Why are most parents more interested in teaching their children WHAT to think, instead of HOW to think?

Question

I know some people will understand my question completely from what I have written above. Probably the majority will not have a clue and I would be wasting my time if I elaborated. If my question annoys you, you must be in the majority, and if you think it is always good to be in the majority, I send you my blessings with tongue in cheek, as the expression goes.

Answer 1

Do you even have children? There is absolute right and wrong that children need to learn. The world will not give them that knowledge; the world will teach them to take what they want and be greedy and self serving.

I have to give my children knowledge of good and evil. I will not send them into the world morally empty. That would be lazy, abhorrent and almost criminal.

Answer 2

People tend to see their Children as an extension of themselves. Thus they want them to think the same way that they do. Many are simply not smart enough to teach a Child how to think.

Answer 3

Why are most parents more interested in teaching their children WHAT to think, instead of HOW to think?

Because I said so thats why!

Answer 4

I think it is because most parents are not great parents. Just like most drivers are not race car drivers. There are very few people that are great at anything. Parenting is probably the toughest of things to be great at.

Answer 5

Parents are more inclined to teach their children what they already know as true, rather than letting the children figure it out for themselves. It's easier, and it makes more sense at the time.

"Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime."

Answer 6

It's like metacognition. It is more effective to teach towards metacognition than to teach by rote drilling.

Answer 7

Wouldn't teaching your kids HOW to think merely end up at the same result? How you think determines the scope of conclusions you can possibly arrive at. For instance, if I were taught to think with a subjective disposition, wouldn't I never hold a position firmly? In other words, would I not, in a sense, be told WHAT to think (i.e. that all things are subjective)? Again, if I were taught to HOW to think viz. the scientific method, would I not be ultimately disposed to not believe in anything supernatural? Do you see what I mean here?

Granted, telling children WHAT to think is definitely more constraining than telling them HOW to think. Yet, consider this: implicit in WHAT to think is HOW to think, if what we said above is accurate. Since, if I am told that Jesus rose from the dead, I am implicitly being told that it is acceptable to believe in the supernatural and, at least sometimes, go beyond the scientific method in acquiring knowledge.

Anyhow, this is above all the most important part of my answer to your question: children do not have the intellectual capacity to reason like an adult, and so trying to explain to them abstract ideas like HOW to think will, more often than not, be in vain. Again, telling them WHAT to think is useful insofar as they are children and are generally unable to arrive at reasonable conclusions on their own, and insofar as telling them WHAT to think necessarily contains the principles of HOW to think.

Answer 8

Because their parents didn't teach them how to think

Answer 9

Because that's the way THEY were taught.

Answer 10

You can't teach what you don't know.
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