Children hardly grow up in a vacuum. They are shaped largely by the social worlds they inhabit. A child’s personality, interests and activities are neither attributes of an isolated individual nor imposed by the environment.
They are firmly located in the interactions between a child and the network or system of social relationships to which each child belongs.
Is it true that we are a generation of corrupt parent and not corrupt children? The adult is the mortifying force for whom the child is a peg to suspend all his material worldly aspirations and dump a corrupt value system. A father pushes his daughter to do well in a quiz. This is for the personal deliverance of the father , much to the girl’s agony.
All that our little needs is our companionship. She wants to hold our hand, eat with us humbled puffed rice; she wants us to be a participant in her world. But we take her to an expensive hotel, buy her the most expensive dish, and a horribly priced toy, because that’s happiness as our commercial world view defines it. When the bill finally arrives and we perspire over it, anxiously fumble through the notes in the wallet, a frightful confusion grips the little one…..an uncanny silence takes over.
Essentially we have never tried to understand our children. Our understanding of what is important need not be important to them. There is a class aspect to it. It’s more barefaced with the upwardly mobile. In many layered society one class is a corrupting influence over the other and sees a rigorous indoctrination taking place. The other big blow has been the commercialization of schooling.