Teaching children to rely on authority teaches helplessness

Great Debates
1

I started this as a pitting of Rubystreak, but WhyNot pointed out that it would be far better served here in GD as she’s too classy to really serve a proper pitting. So I hope she won’t mind that I use her as my focus for the position she has advocated in this thread:

Let’s teach girls to put up with violent boys

Now, I am not trying to rehash what was already said in that thread, but to address a larger issue of which it is a part.

Essentially her position is one of an appeal to authority. She is saying that if children are hit they should go find a teacher and tell them about it. All in all, sound advice, which I don’t totally disagree with. However, what lies behind it and many of the posters who agree with her is an implicit appeal to authority.

This ignores one simple fact:

That bureaucracy fails people again and again and again and again.

So while not a conservative by trade, this is one area where I will let my conservative flag fly. We have through teaching like Rubystreak is advocating begun to educate people away from self-reliance. This has resulted in a society where we rely on bureaucracy for everything. Something that is going before the FDA is whether or not health food recommendations can count as medical advice. That say if I recommend some herbal remedy to you for your stomach ache, I am responsible for giving a prescription without a medical license.

FDA Docket 2006D-0480 – Draft Guidance for Industry: Complementary and Alternative Medicine Products and Their Regulation by the FDA

The problem is that so-called ‘experts’ or people in authority position are consistently wrong, deal with the situation inadequately, and then are capable of hiding behind the bureaucracy when things don’t go according to plan. This is what Rubystreak advocates teaching our children. I find this to be more destructive than a bloody nose or a fat lip, even more destructive than the occasional psycho going to school with an assault rifle. The psycho in my opinion is not going to be deterred by such an authority structure anyhow.

I find this sort of dependence upon an ineffective bureaucracy to be repellant and contrary to a free society. It has bred a society filled with weak social dependency.

So while Rubystreak’s advice makes sense in a school environment, it also lays the foundation for dependency by weak and incomplete people who are totally helpless when the system fails them.

2

While I agree that children are being more coddled today than ever before, I have a real hard time believing “Tell a teacher if someone’s smacking you around” should be considered coddling.

There’s a right way and a wrong way to go through life and I think minimizing the amount of people that get the shit beat out of them is the right way.

3

How about the lack of nuance in the way it’s administered? There were many people talking about the laziness behind zero tolerance policies, and kids getting suspended for pushing their way out of a corner a bully had backed them into.

4

Is it true that, on the whole, people are helpless when the system fails them?

It’s my impression that there have been and always will be people who use and abuse “the system,” either maliciously or because that’s just the way they are.

I just don’t see it as endemic in our society.

And, as a slight aside, I think a large bureaucracy is a direct result of the size of our “community.” It’s nice to imagine that we could be self-policing, but when you don’t live in community with your neighbors (and are thus unaccountable to them), a detailed and tedious system to deal with grievances is necessary.

5

Self-reliance may be a conservative value, but isn’t respect for authority also a conservative value?

It looks like you may be equating, and/or confusing, authority with bureaucracy.

This is sometimes true. And I’m all for teaching kids to deal with the reality that it is sometimes true, and for doing whatever we can to make it less true.

But to teach kids that authority can never be trusted, and is always incompetent, venal, and impotent, would result in every-man-for-himself Wild-West-style social anarchy. Which I, for one, do not want.

6

I don’t consider respect for authority a conservative value…at least, not bureaucratic (especially government) authority. Respect for individuals in authority who have EARNED respect, such as parents, is different.

7

There is a very great difference between being taught to go to the authorities to seek protection or to resolve disputes, which I support, and being punished for defending one’s self when attacked, which I oppose.

With the former, it is better for a child to learn to deal with problems without having to get violent.

With the latter it, if a bullied child learns that going to authorities when assaulted will result in punishment for the victim, then that child will learn to not go to authorities, which in turn defeats the former.

8

Or not defend themselves, which is worse.

9

I don’t see the difference there. I think I see what you’re getting at - you shouldn’t respect someone because of their rank or job title, but because of their actual actions - but “being a parent” surely is just a matter of biology? Being a good parent would be worthy of respect, IMHO.

10

I will teach my girl to call the teacher is someone is calling her names. And to hit them until they bleed if they are being phisically abusive. If she gets kicked out of school, we will see about that then.

11

Right, that’s what I am saying…a person knows whether a parent has earned that respect. A faceless bureaucracy is not the same, since by definition the respect cannot have been earned.

12

What happens though, when said kid tries to fight back…only to get his or her ass whomped? It’s not always like the movies, where all the victim has to do is punch a bully in the face and YAY he’s a hero!

What about kids who are disabled? Or whatever. There’s gotta be a more effective way.

13

She will get kicked out of school, and rightly so. There’s a difference between self-defense (which almost never applies to children at this age) and “hit them till they bleed if the are being physically abusive.”

14

Ah, gotcha. Sorry to have misread you. :slight_smile:

15

If a child retaliates when someone is physically abusive, most parents will expect the authorities to back that student up. But if no one in authority saw the fight, the authorities cannot take the word of one student over the other about who started it. That’s why both kids get into trouble.

The teachers are legally responsible for the students in their care. That’s one of the reasons that they should be given a chance to straighten things out. Another is that in a situation where everyone is taught to hit back, there is an enormous amount of violence for its own sake. Teaching becomes sidelined.

There are other ways to teach self-reliance than through fighting. How about conflict resolution? Assertiveness skills? Survival skills?

And I don’t think that self-reliance is particularly “conservative.” How so?

16

Shh! You’ll spoil the fantasy for the “They Must Defend Themselves!” crowd.

But seriously, this is a good argument that never seems to get its due in the “to fight back or not fight back” debate.

17

Perhaps there’s some part of the logic that I’m missing here, but mswas’s OP looks to be like an ill-thought-out argument that, if followed to its logical conclusion, would totally disable schools. For schools to fulfill their purpose of educating children, their first must be basic order. If kids were to resolve every difference by violence rather than depending on the authorities (i.e. the teachers), teaching would be impossible. Instilling respect for and obedience to the teachers is the very first and most important task that a school must accomplish when new students enter the building at the start of the year. If it’s not done thoroughly, then we might as well cancel school entirely. Anyone who thinks otherwise has clearly never been a teacher.

Then to jump from there to bashing the FDA is a rather large leap of logic that I can’t quite agree with. Respect for one type of authority does not equate to demanding obedience for all types of authority.

18

No prob…I wasn’t clear.

19

Well, I think part of the problem in that thread is that the children in question are in fact dependent, weak and incomplete people who are at least more or less helpless. They are after all about five years old. Which has been so thoroughly confabulated with experiences people had as teens and tweens (and adults and now theories about entire societies) that I fear the conversation is past saving.

It seems to me that five year olds lack a certain amount of judgment and however brilliant any individual child may be it seems to me not to be good school policy to expect five year olds to exercise judgment about when and when not to whack each other. Five year old childrens’ map of the social universe is still fairly crude and each generally features the child him or herself right at the center at the spot marked “x”. It is devoutly to be hoped that as a child gains sophistication in the prevailing social mores (which seems to me for most people to involve going to school amoung other things) they gain additional spots marked “x”. even if most of us never reach the place where the spot marked “x” is anything other than ourselves. And if the prevailing social mores actually support placing the self at the spot marked "x’ then this part of the map is unlikely to change.

This statement is as true of law enforcement officials as it is of educational ones, and still I do not advocate abolishing the rule of law. It is as true of medical personnel as educational personnel and still I do not advocate abolishing licensing requirements and so on for the practice of medicine. Any group of people larger than three has to organize itself somehow, usually via some form of hierarchy.

The more useful rule would be to teach children to rely on authority and also how to challenge authority when it is ineffective. (Not to mention when it is better to take your lumps if you like and move on). Learning how and when to speak the truth to power is a useful skill and a far more useful skill than controlling others by force, it seems to me.

20

Thanks for moving the thread over here! I feel much better about it (and see, we worked it all out without invoking a Mod!)

Here’s what I think: I think we need to do a better job at teaching kids how to resolve conflicts themselves - and by “teaching”, I mean, “getting the hell out of the way so they figure it out themselves”. If you wait until middle school to “teach” conflict resolution, then it’s really really hard to learn and not natural to implement. If you let them figure it out themselves as toddlers, it comes naturally, just like learning a second language. I have huge issues with parents who constantly and instantly jump in to resolve every dispute when toddlers play together. Yes, occasionally they need some modeling, but 4 times out of 5, they’ll sort it out if you just leave them the heck alone. What you teach when you jump in is that they are helpless and weak and need to turn to someone else to “make” the other person do something, instead of working together to find a solution that works for both of them.

Zero tolerance fighting policies which require no self-defense and equal punishment do exactly the same thing - they teach the kids that no one cares “what happened”, no one will listen to them or believe them or let them resolve their own problems or teach them how to resolve their own problems, because they are wrong and bad and deserve punishment no matter what. The grown ups aren’t really interested in helping them, they’re just interesting in shutting them up. It’s incredibly unempowering.

I teach my kids a very specific set of rules for when it’s okay to hit someone. And it does include asking for adult intervention somewhere in there at step three, I believe it is. But it’s all part of an empowering plan requiring the kids to try to work things out themselves first - first verbally, then by removing themselves, (then seeking adult intervention), then warning of a hit to come if the behavior continues and only with a punch in the nose as a last resort.

And yes, I do think it’s spread to the community at large. I’m not sure if it’s because we’re lawsuit-phobic or what, but I hardly see anyone try to work anything out anymore. Neighbor’s music is too loud? Call the cops. Boss wants you to work extra hours? Call human resources. Wrong price scanned? Call the manager. Trip on someone’s steps? Call a lawyer.

It just makes me think of that scene in Bowling For Columbine, when Michael Moore is pointing out that the Columbine school shootings took place over 2 hours, and adults and parents were standing outside the whole time listening to gun shots. Yet no one went in. No one said, “Fuck this, those are our *children *in there and I don’t care if I get shot, at least I’m going to rush the gunman and try to take him out.” No, they stood there like sheep because the police told them to stand there like sheep.

When did pain and death become such horrible things that we’d rather let them happen to our kids? When did we become so convinced of our own worthlessness that we can’t act without someone with a nametag to tell us to?
Now get off my lawn.