To: All Parents
From: PZ
Date: Immediately
Re: What You Claim To Be Teaching Your Children
It is not what you tell them one time in an Official Talk, or even several times as your Official Belief, that they will remember you having taught them. They will remember what you told them casually, informally, off the cuff, repeatedly. What you said unrehearsed is what they will remember.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
definitely what you say…but also what you don’t say sometimes. a friend of mine was just pointing this out to me this week when we were talking about master narratives of US history–that in historical narratives that reproduce power relationships, sometimes what you don’t say is just as important as what you do. even if in a slightly different context, your post makes me think more about that.
btw-thanks for stopping by mi bloga! i can’t claim the “greater mexico” thing–it was actually americo paredes who came up with that one many decades ago. but it’s definitely way cool.
And the scary part is that most parents, even the best ones, would tend to respond to this statement — so incredibly true –with a befuddled expression: “Wha?”
Hola Rebelde and CS – and yes!
And – aha, Américo Paredes – someone I should have read, should read, want to read. Now I at least know whom to cite. !Graz!
🙂
yes and their behavior can teach horrendous things
It highlights historical aspects of different relationships not circumscribed to an opposition in power. Good reading too!
What can I say as a mother but, yeah I know already. I had proof of this just yesterday, but fortunately it was good news.
However, before I read what you had to offer and focused on your title, I thought of a Gwendolyn Brooks poem. I must admit, I braced myself.
People Who Have No Children Can Be Hard
(1949)
People who have no children can be hard:
Attain a mail of ice and insolence:
Need not pause in the fire, and in no sense
Hesitate in the hurricane to guard.
And when wide world is bitten and bewarred
They Perish purely, waving their spirits hence
Without a trace of grace or of offense
To laugh or fail, diffident, wonder-starred.
While through a throttling dark we others hear
The little lifting helplessness, the queer
Whimper-whine; whose unridiculous
Lost softness softly makes a trap for us.
And makes a curse. And makes a sugar of
The malocclusions, the inconditions of love.
The poem is great!
Gwendolyn Brooks was great!
ah, Gwendolyn Brooks!
i saw her read once….
I’m so tired of these talks that never end. I have to say it over and over again and it drives me nuts! Yes, I have the parenting blues.
I feel you, Stephen! Got teenagers? 😉
A great poem.