On Friday (8 Feb) I was watching the Mike and Mike radio show on ESPN (they do a simulcast of the show on TV). They were interviewing Bob Knight, one of the NCAA's most successful basketball coaches. He's well known for getting his players to not only perform to the best of their ability on the court, but he also graduates his players, which lately has become a rarity in NCAA basketball.
Coach Knight said something really interesting that I've been thinking about for the last day or so. He was talking about the mentality of today's youth, how having fun and doing things their own way gets in the way of real growth from hard work. How coaches and teachers can't help children grow because their not allowed to teach or discipline in a way that should have been initially done in the home. Anyway, here's the quote:
It really isn’t the fault of the kid that grows up without a real determination, without a real desire to succeed; it’s the fault of parents that don’t make sure that a kid is pulling it in that direction. And I’ve said again for years that parents have changed, and it isn’t the kid that’s changed. The two- or three-year-old kid is the same that he was 40 or 50 or 20 years ago. But the eight-year-old kid or the fourteen-year-old kid or the twenty-year-old kid is a lot different because he hasn’t had the same kind of background, the same kind of mentality used in his development that was used back then.How true that quote is. I've noticed this problem around the world. I don't work as hard as I should sometimes--not that I wasn't taught to work by my parents (go Mom and Dad!)--but that I can be pretty lazy when I'm in the mood.
-Coach Bob Knight, 8 Feb, 2008, Mike and Mike in the Morning
The reason why I thought this quote was such a poignant rejoinder to society's ills is that I've been thinking about this lately (the last 2 or 3 years) and what kind of parent I'd like to be someday.
Haven't you guys seen kids that were never taught basic discipline, and simply have never been disciplined for fear that the parent won't be liked or that the kid could be bummed out by the discipline? I always knew growing up when I was doing something wrong, I'd been taught the basics of not only the Gospel but normal societal etiquette.
I think kids want to know what's right and what's wrong, even though they'll choose to do differently at times, they'll always know what they can do to achieve success and they'll know how to deal with difficulty. The lack of this basic knowledge, I think has left a lot of people from my generation wandering, unable to act because they simply don't know how because their parents wouldn't/couldn't teach them.
Man, I could go on and on about this (as if I haven't already). But I think I'll end here and let the rest of you ruminate on Coach Knight's insight.
4 comments:
Amen to that. It gets even scarier when you have your own.
One thing we've noticed, though, is that even with temper tantrums if we tell BeeBoo "We love you very much, but no you may not ______" it really does work. I mean, she still throws the fit, but it doesn't get her anywhere, and she usually doesn't throw the same fit more than once...
That's really cool, Em. Since there have been so many stories about President Hinckley lately, I heard about what kind of father he was: never an angry word, never lifted his hand against his children. But he taught with love and delineated clear boundaries, working with Sister Hinckley the whole while to raise their children. Just as you and Ben say, "We love you very much, but no you may not ______," and President and Sister Hinckley did, I wish that more parents would act that way.
so why haven't you blogged about
http://www.geekstir.com/startrekmap.html
this yet?
that's a good question. although i'm pretty sure that's been my desktop picture before.
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