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| Boys at Broughty Ferry beach & playpark |
A: I don't like not knowing! This is why I always want to know.
B: Goodness, what nuisance you must have been at school :)
***
The reason the younger one only has a towel is because his school uniform is soaked from jumping in the water play. This was at a playpark at Broughty Ferry, a seaside village we went to on Wednesday afternoon. I never care about clothes that get wet or muddy after school. It is the sign of a good afternoon outdoors and I have time to wash them. We are out a lot but even for us that was a pretty good day with much play, cuddles, fish and chips by the harbour wall, ice cream and no washing up.
When the weather is this good in Scotland, you want to make the most of it. I did and confess I spent lunchtime of the same day at another beach. If you like beaches, it is Elie, in Fife, if you are this way.
I find an idea from the article I mentioned last time pretty easy to accept: provide good conditions in which your children can grow and discover who they are rather than deciding that for them. I know not everyone does. When my second baby was messily, but with rapidly improving hand-eye-mouth co-ordination feeding himself with large chunks of whatever appealing food he could grab and lift I remember a Japanese mother telling me how she spoonfed her child for years past infancy because she couldn't bear the mess. It strikes me now how much letting your children find out often does seem related to mess. Perhaps it's just boys. More generally what "good conditions" are I think include those you can tolerate and even - it took me a long time to learn this - thrive in yourself.
“Educating” children is to me increasingly distasteful as a term because it implies I am going to do this to you because I know best. You are a beginner/a child/know nothing/have less power than me. Unsaid is the scary addendum - because I can and (chillingly) you can't do anything about it. There are such parallels with social dance, learning naturally versus being taught in class.
Beginners at anything, but most especially children are so vulnerable. I like it when children make or are at least involved in decisions. It used to frustrate me no end that my parents got to decide everything. As part of decision-making, children have more say about things that affect them; decisions such as what constitutes a good learning environment or a pleasant home. What if they could not just design a playpark but say more often how they would like their town or their countryside to be? How often do children get to say what services or facilities are important to them?
What about reward and success? What if children could decide what defines and constitutes these rather than it being defined and decided for them? Do they know that Xerxes was astonished to learn that the Greeks competed at the Olympic games for a wreath of olive, which is to say, for honour? The Games still stand apart from ordinary life in many ways but it is interesting that this and the setting aside of politics and war has been often preserved as it was in ancient times, although in the US, Singapore and Indonesia, athletes can win big cash prizes. What do children think about the commercialisation of sport and in particular the Olympic Games? Does the history of the Games matter? Does history matter? Do they know that after Salamis, Eurybiades was honoured in the same way with an olive wreath for valour, as was Themistocles for wisdom and skill? Footnote: Themistocles' honour did not last long in his homeland. He was hounded from Greece by the Spartans, but honoured and employed instead by Xerxes the Persian king against whom he had led the heavily outnumbered Allied Greek forces. Plutarch claims to have met a descendant of Themistocles who was still paid honours by the Persians 600 years after his illustrious ancestor died. How fickle honour, respect and status, but also how enduring!
Admittedly, the Greeks were honouring these things as part of success in war (again, does history matter?!), but I wonder what children think about this aspect of a people who valued these things not only (or not always) with power and office but very publicly yet in these simpler ways. What is success? What recognition? What reward? What the difference between them, what makes them endure or not and does any of it matter? How much are these ideas raised with children? Does that in itself matter?
As with the some of the most interesting things in life, the questions become labyrinthine: how should we view a people who honour valour so simply yet so profoundly yet who also stone Lycidas, a councillor to death (and his wife, and his family) who merely proposes listening to the Persian envoy when the two sides find themselves caught in a tricky stalemate. How much can history teach us about perspective and otherness? How much is history, (like memory) a store on which we draw? Is that what history is - collective memory? And if we deny the value of history, must we also say the same of memory? But I don't know that you can really keep asking questions like that in school...
Beginners at anything, but most especially children are so vulnerable. I like it when children make or are at least involved in decisions. It used to frustrate me no end that my parents got to decide everything. As part of decision-making, children have more say about things that affect them; decisions such as what constitutes a good learning environment or a pleasant home. What if they could not just design a playpark but say more often how they would like their town or their countryside to be? How often do children get to say what services or facilities are important to them?
What about reward and success? What if children could decide what defines and constitutes these rather than it being defined and decided for them? Do they know that Xerxes was astonished to learn that the Greeks competed at the Olympic games for a wreath of olive, which is to say, for honour? The Games still stand apart from ordinary life in many ways but it is interesting that this and the setting aside of politics and war has been often preserved as it was in ancient times, although in the US, Singapore and Indonesia, athletes can win big cash prizes. What do children think about the commercialisation of sport and in particular the Olympic Games? Does the history of the Games matter? Does history matter? Do they know that after Salamis, Eurybiades was honoured in the same way with an olive wreath for valour, as was Themistocles for wisdom and skill? Footnote: Themistocles' honour did not last long in his homeland. He was hounded from Greece by the Spartans, but honoured and employed instead by Xerxes the Persian king against whom he had led the heavily outnumbered Allied Greek forces. Plutarch claims to have met a descendant of Themistocles who was still paid honours by the Persians 600 years after his illustrious ancestor died. How fickle honour, respect and status, but also how enduring!
Admittedly, the Greeks were honouring these things as part of success in war (again, does history matter?!), but I wonder what children think about this aspect of a people who valued these things not only (or not always) with power and office but very publicly yet in these simpler ways. What is success? What recognition? What reward? What the difference between them, what makes them endure or not and does any of it matter? How much are these ideas raised with children? Does that in itself matter?
As with the some of the most interesting things in life, the questions become labyrinthine: how should we view a people who honour valour so simply yet so profoundly yet who also stone Lycidas, a councillor to death (and his wife, and his family) who merely proposes listening to the Persian envoy when the two sides find themselves caught in a tricky stalemate. How much can history teach us about perspective and otherness? How much is history, (like memory) a store on which we draw? Is that what history is - collective memory? And if we deny the value of history, must we also say the same of memory? But I don't know that you can really keep asking questions like that in school...
The gardening idea in the article seems more related to a Greek eudaimonic concept of flourishing, which for some I think means "letting be" as much as it might mean to others "working at virtue", virtue being, for some, a key idea in that concept.
The joy of eudaimonia seems to be how variously "living well" can be interpreted. Pleasure and health in variety reminds me of the response I received from a DJ last week. I was trying to decide which milongas to go to in the Netherlands next month. I wrote to various DJs: I see you are DJing on <date> at <milonga name>. Can I ask, will that be traditional music, alternative or a mix? And if trad do you play mainstream or less well known tracks? Regards, etc. One who replied in straightforward Dutch manner rather took aback the Brit in me: Too many questions, Felicity [if only he knew!]. 70 trad 30 Neo. Let yourself be surprised. No surprise that I was writing precisely because I don't like musical surprises in milongas. I said nothing. Then he asked a few things, which is always nice, including whether I was especially interested in neo-tango music. I tried to be truthful but not provocative:
Re music I need trad music. I wish it were otherwise but sadly I don't get a dancing [tango] feeling for neo, I don't know why.
He replied, wonderfully :
happily we are not all the same.. :)
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