Should people be trained to think about work differently.

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Spammy93
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Should people be trained to think about work differently.

Post by Spammy93 »

This stems from a thought/conversation in my house.
When we were little we were rewarded for getting blocks through the right shaped holes, in retrospect we think this was basically meant to help us learn or was a game with a prize or a combination of the two.

The question is, when children are young should they not be rewarded for learning or work because it will encourage them to find a career/job that will be financially beneficial rather than that which is fulfilling to them personally without the need for monetary reward?
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Burning ghost
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Re: Should people be trained to think about work differently

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It is quite simple. Financial benefits do not make a fulfilled life.

Children don't really need to be encouraged to learn. If anything rigidly structured tests and schedules can, for some, actually inhibit use natural abilities. When it comes to education freedom of choice for students to choose what to learn and when to learn is the best course of action. Obviously in practical terms this is extremely difficult to implement and put to practice on a large scale.

What tends to happen is if you are a youngster and your friend is interested in X then you'll be exposed to X too and maybe you'll be interested in X more than your friend. Some children learn better alone and other thrive in groups, some like noise and some like quiet. The ideal "school" environment is one that allows freedom of thought and choice. Children are the best learners known to us in the universe, our task is to facilitate them in their learning not indoctrinate them to what we believe is best.

I am a firm believer in knowledge for knowledge's sake. If an interest is pursued far enough generally "success" will follow ("success" in happiness, self-worth and/or economic prosperity).
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Jamonit
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Re: Should people be trained to think about work differently

Post by Jamonit »

Yes, knowledge is for knowledge´s sake. Just as we can live for living´s sake. we learn for learning`s sake. Infants do not live for a reward or learn for one.
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Re: Should people be trained to think about work differently

Post by Alias »

Spammy93 wrote: The question is, when children are young should they not be rewarded for learning or work because it will encourage them to find a career/job that will be financially beneficial rather than that which is fulfilling to them personally without the need for monetary reward?
I emboldened the problem: putting those two words together into a single concept. They are quite separate.

Children do not require external rewards for learning: they do it as naturally as they breathe or eat. The knowledge they gain is rewarding in itself, just as the air and food are.
If adults do not make the process of learning unnecessarily difficult [e.g. by presenting material beyond the child's ability] or uncomfortable [e.g by punishing failure, or pressuring the child to compete] all children will learn whatever they need to know and quite a lot more, just for the fun of it.

Work is a different matter. It is defined variously - so variously, in fact, that we confuse children as to what it means.
Young children of 3-7 years generally want to be helpful; are eager to participate in serious adult activities. They are far too often discouraged from doing this, because their capabilities are limited and they require supervision. Sometimes parents hold children back for fear of injury - and simply because we tend to underestimate them.
Allowing - even requiring - them to contribute to the family's well-being is good for their self-esteem, social development, life-skills and eventual citizenship. No extra reward should be offered, but appreciation of any effort should be expressed as a matter of course and exceptional effort or exceptional proficiency should be praised.

However, some work beyond the routine maintenance of a household could be designated as paid jobs. Such non-standard tasks as helping with a construction project (of something not for the child's use!!) or cleaning out the garage, or running errands for the adults' convenience, might be "contracted". That is, a set of requirements and a fixed payment (in currency, goods, favours or services) agreed-on at the outset.
Many parents make the mistake of offering a child payment for work, without clearly defining the deliverables and remuneration, and end up in argument and tantrums. All the child learns from that is: Work is unfair; bosses are bozos. This may be a valuable lesson for later employment, but it does nothing for family harmony.

It's not a parent's mandate to prepare children for wage-slavery. It's the parents' mandate to prepare children for competent socially responsible adulthood.
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Re: Should people be trained to think about work differently

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Spammy93 wrote:This stems from a thought/conversation in my house.
When we were little we were rewarded for getting blocks through the right shaped holes, in retrospect we think this was basically meant to help us learn or was a game with a prize or a combination of the two.

The question is, when children are young should they not be rewarded for learning or work because it will encourage them to find a career/job that will be financially beneficial rather than that which is fulfilling to them personally without the need for monetary reward?

Quite, quite. A child, or rather, a baby of seven days to thee months of age, should be rewarded for laying railway ties and for accounts receivable duties.

A child of six years to twelve years of age, ought to be forced to work in a carpet factory or a shirt manufacturing concern, or maybe in an asbestos mine, working seventeen hours a day, in poor incandescent lighting, with two washroom breaks altogether and be rewarded for it richly by not getting whipped every night if he does not fulfil his quota, but instead be sent to pile rocks instead of eating dinner that night.

Is this the sort of thing you are referring to?
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Re: Should people be trained to think about work differently

Post by Sy Borg »

Marnard G Krebs, the bongo-playing beatnik from the Dobie Gillis Show, was the clearest thinker I know about the concept of work. Work is what you do when cornered like a rat in a trap :)
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Re: Should people be trained to think about work differently

Post by Burning ghost »

Work is a different matter. It is defined variously - so variously, in fact, that we confuse children as to what it means.
Young children of 3-7 years generally want to be helpful; are eager to participate in serious adult activities. They are far too often discouraged from doing this, because their capabilities are limited and they require supervision. Sometimes parents hold children back for fear of injury - and simply because we tend to underestimate them.
VERY true. I remember watching a little girl (probably about 4-5 yrs old) with a hammer and 4 inch nail trying to hammer a sign onto a post. The parents weren't concerned. Also it was common to see children, maybe a couple of years older, hacking at coconuts with a machete.

I learn more from children than they learn from me!
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Re: Should people be trained to think about work differently

Post by Alias »

North American children are babied far too often. (Not always, obviously: watch Masterchef Junior sometime, or the talent shows: there are extremely self-possessed, skilled and disciplined children in America, too.) I suppose because the economy does not require their labour, and does thrive on childish, impulsive self-indulgence, commercial culture has been trending toward a longer and longer childhood. I began noticing it back in the '80's - the depiction of American teenagers as utterly vacuous, know-nothing, do-nothing hedonists and consumers; as if they were a separate species that somehow, sometime, in a secret place, metamorphoses into its drone-like, selfless, joyless parents.
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Re: Should people be trained to think about work differently

Post by LuckyR »

Spammy93 wrote:This stems from a thought/conversation in my house.
When we were little we were rewarded for getting blocks through the right shaped holes, in retrospect we think this was basically meant to help us learn or was a game with a prize or a combination of the two.

The question is, when children are young should they not be rewarded for learning or work because it will encourage them to find a career/job that will be financially beneficial rather than that which is fulfilling to them personally without the need for monetary reward?
You're asking the wrong question. For children the greatest reward is their parent's attention and approval. Possessions are not the reward. So in your case the infants/children ARE being rewarded.
"As usual... it depends."
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