♫ "A dream is a wish your heart makes..." ♪
Disney movies have some good things to teach our children. One important message that shines through is the importance of dreams -- and following your dreams. Whether you are a princess in a tower or a dented tow truck, it is of vital importance to keep chasing your dreams.
♪ "The dream that you wish will come true..." ♫
So why do we end up hijacking our kids' dreams? Somehow, through the "real world" of public education, our kids end up thinking they need to dream smaller dreams. I think the term that is bandied about is "realistic" dreams. Really? Since when is dreaming supposed to be about thinking small? Your dreams are supposed to be BIG -- as big as you can think up!
Picture this: a child enters school dreaming of becoming an astronaut. The child's teacher tells her, "There's no way you can be an astronaut. Wouldn't you like to be a ____ instead?" Fill in the blank with whatever idea you'd like. It ends up the same. We should be about the job of helping kids find ways to reach their dreams, not telling them their dreams are unreachable.
My son wants to fly fighter planes and helicopters for the Air Force. He has wanted to do this since he was quite small. We attended an air show with my father (who was in the Air Force), and my son got to sit behind the controls of a Blackhawk. That was it; that was his dream job from that moment on. His dream has adapted and changed a bit. He is now 10, and his dream now looks like flying unmanned drones and designing software to create these types of programs. He has even talked about going to the Air Force Academy and Spartan School of Aeronautics.
Now, I am making sure that his dream stays alive. As parents, we aren't supposed to kill our kids' dreams. We're supposed to help them realize their dreams. We support our kids dreams, and allow our kids' dreams to change. NOT change their dreams for them!
I've been reading (and rereading) Stop Stealing Dreams. Have a look at section 14:
14. The wishing and dreaming problem
If you had a wish, what would it be? If a genie arrived and granted you a wish, would it be a worthwhile one?
I think our wishes change based on how we grow up, what we’re taught, whom we hang out with, and what our parents do.
Our culture has a dreaming problem. It was largely created by the current regime in schooling, and it’s getting worse.
Dreamers in school are dangerous. Dreamers can be impatient, unwilling to become well-rounded, and most of all, hard to fit into existing systems.
One more question to ask at the school board meeting: “What are you doing to fuel my kid’s dreams?”
And more here in section 19:
19. Dreams are difficult to build and easy to destroy
By their nature, dreams are evanescent. They flicker long before they shine brightly. And when they’re flickering, it’s not particularly difficult for a parent or a teacher or a gang of peers to snuff them out.
Creating dreams is more difficult. They’re often related to where we grow up, who our parents are, and whether or not the right person enters our life.
Settling for the not-particularly uplifting dream of a boring, steady job isn’t helpful. Dreaming of being picked—picked to be on TV or picked to play on a team or picked to be lucky—isn’t helpful either. We waste our time and the time of our students when we set them up with pipe dreams that don’t empower them to adapt (or better yet, lead) when the world doesn’t work out as they hope.
The dreams we need are self-reliant dreams. We need dreams based not on what is but on what might be. We need students who can learn how to learn, who can discover how to push themselves and are generous enough and honest enough to engage with the outside world to make those dreams happen.
I think we’re doing a great job of destroying dreams at the very same time the dreams we do hold onto aren’t nearly bold enough.
Or here, from section 36:
36. Instead of amplifying dreams, school destroys them
Every day, beginning the first day and continuing until the last day, our teachers and our administrators and yes, most parents, seeking to do the right thing, end up doing the wrong one.
We mean well.
We let our kids down easy.
We tell ourselves that we are realistic.
We demand that students have a trade to fall back on, an assembly-line job available just in case the silly dreams don’t come true. And then, fearing heartbreak, we push them to bury the dream and focus on just the job.
The job with a boss and an office and air conditioning and a map of what to do next. A job with security and co-workers and instructions and deniability.
And when the job doesn’t come?
When all the dues are paid and for nothing?
Ouch.
Some intense reading, folks. And food for thought.
Have you talked to your kids about their dreams? Teachers, have you talked to your students about their dreams?
What are we doing to help kids reach their dreams? And how can we help them if we never let them talk about what their dreams might be? Instead of fitting kids into certain boxes, perhaps we should let them dream outside the box!
Most powerful section (at least today) --
Take a look at section 130:
130.Whose dream?
There’s a generational problem here, a paralyzing one.
Parents were raised to have a dream for their kids—we want our kids to be happy, adjusted, successful. We want them to live meaningful lives, to contribute and to find stability as they avoid pain.
Our dream for our kids, the dream of 1960 and 1970 and even 1980, is for the successful student, the famous college, and the good job. Our dream for our kids is the nice house and the happy family and the steady career. And the ticket for all that is good grades, excellent comportment, and a famous college.
And now that dream is gone. Our dream. But it’s not clear that our dream really matters. There’s a different dream available, one that’s actually closer to who we are as humans, that’s more exciting and significantly more likely to affect the world in a positive way.
When we let our kids dream, encourage them to contribute, and push them to do work that matters, we open doors for them that will lead to places that are difficult for us to imagine. When we turn school into more than just a finishing school for a factory job, we enable a new generation to achieve things that we were ill-prepared for.
Our job is obvious: we need to get out of the way, shine a light, and empower a new generation to teach itself and to go further and faster than any generation ever has. Either our economy gets cleaner, faster, and more fair, or it dies.
If school is worth the effort (and I think it is), then we must put the effort into developing attributes that matter and stop burning our resources in a futile attempt to create or reinforce mass compliance.
