TKG Listen: Protect Your Kids From Failure – Alfie Kohn The Atlantic

Community Resource – The Whole ChildLeaningTower

We picked this article, by one of our favorite experts – Alfie Kohn (a TKG reading list regular) because we know our students won’t learn without being invested in the process.  We know some want to jump right in and we know that it takes a little while for others and most important, we know that students don’t need to be prepared to fail, they need practice getting ready to soar.  Enjoy!

Protect Your Kids From Failure
The case for self-esteem, success, and even an occasional participation trophy
by ALFIE KOHN in The Atlantic

It isn’t usually spelled out quite so bluntly, but an awful lot of parenting practices are based on the belief that the best way to get kids ready for the painful things that may happen to them later is to make sure they experience plenty of pain while they’re young.

I call this BGUTI (rhymes with duty), which is the acronym of Better Get Used To It.

If adults allow—or perhaps even require—children to play a game in which the point is to slam a ball at someone before he or she can get out of the way, or hand out zeroes to underscore a child’s academic failure, or demand that most young athletes go home without even a consolation prize (in order to impress upon them the difference between them and the winners), well, sure, the kids might feel lousy—about themselves, about the people around them, and about life itself—but READ on The Atlantic…

Comments are closed.