Episode 220: Matt Feeney
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Opting Children Out of Competition
Does competition always make you stronger, or does it subtly shape far too much of life throughout childhood and beyond. Society is now shaping itself around newly competitive fields in school and academics while contorting students and their families in different directions to keep up in today’s environment of education.
Matt Feeney is a writer whose latest book, “Little Platoons: A Defense of Family in a Competative Age” dissects the benefits and detriments that competition of all types has on our families and our children. He holds a Ph.D. in political philosophy from Duke University and a B.S. in English teaching from Central Michigan University. A former teacher at Duke, George Washington University, Texas A&M, and Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen, Germany, his writings have also appeared in The New Yorker online, Slate, and other publications.
Matt and Greg discuss the benefits and drawbacks to putting so much emphasis on competition for children in schools and in sports. They look at ways in which families have been enlisted to raise children that suit the needs of the knowledge economy and the preferences of college administrators.
Episode Quotes:
The effect of optimizing your kid's competitive viability
31:07: There's a fair amount of anecdotal evidence that suggests that as parenting has intensified, the children of this intensified parenting are becoming more fragile and have a hard time achieving independence. It doesn't seem the healthiest way to raise your kids, basically.
17:04: Your kid is your kid. You have a job as a parent to cultivate your child's virtues and abilities. But there's a point at which optimizing that kid is an injury to spiritual integrity and autonomy.
The competitive process is actively influenced by parents
42:19: Parents are not passive agents of ideology or passive victims of ideology. They're more active agents of a competitive process that extracts and insights their competitive output. And it turns it into an elaborate kind of institutional system.
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Recommended Resources:
Matt Feeney’s Book - https://www.mattfeeney.com/little-platoons
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Contributor’s Profile on Basic Books