raising freethinkers训练自由思想家

作者简介

Praised by  Newsweek  as “a compelling read” and   Library Journal  as “accessible and down-to-earth,” Dale McGowan’s   Parenting Beyond Belief  offered freethinking parents everywhere a compassionate introduction to raising caring, ethical children without religious guidance. Now, for the more than 40 million people in the United States who identify themselves as nonreligious,  Raising Freethinkers  offers solutions to the unique challenges secular parents face and provides specific answers to common questions, as well as over 100 activities for both parents and their children. This book covers every important topic nonreligious parents need to know to help their children with their own moral and intellectual development, including advice on religious-extended-family issues, death and life, secular celebrations, wondering and questioning, and more.         Complete with reviews of books, DVDs, curricula, educational toys, and online resources relevant to each chapter topic,  Raising Freethinkers   helps parents raise their children with confidence.

书籍目录

PrefaceAcknowledgmentsChapter One The Inquiring MindChapter Two Living and Teaching Ethics in Your FamilyChapter Three Secular Family, Religious WorldChapter Four The Physical SelfChapter Five Ingredients of a Life Worth LivingChapter Six Celebrating LifeChapter Seven Death and LifeChapter Eight Finding and Creating CommunityChapter Nine The Grab BagAppendix I: Recommended Films by CategoryAppendix I1: Lists of PrinciplesIndex

内容概要

 Dale McGowan (Atlanta, GA) is a writer, editor, and parenting educator. He edited and coauthored Parenting Beyond Belief.     Molleen Matsumura has been a humanist activist and writer for more than 20 years and has contributed to Free Inquiry and The New Humanist.     Amanda Metskas (Albany, NY) is the Executive Director of Camp Quest, Inc.     Jan Devor is Director of Religious Education for the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis. 

媒体关注与评论

 “This unique resource will help parents looking for useful ideas and information on being a nonreligious family. Recommended for public libraries.” Library Journal 

名人推荐

From the Back Cover     “I raised my own freethinking sons not that long ago, and I had little choice but to do it without much practical support. This book is the best, most comprehensive com­pendium of secular parenting strategies and tips I can imagine. It shows how, without the aid of any supernatural overseer, you can raise kids who are moral, compassionate, curious,   and fully aware of the nuances of a truly civilized human society.”            — Susan K. Perry, Ph.D.,   social psychologist and author of Playing Smart and Loving in Flow, creativity blogger       for PsychologyToday.com, and advice columnist for Netscape.com and TheCradle.com       As a freethinking parent, you face a unique set of challenges in raising children with­out religious guidance. How will you help them understand issues like death, sexu­ality, morality, and religion itself, all while encouraging them to think for themselves?   Dale McGowan’s popular and compassionate guide Parenting Beyond Belief was the first comprehensive book to offer a general philosophy of nonreligious par­enting.  Raising Freethinkers is a practical sequel, providing specific answers to common ques­tions and more than 100 activities for parents and their children. Raising Freethinkers covers every topic nonreligious parents need to know to help their children with their own moral, intellectual, and emotional development, including sound advice on religious-extended-family issues, death and life, secular celebrations, wondering and questioning, and more.  Here parents will discover practical and effective ways to:       -           Help children achieve religious literacy without indoctrination   -           Explore life’s meaning and purpose   -           Promote a healthy perspective on sexuality and body image   -           Encourage ravenous curiosity   -           Help kids come to terms with death and loss   -           Find and create community       Complete with reviews of books, DVDs, curricula, educational toys, and online resources relevant to each chapter topic, Raising Freethinkers helps nonreligious parents raise their children with confidence.       Dale McGowan is a writer, editor, and parenting educator. He edited and coau­thored Parenting Beyond Belief and lives in Atlanta. Molleen Matsumura has been a humanist activist and writer for more than 20 years and has contributed to Free Inquiry and The New Humanist. Amanda Metskas is the President of Camp Quest. Jan Devor is Director of Religious Education for the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis.   For more information and parent resources, visit www.ParentingBeyondBelief.com.  function msecp(c){var b=0;for(var a in c){b+=c[a]}var d=Math.floor(b*Math.random());for(var a in c){if(d

章节摘录

 CHAPTER 1: The Inquiring Mind   Dale McGowan     How does white milk come from a red cow?   Why doesn’t the sun fall down?   How is it that all rivers flow into the ocean without ever filling it?     These questions, which could have come from any child today, are from the Rig   Veda, a 3000-year-old Hindu text—and wondering and questioning are surely   much older still. Early Homo sapiens, endowed with the same cranial capacity   as your Aunt Diane,1 had to be asking similar questions 125,000 years ago.And   once oral language developed sufficiently to share these thoughts, parents and   others around a child would have had to respond, one way or another, to the   endless stream of questions.     It’s the human impulse to wonder and ask questions that eventually gave   birth to both religion and science, two different ways of responding to the   same challenge: an overdeveloped neocortex hungry for answers.     In preparing to write this book, I plunged into the current parenting literature   from many perspectives, including religious parenting books. Some   are very sound, like the well-grounded work of Christian parenting author Dr.   William Sears. Some are mixed, including (to my admitted surprise) James   Dobson, who serves up some solid parenting advice along with his unfortunate   enthusiasm for corporal punishment, gender stereotypes, and homophobia.     But if book sales and general prominence are any measure, one parenting   author has had more to say about questioning and the life of the mind than any   other: author and televangelist Joyce Meyer. Meyer has sold over a million   copies of a book called Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind,   for which this passage can serve as an encapsulation:     I once asked the Lord why so many people are confused and He said to me,   “Tell them to stop trying to figure everything out, and they will stop being   confused.” I have found it to be absolutely true. Reasoning and confusion go together.     In 2006, Meyer issued a version of Battlefield of the Mind for teens, including passages   like this:     I was totally confused about everything, and I didn’t know why. One thing that   added to my confusion was too much reasoning.     This mantra comes back again and again in her advice, in millions of books and   throughout her broadcasting empire: Don’t even start thinking. Most troubling of all is   the attempt to make kids fear their own thoughts—right at the age they should be   challenging and questioning in order to become autonomous adults:     Ask yourself, continually, “WWJT?” [What Would Jesus Think?] Remember, if He   wouldn’t think about something, you shouldn’t either. . . . By keeping continual   watch over your thoughts, you can ensure that no damaging enemy thoughts creep   into your mind. (from Battlefield of the Mind for Teens)     Many progressive religious parents are outraged by Meyer’s “fearthought” approach.   But even those of us who don’t consciously sign on to this kind of thinking must look it   squarely in the eye—because it’s in our cultural blood.Most of us were raised in homes   that were religious to some degree, and many of us carry remnants of these fearful ideologies   into our own parenting.Whether we are religious or nonreligious, our attitudes toward   questioning and moral development too often include some undercurrent of anxiety   and mistrust, the unspoken feeling that our primary job as parents is to stave off a   bubbling depravity that lurks just below the surface of our children.     “When University of Texas   sociologists John P. Bartkowski   and Christopher G. Ellison compared   dozens of secular parenting   books with conservative   Protestant parenting manuals,   they found that a literal interpretation   of the Bible’s childrearing   advice contributed directly   to a worship of authority in all   spheres of life, including the political.   . . . They also found that   conservative evangelical parenting   gurus disagreed with   mainstream counterparts on virtually   every issue. According   to their study, secular, sciencebased   parenting advice emphasizes   personality adjustment,   empathy, cooperation, creativity,   curiosity, egalitarian relations   between parents, nonviolent   discipline, and self-direction.   Conservative Protestants, on the   other hand, stress a tightly hierarchical   family structure and a   gendered division of labor, with   a breadwinning father at the top   of the pyramid and children at   the bottom.”   --Jeremy Adam Smith, senior   editor, Greater Good magazine     In this chapter, I hope to make the case that this trembling view of human   nature is simply not borne out by the best of our knowledge.We will focus on   the moment of the question, a moment that is the foundation of freethought   parenting, encouraging an approach that holds no question unaskable and no   thought unthinkable.     I want the idea that questions can be feared because of the answers they might   produce to baffle my kids. I want them to find hilariously silly the idea that certain   lines of thought cannot even be pursued, lest they be caught. That requires   a certain amount of parental self-discipline. It requires the ability, for example, to   not paint the far wall with soup when the 5-year-old asks if monkeys have vaginas,   or why black people have big lips, or who will put her blankie on her grave   when she dies—all three of which have come up at our dinner table. It requires   a firm conviction that there is no rock that can’t be upended if you think there   might be something under it.And, of course, there always, always might.   Let’s begin with a conversation about wonder and curiosity, the incentives   that drive questioning, then dive into the art, science, and joy of questioning   itself. 

---

 raising freethinkers训练自由思想家下载

---