Reading The Gardener and the Carpenter by Alison Gopnik

I'm reading Alison Gopnik's latest, The Gardener and the Carpenter, which is an interesting look at "parenting" and its supposed experts. Unlike many Americans, I have a lot of experience working with children, I've been doing it for eight years. In the course of that work, I've come across other teacher that consider themselves experts. And I've come across teachers that make no claim at expertize, but instead depend on experience.

Gopnik rightly takes aim at the so-called experts. As a psychologist and philosopher, she knows more about the science of child development than most. Even then, she's no font of divine wisdom. Her own pet theory, theory theory, is hardly settled.

In any case, Gopnik suggests we allow two metaphors guide our thinking about parenting: the Gardener and the Carpenter. The carpenter doesn't like mess or unpredictability. He measures everything twice, works to a plan, builds with a particular function in mind. Indeed, Gopnik doesn't say this, but the carpenter is more like an engineer. He factors in a large factor of ignorance. Both arts and math. Not just one. Books and sports. Ballet and lacrosse. Why by bilingual when you can be trilingual?

I confess. I sympathize with such parents. Take languages for instance. If my wife and I are fortunate enough to have children, I'd like them to be at least semi-confident heritage speakers in all the languages their grandparents speak. That means four different dialects of Chinese--which are better thought of as separate languages, English, and French. Plus, I'd like them to know Latin.

We want to preserve our traditions. This urge is one of the things that make us human. But it's a tall order.

Gardeners, on the other hand, might lay out their garden with a certain plan in mind, but they leave a lot of room for chance and randomness. They know sometimes nature has a way of producing the best effects. Indeed, some gardeners claim to just broadcast their seeds and see what happens.

Gopnik doesn't want us to take such an extreme laissez-faire approach, but she certainly leans on the side of gardeners, not carpenters, which is a position I sympathize with.

I look forward to reading the rest of the book.