Gimme Shelter: Why I taught Grammar to Kids Who Didn't Care (Parenting in Colorado, Part Three)

(or What I Learned about Parenting from The Rolling Stones)

In this interview, Mick Jagger calls the song "a very moody piece about the world closing in on you . . . ."

My hometown greeted 2014 with the lawful sale of recreational cannabis. Naturally, parents and educators are talking a lot about marijuana here in the 303. The debate is a many-tentacled beast in our local zeitgeist, and I will address various aspects of it in a series of blog posts here.

Today, I share my thoughts on the importance of helping teenagers learn to think critically about ALL issues in the world, including drug use.

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Oh, a storm is threatenin' / My very life today / If I don't get some shelter / Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away   -M. Jagger, K. Richards

I. The Inner Fortress: Shelter from the Storms of Life

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We do not like to admit it, but parents cannot truly keep our kids safe. The storms threaten with too much force; the best we can do is offer some shelter. 

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The best protection against the slings, arrows and other outrageous fortunes life offers is knowing how to think. Messages from corporations, institutions and industries barrage our kids every minute of every day. The only real shelter lies within themselves: the ability to discern good from bad, right from wrong, and truth from deceit.

This is the key to ultimate, adult liberty: being free to make choices unfettered by ignorance. This is also why I endeavored to teach high-school English.

II. Rhetoric is Power. Learn How to Wield It, or Fall Victim to It.

Although I think many students remember me fondly, I was not the kind of teacher who inspired a life-long romance with literature. As I reminded them often, I didn't give a whit about how much they liked a book. We had bigger fish to fry. 

Most high-school students would rather talk about anything besides grammar. Literary analysis interests them only slightly more. Discussions of tone, theme, purpose--and God forbid syntax or diction--inspire resentment and apathy in the average teenager.

And yet, nearly every day of my teaching career, I insisted on talking about grammar and analysis. And it was awful.

Why not change tack? Why sail against such rough winds, instead of taking the smoother course of young-adult lit and how it makes kids feel? Because their brains are worth it.

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Adults have the opportunity (if not the mandate) to teach kids how to protect their brains against predators. In our brave new world of constant media messaging, the task is more vital than ever. I lost sleep over teenagers who fought my instruction (due to their unfortunate, adolescent circumstances), because unless we understand how arguments work, we are powerless against the barrage of arguments invading our mind-grapes.

III. Critical Minds Build Strong Backbones.

These almost-adults will soon be making decisions about where they spend their money, whom they support in elections, and how they conduct themselves in the wide, weird world. Our parental, teaching, and grown-up decree is to give them shelter from the storms threatening to blow them off-course. 

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So we diagram sentences. We write formulaically in the classroom until we can prove a thesis with air-tight precision. It's brutal work, but the minds of our future adults are worth the struggle. When they know how to defend a logical argument of their own (which means knowing how to craft a smart sentence), students are more capable of recognizing the fallacies in the arguments aimed squarely at them.

The forces threatening our teenagers--and all of us--are too many to fathom. Nary a parent I know would argue against the importance of fortifying our children's inner strength in the face of all the evils in the world. That strength--that ability to make sound, responsible decisions--begins and ends with understanding the messages we receive and interpreting them wisely.

Let us give our teenagers the shelter of strong backbones and critical minds. The study of rhetoric--which begins with grammar and embraces logical argument--is an excellent place to start.

See you in English class.

[In honor of the human need for shelter, I will be giving Keith Richard's children's book for Christmas this year. Gus and Me: The Story of Granddad and My First Guitar, here at amazon.]

Please stay tuned for more installments! Follow me on twitter @lisafilholm; tune in often to www.beyondmamabear.com; book a workshop or lecture for your parenting group now!

Open Culture's article on background vocalist Merry Clayton

Eight Minutes Too Late: The Beautiful Agony of Natural Consequences

I continue to be a big fan of the good doctors at Love and Logic, who preach the power of natural consequences. Their wisdom resonates identically with parents of toddlers and parents of teens. It is agonizing, watching our kids suffer the results of their actions, but it is worth it. Every single time, they grow and learn and take one giant leap toward responsible adulthood.

A Cautionary Tale of Consequences: Here's a Good One for You.

A young man in Denver, Colorado rushed home one afternoon to put the final touches on a scholarship application, due that very day. This high school junior is mature, well-spoken, bright. He does well in school, plays sports, works a steady job. He knows a lot of things about the great big world, but he didn't know (until this particular afternoon) about the importance of time zones. 

This intrepid boy submitted his online application at 2:08 PM, happily in advance of his 4:00 deadline. His email was immediately rejected; the application process was closed; the website went blank. The deadline, of course, was 4:00 PM Eastern Standard Time (whereas our unwitting hero lives in the  Mountain Time Zone). He missed out on the promise of a dream by eight minutes.

His mama might have lectured or blown her top. You can bet she envisioned thousands of dollars circling right down the drain; I am certain she has repeated, "eight lousy minutes" in varying tones of dismay to all her friends.

Instead, she recognized the shock and disappointment in her baby's eyes. She saw the resignation and regret--familiar to cynical adults--which fester when doors slam shut. She knew no one was more sorry than her son about the opportunity he had just missed. Instead of chiding him, instead of frantically emailing powerful people to finagle an extension, she took a deep breath along with him and carried on.

The lessons he learned were many, in that moment and in the following days. Natural consequences are a bitch. He will probably be more careful about deadlines hereafter. He is practicing the art of handling disappointment. Because he is young and gifted--and because the world is bountiful--he will have countless other opportunities. He faced frustration, panic and anger at himself and survived. He learned these feelings--like all feelings--are temporary.

To my way of thinking, there are few lessons more valuable for adolescents to learn. Feelings are temporary.

Agonize Less When Teens Falter. Enjoy More. They're Learning!

Love and Logic parents try to enjoy watching their toddlers make stupid mistakes. The natural consequences of these actions (repeat the parents to themselves behind clenched smiles) produce exactly the results we desire. Kids will only remember their coats if they have felt the chill of forgetting them, or their lunches if they have felt hunger pangs at noon. 

Parents of teenagers, let's try to look at it the same way. One of the teenagers in my very own home accuses me of "loving it when kids get in trouble." He may have a point. I do enjoy watching teenagers face the music, be responsible, suffer the consequences of their idiotic actions. Nothing less will save them from themselves. 

When we parents rush to solve their problems and rescue them from natural consequences, we deny our children the gift of learning how to fail.

“We are all faced with a series of opportunities—brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.”
-John Gardner”