Lessons of Life

On a mailing list a question was asked "when someone says that kids MUST deal with the negativity of school, teasing, bullying, etc. so they will be prepared for real life?" I was going to email a reply but I decided to blog about it.

My response questions would be:

1) would you let a toddler play in the busy streets because that would prepare them for the real life of dangerous roads? Would a peer group of toddlers do any better?

2) would you just hand a car key to a teenager and say go learn how to drive in the real world? How about a car full of teens with zero training and experience?

3) would a new hire (with zero experience) be handed a set of blank checks without any training? How about putting all the new hires in one room and tell them to figure out the business? How successful would such a business be?

Likewise, a bunch of peers just trying to figure out "socialization" on their own, each with equal amount of experience, will flounder and relearn the lessons of the past the hard way (on their own rather than from other people's experiences).

All lessons of life are learned either the hard way (trial and error) or the easier way (from learning about other peoples errors and successes). Successful societies (and families) are those which learn the lessons of the basics quickly and then move on to the next level rather than relearning them from scratch.

Update: thanks to keywords, the townhall article confirms what I just wrote above in the article: "homeschooling sweet homeschooling."