10 Reasons to Stop Blaming Parents Blaming parents is a favorite mind game — and not just with teens. The media and other professionals often find it fun to blame parents for everything that they think is “wrong” with the younger generation. As the fall semester comes to a close, here are my Top 10 […]
Myths of Education™
I’ve been thinking a lot about how we pay attention — and how we often miss what’s best in our kids because we have our attention trained on what we think they should be doing. Now don’t start blaming yourself… our whole approach to education teaches us to believe our kids should be other than […]
“‘I was an aspiring astrophysicist and that’s how I defined myself, not by my skin color…’” — Neil deGrasse Tyson in Parade Magazine today. It’s so freeing to stop viewing yourself through other-people’s-eyes. Too often, we allow ourselves to be defined by other people’s opinions — by what they think about our behavior, our performance, […]
Even though I know better, it’s easy to forget that where I put my attention is a choice. My choice. Sometimes I get caught in the trap of feeling stressed and I keep thinking about the stressful thing… I may even talk about it, which keeps it front and center…. and it’s like a whirlpool, […]
Not seeing the best in our students is not as much an issue for them as it is for us. Many of them go happily along feeling free and knowing they just want to stay under the radar of parents, school, teachers and traditional expectations. Jimmy, for example, is a C-student who, “… trained us. […]
I sometimes wonder why so much of what is considered “good literature” for ourselves and for students has to be dark, depressing, or unhappy. I’m not against stories in which something bad happens, but knowing that bad news seizes and clings, while good news slides right off us, I like to prime myself with uplifting […]
“Bring back Vo-Tech” and “Not everyone needs to go to college—some people would be better in the trades.” These are two comments I often hear when I speak about Gifts that Conflict with School™, The Myths of Education™, or Race to Nowhere. Now, those of you who have been on my calls or in my […]
Note: This is the third article in The Myths of Education™ series. Some babies walk at 10 months and others don’t walk until 17 months. Right from the start, we have a 70% performance gap, yet we accept this as normal so we don’t insist on rating babies’ walking skills. We understand that by the […]
Note: This is the second article in The Myths of Education™ series. Have you ever wondered why we urge teens to be the best possible student? Many parents, leaders, and educators say it’s because they believe this will get him into the “best” colleges and — the big assumption — that this will lead to […]
The future looks very bright for our teens– when we de-bunk three false, damaging myths. In a recent study, I found that—no matter what their GPA—teens will have great opportunities because world, corporate, and scientific prospects depend on a far broader set of characteristics than those we emphasize in our system of education. I’d like […]