NO FORMULA
It came to me suddenly, why I feel disrespected when people ask about my upbringing or education, in order that {they tell me} their own children can be like me or my siblings. Why would one resent such open admiration? I would ask my curmudgeonly self.
I know now.
Because I am not a product; I am a person.
[W]e regard a person as a product, and have a sort of unconscious formula, something like this: Given such and such conditions of civilization and education, and we shall have such and such a result, with variations. When we find the result without the conditions we presuppose, why, then we are surprised!–C.M. Mason, ‘Concerning Children as Persons’
I've read this passage many times, as I've explored the idea of children as persons, but it didn't connect to me until this week.
Finding out and reproducing how I was parented and educated is not going to produce my clone because these things–influential and valuable as they are, grateful as I am for them—did not make me; they worked by God's grace on a person already made—by God.
I am not the sum of environmental influences. I am not the sculpture of my parent's molding, or the empty bucket of my education's filling. Neither are you. Neither are your children.
Apart from these things, there are persons, and they are persons to be respected.
I experienced and continue to experience many great and beautiful things because of my upbringing and education. I do think many of those things are worth your having too. Not because you will be more like me, but because you will be more like yourself.
• Coralie and I went shopping and had lunch. We have the same parents and were educated with the same books, but the result was two very different people. •
October 24, 2014