A Battle of Ideas Around the Family Dinner Table

By Shlomo Maital

    Consider the sad case of Britain.  In the 20th C., it had Conservative governments for 65 (non-consecutive) years, or two-thirds of the time – and Tories have ruled UK since 2010.  They have slashed public spending, ruined the National Health Service, botched privatization – and are deeply unpopular at the moment, doomed to lose in the upcoming election.  Schools in Britain have closed, because roofs have literally fallen in.  Not to mention David Cameron’s disastrous referendum on leaving the EU.  (After his enormous success, he’s back as Foreign Minister — call him Sir). 

    A voice of reason is being heard, at University College, London;  Mariana Mazzucato, Italian born, US educated, and a UK economist for the last 20 years.  Her book The Entrepreneurial State explains how historically, governments and government investment have spurred innovation, and how they still can and do.  Public infrastructure investment pays itself back in four to five years, according to dozens of research studies.  How many private investments can say that?    

      But my blog this time is not about this.  It’s about Mazzucato’s family life.  Our kids have long ago flown the coop.   But from time to time, we still have fascinating discussions around the dinner table, mostly on Shabbat (Sabbath), with guests. 

          Here is what the Mazzucato’s do:  (from a magazine piece):

     “Even around the dinner table, economist Mariana Mazzucato deployed her extraordinary skills as a communicator to keep her family engaged during the pandemic lockdown in London. She and her husband, Italian filmmaker Carlo Cresto-Dina, insist on a sit-down family meal each evening in their London home, and everyone speaks a mix of Italian and English. They discuss school, work, movies, and economics.

    “We talk about a theme, so every night is a massive debate between the teenagers and us,” Cresto-Dina says. The four kids are ages 20, 17, and 14 (twins). “During lockdown she also assigned the twins a research project on the digital divide.” There was, he says, “lots of yelling.”

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      I love this idea.  I think that families that argue are families with our-glue.  Help your kids learn to become excited about ideas, to have their own, and to defend them and think about them critically, in the face of critique. 

      Jonathan Haight’s book The Coddling of the American Mind claims we are failing our kids, in not helping them learn to think critically.   A nightly family dinner,  where thinking (and not just French fries) are crisp, can help.