I think the best thing you can do for your kids is teach them to notice. To look carefully. To see patterns. To ask hard questions about what they're seeing.
Not just to consume information, but to think about where the information is coming from. Who benefits if you believe it? What would change if you stopped believing it? What's not being said?
That's the education your kids need most. Not facts—facts are everywhere and they're all connected to the internet anyway. What they need is the capacity to think about facts. To examine the frame the facts are sitting in.
A frame is invisible when you're inside it.
You see what the frame lets you see. You don't see what the frame cuts out. And the people who built the frame are counting on that. They're counting on the frame being invisible.
Kids who can see the frame have a power that most people don't have. Not power over people. Power to not be pushed around by invisible things.
The only way to see the frame is to step outside it.
That takes practice. It takes someone older who knows how to do it, doing it with them until they can do it alone. It takes time. It takes permission to ask uncomfortable questions. It takes a relationship where you're safe if the question makes the authority figure uncomfortable.
Every child learns to see something. They're learning it right now. In school. In the shows you let them watch. In the conversations they overhear. In the things that don't get talked about because everyone assumes someone else brought it up.
The only question is: are they learning to see consciously, or are they learning to see by osmosis?
Osmosis is easier. Osmosis doesn't require you to do anything. Just let them watch the show, finish their homework, believe what the authority figures tell them. That's the default.
The default won't make them stupid. It'll make them normal. And normal right now is someone who doesn't notice the frame because the frame is so good at staying invisible that the only way to see it is to have someone who already saw it point it out.
So I'm going to point some things out.
I'm going to try to be precise about it, careful about it, and fair about it. And I'm going to tell you what I see, knowing that I'm looking through a frame too, and mine has blind spots you might be able to see better than I can.
And I'm going to invite you to look at the things I'm pointing at and ask: is this true? Is this the whole picture? What would change if this wasn't true? What would have to be true for this to not be true?
Those are the questions that kill frames. And frames—the invisible ones especially—are what needs to die so people can see again.
