We commonly assume that spoiled children are spoiled because they get everything they want. I now see that getting everything they want is actually a symptom, not the cause. They get everything because it is easier for their parents to give them what they want than to pay them proper attention. As long as you are paying your kids proper attention, I don’t think giving them what they want would cause any harm. Because most parents are so busy managing so many things that we are substituting proper attention with material goods. There is nothing wrong with the goods themselves; the problem is the substitution. If my thesis is correct, the term “spoiled” is not appropriate. What is actually happening is the opposite: They are being neglected.

Proper attention can sometimes mean deliberate inattention where the parent is ignoring her child’s persistent nagging or temper tantrum. This can be very hard for a parent. I often give in too, despite the fact that it is not good for me or for my child. Giving her what she wants is certainly the easiest and the quickest solution.

One time on the street, a stranger said to me, “Why are you torturing her?” because my daughter was crying very loud and I wasn’t giving in. I didn’t respond to him, but it certainly was one of those tough parental moments.

I believe that kids do this partly because they want to see how much their parents care about them. We do it as adults too. Sometimes we deliberately create conflicts to see how strong our love or friendship is. Although kids do this unconsciously, what they feel from the results of the tests are all the same. If their parents don’t seem to care, the kids will feel neglected.

Why don’t students like school? My own answer would be: Because schools are not supposed to be likable. But, it’s because we are not supposed to like it, that we deep-down like it. The same goes for our jobs. We are not supposed to like our jobs. We are supposed to prefer vacations. But, when we take indefinite vacations, most of us get bored out of our minds. So, I would say: It’s fine that students don’t like schools; that’s how they are supposed to be.

But, that is not what the cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham had in mind when he wrote his latest book, “Why Don’t Students Like School?” The book offers a variety of ideas on how to make the classrooms more engaging and effective. Since I’m not a teacher, I cannot apply his theories at school, but some of his suggestions are useful for me as a parent. The one that was revelational to me was his suggestion to praise efforts not abilities. I had read about a certain type of praise having negative effects on kids, but I didn’t think about the message implied on the other side of the coin of praise. If you tell your kid, “You are so smart!” as a praise after she achieves something remarkable, you are at the same time implying that she is dumb if she fails. This is because “smart” implies innate abilities. You either have them, or you don’t. Willigham suggest that we praise their efforts instead. For instance, “Well done! You must have worked hard on that.” This implies that achievements are about efforts, not about abilities, which in turn implies that a failure is a lack of effort, not because they were born stupid. If we kept praising their abilities, eventually we will convince our children that there is nothing they can do about anything because it’s all up to the stars, I mean, genetics. Why should they bother trying anything new unless they knew they have the abilities for it? If they fail on their first attempt, it would convince them that they don’t have the abilities for it. This naturally would hurt, so they would rather not try. Eventually this will paralyze them.

Once it is explained in this manner, it sounds like a common sense. In the West, many of us are resigned to the fact that much of our fate is determined by our genes. In fact, this conviction drives many of us to specialize at an early age. If it’s all up to our genes, the key to success would lie in exploiting the best parts of our genes. If we believed that it’s all up to our efforts, it wouldn’t really matter what we pursue. I believe the Eastern cultures incline more towards the latter. In Japan, specialization is a decision that comes much later in life. Most corporations do not care what you studied in school; they just care about where you studied. They also tend to move their employees around to different departments while they are young, so that they can get a better picture of the whole company, and so that their skills and knowledge would be more diverse. When Eastern kids excel at one subject, they try to work on other subjects to even them out, which is the exact opposite of what Western kids do. Now I suspect that this is due to their deterministic view of genes.

Another factor that makes this situation worse, I believe, is that praising our kids for their abilities is essentially the same as praising ourselves because it is our genes they inherited. So, given the choice between praising their abilities and efforts, we naturally gravitate towards praising their abilities because, in doing so, we feel better about ourselves. In other words, by praising their abilities, we are taking credit for their achievements, and denying them their rightful credit. As despicable as this sounds, I think this is quite common. I must admit that I’ve been guilty of it myself. From now on, I’ll make a conscious effort to stop praising my own genes, and start praising what my daughter achieved on her own through efforts.

I’m reading this book about how to make schools more interesting. It provides a bunch of clever tricks, strategies, and techniques based on cognitive science. As I read it, I’m trying to remember my own experience in school, and I cannot remember a single thing I learned in school. You might ask, “How about your knowledge of math, science, English, and history? Someone had to teach you all that.” Actually, no. I never paid attention in class. I’m not exaggerating when I say never. I always just drew cartoons. Even if I tried to pay attention to the teacher, it never lasted more than a few minutes. Everything I know, I studied on my own at home. That was the only way I could learn anything, and I’ve always known this about myself, so I never bothered to pay attention in school. The ideal school for me would be where I go to play with my friends; no classes or teachers. I would then go home and study on my own. The school should have exams twice a year to make sure that I studied enough, but that’s all they would need to do.

All my professional skills like graphic design, animation, and computer programming are self-taught too. When I worked in Wall Street, I had to teach myself calculus and statistics (art schools don’t teach you those things). In fact, I see a fundamental problem with the idea of taking classes for professional skills. Firstly, if someone is teaching those skills in school, it generally means that the market is already oversaturated with them. Secondly, if you need 4 months to learn a skill (say Photoshop or Excel), you will never catch up with the speed of the technological evolution. By the time you finish your class, a new version of the application would be out.

If we want to be life-long students, the most important thing to learn is how to learn on our own. All these tricks and techniques for making the classrooms more interesting would just make students lazy. They would always expect the teachers to be Hollywood actors, or else pay no attention. Once they are out of school, they wouldn’t bother studying anything because they wouldn’t know how to learn anything on their own. So, if they had to learn something new, they would resort to going back to school. In other words, the teachers are spoiling them by turning the classrooms into theatres.

Perhaps the best arrangement would be for schools to have classes, but make them optional. If the kids don’t want to attend, they shouldn’t have to. They can just play all day with friends, and go home and study on their own. As long as the schools make it clear what the students are supposed to learn that year, this should work fine for many kids. And, naturally, there should be exams and interviews to make sure that they are learning enough. Does this sound too outrageous, naive, or far-fetched?

My short answer is no. In order to teach “creativity” we have to define what “creativity” is. Otherwise we cannot claim that we are teaching it. In speaking of creativity, we often hear the expression, “Think outside the box.” My wife is sick of hearing this phrase because it was used in every meeting at the advertising agency she used to work at. It is such a cliche that anyone who uses this phrase cannot possibly be creative. In this manner, every time you define anything, it becomes a formula. The very reason why we define anything is to make it possible to repeat. So, once you define what “creativity” is, it immediately becomes a formula, and anyone following, repeating, or conforming to it becomes less creative. Therefore, “creativity” must remain undefinable, which in turn means unteachable.

Here is an example of someone attempting to define what creativity means. Anyone who faithfully follows his criteria of a creative person, cannot possibly be creative. The author provides some examples of how creative people talk. Here is an example:

Creative Person: “Why don’t we add a little garlic?”
Ordinary Person: “Because the recipe doesn’t call for garlic.”

Especially in the US, a “creative type” has become a stereotype. We see it on TV shows and on Hollywood movies all the time. We all know, by repeated exposure, what “creative types” are supposed to say in this type of situation above. Yes, a “creative” person is supposed to be spontaneous and adventurous, so he is supposed to say, “Hey, let’s throw some garlic in there and see what happens!” In most of these “creative” moments, people are just playing a character of a “creative” person. They are not being creative at all. Our public image of a “creative” person is itself a cliche, and many people vainly and mindlessly conform to it. This is why it’s not possible to define what “creativity” is because the moment you define it, it ceases to be creative. And, this is why it’s not possible to teach someone how to be creative.

When I cook something for the first time, I follow the recipe strictly so that I understand the writer’s original intention properly. If I decide to cook the same thing again, I might do something differently, but at that point I would know whether my change was creative or not. If you haven’t tasted the original dish (how the author of the recipe intended it to be), how would you know if what you did was creative or not? Without that knowledge, it would just be a random act. In fact, you are just trying hard to conform to the perception of a creative person, which is very uncreative.

“Creativity” is a cultural construct. For something to be recognized as “creative”, there must be historical/cultural precedents, which means that, before you can break the rules, you must understand the rules first. Even if you come up with something recognized as “creative”, if you didn’t understand the historical precedents, it could just have been dumb luck. In such a case, you would not be able to repeat the same level of creativity in the future. (Because it really wasn’t creativity in the first place.)

The typical misconception about teaching “creativity” is that exposing kids to creative things would make them creative. If this were true, let them just sit in front of a TV and expose them to a variety of TV shows and movies. Putting someone creative, or something creative, next to your kids does not magically make them creative. In fact, you might end up raising a kid who expect amusing, creative things to be served on a silver platter to him, and forever complain about being bored. Making them go through supposedly creative processes wouldn’t do it either.

Jung describes this phenomenon eloquently in his book “The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious.” He tells a story of a sorcerer and his disciples. One day, the sorcerer attained enlightenment. His disciples asked him how he did it, but the sorcerer made no reply. They discovered peculiar diagrams in the cave where the sorcerer attained enlightenment. They said to themselves, “That’s it!” and began copying the diagrams. The point of this story is that by repeating the diagrams, they have reversed the entire process. The diagrams to the sorcerer were effects, not the cause of his enlightenment. The same can be said about creativity; copying a creative person’s process does not make you creative, because his process is actually an effect, not a cause.

So, I’m skeptical of anyone who claims to be able to teach someone how to be creative. Even the most creative people in history, like Duchamp, Warhol, Wittgenstein, Einstein, Mozart, Stockhausen, Shakespeare, Joyce, etc., wouldn’t be able to teach anyone else how to be creative, let alone some teachers that we’ve never even heard of.

Additional Notes (Jun-4-09)

If you were to claim that you are “teaching” someone something, you have to be accountable for it, and be able to take credit for it. If you cannot be accountable for the result, you are not “teaching” anything.

Creativity is something unique to each individual; it’s like mutation in evolution. It is preposterous to claim that you taught someone to develop that unique individuality. And, if you are going to claim it, you better be able to prove it; otherwise you are taking credit for someone else’s work.

To be creative is to transcend every prescription, and that includes a prescription about “creativity”. If you transcended something, for someone to be creative, he needs to transcend your transcendence. If he repeats your transcendence, it’s not creativity. And, if he does transcend your transcendence, then obviously you didn’t teach him how; because you cannot teach someone to transcend you.

I haven’t read “Free-Range Kids” by Lenore Skenazy, but this excerpt on Babble is enough to get the basic premise of the book. We are all over-parenting and we are not even aware of it because over-parenting has become the norm. It’s true; this has in fact been frustrating me ever since our daughter Annika was born. New York City is now much safer than it used to be several decades ago, but it appears that the safer the city becomes, the less freedom kids have. Shouldn’t it be the opposite?

In Japan, by the time I was in kindergarten, I was going out to play outside with my friends without any adult supervision. My wife Roxanne grew up right here in the East Village, New York, and she had freedom that no kids in New York have today, even though the East Village has become far safer than it was when she was a little girl. My daughter will probably have an adult escort everywhere she goes probably for another 10 years. We don’t really have a choice in the matter. If I let my daughter go out and play on her own, I’m sure someone will call the social services in no time. As a compromise, I often go out on a walk with her and simply follow wherever she goes. I observe if she stops at traffic lights, and would not intervene unless she is in real danger.

I believe this paradox of safety and fear extends beyond parenting. As the world becomes safer, we become more fearful. As ironic as it may seem, it makes sense. We do not build courage by hiding behind walls. The world today is too safe and stable. We expect our lives to be predictable and controllable. We have all sorts of insurance to protect ourselves from unexpected events. Most of the jobs these days are for large corporations who protect us from economic and seasonal fluctuations, and pay out fixed salaries. In the end, all this security makes us weaker as humans.

The more courage we have, the more sense of freedom we can enjoy. We are not letting our kids have the opportunities to build courage on their own, because we are more concerned about our own fear. And, we think we are doing it for our kids. No. The truth of the matter is that we are doing it to protect our own feelings and reputations. We hate to worry about anything, so we deprive our kids of their freedom just to make ourselves feel better, and we hypocritically call it “love”.

As the author of the book points out, we feed each other’s fears, making this situation even worse. It’s like prisoners who are guarding themselves. I believe that most parents know deep down that they are giving into their own fears and sacrificing their kids’ freedom, but they want to keep it that way because they can’t deal with their own fears otherwise. They try to make sure that other parents also conform to their own standard of weakness. This is why they love to point out “irresponsible” things other parents do. I’m glad that someone is brave enough to stand up against this.

I found a funny site that collects photos of bad parents. If you followed me around with a camera, you probably could get similarly incriminating photos of me as well. I feel like someone richer than I am can always question why I had a kid. Like: “If you can’t afford to send your kid to a private school, why did you have a kid?” There is no way to draw a clear line between why you should and why you shouldn’t, but I do feel sad for some of the kids in these photos.

The name of the site, “Why the F*** Do You Have a Kid?”, is meant to be funny, but at the same time, it is a big question like, “What’s the meaning of life?” It is a hard question to answer in a rational manner, even if you are a responsible parent. On the other hand, there are many rational reasons why we shouldn’t have any kids. Some people would argue that the earth is too over populated. The reasons for having one are essentially all selfish reasons. My own reason for having one was because I wanted to experience what it is like to have a kid. I’m certainly glad that I have a kid, but I wouldn’t deny that the reason was indeed selfish. In that sense, no matter how responsibly I act, I stand guilty of that rhetorical question of “why”.

But, I feel that a part of the benefit of becoming a parent is to grow beyond naive idealism. For younger readers with no children, this may sound like a cop-out, like doing the wrong thing because I’ve lost the courage and the strength to do the right thing. Some degree of idealism is always important, but as we get older, we realize that much of the idealism we had in our youth was driven by social and cultural pressures. In other words, it was driven by our desire to be “right” in the eyes of the others. There is a subtle yet important difference here; whether you want to be “right” for yourself or want to be perceived as “right”. When something feels “right” for yourself, you often don’t have a good rational reason for it, because there is no rational reason why you were born and raised the way you were. The better you know yourself, the more you can stand up for yourself. You no longer feel the need to defend or justify who you are and why you do what you do. Idealism is compelling when it is backed by logic, but it can lead to a loss of self and alienation. Fortunately or unfortunately, life is not rational. When we force our lives to be rational, we create discord. We need to keep in mind that reason is a tool, not a moral standard. Rationally, I stand guilty of all charges, yet I feel fine with it. I think this is part of what it means to be a parent.