Once again, I am heartbroken for the child, his family and the society when the news broke that a Gunn senior did the silly thing yesterday morning! Why would a high school senior finding such a way to give up? A lot of discussions arose since yesterday, with most of them to be touching areas that are so commonly debated, for a solution out. In my mind, there is one thing that is missing in today's society, that is to educate the kids to build themselves for the human society! In my country where I grow up, there is a term for it called "ideal".
Back then, we were taught to set up an ideal, no matter what it is. That actually worked for me, at least. I had a hope to become a famous scientist, with idol of Madam Curie! Believe it or not, it helped me to across many hurdles, when I didn't want to work anymore, it told me to standup and continue.
Nowadays, kids are buried by the material-world mentality which is so trendy in the adult world. They compare the sizes of houses, the brands of their cars, the destinations of their vacations ...... one thing they forgot --- kids have no sense of comprehend these material stuff yet; instead, they translate that to the grades at school, the achievements they can get at their extra curriculum (EC), and ultimately the college they get into. To one end, this motivates the kids to work hard; on the other side, the kids collapse if they can not reach their goal, because they think the world is ending if they can not get what they set out to grab. What can happen when someone feels his/her world is ending?
So, parents, schools and society need to take a u-turn. Instead of feeding the kids so much of the material incentives, we shall start to feed the kids some stuff that is not so visible that they won't know it is not reachable until they are adult and ready to face the reality; then, they are ready to take the correct view and find out something more practical to achieve! I call this a "back to the ground way of raising children"!
