A question for you, readers. From the deepest, darkest, most pessimistic corner of my consciousness: Are we lying to our children when we tell them they can be anything they want? If not: Really?! If so: Is this a bad thing?
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4 comments:
I've strugged with this question a lot working in South Central. There was a period in time when I thought it was absolutely not true that these kids could be anything they wanted.
Perhaps I've just grown accustomed to everything, but I'm starting to that it's not that it isn't POSSIBLE to be anything you want, it's that it will require VERY different amounts of effort depending on the child and the child's circumstances/envirornment, etc. I think a child can be what they want to be (the exception, I think, being careers that require an-at-its-root-non-acquirable-talent--i.e. being an artist, a pro athlete) or becoming something extraordinarily rare, where the market or humanity cannot support many of them (i.e. a rap star or Martin Luther King Jr.) For all normal careers, though, I think they CAN become it. I just think for some kids it would require SO much expense, SO many loans, SUCH a long road, SO much proving themselves, SUCH a distance from all things familiar, and SO little support, that it simply won't be worth it. And they'll "give it up."
And, frankly, I think some kids (perhaps like me) may not be able to "be whatever they want," because they may go their whole lives through and not ever really identify a concrete "this is it" dream. So for those kids, the "you can be whatever you want if you work hard enough" is total bullocks.
-M.
I enjoy this question. I decided not to post my initial response in order to think it through some more. I appreciate what Michelle said.
This is how I'm going to approach it: two categories, which few things truly fitting independently into either (meaning they interact).
1) What we're in control of as an individual.
2) What the people around us influence.
Just to get the obvious out of the way, we can't be anything we want to be if someone else who's in a position to effect it doesn't want us to be, too. I'll go out on a limb with an extreme example. . . Oh . . . president of the united states.
Then I'll use myself as an example. In as unarrogant of a spirit as I can possibly have, I've been able to do the majority of things I've wanted to, and have struggled to do the things I haven't been enamored with being able to do.
If I wanted to, I'm sure I really could've figured out how to balance those chemicals in physical science and I wouldn't have gotten a D. But at the time, I was way more interested in learning what makes a trumpet have the tonal character it does. And I did. So I can't say, "I'm just not good at science!" I was, but at the kind I wanted to be.
I think we all know I step out on a limb somewhat regularly and want to learn how things work, or how to build them; then I usually do, then I usually build them, and sometimes they even have a degree of innovation.
I don't think it's because by nature it's just something I'm able to do. I think it's because initially I had enough gumption to run through all the warnings people had to offer (when I was 17, why did so many people caution me about trying to build a guitar?! It's not something that could've ruined my future), but now I just have a history of successes and that's taught me simply not to be stressed when trying something new.
I think that's more telling. What do series of successes do? And what does series of failures do?
If I know something is attainable, attempting something similar in nature isn't going to freak me out.
My issue is more of one of wanting to do it than being able to. But I don't think we're that entirely isolated, so, do someone else want me to, too? They're going jump start one series or another.
Hmmm... I think it better to make children believe they have infinite possibilities than stifle them... but hey, I don't have children yet so ignore me.
Thank yall for your thoughtful responses. Like I said, I was in a surly mood and that day, thought I'd throw out the question . . . I guess one way that I was thinking about it was this: Do we really do what we dream of doing, or do we convince ourselves that we wanna do what our skill sets allow us to do?
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