Sybaris Posted March 25, 2014 Posted March 25, 2014 My 7 year old step-grandson has been carted off to VBS for several summers in a row and his parents couldn't be more pleased with his recital of hymns and verses ad nauseum. His mother works and his father is marginally employed by choice. Basically he's just a sperm donor and spends more time on his Xbox than on the job. I really don't have a dog in this but my wife extends her daughter quite a bit of generosity and watches the grandchildren so she can work and her husband by circumstance play his stupid games uninterrupted. Realizing that their abode isn't exactly a bastion of intellect nor will it foster any I took it upon myself to start asking the grandchildren a question, "What did you learn today?" when I see them. This has taken an unexpected turn of events. My grandson has started writing questions in a notepad so that we can go back and forth answering each others questions and teaching each other. I had just finished reading some posts on this forum when I was shown the notebook and it struck me.............. I can start asking him questions that undermine his religious indoctrination!! First question, "How old is the earth?" 5
MerryG Posted March 26, 2014 Posted March 26, 2014 Oh, suuuuuuch a baaaaaaad granpa! You should be ashamed proud of yourself! And I love that you're taking the approach of asking questions to encourage grandson to think for himself, rather than just doing counter-indoctrination.
rach Posted March 26, 2014 Posted March 26, 2014 I think it's wonderful Sybaris what you're doing. I never had anybody to talk to like that. My adoptive parents were sending me to every church program (which I always hated) and I never received any other kind of education (well I attended school, but I'm not sure how much of a useful education I got there, I mean they threw facts at us left and right but there was no real life wisdom being gained). It all led to a severe suicidal nervous/psychotic breakdown as an early 20-something who knew nothing but Biblical fundamentalism and couldn't cope with the world. It would have done so much good to have had an adult mentor in my life who cared enough to teach me critical thinking skills and the ways of the world. If critical thinking is not being taught somehow, it isn't going to develop on its own except by what I experienced- painful trial and error. I learnt to be my own parent by educating myself with reading many different kinds of books. No child should have to be their own parent, their own teacher. 1
Super Moderator TheRedneckProfessor Posted March 26, 2014 Super Moderator Posted March 26, 2014 I remind my son all the time that he is free (an expected) to question everything... including me. 2
amateur Posted March 26, 2014 Posted March 26, 2014 Good job! At 7 he'll be old enough to have good questions and enough basic knowledge to know some of those stories just don't make sense! Good for you for being there and helping protect him from brainwashing and from learning to not trust his own instincts. Even if you don't always have a perfect answer, a good honest "I don't know" means a lot more than "just believe the bible." My parents gave me some good "I don't know"'s and my kids got that sometimes, too. What I and apparently my kids got out of some of the "I don't know"'s is that it's ok to question, ok to keep looking for answers, and definitely ok to not blindly follow a book or leader. And how about very simple science projects? One thing that made a huge impression on me as a young kid was when my dad brought home a prism and showed us how it broke the light up into the color spectrum, a rainbow. From that young age, I understood that a rainbow is a natural event that has always occurred and has nothing to do with anything (i.e., arks and floods) but the science of light going thru a prism to show the colors of the spectrum. I mean, he didn't make a big deal out of it -- five minutes of showing us how the prism worked, a simple explanation including why there are big rainbows in the sky after rain, then he let us play with it a while to make rainbows. But I always remembered that. Good for you for bringing some reason into your corner of the world! 1
older Posted March 26, 2014 Posted March 26, 2014 Get a copy of Peter Boghossian's book, A Manual for Creating Atheists. Therein you'll find some good guidelines for asking questions using the Socratic method. Even as young as seven, you can teach this child to ask questions and to question the thoughts and methods behind what he or she is being told. Teach this young man to ask, "How do you know that?" and to look for verifiable facts in the answer and you'll have done him a great service.
Sybaris Posted March 26, 2014 Author Posted March 26, 2014 And how about very simple science projects? One thing that made a huge impression on me as a young kid was when my dad brought home a prism and showed us how it broke the light up into the color spectrum, a rainbow. I have thought about that too. I do spend some time in 300 million year old deposits and have thought about taking him along. It will be the perfect lead-in for a light creation discussion. I think I'll do that right before he goes to VBS.
amateur Posted March 27, 2014 Posted March 27, 2014 ^^^Awesome! My dad used to take us to look for fossils, and we'd go to a little stream by our house and chip coal. When my son was young and into dinosaurs and fossils, my dad found a good place to go off the highway and we all found some really cool fossils. We made a little "museum" in our basement of all the fossils my son found, geodes, and crystals from those little homemade crystal kits. Any interest in realities of creatures before dinos, dinosaurs and how they evolved and how their bodies worked (as opposed to, say, crocodiles and birds and mammals) really blows up the weird xian theories!
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