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Comment by didibus | Hacker News Reader

> Unless you give every kid the same standardized education and childhood experience, which implies a society no one wants.

I've always personally been open to this idea. I find families to be tribal and often problematic. I think it be nice to start seeing all children as your own, the children belong to society, and maybe we should all pay for them.

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>> the children belong to society

That's the dangerous way of thinking that we should avoid. Children belong to their parents, until they come out of age when they start "belonging" only to themselves. Seeing children as belonging to society is typical for totalitarian regimes (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Youth)

No, it's typical for any society. There's social services in most if not all industrialized societies, that can take children away from their parents for the sake of the child if the parent(s) are ill-equipped to raise them. That's not a bad thing.

> That's not a bad thing.

For the record, I don't consider this obviously true. If you search "cps horror stories", some of the results are about horrible family situations that Child Protective Services has encountered, and others are about family situations that CPS has horribly mishandled. A couple of links focusing on the latter:

https://parentalrights.org/child_protective_services/

https://lfb.org/confessions-of-an-ex-cps-agent/

I'm not sure if anyone has tried very hard to make a case that the good of CPS outweighs the bad.

The problems start when "ill-equipped" is defined as expansively as possible. See the various cases of CPS getting involved when parents try to teach their kids basic independence by letting them walk to the playground on the corner and play there.

I think the way CPS is currently done in the US is actually causing a great deal of harm to current kids whose parents are totally reasonable parents...

I just checked the definition of "belong" I didn't like the idea that parents own children . I did find to meanings: "be the property of" and "be a member of". So I really prefer to say that children are part of a society than children are owned by their parents.

Could we say that children are part of our society and that parents are their guardians and primary educators? I would like to convey that we have shifted from the "pater familias" model to something different were we recognize that children are no more properties.

Belong doesn't always imply ownership, it is more nuanced. "We belong together" doesn't mean that there's a contract of sale putting one of us in the others ownership.

Children belong with their parents. Parents belong with their children. It's mutual.

That aside:

High levels of intellectual learning are not the be-all-and-end-all; ie should not be the ultimate goal. Fulfillment of the person, and in turn of those around them, is a better outcome IMO.

Schools often focus on intellectual outcomes to set kids up for their future; but parents should watch that the kids have a measure of fulfillment now -- this is why the huge focus on attendance as the primary statistic in UK schools is so damaging IMO. Kids need an education (not necessarily in a school) but a family holiday can be a part of that education and provide a measure of enjoyment to life.

"What is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare, ..." (W H Davies)

As a non native speaker i just reacted to "belong to" and I think "belong with" is really better in the context of parent-children relation.

I 100% agree that intellectual outcomes (and even more fitness to the job market) shouldn't be the ultimate goal. We should look back to a well rounded education. And you re quite right that education is provided in a lot of way. "It takes a village to raise a child"

"Society" is just another tribe, one that may wish to eradicate your culture. In a multicultural society, whose tribe is deemed "problematic" and whose is "normal?"

Even by being open to the idea, it is easy to see that such a project will garner so much opposition as to be politically non viable.

It is also very hard to achieve, as even if you break up the family structure, there will be a disparity of compétences accross the education institution and will also magnify genetic advantages and handicap, things that as a society we do not feel legitimate to attribute merit.

I am open to the idea of banning inheritance though, which seems to me the most unfair family advantage out there.

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