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Gunnar_Zarncke comments on Raising numerate children - Less Wrong Discussion
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The question of the subject is too dense and should be partitioned. Some ideas for auxiliary questions:
Do there exists attempts at classifications of parenting styles? (So that we may not re-invent tread tracks)
Is parenting or childrearing an activity that supports the existence of relevant goals? Do there exist relevant values? Or is parenting better approached as a passive activity sans evaluation with no winners or losers? (So that we may affirm this question is worth answering)
Given affirmative answers to the above questions (and having achieved some epistemic rationality in this domain), and assuming a choice of parenting style(s) and/or values, what specific steps can be taken to activate those values in meatspace (so that we may gain instrumental rationality in this domain)?
The above kind of direct onslaught will likely lead to overzealous suggestion, so we can also consider stepping back and asking: what are some strategies for generating candidate actions without concurrently assuming premature preferences? [1]
Potential answers to the above queries will always be accompanied with degrees of uncertainty. How do we determine when to stop researching and move towards implementation? How does the domain of parenting differ here from the general solution (productivity / to-do systems like GTD or strategical thinking )?
Are there tangible contributions that can be made in the general case? If we went through this much work and make significant progress in answering some of these questions, and we have been surprised by some of the answers, is it our duty to make an attempt to inform other parents? What are the best ways of doing so? Joining a local club or school district assembly? A blog? Submitting to an editorial? Your lullaby above is wonderful and could make some serious universe-changing modifications to reality (e.g., a child grows up to assume a mathematical or scientific vocation) but we do not feel the wailing alarm in our head that assigns it the appropriate significance. Effective parenting is one of the most accessible optimization processes Joe Schmoe has access to, so how can we make meta-improvements on a large scale?
If you are serious in your attempt to answer the original query, I recommend selecting one of the above questions or something even finer-grained and re-submitting to Discussion. (By the way, I am interested.)
[1] Say that a naive answer is the banal "brainstorm," to make a list of relevant large-scale projects to relevant values (e.g., figure out a consistent system of reminding my kids to be compassionate to those around them (name 3 examples of specific compassionate actions) if we value empathy and mindfulness). Then a follow-up question is to locate where your candidate actions are in behaviorspace for this domain: collate several "brainstorm" lists by independent parents who seem to have similar values and styles. Are there academic resources? Potential analytics to be done? Are there quantitive variables that correlate to success? Can we data-mine historical sources over these variables? (e.g., if we are determining whether to raise kids vegetarian or omnivore, what do long-term studies in the literature say about follow-up health?)
Wow. That is not a comment but a post in it's own right. I'm somewhat blown away of what to make out of it.
I will try to address the raised points:
1) Our approach to parenting can be classified as authorative/propagative (according to Baumrind's Three Parenting Styles) but with a non-extreme damand level. It is rather not Concerted Cultivation (which in our opinion puts to much pressure on the child and has it's own inefficiencies (and doesn't really lead to rationality). Instead we rather fall into the Natural Growth pattern. We didn't invent most of the methods we apply. You could say that we did a meta study on parenting and took the best of it. I will provide a parenting bibliography below. The lullaby is my own invention, but singing lullabies is one recommended method, as is reading and discussing bed time stories. Teaching via dialog of wuestion and answer is also a traditional teaching method going back to Socrates I believe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method
2) Is parenting a no-win activity? I'm not sure what this is diving at. I wonder if this takes the view that parenting and education should be left to specialists and that doing parenting oneself is inefficient any way it is done. Even if that may be true on average there are the following exceptions (some of which apply to our case): - Availability of professional care (we do use a wood kindergarten for outdoor, musical and social education) - Trust into the quality of professional care (compared to the alternatives) - Personal preferrence (our utility functions rank high on affection to our children) - Personal experience (my wife is a teacher)
3) I though much about 1) even before we had children and we compared multiple options regarding 2). Otherwise I'm not sure what to make out of this paragraph.
4) If with 'onslaught' my intense advancement of numeracy is meant, then I have to assume that you imply that I am jumping to conclusions by proposing my specific parenting style as a general model.
I do not. I recount personal experience. You could call my post an opinion piece. But I have to stress that this specific style results from very careful and long time planning, continuous adjustment, success control and it is even controlled in so far as we have basically 'run' the same 'program' with all our four sons so far. And it appears to be successful for all of them (if one can say that of 2 and 5 year olds).
5) When to move to implementation? I goess this is meant as a question for non-parents. For parents the point is usually the birth. And I can assure you that my wife has run this program with her usual productivity scheme she uses for all 'tasks'.
6) The tangible contributions I am just making, or am I? I was pleasantly surprised by our success. I was prepared to see more or less average achievement by my sons due to regression toward the mean (but I cannot completely rule out filtered awareness due to parental pride). And beside 'success' on some popular measureables like IQ or grades I see that my children are healthy, balanced and happy. Our parenting method gives us concrete positive feedback and I assume that it helps making us happy too.