David Raitt – Off-Topic

Dear Kids,

It happens a few times every year, mostly on Mondays after a school break, but occasionally in the winter dimness of an early weekday morning: grumbling, coming from under your bed covers, with the occasional declaration: “I hate school.”

As a kid, school is your “job”, and you have to go every day the same way your Mom and Dad have to go “the office”. (Yes, I know some Moms and Dads don’t go to work, but even those people have things to do every day. Most of them anyway.)

I suspect your “hating” school really comes down to a simple desire to just relax, without demands placed on you. Schools, like offices, are busy places with rules of conduct – no TV or video games – and occasionally you just want a day off. I’m right there with you – we all need a “mental health day” every now and then.

People who aren’t fond of school love to talk about how much stuff you learn that you’ll never use. Beyond reading skills and some basic math, they say, everything else is “trivia” that can be learned as and when you need it, especially with our modern access to the Internet. (I suspect they’re also the ones who don’t actually do well in trivia contests, or who create game shows like Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?.)

These people miss the point. Yes, very often school is about learning and repeating facts, but that’s just the mechanism for learning. Education is about training your mind, about exposing you little by little to the larger contexts that shape everyone’s life, and preparing you to think about them on your own terms. I probably won’t need the encyclopedic knowledge of the Grimsby area I learned from colouring satellite photos in Geography, but I do know how to read a map. I can’t remember the exact year Champlain came to Canada, but I understand how my background has shaped modern culture. I’ve forgotten how to titrate a solution, but I can cook a hot and tasty meal.

All of my current skills and knowledge would have been much harder to learn without the basic concepts I learned in school. Even my ability to still learn new things at all has been made easier by that previous practice. And then there are the social skills I couldn’t help but learn by mixing in with hundreds of other students along the way.

And who knows? Maybe one day someone will ask me a million dollar question, and I actually will know the answer.

Now, if you really hate school, we need to sit down and have a serious discussion, because dropping out isn’t an option. You’ll find examples of successful people who didn’t finish school, but you’ll also find they had other ways of training their minds, and that their success was mostly luck on the order of winning the lottery. Practically speaking, if you have (or will have) any kind of ambition for your life’s work, you’ll need at least a high school-level education, and probably more. And the further you go, the more you’ll find it’s about applying a disciplined mind to solving problems, and not so much about knowing facts.

So yes, school is work, and you’ll occasionally feel the desire to not go, especially since you’re not being paid. But trust me – the day will come when you’ll never have to go to school again. And all that schooling will pay you back every day after.

Love, Dad

[Originally by published on Oakville.com.]

Dear Kids,

I can understand why you might be mad. No kid likes their parents going through their stuff, and that feeling just gets more intense the closer you get to being teenagers. If you were shocked when I pulled that surprise audit of your smartphones the other day, I can completely sympathize.

Actually, I don’t think I can. When I was your age, nobody had the free and easy access to electronics that today’s kids have. The most we had to worry about in our day was that Mom and Dad would read our diary, or find that stash of magazines we kept under the mattress. And we couldn’t get that stuff nearly as easily as you can today, much less carry it around in our pockets.

I myself am a technology guy, strongly tethered to my phone, so it seemed a little hypocritical of me to refuse your requests for one, especially when it lets us keep in touch with each other. You’ll remember I favoured the basic model – it was only by pure luck in that raffle that you ended up with the iPhone. But even “dumbphones” have their problems.

So, the audit. I hope I made it clear to you that its purpose wasn’t to get you in trouble. It’s just so easy for everyone (including grownups) to forget the dangers of a near constant Internet connection, we need to be regularly reminded of a few things…

1. There’s no such thing as “Delete”. Snapchat selfies can be saved, disposable texts can be copied, and anything you post can be shared. And there are archive web engines that record everything they come across. So once something is out there, it’s very difficult and likely impossible to completely remove it. And it could all come back to haunt you someday.

2. The crazy stuff is only a click away. We grownups don’t like to draw your attention to that fact. But it’s just so accessible, even by accident through a simple spelling error in a web address, that you can easily wander into places where your young age makes you vulnerable. Not just from predators – you can be spied on or get computer viruses on these sites. And while it may be tempting to go see what you can see, just remember: once you’ve seen something disturbing or upsetting, you can’t un-see it.

3. Even if you’re being safe, you’re still in danger. This is the most frustrating thing of all, and it’s the biggest reason for the audit. Those seemingly-harmless little game apps you fill your phones with can sometimes be fronts for data theft. Some apps get permission from your phone to access your private photos, or your contact details, and who knows what they do with that stuff? And even the big Social Media sites like Facebook can change their privacy settings without warning – suddenly the stuff you thought was super-private is open for the world to see.

Look, I get it. Sharing is the new way of things, and all this auditing might seem paranoid to you. But the fact is, no generation before you has ever had the technology to communicate with the world like this. We just don’t know what staring into a tiny little glowing square all day is turning us into, or how all this communication will affect our lives as we all get older.

We’re still your parents, and we want whatever you’re turning into to have the best chances in life. So I completely understand why you’ll grumble when I ask to see your phones. But I’m still going to ask.

Love,
Dad

[Originally published on Oakville.com.]

Dear Kids,

March Break is here! I’m sure you’re looking forward to a few days off school. Sorry we’re not getting out of town this year – if I’d known the winter would be this cold we might have held off that trip to Mexico last October.

So – especially in the case where we grownups can’t get the whole week off work – what to do? I’ll bet you’d love nothing better than to sleep in and watch cartoons all day, but that doesn’t sit well with us grownups. We want you out in the world doing activities, developing life skills and social integration. Whole industries have developed around kids’ activities. There’s the usual sports camps and arts & crafts, but there are now even more and stranger options. I just saw an ad for a camp in Financial Management – and here those kids thought they were getting time away from Math class.

Hopefully we’ll be able to fit the March Break activities around your usual sports leagues / cheerleading practice / music lessons / tutoring sessions, since they usually take time off too. But then maybe we could get you into some extra goalie training / gymnastics / guitar intensives / real estate seminars to fill in the gaps and keep your skills sharp.

You may be sensing what I’m getting at here. I don’t believe idle hands are the Devil’s playthings, but I do believe in the value of structured activity. At the same time, I grew up in an era when parents were more likely to kick us out of the house for the day, and we had to make up our own activities. Kids don’t roam the neighbourhoods as much these days, so we feel like we have to give you stuff to do to keep your bodies and minds active.

But, whether it’s parents pushing too hard, or merely over-indulging an active kid’s every interest, overscheduling is a real risk. When we take on too many things, even if they’re all meant to be fun, we create stress, which eventually leads to bigger problems. And then that stuff doesn’t seem to be so fun anymore. I remember a night, not too long ago, when after several days of project work, school basketball, football camp, and hockey league, you voluntarily went to bed early, grumbling about a sore back. That might be the best argument against overscheduling: there’s something wrong when a kid starts to behave like an old man.

But we old people have to think about what this is doing to us, too. Already stretched as we are, we’re replacing our precious family time with rushed meals and a constant battle to get to the next thing. We’re handing our lives over to the clock and calendar, losing our individuality as we pile yet again into cars and parental observation areas. When more than half our time is spent rushing home from work to stuff a quick sandwich in you and shuttle you off to ballet, it becomes as if we’re living our lives through you. Of course we do it all out of love, but in the long run I’m not sure that’s the best thing, for us or for you.

I’m not saying that genuine talent shouldn’t be encouraged, or that we should keep you from exploring interesting activities. I just think we need to remember that there is also value in downtime, and even in boredom. Nothing teaches patience and creativity better than having nothing to do. And those are probably the biggest life skills of all.

So this year, maybe we’ll use some March Break time to just relax and hang out. Reconnect over a family dinner or a game of cards. Drive in the car for no other reason than to look at some beautiful scenery. Just take some time to let the buzzing in our ears go away. And maybe once the Break is over, we’ll think about some ways to keep that rolling. Maybe your hands shouldn’t be too idle, but they should at least get a regular chance to rest.

Love,
Dad

[Originally published on Oakville.com.]

Dear Kids,

You might have seen me working at my computer more than usual in the last little while. You might also have heard me saying some of those words I tell you not to use. These two things are connected.

It’s because this is the time of year that’s known as “RRSP Season”. Our Government has some strange rules about money and what you can (or should) do with it. One of them is that if you deposit your money in a “Registered Retirement Savings Plan”, you get a break on the taxes you have to pay every year. You get a couple of months after the end of the year to make your deposit, so here we are, a few days before the deadline. I’m trying to figure out how much money to put in, and which ways to invest it so that it grows faster. But, like a lot of people, I’m not much of an expert on this stuff, so it can be frustrating.

(By the way, I should mention that you still have to pay taxes on that money, just not until later when you take it out of the bank again, usually after you’re retired and don’t work anymore. It’s kind of like the school bully saying “I’m not going to take your lunch money now, but I will be taking it from you one day in Grade 12.”)

I can hear your eyes glazing over as you read this. “Savings accounts and taxes are grownup stuff,” you say. “If it was important for kids I’d be learning it in school.” Don’t get me started. I think you should be taught about it, but it seems there’s no time, what with the Science and Social Studies and your 60 minutes of daily physical activity and everything else. Let me tell you why it’s important.

You know that allowance you get? It’s a few dollars every week that we give you for two reasons. One, it gives you some freedom to spend money on whatever you want, which is fun for you and which stops you and me from getting into arguments when we go to the mall. The second reason is to help you learn what to do when you want something and don’t have enough money to pay for it. Not having enough is usually what we’re arguing over at the mall anyway – I’m just passing the whole issue off to you.

I know you like comic books and candy, but if you buy that stuff all the time you’ll never have enough to get that NHL video game you want “so badly”. You have to save some of your cash every week, and build up those savings until you have the right amount. That takes a long time, and it’s hard to want to save money when your brother is reading Batman and chewing gum.

Well, it’s the same thing for grownups, except we have to prepare for the time in our lives when we don’t go to work anymore. Once we’re retired, the money for our comic books and candy and video games (and other less important stuff like food and shelter) is going to have to come from somewhere.

The problem is, because most of us weren’t taught about money growing up, we’re not so good at saving either. And, because the Government wants us to help ourselves before asking them, they use things like RRSPs and tax breaks to encourage us to save. It seems like an okay idea, even if it feels like the school bully is dragging us to the bank by our ears.

There’s a wise old saying that goes something like this: “If you always spend one dollar less than you earn, you’ll always be rich.” Well, one day you’ll need to know where that one dollar is going to come from. And that’s why you should learn to save.

Love,
Dad