I’ve been watching too many videos about parenting lately. About the things I’m supposed to be doing and the things that I most definitely should not be doing. The algorithm has me all figured out, churning out endless content about setting clear boundaries, establishing daily routines, and… well, that and a lot of Liverpool F.C. news, because honestly, this off season has been absolutely insane.
Recently, I’ve noticed an uptick on content related to FAFO parenting, or Fuck Around and Find Out parenting, where parents are encouraged to take a more laissez faire approach (e.g. just let the kids do as they will and let them deal with the consequences of their actions). FAFO parenting (supposedly) teaches children to be more accountable for their own actions and enables them to learn from their mistakes. If your kid doesn’t want to wear sun screen, let them fuck around and find out that getting sunburnt really sucks. This is in stark contrast to curling parenting (where the parents remove all the obstacles for their children) or gentle parenting (where there is an emphasis on validating the children’s feelings).
I often conflate guidance for parents with lessons for teachers, knowing full well that students are not little children (although I suspect there are some overlaps). Along these lines, I often see a lot of FAFO in the way we approach education. If a student doesn’t show up to class or fail to follow our instructions, let them fuck around and find out. Of course we don’t call this approach FAFO, but instead, we use words like autonomy, accountability, and resilience to legitimize our approach.
One example of this is when I asked several coordinators during the last semester if we could stagger our assignment due dates across our three courses because the students complained that three of our big assignments all overlapped in one week. The response that I got from my colleagues was a unanimous “no”. To be fair, I think there is a legitimate reason for their response, which is that the students know when the deadlines are at the beginning of the semester so let them sort it out for themselves. Let them be accountable. If they fuck around and don’t manage their own affairs, they will inevitably find out the consequences of their actions (and there is an important lesson to be learned there).
Figuring out the best way for me to educate our students (in a manner that feels genuine and authentic to who I am) has been a recurring struggle (for example, see my previous rants about whether students are our customers or whether there is room for “unreasonable hospitality” in education). I do not (or cannot) hide the fact that I am more of that “gentle” or “curling” educator (an embarrassing fact that I was once proud of). I’ve often been told by my colleagues that I am too responsive to the students and that I should just let them figure things out on their own.
While I cannot completely subscribe to the FAFO approach (both in parenting and in education), I suppose there are things that I can learn from its essence, like giving the students more opportunities to fail (so that they can learn from their mistakes) or trusting them that they will be able to manage the hardships. In educating them, I am trying to learn for myself when I need to put up some guard rails or when I can remove the training wheels. How this will all turn out when the new academic year starts, I guess I’ll fuck around and find out.
