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Children can't be experts on themselves

Shriver, Lionel
http://unherd.com/2023/01/how-we-created-a-self-hating-generation/

Year Published:  2023  
Resource Type:  Article

Character is created over a lifetime, not discovered whole.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

Once upon a time, a fully realised person was something one became. Entailing education, observation, experimentation, and sometimes humiliation, 'coming of age' was hard work. When the project succeeded, we developed a gradually richer understanding of what it means to be human and what constitutes a fruitful life. This ongoing project was halted only by death. Maturity was the result of accumulated experience (some of it dire) and much trial and error (both comical and tragic), helping explain why wisdom, as opposed to intelligence, was mostly the preserve of the old.

These days, discussion of 'character' is largely relegated to fiction workshops and film reviews. Instead, we relentlessly address 'identity', a hollowed-out concept now reduced to membership of the groups into which we were involuntarily born -- thereby removing all choice about who we are. Rejecting the passé 'character building' paradigm, we now inform children that their selves emerge from the womb fully formed. Their sole mission is to tell us what those selves already are. Self is a prefabricated house to which only its owner has a key.

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