JNL
I am less certain about, but willing to put my bets on, even the fig leaf of AI as "education" completely collapsing ten years from now
But your kid is learning NOW
don't let them be made bycatch
you've gotta give them the watch words and teach them the code if systems have bought in to keeping those things from this group of kids
JNL
Last night mattered, friends, in the life of this kid, and it didn't come with a flashing sign
Just a test, and a disconnect, and both of us deciding whether we would be with each other in bullshit
We are living through a shamelessly dishonest era, because wide-scale dishonesty makes it much easier to strip the sacredness from all of the human things that are also seen as 'lost profit'
At the end of the day, this kind of conversation is your kid asking if honesty matters
asking if the sweat and tears of their own EFFORT toward intellectual honesty matters
if your witness to them is 'yes,' you gotta say it
come through
they are asking you to tell them what's true
say it.
JNL
Teen2 woke this morning at the fucking crack of dawn because HS schedules are sadistic and he's in an honors music cohort, and came to find me TO SHARE HOW HIS WRITING WENT, and to plot the paragraph that he hasn't written yet but wants to
HE WENT TO SLEEP THINKING ABOUT WRITING
HE WOKE UP THINKING ABOUT WRITING
HE WOKE UP AND WANTED TO CONNECT WITH ME ABOUT HIS WRITING
Y'all if your teen wants to share writing with you in the first place, they are already bought in on this project
And they are secretly desperate to hear the same thing that we all, all the days of our lives, always are: that they are enough
that their words are enough
that what THEY can do toward this project is enough
TELL THEM THE HUMAN TRUTH
Tell them that their words, while they will be imperfect, are all we have
the striving toward them is sacred
the writing them is enough
the friction and limitation and frustration are how we learn
This witness WILL NOT ALIENATE your fumbling, hopeful, beautiful kid
Brian Gettler
@jnl The imperfection is sacred. It's what makes, and has always made, great art. It's the jagged, jarring edges of the-best-we-can-do, not the superficially flawless product - achieved by LLM, auto-tune, or whatever - that makes human creation so special. It's celebration, commiseration, resistance, inception, and so much more. Give me imperfection, always striving to improve while understanding nothing is ever perfect, or nothing at all (which, of course, is exactly what Chat et al. generate).
Rich Felker
@brian_gettler @jnl It's not "imperfection". That's the framing of people who have no heart or creativity. It's merely the lack of following arbitrary and capricious rules designed to stratify and build hierarchy and have things to praise mediocrity so that it's not judged on its emptiness.
Rich Felker
@jnl @brian_gettler I guess I just don't like the name "imperfection" - I don't see difference, not matching somebody else's preconceived expectations, etc. as being in contrast to some idea of "perfect".
JNL
speaking theologically, I witness that what matters IS ALSO IMPERFECTION, and our collective ability to embrace it, whatever we deem it to mean. For some, it means difference. For some, it means that which evokes shame. For some, it means not meeting a generalized standard of "value" or "efficiency." Our ability to be in the presence of that which purity culture and capitalism (which are more tied at the source and in the structures than many admit, which then pulls us straight into theology and actually, also into theodicy) deem to be discardable is essential to being humane with ourselves and with one another.
Rich Felker
@DavidM_yeg @brian_gettler @jnl The problem is the framing of what is a mistake. Conveying something different than what you meant is a mistake. Expressing an idea in a way that's likely to be misinterpreted by your audience can also be a mistake. Failing to follow arbitrary style rules is not.
What's infuriating is that we have systems pressuring kids to feel like the latter are grave mistakes and the former is nbd.
DavidM_yeg
In a different stream, I encounter kids who have been taught the opposite: that mistakes don’t matter, everything is flawed therefore striving isn’t needed. This kind of carelessness is dangerous for them and us.
Finding balances that learn through flaws rather than being rigidly perfectionist or placidly careless is how we teach kids that the beauty of life is who we become when we strive toward perfection in our humanity
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DavidM_yeg
I think that “perfect” is the only thing worth striving towards, even as we know we cannot accomplish it; that holding perfection in our imaginations is part of what makes great art and life.
But this message bumps up against our society which makes imperfection blameworthy, that piles shame on top of flaws and striving, a society that prefers to judge the worth of a person instead simply accepting it as given.
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