I don’t have a linky, I only recall watching a few videos out of the West Bank or elsewhere in that region involving children reciting elaborate anti-zionist propaganda. Thing I remember about those kids is how darn well-dressed they were. They mostly had good posture, spoke clearly and had a grip on themselves. The other kids in the group paid attention and didn’t interrupt when someone else was speaking. The adults are beaming at the kids for doing it right, and the kids are proud of themselves for pleasing the adults. And so on- aside from the particulars of the religious hatreds they’re expressing, they seem to me, in retrospect, to otherwise be pretty much model children.
The quest to turn me into a model child pretty much turned my mother into a bad person. She went to great lengths to harangue us into compliance, and I don’t know if I was especially a hard case, it seemed like there were plenty of other quasi-conformist kids around, but I can’t say anyone ever behaved as if I were a model child. Western techniques just didn’t work? Debatable I guess, but if my mother had known about this, would she have converted us all to Islam to get us to dress and act like that?
I’m exaggerating of course, but I wonder what it is about the jihadi thing that makes kids snap to like they seem to do.
Yeah, it’s a lot easier to gain compliance from kids who know for a fact that either dad, uncle, or God will beat the everloving shit out of them and damn them to hell for eternity if they don’t “snap to” as expected.
It seems like there has to be more than coercion going on there. Pedagogy, for example.
And telling American kids that they are going to Hell doesn’t work as often as not. And beatings didn’t work on me personally, quite the contrary. If I ever have kids, I may threaten to convert to Islam if they don’t behave.
THIS, and I’m sure I’ll get bitched at for this but in plenty of countries beating the everloving shit out of children is still considered good parenting.
I’ve heard old people say in all seriousness that having their hand burned over a flame did them good as kids as a disciplinary method.
Obviously they wouldn’t aim the cameras at the bad children. Every human group has compliant kids and rebellious kids, even within each family.
I’ve heard the same thing said about FLDS and Quiverful kids. I suppose that in any fundamentalist context, wherein all outside influence is avoided and any that slips through is universally repudiated, the compliance percentage would be higher than in a more open society.
Do the kids really agree? Are they simply ignorant of any other ideas? Are they putting on an act in order to avoid punishment or assure being fed? In any group of ten I’m sure there’s at least one of each. . .
Of course they look good - it’s a performance. They probably rehearsed for days, and the film crews certainly didn’t use the takes with the kids picking their noses. I doubt there was any violence or threat of violence; at least, no more than there is in any other school pageant.