Children “Easily” Solving Family Problems
See full discussionLog in or sign up to participate in this discussion.
With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas.Just having the child take the lead on problem solving, on the assumption that he’s more rational, is not a reliable way to quickly get a great solution.
It follows from Popperian epistemology that there can be no reliable way to get solutions to problems, let alone great ones. So holding Deutsch or TCS to that standard – ironically while referencing Popper – can’t be right.
In addition to the book All Life is Problem Solving (which is referenced, albeit spelled “Is” instead of the correct lowercase ‘is’, see https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/all-life-is-problem-solving-karl-popper/1128336063), Popper also wrote a book called All People Are Philosophers (Alle Menschen sind Philosophen in the original German, https://www.piper.de/buecher/alle-menschen-sind-philosophen-isbn-978-3-492-24189-2).
If all people are philosophers, then that includes children. Children are natural problem solvers.
Sudden switch/moving goalposts from children being “fully rational” to just “more rational”.
In addition to not yet having the hangups Deutsch mentions, I do think children are often more rational than adults in important ways, such as:
- being able and willing to refuse the unwanted loudly and clearly – children are often better at his than adults
- not sacrificing one’s own problem situation for the teachers’ and parents’ problem situations (ie focusing on one’s own goals without compromise)
- disliking and rejecting the arbitrary, including authority
Due to this last point in particular, children are sometimes better scientists than adults!
Also consider how fantastically creative children are, often way more creative than adults. (For example, it is extremely difficult for most adults to lose their native accent when they speak a foreign language, but bilingual children often do this effortlessly.)
There seems to be a general rule of thumb that, the older a person gets, the less knowledge he creates. So who’s the better problem solver, children or adults?