Comments on: the consequences of ‘modern’ life

By: Dick Stainy

Dick Stainy — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:52:31 +0000

David Buckingham? You mean Beckham?

By: Lewis

Lewis — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 03:45:17 +0000

This is a little more on point in relation to my concerns on adolescents, “modern life,” the body and youth culture. There’s such potential in technology, esp. Web 2.0 hype, but I can’t escape the feeling that things are too late given how fast society & tech. now moves.

The one area where I have hope is in the work Jane is doing re: games, but it’s unclear how big that can grow.

By: ashley

ashley — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 08:53:14 +0000

Another thanks for posting this article. The Dalai Lama spoke with a panel of leading educators around the topic of Educating the Heart, social and emotional development. It was open to the public and is available in webcasts.http://www.dalailamacenter.org/multimedia/index.php

This was part of the kick off for a new center, The Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education. It feels like this line of conversation with researchers, educators, and policy makers is growing right now… or that’s my optimistic thinking!

By: Tarun

Tarun — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 22:49:08 +0000

Thanks for posting the article. It makes me feel like less of a failure.

By: albert

albert — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 23:09:24 +0000

Not that I disagree with the overall message, but this one line strikes me as odd.

“Since children’s brains are still developing, they cannot adjust as full-grown adults can – to the effects of ever more rapid technological and cultural change.”

Children, from my experience are much better at adapting to the effects of rapid technological and cultural change than adults are.

By: Deirdre' Straughan

Deirdre' Straughan — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 22:50:19 +0000

We first have to ask ourselves: why is there a gap to be filled? What is wrong with the American (and British) family that people have all these holes in their lives waiting to be filled by TV and MySpace?

Not only do kids need unstructured time alone and with their peers – they need it most of all with their parents.

I’m raising my half-Italian daughter in Italy, where a big feature of almost every kid’s life is lots of time with the family – meals, family outings, family vacations well into their 20s. Many of my daughter’s (high school age) friends are now going on exchange programs in the US. One recently told Ross that the only thing she doesn’t like about her American family is that they never eat together – everyone just grazes from the fridge whenever they’re hungry. She said she misses the daily opportunity to discuss things with her parents. (Which is ironic, given that relations with her parents have been, by Italian standards, fairly strained in the last couple of years, and the word “discutere” in Italian can mean discussion or argument!)

Seems to me American parents are looking for institutions (government, schools) to do their parenting for them, e.g. making sure their kids don’t see any nipples on TV, and completely abdicating their own role as parents.

By: Mark Federman

Mark Federman — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 05:40:21 +0000

Utterly fascinating to me is the pervasive view that what the adults create for youth beginning at a very young age – rigorous content testing, hyper-competitiveness, modelling of consumerism, drive to over-achieve – is considered “good,” while what the youth create for themselves – especially in the context of cyber-presence – is considered “bad.” In society’s rush to “think of the children” (sorry for the gross generalization) relatively few who make policy are actually thinking about the children. It is tremendous that these British thought leaders are doing just that.

By: juan

juan — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 20:49:48 +0000

From my post on the same article:

In my opinion, the abundance of opportunities for parents in privileged countries is seriously affecting the dynamic of the relationship with their children, often times exposing them to untested methods. The paradox of abundance is well illustrated by the common metaphor of the ‘rich spoiled kid’, but we seem to have grown apathetic to such wisdom. We are all richer and we are spoiling our kids, but fail to see anything wrong with it. In a culture of consumism, the only winners are the corporations profiting from the growing obsession to care for our children through products and services that have little to do with their most basic needs to be nurtured and allowed to discover the world at their own pace.

By: Nickie

Nickie — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 19:23:40 +0000

By and large, technology is filling a gap and that gap is created by us -

Thank you! I can’t count the times people have said that technology is bad. But for the most part, it is filling the gap. Maybe playing on facebook, or even writing in the blog isn’t ideal, but it does fill the gap.

How many times do students hear that we should use tools available to us? That’s what I think many of my peers are doing (myself included).

By: Michael Chui

Michael Chui — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 16:55:47 +0000

By and large, technology is filling a gap and that gap is created by us – parents, educators, politicians, media, … society in general.

Thank you for saying that; I was preparing to comment as soon as I finished reading to say pretty much exactly what you did there. That’s probably the most important point…

Typical role models seem to have willingly abrogated their involvement, then turned around and blamed their replacements.