I've had three of my own children and spent my professional life thinking about children. And yet I still find my relation to my children deeply puzzling.
Alison GopnikRead
Ours is an age of pedagogy. Anxious parents instruct their children more and more, at younger and younger ages, until they're reading books to babies in the womb.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Parents today are increasingly focused on teaching their children from a very young age.
In this quote, Alison Gopnik critiques the tendency of modern parents to engage in pedagogical practices even before their children are born. It highlights a societal shift towards an intensified focus on education and preparation for life, raising questions about the balance between nurturing creativity and imposing learning at an early stage.
Themes
EducationChildrenParentingPedagogyLearning
In practice
Example use cases
In a parenting workshop discussing early childhood education.
More from Alison Gopnik
All quotes βWhat's it like to be a baby? It's like being in love in Paris for the first time after you've had three double espressos.
Alison GopnikRead
Adults often assume that most learning is the result of teaching and that exploratory, spontaneous learning is unusual. But actually, spontaneous learning is more fundamental.
Alison GopnikRead
Similar quotes
History is the most aristocratic of all literary pursuits, because it obliges the historian to be rich as well as educated.
Henry AdamsRead
Whatever came to mind, whatever came to hand, I would read.
Stephen KingRead
For quiet, solitary and observant children create their own world and live in it, nourishing their imaginations on the material at hand.
Beatrix PotterRead
I tend to be a subscriber to the idea that you have everything you need by the time you're 12 years old to do interesting writing for most of the rest of your life - certainly by the time you're 18.
Bruce SpringsteenRead
You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in general.
Daniel KahnemanRead
I did go through graduate school and I like to do research, to create something that has a certain objective solidity. The same thing influences my fiction to some degree, because, you know, my fiction is often based on history that I've read.
Marilynne RobinsonRead