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TracingWoodgrains  10mo ago (furiouslyrotatingshapes.substack.com)   1752 thread views

How One Woman’s Children (n=2) Acquired Absolute Pitch

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Many of you are familiar with some of my writing on early childhood education. Here, someone I’ve chatted with explains at some length her process for helping her children acquire absolute pitch. This is something possible for almost everyone during a narrow window of time; it and similar time-sensitive skills are worth serious consideration if you are a parent of a young child.

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My reaction to this is "that's nice, dear" but I honestly don't see the applicability, unless it's meant to be "growth mindset! grit! you can if you think you can!" notion of "mould your kids early into the genius, athletic, attractive, popular kids you want".

What's the purpose of acquiring absolute pitch? One kid seems to be talented for music, at least at this early stage, but he could still have been musically talented without absolute pitch. I found it to be a humblebrag: "oh yes, my trilingual kids learning Mandarin and composing their own music because of absolute pitch which I taught them to acquire".

Well that's nice dear, now are you going to tell us next about how they're whole-food organic vegan eco-warriors inventing the next AI advance to save the planet from climate change, all before the age of twelve?

EDIT: I realise the above sounds churlish, and I'm delighted that children get the chance to be exposed to an entire range of non-conventional educational attainments, but at the same time that piece does veer too near, for my comfort, to the "you can make your baby genius success for life" notion of what kids are for. Tiger moms are not the kind of role model I think we need.

What if your kid grows up to be Batman? Do you want him to fail Gotham city and get everyone killed because he whistled one note wrong and accidentally set off the question mark shaped bombs lining the levees and seawall?

It's obviously pointless for daughters though, agreed.

What do you mean? Catwoman had to solve the question mark bombs too.

Yeah but nobody wants their daughter to grow up to be a prostitute who pisses off the mob until they kill her and dump her dead body in an alley where she survives by eating stray cats and fashioning a costume out of the remains.

Personally I'd rather that than be Batman's dad.

Yeah? Maybe I'm too nihilistic, but I would rather die knowing my son would be well cared for than live knowing my daughter grew up to be an mad prostitute.

I don't recall well enough whether Thomas Wayne could be sure Bruce would be out of danger, at the moment he was shot.

Also I haven't read the Original Comics(tm), and in the movies Catwoman worked in an office for evil bosses.

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