Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…There are models of education, like the progressive model of education of John Dewey, that, in part, are premised on this notion that as we become adults, we forget what it was like to actually be a child. That is one of the core challenges of being a parent, is to remember what it was like for you when you were really young. Do you think, in general, that’s an underrated thing that we have this loss of memory? How well do you remember how you were at three or four? Very well. [laughs] It’s hard for me to know how well. I have the feeling I’ve changed less over the years than most people, that I was a bit older, young, and now being older, I’m still somewhat young. I suspect the main market failure you see with parents is their mode of interaction is driven by narcissism or their own problems within the family unit rather than concern for the kid, rather than, well, they can’t remember what they were like. I would think that’s pretty low on the list of what is going wrong. Do you think it’s generally true in the sense that we, maybe conveniently, are just willing to tolerate a certain kind of — mistreatment is the wrong word — but we will humiliate our kids in ways that we would never humiliate another adult by, for instance, having a conversation about them in their presence, where you talk about some bad behavior or something.…

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