The Parenting Collective

Have you personally benefitted from learning in the new cultural environments discussed in A New Culture of Learning? What did they provide that an in classroom or one-on-one educational meeting could not?

For our game assignment, I have been learning how to play Minecraft. As I was thinking about that experience, I thought to myself, playing video games is like having a baby! It doesn’t matter what you’ve read about beforehand, or what tutorials you’ve watched, once you start playing, you’re all, “AAAAGGHHH! I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING!!!” And then, of course, the more you do it, the more comfortable you get and the more confident you are.

Now that I think about it, parenting is probably the area in which I benefitted the most from the new culture of learning. I didn’t take any classes (traditional learning) on how to take care of a baby before I had one, and all the material I read could not really prepare me for the actual job of Keeping a Small Human Alive. Everything I know about parenting comes from new learning collectives and hands-on experiential learning.

The internet is a great source of information. I consult babycenter.com for a lot of questions I have (Is it okay that my newborn slept for 20 hours today? At what temperature of fever do we need to call the doctor?). I also google questions and read answers that others have posted in forums (How do I get my 4-year-old to put on his clothes in the morning?). Through our doctor’s website, I can also ask our doctor questions directly (What should I do about the baby’s rash?).

But the internet is not the only collective in our lives. We have a great network of friends and family who can also offer insight. I have friends with older children who share their experiences. I also have friends with younger children with whom I can feel like an expert.

The intersection of these is Facebook, where I socialize with my friends and family online. People like to post parenting articles, and I have a bad habit of reading a lot of them. I share funny stories of my kids, and read what others post about theirs. In this way, we are all learning from each other.

The reason this new culture of learning is so beneficial in the area of parenting is that learning how to parent never ends. From the moment a baby enters our lives, we will never stop learning about being a parent. Because of this, the amount of information to learn is infinite. A classroom setting could never cover everything you need to know. Also, the information that we are learning is both ever-changing and different for every child. As our textbook points out, this is the type of information that the new culture of learning handles best. And finally, the only way to truly learn how to parent is to do it. It is only through hands-on experience that we figure out what method of discipline works best for our child, or simply which brand of lotion doesn’t give him a rash.