122 Teaching Minds

122 Teaching Minds evaluation verbally. Since children naturally copy their parents, it is not that complicated to figure out where children acquire their initial values. And, since values are not typically stated (my father never said liquor at 5 p.m. is a good thing), it certainly isn’t through lectures that we learn values. I learned to drink at 5 p.m. from my father. He wasn’t trying to teach me that. I learned to gamble from my father. He wasn’t trying to teach me that either. I learned to be argumentative from my father. He wasn’t trying to teach that. I did not learn algebra from my father. That, he was trying to teach me. My son wanted to grow up and sip Pepsi. He told me this constant- ly as he was growing up. It did not matter that I hadn’t drunk Pepsi for 10 years at the point when he was saying that. He was impressed that I had done this when he was 3 and he was frustrated that I didn’t allow him to drink it. Presto, another family value is learned. Children learn the family values that their family actually has. Teenage mothers who warn against getting pregnant at a young age may say that in words, but their actions say that their kid is alive and well and it all worked out. So, it follows that we don’t have to consciously teach values be- cause we teach them without saying a word. Values are held subcon- sciously and learned subconsciously. We can only hope that we have set a good example. That having been said, there will still be those who ask how we can teach values. You can’t expect that “you can’t,” will work as an answet. I mentioned in Chapter 3 that there are lots of things that you can’t teach. I mentioned honesty as an example. Honesty is, of course, a value. Now let’s ask whether you can teach people to be more hon- est than they are naturally inclined to be. The answer is that to do this, you have to turn a subconscious process into a conscious one. You would need to provide case after case and experience after experi- ence to a student that all led to the conclusion that honesty simply works out better in the long run. This is, of course, what abstinence and say no to drugs campaigns endeavor to do. They want to argue kids into believing that things they think are fun, are bad. But how can we make that argument? The argument we can make is that these things aren’t as much fun as you think, so try them and see for your- self—but that kind of ruins the basic premise about not doing them in the first place. So, in principle there is no way to argue kids into not doing what looks like fun to them and what doesn’t seem to have HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023868