Reply personal responsibility is a crock: here is why

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No one is expecting mindreading.

But, if you take a look around the internet at what some of the younger generations issues are they say some of the same stuff I do. And, type in boomer advice.

And, how can a person take this responsibility to figure things out on their or figure out what questions to ask if again they don't understand and know the circumstances surrounding the problem? And, this is another issue with the whole personal responsibility concept I have. This demands omniscience and prescience on our part. I'm not a god nor am I the God of the Bible. This is a demand that is completely unreasonable. What's being asked of people is an almost impossible demand.

I'm not psychic. I don't have mind reading powers nor can I see into the future. Personal responsibility advocates, conservatives, objectivists, etc demand the impossible.

I believe it was proverbs 22:6 said "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."

So, it seems like parents do have an obligation to teach their children how to function in society and in the workplace. And, they have an obligation to their child's education both academic and non-academic like life skills.

And, I do believe that one of the ten commandments is to honor thy mother and father. What parents have done in modern society is made schools what is called In loco parentis. Parents today complain and complain about today's schools and how today's children are entitled. If the parents are making the schools In loco parentis for periods of time then it is up to the parents to hold themselves and their In loco parentis accountable. This means that children should be trained up as to the way to go by their parents and the parents In loco parentis.

If children today are narcissists, entitled, directionless, don't understand a lot about how things work including the workplace then who are the responsible ones. According to the Bible it is the parents and their In loco parentis. Now, if they've reneged on a Biblical commandment of training their children in the way to go then haven't they been inadvertently been taught to dishonor their parents by their parents choices. Isn't not training their children, expecting their children to "figure things out themselves" and being fed with misleading horses**t against Biblical teachings and therefore dishonoring their children? Those who would point the finger at children and call them entitled and narcissists and expect them to figure it out themselves how dare they cast stones?

We don’t demand anything, actually. Demanding or expecting things of others runs contrary to objectivist philosophy. We demand/expect things from ourselves—and encourage same from others. However, demanding that we MAKE others successful is u reasonable. We can’t read minds and we can’t help someone who won’t tell us what they want, who won’t work for themselves, and who won’t listen. Millennials are known for making such unreasonable demands, which is ironic because millennials are also really big into DIY culture. For everything there is a YouTube, and monetization fulfills the objectivist ideal that nothing is for free. Now if we can cure the mental illness of collectivism that infects so many millennials, we’ll be in business.

Proverbs are proverbs. They are expressions, sayings, riddles, paradoxes, etc. meant to get the reader to think and meditate on deeper truths. Train up a child is just common sense. IF you train up a child, THEN he will not depart from it. This doesn’t say anything about what a child might decide on his own. In other words, you only give the child the best chance at success, not a guarantee of success.

The Bible does have a lot of great things with practical significance. Proverbs wasn’t written with common people in view. It was written from the perspective of a king or local ruler as advice for his heir.


The problem is Solomon did EXACTLY the opposite by marrying foreign wives, levied heavy taxes, and used the money to support his own excessive palace living. Now, maybe Solomon wrote his proverbs from a place of regret, writing what he SHOULD have done rather than what he did. But then that doesn’t explain Rehoboam’s failure. Rehoboam was crowned at Shechem in view of the 10 northern tribes who’d felt alienated by Solomon. His older, more experienced advisors urged him to show diplomacy, cut his personal and palace expenses, and ease the tax burden. What did Rehoboam do? He bragged about the size of his sexual organs and doubled down. Damascus declared independence, Egypt raided Jerusalem, and the northern kingdom rejected Judah AND God.

So much for training up the child.

And this is exactly the point I’ve been trying to make. We can train up the child all we want, but in the end it is the decisions of the child that matter. We can’t do it for you. You HAVE to learn your own lessons and act. Training up the child is great advice because it does give the child the best chance at success. It does not absolve the child of his own responsibility, nor does it fault the father for doing his best.

I just want to say something to everyone that is off topic before I continue.

Be careful out there. Please wear your masks! Stay Safe! And, be careful and mindful of the extremists that may be in your area.

And, your point is valid of course!

I'm not talking about disobedient children or children who went against the elders advice or their parents advice. I will use the verses you wrote. I'm talking about the children who did listen to their father's instruction and did not reject their mother's teacher yet still did not receive the garland of grace around their head and the gold chain around their neck.

In other words what if the instruction was poor, outdated and/or misleading? And, in fact what if in some cases the parents themselves are the sinners?

Is it reasonable to give the child 100% of the responsibility pie if all of what I'm talking about is the case?

As for the millennials, it isn't that they're entitled it's that they're ignorant about a number of things on how the workplace actually works. They should've been taught from jump how to function effectively in the workplace instead of being given outdated, poor and misleading advice.

Example: Little things like They should've been told that the world of education is different from the world of work. In school, after they complete all of their assignments early they could put their head down if they wished. With respect to the workplace you can't do that. You're expected to always be productive and if you're done with something you're expected to find yourself something to do or ask your supervisor. This is a part of taking initiative. Now, imagine you're a student kept in this bubble through a 3rd of your life by your parents and the school system. For a 3rd of your life you're given assignments to do in your various classes and grade levels and you're allowed to put your head down. Now all of a sudden at the age of 18, you graduate high school and all of a sudden this changes with no rhyme, reason or warning.

As for youtube vids. They are wonderful to look things up even to tie a tie and I can tie a tie now b/c of a youtube video. But there is a drawback. You can't look up things on youtube or anywhere if you don't know the circumstances surrounding the problem or what to type in. If you are ignorant about something and don't even realize you're ignorant about it and there was no way for you to conceive of it then youtube and other platforms don't work for this. This is called an out of context problem and youtube doesn't work for these things.

Personal responsibility is a crock and is pushed by right wingers.

much if not all of the right-wing's harping on "personal responsibility" amounts to ableism.

↑ This.

Personal responsibility is both real and necessary.  Without it, we would have people living in the streets, coup attempts, and tyrannical dictators making life-and-death decisions for others.

Just because these conditions also exist only means that some people have abdicated their personal responsibilities, and would blame others for whatever goes wrong, including their own mistakes.

What if those others had a hand in one person's mistakes or whatever goes wrong? Again, shouldn't they be receiving some of the personal responsibility pie?

Let me add to this. Why did my parents and my In Loco Parentis deem it necessary to learn all of these facts and formulas instead of things like how to manage my money, how to do an effective job search, etc?

Why did parents and In Loco Parentis pump us all up and make us all believe that we can do anything and be anything and that college was the end all be all to everything instead of showing me how to get experience?

It was up to the parents and In Loco Parentis to train the children up in the way they should go. If the the millennials are entitled and narcissistic then the parents and In Loco Parentis need to look themselves in the mirror. They failed to train the children up in the way they should go.

If a product comes out to be garbage then who is responsible for making the bad product?

Last edited by cubedemon6073 on 18 Jan 2021, 2:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

There's another aspect that was not discussed.

1. Assume there is no personal responsibility. Like, in die-hard determinism, where your brain functions are thought to be entirely a casual function of particles interacting, and not *you* exerting a will.

2. We still have to deal with people who have bad outcomes. Like, a rapist or murderer.

3. So, even if personal responsibility is a crock, we still have to do something with people who cannot act like it exists.

You can skip to the last three paragraphs if you want, but perhaps I can shed some light into how the education system works (or doesn’t).

Overall I actually agree with you here about education. But you need to go back and read what I wrote about what train up the child means. Personal responsibility does not account for the inadequacies of others. It says: ok...so your parents and teachers were all full of feces and lied to you about college and realizing your dreams. Now you know. So what are YOU gonna do about it now? Forget about your teachers, forget about your parents, what do YOU do about it? How do you build on your actual, personal experience, recover from the mistakes THEY made, and make a better life for yourself?

Everyone DOES get a slice of the personal responsibility pie, yes, because of justice. Everyone has to accept that their actions, especially those that harm others, will ultimately fall back on them. Ineffective teachers get fired. Bad parents can go to jail/kids go to foster homes. If you are a careless car driver you might have a wreck.

Metaphorically speaking...say you get drunk and drive a car and kill someone in the process. YOU are the one who drove drunk. The other person made the choice to drive. You didn’t force him to get on the road and take the risk you might be drunk and kill him. He is not your responsibility. YOU are your responsibility.

Now, let’s suppose you are one of the dead guy’s survivors. You are angry that your loved one is dead. That death affects you personally. You are going to take personal responsibility and demand justice for your friend. If it is the proper role of government to protect its citizens, you are going to do your part to make sure the justice system is doing its job and see to it that the drunk driver gets the electric chair.

If you feel like the education system failed you, make sure YOUR children don’t have the same experience. Home school them. Pay for a private school. Seek mentors after school that they can shadow and learn important things like taking the initiative and so on. Become an activist and push for education reform. Close failing schools. Hold their feet to the fire and make them do their job. That is a form of personal responsibility when you see or even experience a failure in the system and push for change.

The opposite would be: oh well, it’s my parent’s fault or the school’s fault. There’s nothing I can do about it, so I’m just gonna wallow in misery for the rest of my miserable life. Boohoo, woe is me.

It’s not entitlement to demand what you REALLY ARE OWED, I.e. if you pay for something you expect a return on it. Your parents are responsible for your education, and if your teachers don’t deliver, your parents can show up at the school raising hell until the teacher falls in line. I’m both a teacher AND a parent, and I let my coworkers know I wear both hats. If you see me coming down the hall to your room, it’s not as a coworker who cares about YOU. I demand to know how my son got a failing grade in computer class. (He didn’t, just hypothetical). Entitlement is really just another word for greed, or a form of greed, when you want or demand something you didn’t earn. Public education is a huge problem because it is viewed as free...meaning it’s not paid for, therefore it has zero value. If free education lacks value, parents have no incentive to be involved, children have no incentive to learn, and teachers have no incentive to gauge student learning.

And that’s why parents have to constantly be on guard in public schools. As a parent, YOU get to demand your child does well in school, YOU get to support your child’s learning by staying involved, and that means YOU get to hound your principals and teachers at every opportunity when YOU feel something is wrong and your child isn’t getting the education you expect. Good teachers prefer parental involvement because it means SHARED responsibility and investment in the child’s learning. We have to educate parents as much as the kids, and it’s awesome when parents show up or call. Many public school teachers HATE this collaborative relationship because they see it as a loss of control over the classroom, whereas I see parents as a resource.

Now, as a teacher, I’ve also observed in critical needs areas how parents prefer teachers maintain control because these are not people who are used to controlling even their own lives. This might seem ugly of me, but I recall how I’d get angry parents in my classroom raising all kinds of hell because of how poorly their child was doing. So I’d dig out a folder and I’d say: Is this your email? Because I emailed you about an incident on (date). Is this your phone number? Because I left a message on (date). Do you still work for (business)? Because I talked to your boss on (date) trying to reach you. Here’s a copy of the note I sent home. Is this your signature? And here’s the referral I made to the guidance counselor and her recommendations. And here is the disciplinary referral I made along with aaaaaaalllll the documentation I just showed you. So, PLEASE tell me how to do my job, I’m just DYING to know! And you find these are people who are easily intimidated and actually expect you to have the upper hand and bully them. You cannot be nice or compassionate to them. They have learned to be controlled by the system and get really angry if you treat them as anything but a victim. For them, positional authority is EVERYTHING. They cannot function without being told what to do. So you learn in order to survive as a teacher, you spend every spare minute on the phone complaining to parents about how their kid acted in class. Or, even better: “Ma’am, I hate to bother you at work, but we need to talk about that test grade. He bombed it. I mean REALLY bombed it. I don’t know what happened, he participated in class, he did well on the quiz, he turned in all the work, I mean...he should have aced that easy. I don’t understand, I worked with him after school, I KNOW you worked with him, I mean...I’m at a total loss here. We can look into tutoring, or we can retake the test with accommodations. Or, I can’t diagnose him, but I know someone if you want to have him tested for whatever.” These parents are so afraid of teachers they’ll do or say anything to get off the phone or avoid conferences. As a teacher, you learn to take the initiative, keep a cool head, and control the narrative. You have to keep the pressure on them or they’ll come after you.

Positional authority is everything here, and you learn to keep that constantly in mind. You are a teacher because these people don’t know how to make educational decisions. You get their attention by flaunting your credentials. You say “Excuse me, which one of us has a license? Which one of us has a college degree? Before I taught high school, I worked as an entomologist for Bayer, so, yeah, I think I know a little bit about biology. Now if you want your son to get good grades in my class, you better go over his homework with him and sit on him until he studies for my test. If you think you can do better, YOU come and teach my class. By all means explain to me how mitochondria work.” They elevate you to essentially their own overseers and imagine that their quality of life is directly related to what you think of them. If the teacher is happy with them, their life is somehow better. If not, dang it, we have a big problem. They’d rather deal with bill collectors than deal with us.

I’m not saying this is morally right or that I agree that’s how it should be. I despise public education. I dislike people who give other people that much control over their lives. But there is an entire culture built around this, and any teacher would be stupid not to exploit it. Your ineffective teachers are often so consumed by their own sense of power they fail to see that THEY are the problem. If you are a parent, how do you handle a teacher who can’t possibly be wrong? You steal the initiative, YOU schedule the conferences, YOU complain to the principal, YOU complain to the superintendent, YOU get yourself on the agenda during the next board meeting, YOU lawyer up...nevermind, lawyers hate suing schools because they never win. Let me know if you need me to explain that one. Once you get that ball rolling you can make a teacher’s life a living hell until they have no choice but to do something about the problem. You do exactly what they tell teachers to do: start the paper trail. Just make sure you happen to actually be RIGHT, though, because experienced teachers on power trips are hard to get rid of.

Where I work now, students and parents have access to grades in real-time. So if I grade a paper and see a red flag, I call the parent before I even record the grade. And because these parents are paying MASSIVE tuition and fees, they expect the extra mile from teachers. I even get the other teachers’ kids, so that adds a ton MORE pressure, so I constantly review EVERYTHING. Parents aren’t paying all that money for failing grades, you see, so you have to work extra hard to make sure ALL students actually comprehend what they get in class. I have access to their work in other classes, too, and I swear it’s like we’re at Mayberry High if you’re familiar with the Andy Griffith Show. But when you see how consistently high students score on college entrance exams at this school, we are doing something right! It is my responsibility to hold students to a higher standard, to monitor student learning, to adjust my instruction appropriately, to inform parents, to show parents how to best support their learners, and give high grades once students have EARNED those grades. I also take the step of educating parents that they don’t OWN me or my methods, but that rather they have hired me as a resource to work alongside them and what they do at home to get the results they expect. You didn’t hire me to do what YOU want to do. You hired me precisely because you do NOT know what you’re doing and need my help. Thus we work cooperatively and collaboratively to get the best results. If YOU are unwilling to put in the work, I cannot help you. I cannot be held responsible for the choices YOU make. But if you actually VALUE what it is we do here and what it is you’re paying so much for, you won’t fight my instructional decisions.

Now, to answer your question about instruction and experience: Nobody taught you that stuff because it was never their JOB to. There’s a saying, and I completely believe this: “Those who can’t, teach.” In other words, people resort to the classroom because they don’t believe in themselves/abilities enough to perform independently, or they just flat don’t want to and the classroom provides an easy out. Seriously, man, think about this—really THINK about it. What did your English teacher do before he or she taught English? Invariably your teachers graduated from high school, declared a major for a couple years, and entered a specialized program that trained them for the educational field right before doing an internship. So they went straight from high school to college and RIGHT BACK TO HIGH SCHOOL. Dude, your teachers couldn’t prepare you for a career because THEY NEVER HAD ONE THEMSELVES. What do you think your college profs did before they became college profs? High school, college, terminating doctorate program, and RIGHT BACK TO COLLEGE for their ABD years and then on to one university after another until they got tenure track. They cannot prepare you for a career because—what?—THEY NEVER HAD A CAREER.

What about your parents? All your parents can teach you is how they got into their own career way back when. They have no way of knowing what from their own experience would even be relevant to someone entering their own career path, and if you choose a different career path they certainly aren’t going to know how to help you. And for anyone entering any field, no two have exactly identical goals. Please explain to me exactly how you expect any parent or teacher to help you make your dreams come true??? And as much as I resent my own parents and teachers for pushing college for all the wrong reasons, they couldn’t possibly have helped me, either, EXCEPT maybe they could have been more honest about exactly what the proper role and benefit of college actually was.

YOU are the only person who can decide your path, gather the right information to get there, and follow through. This is what I have decided for my own children. My own children MUST learn all they need to start a career path in music. They can be teachers, session musicians, freelance, moonlighters, whatever they want. They HAVE to do it because I’m Dad and I say so. They may decide to do something different with their lives, but they WILL be completely prepared to do what I do. And because they are used to thinking about how starting a career works, they can apply the same knowledge to do whatever they want and still have a potential music career to fall back on if theirs doesn’t work out. There’s nothing else that I can do to help them. I don’t owe them any more than that. When they grow up, that will be THEIR responsibility to accept what I gave them or not. I think if you look back on your own experience, you’ll find everyone did the best they knew how to do. If you want to change the world for the next generation, it’s up to ONLY YOU to do it.

There are problems I have with this.

1. I'm not angry just for myself. Right now I'm teaching in China. It is not just about me. It is about future generations. I'm not just thinking of just myself but across the board for others.

2. For me, I guess I've recovered. But, I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about future generations and not having to go through the same s**t I did.





Do they? From my experience not really. And, what is considered an ineffective teacher and let's say they get fired. They'll just maneuver themselves into different teaching job. Bad parents? A lot of the parents I'm talking about based upon modern society's definition would be considered good parents?



True and one has to look at mitigating circumstances as well.



But, doesn't Jesus say to forgive those who would trespass against us? (paraphrased) Or, is it another obscure biblical quote that I don't understand and if we don't get it right we burn in hell for all opportunity?



I do agree with home schooling them, private school, seeking mentors, etc. As for becoming an activist, how many activists have tried this and it doesn't work out or it goes in a way they didn't expect?



But, what if you can't really think about what do do about it and one needs guidance to do so?



Let's get this laid out?

What exactly are parents responsible for when it comes to their children? Why? What about teachers? What is the teacher's role vs. the parents role towards the children?

And, what do we owe others and what is owed to us in various stages of our lives?

Can you and other personal responsibility advocates lay all of this out please and let's not assume common sense.



The teacher is expected to wear many hats with little support especially from administration with little pay.



Let me ask you this. Does the content that is taught to us from Grades K - 12 and the content in college/trade school prepare us on how to do the things that would have us effectively function in the real world? If they don't then why waste my time as a parent and my child's time requiring things they more then likely will never use instead of getting rid of these things and replacing them with things that are more useful like how to effectively choose a career, how the whole application process works, how to take intitative and what that even means?

What we have is young people who don't know nor understand these things and they flop and the older gens complain about this and the lack of character they have. WELL THEY WEREN'T TAUGHT IN THE FIRST PLACE! They learned things like you could put your head down after you finish your assignment(s) when that doesn't fly in the workplace.

If child is expected to hunt then shouldn't we be teaching them how to hunt instead of the anatomy of a rock?

This won't happen but parents need to get together and work together for their children, ask themselves what the heck is going on, and demand changes for the schools in which some of the content is out of date and the teaching methods as well.

Don't (Not you angelrho) blame younger gens cause they followed your advice and had all sorts of difficulties.

None of this will happen so I'm just blowing hot air to the wind.



Here is the thing maybe I don't know how to make educational decisions but I understand my child better then you do. The public education system is an outdated factory style, one size fits all type of environment in which every cog is expected to be the same everyone is required to function to specifications without any exception and no mitigating circumstances. This horrific system expects fish to climb trees.

Maybe you know how this educational factory works but you don't know my child as well as I would.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqTTojTija8



And, this is why I don't like the public education system as well and my children need a wider perspective of life then academics. I didn't get that when I was younger. My children in the future will.




But if you have many other children to teach then how can you understand my child? Are your methods adaptable and open to question by the parents? Have their been children in which your methods have not worked and not because the child is not doing their part as well?

You may know how to teach children but would you know how to teach my child? Unless I don't understand you you seem to have this one size fits all type of approach which is similar to the public education system and you seem to be inflexible and not open to question at all. I had this for a grade 12th teacher and she was a complete b***h.




I disagree! It is the job of the parents to prepare their children for the world not have the child straggle about and figure it all out themselves.




I teach in China and I'm sorry but it's hard work. It's not easy as you make it out to be. There are all sorts of other crap you have to do. And you said "people resort to the classroom because they don’t believe in themselves/abilities enough to perform independently." How do you know this to be true? Where do you even come up with this?



Of course! So, why don't the parents get this s**t fixed?



Okay, if my parents can't teach me, my teachers can't teach me and let's say I can't derive myself what I need to do is it truthfully my fault if I fail in life or quote on quote make bad decisions that lead to bad circumstances? How would it be reasonable to expect me to quote on quote be responsible, take responsibility for my actions and my life based upon the idea that I cause my own actions if I can't be taught the correct actions to take and it may not even be possible to derive these correct actions myself?



That's impossible if one doesn't know the circumstances that surround one's ability to do these things.



And, how do you know?



Huh? I don't follow. Are you God now? If you say apples will grow from a tree then that is what will happen? Huh?



How do you know this? My parents thought the exact same thing?



And, as you said you're going by your own experiences as well? What if they follow your advice and it doesn't work? Are you at least explaining to them the possibility exists that your advice may be outdated and may not work? Are you encouraging them to look things up on their own. Are you making suggestions on what questions to ask as well?



And, now we come to full circle! Everyone can do the best that they can. Parents, you, teachers, myself. I can do everything right, play all the right hands, be this responsible person, have a positive attitude and yet still fail. Guess what? Personal responsibility types would still preach the same BS of personal responsibility and won't even hear of extenuating circumstances. And, this is why personal responsibility as it is understood to be in the USA is a crock. And, that is because choice in of itself has limits to it which you have proven.

I don’t have the time to go line-by-line, and while I do appreciate what you’re doing, honestly, I’ve already answered all your questions.

Some thoughts: I’m not defending the educational system, especially not public schools. I’m just trying to shed a light into the mindset. Public school teachers are government agents, and when you deal with the bureaucracy, you deal in power and control. You are not hired to do math or scientific research. You are hired to teach kids how to do math or scientific research. I’m not payed to makes music. I’m paid to manage a music classroom. HUGE difference, hence why I INSIST on playing gigs every chance I get. I’m not teaching kids from the position of “I need a day job,” but from the position of “I’m a career musician and this supplements my income.” Most teachers don’t do that.

But to be honest, you may not want them to. People who tend to be experts in the field, people who have ACTUAL jobs in math, comp sci, etc., focus on actual work and their own responsibilities. They don’t have time to be bothered by misbehaving students, special needs, etc. Because they lack the psychological background of trained educators, they aren’t going to pick up on who’s falling behind, or they may struggle with curriculum development, and that kind of thing, whereas professional teachers spend more time on behavior than instruction. In other words, learning is demonstrated by behavior, so you set physical and cognitive behavior goals and work until you get the desired behavior from as many students as possible. If, say, 9 out of 10 students get good grades and nobody got sent to the principal’s office, it was a good day. 9 out of 10 would get you fired in some professions. In my case, I have a background in education AND I insist on actual performance, plus as a band director my conducting skills have to be above par. I’m more like an athletic coach than a teacher-teacher, and I like it that way. That’s not the average teacher.

You asked “How do you know?” With regard to my own children, I noticed that people who tended to be most successful at things learned it at home. Take stock car racers, for example. Probably most of your drivers out there learned it from a family member who owned a stock car. That doesn’t mean you can’t buy and customize a stock car and start racing on your own, it just means you aren’t as likely to win if you don’t have a long history of racing all the way back in childhood. So you do get guys who start out as hobbyists and hit the dirt track every weekend, their kids learn it, and some of them graduate up from the dirt track to race professionally, like Lee, Richard, Kyle, and Adam Petty. Or the Andretti’s. In music, you’ve got Hank and Hank, Jr. And among professional entertainers, many of their kids, while they may not have the name recognition as their parents, do still have steady careers in the music industry. Actually...most people talk about their favorite entertainers, but entertainers talk about their favorite producers. People who get steady work who don’t have to worry about fickle public taste are those who work behind the scenes, and that’s where a lot of these kids end up. They know the business inside out from their parents, so they can do pretty much whatever they want. For the rest of us “regular folks,” we never have that luxury. But if we want star-quality production on our work, these are the people we call.

That’s how I know, because that’s how it’s been since the dawn of time. Before you had modern education, you learned from your parents and you engaged in the family business doing whatever task you could handle at whatever age. A woodcarver’s kid would grow up with knives for toys. The violinist’s kid would get his first violin at 3 years with overtightened strings a quarter inch too high and would play until his fingers bled. That’s how dad did it, along with every working professional. They were career ready when they were teenagers, and that kind of thing has never changed. If you don’t start in music as a young child, you’re less likely to have a career in it.

I know, also, because this IS my career. So for my kids, they really are getting up to date instruction because I’m actually LIVING this life. It’s what I do every day, all day, and what they are expected to do as well. If they want a career in music, they will already know what to do before they even graduate. I may not be able to get them any better gigs than volunteering at a nursing home, but they will be used to being on the road touring nursing homes. That’s the best way to get experience, that and church. So after that it’s about deciding on a more specific career path that aligns with what they want to do, as opposed what I tell them they HAVE to do.

AngelRho, I will think on what you said and provide my own thoughts and answers to you.