Complaining about the younger generations has been a common habit for many millennia. The Greek poet Hesiod in the 8th Century B.C. groused about the young, “I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint.”
But the antiquity of such clichés doesn’t mean that in our time there hasn’t been a decline in child-rearing and education that has created flawed characters, dangerous ideologies, and bad habits among our young. For many traditional moms and dads, “gentle” parenting coddles and spoils children not just at home, but in grade schools, universities, and jobs, and accounts for many of the problems and dysfunctions of our young people.
Hence the trend of FAFO––the “f–ck around and find out” method of child-rearing. The New York Post reports one pioneer mother, Janelle who explains this novel child-rearing in her video. “I practice authoritative parenting but within what I would consider a subgenre that I would call ‘f*ck around and find out’ parenting… [kids] get their natural consequences and get to figure out the way through them.”
Just saying “authoritarian” will shock and anger school teachers and “gentle childrearing parents.” But for multiple decades, American primary schools and parents alike have failed dismally at educating and rearing many of our children––a national disgrace for the freest, richest country in the world. Part of the problem is the idea that learning should be “fun” and “affirming” students’ self-esteem, rather than requiring a work ethic to achieve proficiency and knowledge by meeting the challenges of rigorous standards.
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Author: Ruth King
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