Your parents were the first, mom especially, then other family members. Of course back then it was absolutely necessary as you had to learn how to live in this very hostile world.
Small human children are like sponges, they absorb everything. The ability of infants to learn languages is nothing short of astonishing. The younger the brain the more malleable it is in its ability to receive new information from the environment and process it in such a way as to be useful to the processee. It loses that ability very quickly as it gets older as the neural pathways are set... in stone if you will, hence the phrase "Set in one's ways," comes to mind. The older one gets, the more difficult it is to both process new forms of information, such as other languages, and the less likely one is to be able to reevaluate the world view one has become used to using in order to survive.
Loving parents have a special responsibility to teach as best as they can those traits and knowledge that will become useful for their children to live, grow, and thrive, and find mates as they grow older, in the hopes that those traits and bits of information will be passed on to future generations, thus ensuring some form of immortality, if not for one's personality, then at least for one's genetic information in the form of genes and DNA.
That's how it works, this deal called life. The passing on of this information, and maintaining the physical security and nurturing of the child are the primary responsibilities of the parent.
In my mind, and please keep in mind I've never been a parent, the better the information that is provided to children, the more it conforms to the real world around them, the better chance they have of surviving until they themselves have the opportunity to have children who they can pass similar information so they can have children, on and on. For instance we live in a social environment, with other people with similar goals so their will be a certain amount of competition involved in achieving one's goals, and the better the information that is provided for children to get along and work well, or coexist with others, the better the odds are that they will be able to archive their own goals.
Conversely, if information is passed on that does not reflect the reality of the environment the child will find itself in when it matures, will tend to have detrimental consequences in that child's efforts to survive and mate. If a parent instills the values of selfishness and manipulation of others, for instance, their is a good chance that that child upon maturity will tend to be excoriated and shunned by those they come into contact with, thus lessening their chances of survival and mating in this social community we find ourselves in.
Now what information reflects the reality of the environment we find ourselves in is open to a certain amount of interpretation, and varies certain degrees from culture to culture. One custom works well in a certain cultural environment, and will not work well in a different cultural environment. For this discussion I will stick to the culture I know best, that in which I matured, right here in the United States.
Parents tend to imbue their children with their core beliefs and values that they in turn learned from their parents. Thus philosophical and religious ideals are handed down from one generation to the next, and may or may not reflect the reality of the environment they find themselves in at this particular time in history. They may have been of greater value in the past than they are in the present, but they may still retain certain social benefits associated with living in a certain sector of like minded groups or individuals.
There are, however, certain types of knowledge, like learning the specialized task of reading, for instance, or mathematics and history, that will certainly benefit those who are able to master them as they progress through life. Unless the parent is free to, and willing to teach these specialized tasks themselves, such as in home schooling, we in this country have created a public and private school system to do this for us. There is a profession in this country dedicated to teaching our children those things they will need to exist and thrive in the environment they will find themselves in when they mature, and they have specialized skills that allow them to do just that, and parents and society trust these schools and the teachers that work within them to do just that.
When those who are responsible for administering the teaching of our children change the curriculum from that which is usually accepted by the nation (and world, for that matter) as a whole, to fit their own political or philosophical belief systems in order to harvest more adherents to their particular point of view, independent of what the child's parents may wish, and which may not prove beneficial to the child in their future, then these practices may fall into the category of thought manipulation to reach a certain end that may be contrary to that persons benefit, and is indeed, in my opinion, an attempt at mind control.
To be continued.
Small human children are like sponges, they absorb everything. The ability of infants to learn languages is nothing short of astonishing. The younger the brain the more malleable it is in its ability to receive new information from the environment and process it in such a way as to be useful to the processee. It loses that ability very quickly as it gets older as the neural pathways are set... in stone if you will, hence the phrase "Set in one's ways," comes to mind. The older one gets, the more difficult it is to both process new forms of information, such as other languages, and the less likely one is to be able to reevaluate the world view one has become used to using in order to survive.
Loving parents have a special responsibility to teach as best as they can those traits and knowledge that will become useful for their children to live, grow, and thrive, and find mates as they grow older, in the hopes that those traits and bits of information will be passed on to future generations, thus ensuring some form of immortality, if not for one's personality, then at least for one's genetic information in the form of genes and DNA.
That's how it works, this deal called life. The passing on of this information, and maintaining the physical security and nurturing of the child are the primary responsibilities of the parent.
In my mind, and please keep in mind I've never been a parent, the better the information that is provided to children, the more it conforms to the real world around them, the better chance they have of surviving until they themselves have the opportunity to have children who they can pass similar information so they can have children, on and on. For instance we live in a social environment, with other people with similar goals so their will be a certain amount of competition involved in achieving one's goals, and the better the information that is provided for children to get along and work well, or coexist with others, the better the odds are that they will be able to archive their own goals.
Conversely, if information is passed on that does not reflect the reality of the environment the child will find itself in when it matures, will tend to have detrimental consequences in that child's efforts to survive and mate. If a parent instills the values of selfishness and manipulation of others, for instance, their is a good chance that that child upon maturity will tend to be excoriated and shunned by those they come into contact with, thus lessening their chances of survival and mating in this social community we find ourselves in.
Now what information reflects the reality of the environment we find ourselves in is open to a certain amount of interpretation, and varies certain degrees from culture to culture. One custom works well in a certain cultural environment, and will not work well in a different cultural environment. For this discussion I will stick to the culture I know best, that in which I matured, right here in the United States.
Parents tend to imbue their children with their core beliefs and values that they in turn learned from their parents. Thus philosophical and religious ideals are handed down from one generation to the next, and may or may not reflect the reality of the environment they find themselves in at this particular time in history. They may have been of greater value in the past than they are in the present, but they may still retain certain social benefits associated with living in a certain sector of like minded groups or individuals.
There are, however, certain types of knowledge, like learning the specialized task of reading, for instance, or mathematics and history, that will certainly benefit those who are able to master them as they progress through life. Unless the parent is free to, and willing to teach these specialized tasks themselves, such as in home schooling, we in this country have created a public and private school system to do this for us. There is a profession in this country dedicated to teaching our children those things they will need to exist and thrive in the environment they will find themselves in when they mature, and they have specialized skills that allow them to do just that, and parents and society trust these schools and the teachers that work within them to do just that.
When those who are responsible for administering the teaching of our children change the curriculum from that which is usually accepted by the nation (and world, for that matter) as a whole, to fit their own political or philosophical belief systems in order to harvest more adherents to their particular point of view, independent of what the child's parents may wish, and which may not prove beneficial to the child in their future, then these practices may fall into the category of thought manipulation to reach a certain end that may be contrary to that persons benefit, and is indeed, in my opinion, an attempt at mind control.
To be continued.
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