by hilzoy
From Brad DeLong:
"When the Fifteen-Year-Old asked, "Why is so much of Africa so poor?" he was not expecting--and did not react well to--a dramatic reading of parts of James Ferguson (1999), Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt (Berkeley: University of California: 0520217020)."
Growing up as the child of academics definitely has its interesting moments. My Dad was generally quite good at age-appropriate explanations. I particularly recall (though obviously I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the quotes; please attribute any total idiocy to my memory) the time when I, aged eight or nine, asked what they were talking about on the news, and Dad said: Apparently, President Johnson thinks he can pay for the war in Vietnam by printing money. It had never previously occurred to me that the President could print money at will, so I asked: can he? Actually, no, said Dad, but he can tell other people to do it. I then asked why that wouldn't be a perfectly good way to pay for things. There followed an explanation that went like this: suppose that Dad and I were the only people in the world, and I had a dime and he had a candy bar. How much would I be willing to pay for the candy bar? Now imagine that I found another dime. How much would I be willing to pay then? Would I get any more candy for my money? Would my purchasing power have been increased in any way at all by my suddenly having twice as much money?
(Note: we did get to the many disanalogies between this example and Johnson's economic policy when I was older. Like I said, he's good at age-appropriate explanations.)
My Mom was also generally good at these things, but since she both totally loves books and is a deeply generous person, she was sometimes led astray by her eagerness for us to arrive at the point where she could share all these wonderful books with us. Thus it was that she recommended that I read Lord Jim when I was nine; thus also her idea of cheering me up, when I was about the same age and had a fever, by reading me Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience, in their entirety; later illnesses produced readings from Cicero and Seneca.
So, Brad, this is what you have to look forward to: the Fifteen Year Old writing about all this in a blog of his or her own. Hopefully, the Fifteen Year Old will then add: being a faculty brat definitely had its peculiar moments, but the benefits vastly outweighed the occasional oddities.
Unspoken subtext? "Stay well, Hilzoy, or Mommy will next read Pindar to you!"
Child abuse, plain and simple.
Posted by: Anderson | October 26, 2005 at 12:46 PM
being a faculty brat definitely had its peculiar moments, but the benefits vastly outweighed the occasional oddities.
I thought so too. (Child of an econ professor, here.)
Posted by: von | October 26, 2005 at 07:16 PM
von: how did I not know that? What sort of econ?
My grandfather was an economist, and talking to him while I was growing up had a lot to do with my wanting to major in econ when I arrived in college, and also with my complete puzzlement when I encountered econ 101.
(He was also, much as I loved him, completely self-absorbed: he thought that my Mom ought to spend her life translating his works into other languages, and after I graduated from college, he announced that now that I had "become a philosopher" (his words), I could devote myself to providing a proper philosophical foundation for his work. I said that I'd do that if he would devote himself to working out the economic implications of my moral theory. Oddly enough, he didn't see the joke. -- But knowing him also made me see that if one is self-absorbed, a lot depends on the capaciousness and interest of the self in question. His was vast and fascinating. That didn't make it OK, I thought, but it made it better.)
Posted by: hilzoy | October 26, 2005 at 07:36 PM
being a faculty brat definitely had its peculiar moments, but the benefits vastly outweighed the occasional oddities.
I'll third that. [Hi, Dad!]
Posted by: Anarch | October 26, 2005 at 09:40 PM
I thought so too. (Child of an econ professor, here.)
My father started out studying the labor market -- it was the hot field at the time. Now, however, he mostly studies consumer credit and the consumer gas market. (Full disclosure: On the former subject, he has been accused of being a shill for credit card companies. [He's not, of course; indeed, his research sometimes paints the opposite picture.])
Posted by: von | October 26, 2005 at 09:54 PM
Once, as a very small child, I became fascinated with the copy of Basil Liddell Hart's Strategy I found in my father's library. One night, instead of Dr. Seuss, I asked him to read Liddell Hart to me instead. He tried to talk me out of it, but I insisted, and we sat down to read. He must've read about a page or so, when I started to drop off. My Dad put me to bed then and I went peacefully and I don't think I ever asked about it again. Years later I'd flip idly through it now and then and now I have the copy on my bookshelves. I've never read it. I just keep it in case of insomnia.
(My father taught radar fundamentals on a military base, but he lacked any terminal degrees.)
Posted by: Paul | October 26, 2005 at 11:49 PM
my dad is an English prof., so i got to choose my reading material from his immense (or so it seemed) collection of novels and plays. he taught a couple of sci-fi classes so i got to read all the Niven, McCaffrey, Heinlein, Bradbury, Vonnegut, Orwell, etc., then all the Hardy, Updike, Pirsig, Hess, Kosinski, Shakes, etc.. good times.
Posted by: cleek | October 27, 2005 at 09:32 AM
My little brother always thought that my parents' collection of books was immensely boring. When my Mom wrote her first book, we all had a contest to name it (eventual name: Lying). My little brother, who was then around seven, thought that it would need a really great name to make up for its (to him) not so interesting content, and proposed "Sailing the Seven Seas of Truth".
Posted by: hilzoy | October 27, 2005 at 10:30 AM
Cicero's one thing, but Seneca? Ugh. Not only is his prose style horribly laboured, his precepts are beyond trite. If I remember correctly a relevant one here is his claim that you shouldn't worry about illness because anything extremely painful doesn't last long. Clearly he never knew anyone with cancer or even arthritis.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | October 27, 2005 at 12:37 PM
Well, cancer used not to last as long as it does now ....
Posted by: Anderson | October 27, 2005 at 01:13 PM
My father never went to college - he was accepted at McGill, but his father made him go to work instead - yet he was a self-made intellectual of great personal dignity. (Many people called him "Dr. Owen," even when he had become the only member of the family without a college degree.)
When we were growing up, his personal library was open to us - we had little else to read, at a mission station in China - and I remember as a child being captivated by his weather-beaten copy of James Breasted's History of the Ancient World. Those of you watching Rome may recall the battle of Pharsalus, where Caesar defeated Pompey. Shoot, I could diagram Caesar's tactics in that battle at age six! And a year later my sister and I, then 8 and 7, apparently astonished the passersby in front of the British Museum by our discussion of whether the columns were Doric or Ionic ...
There's really no limit to what kids can learn, and will, given the opportunity. Curiosity is a wonderful thing. Much of what you learn may do no apparent good, and knowing a lot of stuff your peers don't is not necessarily a recipe for fitting in well when you go to a public school. But what the hey -- I can't possibly wish that I hadn't learned what I did when I did. And so my wife and I tried to give our son as much opportunity to learn as we could while he was growing up; we are not displeased with the results. ;}
They say the truth will make you free. No one ever promised it would make you happy.
Posted by: dr ngo | October 28, 2005 at 01:36 AM