We all struggle to survive as all animals do.

The chief role of parents is to teach their offspring how to survive and how to reproduce so as to continue the species. The job of life is to stay alive. Nature has programmed reproduction to take care of itself. Ultimately, babies are inevitable if you stay alive long enough.

In the mammal world, teaching survival is accomplished by something called “imitation.” Young animals imitate their mother. They eat what she eats, drink what she drinks, run from what she runs from and attack what she attacks. The young animals learned that from her mother.

Thus knowledge is handed down from generation to generation through imitation.

Humans, who are also mammals, have developed the ability to speak — and knowledge on how to survive can be handed down with words. Thus we talk to our children about how to behave. Children go to school, which accelerates the process of gaining the knowledge necessary for survival. It’s amazing how many children do not care for this education process.

This is because they have been taken care of all their lives and do not see the need for learning how to survive. Some will learn the hard way, in the street as we call it. Some parents make their children earn the things they get by doing chores or by making good grades. We call this tough love. Other parents just give their children things, reinforcing in the mind of their children that these things will always be there for them. They call this love.

But the idea of imitation is deep-seated in our genes since there was a time that early humans could not speak with a formal language either. Then humans learned through imitation.

So our children today still learn through imitation. When the parents are talking about how they took advantage of the used car salesman by not telling him that the car’s engine is bad or that the car had been in an accident, the children are listening and will eventually imitate this behavior.

When the parents are talking about cheating on their taxes, the children are listening. When the parents are being negative about life, the children are listening. Soon they will be imitating.

Clever parents will realize that the instinct of the children to imitate their parents is a great advantage in handing down knowledge. With this method, you don’t need to lecture to the children. Rather, they will learn by example.

So what can you do? First, let your kids see you reading the newspaper each day. Even better: Read it with them when they are old enough. Let the kids see you watching the news on TV and make them watch it with you. Explain to them what is happening in the world.

Take an interest in their education so that they will learn to take an interest in their children’s education. Eat well so that they will learn to eat well and teach their children to eat well. Imitation is a wonderful tool to raise children.

Let them see you cleaning your room as a way of teaching them to clean their room. Say “OK, it’s time for us to clean our rooms and clean yours also.” Make it a family thing.

We often call this “setting an example” and it takes no words to do this. No lecturing is required. But by all means, realize that the kids are watching all the time and learning from you how to behave. They will probably become carbon copies of you. Is that what you want? What are they becoming a carbon copy of?

Apart from parents, teachers are the next biggest influence in the lives of children. They too should set an example by the way they dress and the way they speak.

The current trend of teachers getting down to the kids’ level in order to reach them is totally wrong. They do this by dressing down like the kids dress, using slang like the kids use and, in fact, being a kid. They want to be the kid’s buddy. They should be the kid’s leader.

The whole point is to bring the kids up to the level of the adults. Don’t always try to reach out to them — make them reach out to you. Make them try to impress you with their dress, their speech and their grades. You must remember that you are always on stage and they are learning to imitate you.

When I was a substitute teacher, I was teaching algebra at Federal Way High School. A student asked a question and used improper grammar. I stopped and corrected her, then gave her and the class a quick English lesson on the proper place to put an adverb in a sentence.

She said: “But this is math class.” I informed her and the class that I will always correct their English regardless of what class it is. It seemed that they had never had that experience with a teacher before.

Mammals, besides humans, learn 100 percent through imitation. I wonder what percentage of survival knowledge children acquire through imitation.

I expect that it is much higher than we suspect. Schools often teach facts. Imitation teaches knowledge — how to apply facts in life.

Federal Way resident Bill Pirkle: bpirkle@zipcon.net