. I'm talking about timeouts, facial expressions and tones
intended to communicate that the child should feel shame, social
outcasting at home and school, etc. All of these things share the same
quality, anti-reason. And they all cause people to learn anti-rational
memes because they all communicate that judgment should be evaluated
by authority, rather than by reason -- by the authority of parents,
teachers, principals, friends.

Thinking without reason means deferring to the authority of other
people's judgment. But because the thinking is done without reason,
its impossible for the person to know whether or not the other
person's reasoning is flawed, or whether or not its void of reasoning
altogether as in the case of people making unargued conclusions (i.e.
unexplained assertions).

I just realized that I just described a first-hander[2] and a
second-hander[2]. The first-hander is the curious child that became
the curious adult -- he judges ideas with reason. The second-hander is
the curious child (who started out as a first-hander) that became the
scared adult -- he now judges ideas by the authority of other people's
judgment.

So how should parents treat their children instead? Like
this:http://curi.us/1241-i


[1] Anti-rational memes, and meme theory in general, are explained in
_The Beginning of Infinity_, by David Deutsch.

[2] First-handed and second-handed thinking are explained in
_Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology_, by Ayn Rand. You can also
learn a lot about first-hand vs second-hand thinking from _The
Fountainhead_ and _Atlas Shrugged_, also by Ayn Rand.

-- Rami Rustom
http://ramirustom.blogspot.com