Taken in the order that they are listed, the four assigned articles tell a story illustrating the relationship between the way a child is brought up, and how well that child develops into a problem solver as opposed to a problem causer. The first two articles, "Raising a Moral Child" and "Parental Involvement is Overrated", discuss various approaches to raising a child to be successful (where success is a developed sense of compassion/morality in the former, and traditional academic/economic achievement in the latter). The final two articles, "Recovery for Whom?" and "Saving Young People From Themselves", discuss the United States' precarious economic situation, and the problems that it poses for the generations stepping into it. With the articles arranged in this fashion, a clear, common theme begins to emerge: the effects of parenting on individuals, as well as on society.
It is no mystery that parenting is one of the most significant determinants of a child's future. Young minds are incredibly malleable and, as a result, the general ethics, morals, and ideologies by which a person chooses to live his/her life are largely shaped by the parents and/or other authority figures that comprise that person's childhood environment. Obviously, as a person matures, s/he is exposed to more and more things, enabling him/her to derive different outlooks on some matters from personal experience but, for better or worse, the core set of beliefs that a person is endowed with during youth generally persists. We live in an infinitely complex world and, without internal organizational mechanisms to help us make sense of things, we would be hopelessly overwhelmed. In response to the constant influx of information that the brain receives, it naturally develops categories to which it can assign new information with a single, snap judgement. This process applies universally, from the way that we interpret our immediate, physical environment, to, more importantly for my purposes, the way that we form our views on social, political, and philosophical issues. While the absence of this crucial component would severely impair our cognitive functioning, its presence has some side effects of its own. Namely, once established, mental categories are incredibly difficult to reform. This doesn't necessarily have to be negative: say a person is raised to be an extremely hard worker--no amount of resentment from co-workers who are content to skate by with minimal effort is likely to change that. On the other hand, if a person is raised to adopt flawed, discriminatory outlooks, for example, s/he is likely to remain a bigot, even when confronted with fierce public disapproval and mountains of counter-evidence proving the error of his/her ways. This should be cause for caution. Raising a child is like building a sculpture out of clay that ossifies without warning after a certain amount of time: one must achieve the correct shape before time runs out, or s/he risks losing the ability to effect the changes that s/he desires.
So far, it may seem as if I am merely elaborating on the obvious. That is because I am. I wasn't able to draw any profoundly earth-shattering points out of these four articles, and, although I do wish I could have done more, I suppose I'm okay with it. While new and poignant insight is always the goal, clarification of what is already known can be beneficial as well. Everyone knows, to one degree or another, that a person's upbringing is the mold for his/her inner self. If the workers, entertainers, educators, enforcers, protectors, and policy makers that comprise our human infrastructure were all shaped by parental guidance (or lack thereof), then it follows that it is that parenting which collectively determines the nature of society on a generational basis. In a perfect world, each generation would pass down all of their positive attributes and withhold any negative ones but, realistically, that is simply not going to happen for countless reasons. Just because we may never attain perfection does not mean that we should forgo the pursuit, however; all aspects of life are connected in one way or another, and it is of the utmost importance to gain ground wherever possible. By instilling the morals, ethics, and skills that we feel are important into our children while still allowing them room to come into their own, we are facilitating growth on a societal level. This is not restricted to society's standards, either. In fact, in order for true growth to occur, it is necessary to diverge away from and expand past what is already known/accepted. Many parents stress the importance of doing well in school, for example. This seems like something parents should do, and it very well may be, but it also important look past the current standard, and strive for what could be, instead succumbing to what is. Especially in this case where "what is" is enduring a broken education system for at least twelve years, and then punching the clock for the remainder.
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