The Early Bird Gets the Worm!

After reading “Fast Families, Virtual Children” by Ben Agger and Beth Anne Shelton,I was in front of the boob tube watching some random television show, probably one about how some wealthy people survive their rough realities, and all of the sudden a commercial about learning appeared. It was the “summer” commercial for Sylvan Learning. It stated that over the extremely lengthy 2 months of vacation, children will lose all of the information they learned throughout the school year. This statement was paired with, I would say, a ten year old boy getting out of a pool knocking the “knowledge” out of his head; as if it were even possible. It then continued on, explaining that their service could increase a child’s reading level in 36 hours of their instruction. It was a sure-fire way to boost your child’s performance. It ended with a child happily learning, still in a chair taking instruction in a room with books, bland walls, no sun light; with each blink a little more creativity and vivacity lost.

I’m sure we can all relate to the fact that this doesn’t happen. Even though we might forget a random fact or statistical information or definition, skills are never lost and if raw data is your focus then maybe we all forget things here and there. The real question is what is lost in a world where children are sentenced to 6+ exhausting, mentally and physically, hours of learning. Children, nor adults, are made to be sedentary creatures, so locking either in a room and forcing them to be immobile is impractical and unreasonable. As we age, we envy children for many things like their youth, creativity, innocence, and time. Due to adult’s inability to have these, children are resented. With a mix of capitalism this turns into efforts for year-round schooling, ending recess, and increased standardized testing and extracurricular activities. We make the ten year old's life just as exhausting as someone in college. Agger and Shelton make a great point that “[t]he triumph of facts over theories already decides in favor of culture’s utilitarianism” (p.142). With things like recess and summer breaks deemed as useless, there is a push to cut them out because they are not viewed as productive.

Any sane person would question the need to be productive all the time. In today’s economic climate, time is money and “free” time does not turn into career opportunities. We often hear that it is not what you know but who you know. This language transforms every action into a business interaction; cultural capital equates to economic capital. We teach our children to take tests not to enhance their abilities, to reproduce what they’ve been taught not to enhance their analytical skills to challenge their own perceptions and ideas; ultimately we encourage docile bodies and “good” workers.

Adulthood is being performed and produced earlier and earlier in children, hence educational enhancers like “My Baby Can Read.” This amazing program helps your baby read as early as 9 months! In this plan your child can have a college reading level by age ten, what more could you want. Instead of learning some social skills, you stuff them in a corner, only letting them out for their 8 resume building activities. Television programs like Barney & Friends and Dora the Explorer socialize children at an early age the rules of world and another language; don’t forget being bilingual is key. This “worldly self,” concept presented by Agger and Shelton, posits that the manufacturing line for adulthood begins before kindergarten.

What kind of culture and people are we creating when personal happiness and success falls upon performativity? When we calculate a GPA out to the seventh decimal point we are smashing the vase of creativity by reinforcing certain skill sets, skill sets that benefit a world of consumerism, productivity, stereotyping, gender roles, majorities versus minorities, and most importantly socioeconomic status. As a society we become purely workers with limited abilities when we stamp out anything that is not deemed profitable.