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About this quote

What does it mean?
Parents focus on success and competence instead of wisdom for their children.
In plain terms
Parents want their kids to succeed and be skilled, but not necessarily wise.
What can you take from it?
Prioritize wisdom over specialized competence in childrearing.

Where it applies

  • family goals
  • career advice

Putting it to work

  • parenting workshops
  • value-based education

Questions to consider

  • What do you want for your children?
  • Is wisdom still a high aspiration?

Another view

Competence and success often provide tangible security for children.

More from Allan Bloom

  1. Only Socrates knew, after a lifetime of unceasing labor, that he was ignorant. Now every high-school student knows that. How did it become so easy?

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  2. Education in our times must try to find whatever there is in students that might yearn for completion, and to reconstruct the learning that would enable them a…

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  3. There is no real teacher who in practise does not believe in the existence of the soul, or in a magic that acts on it through speech.

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