How do you tell which is which if you are not party to private conversations between the child and their parents?
Remember the link in post #12? I may not have been personally listening in on the family conversations between the Westboro Bigots Church parents and their children, so I have no absolute proof that those kids didn’t pool their allowance and have those t-shirts and signs professionally made all on their own, then show up at the protests where their parents coincidentally happened to be(in the same vehicles their parents just happened to arrive in) and coincidentally start shouting the same-hate-filled rhetoric as their parents…so far be it from me to stifle the creative spirit of a child.
What about situations that aren’t such obvious outliers? Is Gavin Grimm best described by your first scenario, or your second? David Hogg? Malala Yousafzai? Which of the teenagers on this list are being exploited, and which are expressing their own opinions?
Do you want me to give my best judgement(subject to correction when further evidence is brought forth) on each one individually, or are you expecting a blanket statement about all of them?
edited to add: And do you have anything to say about the examples already given in this thread?
Reads thread
Looks at Hector Pieterson print on the wall
*Recalls his own schooldays"
*Shakes his head"
Either, or both, as you feel most comfortable. Your reasoning for putting them in one bucket or the other would also be appreciated.
I don’t have any problem with teaching children your political or ethical values.
So you want me to give judgement on cases I know about, somewhat know about, and know next to nothing about…but you have nothing but a blanket statement about the different examples given in this thread prior to specific list you presented to me?
Look-I gave my opinion that there is a difference between children fighting for a cause they believe in, and children being exploited by adults, and I thought the examples I gave supported that opinion. Apparently not, according to you. You seem to want nothing less than a firsthand account of parents instructing children what to do and say and, human that I am, I just can’t give that to you. I can only form judgements on what is reported and what I see with my own eyes.
Boy you sure hate it when someone doesnt follow your rules when* you* are the OP, but I guess when it’s someone else’s OP, you are Ok with it.:rolleyes:
Look, we all know what would happen if the Op allowed GT- that would be the only thing and we’d get into trump, UN, EU, global warming and a whole host of other crap and the Ops main point would be lost.
You said it’s okay for kids to speak their own mind, but not okay for parents to coach kids on what to say. I’m trying to figure out how you know which is which. You could do this with a blanket statement describing how you know the difference, or you could go through the list and describe how you decide to evaluate each individual. The fact that you don’t know much about these specific kids is, obviously, the point I’m trying to make: you’ve staked out a moral stance, but you don’t seem to have any way to determine if someone is acting in accordance with the stance you’ve staked out, or in opposition to it. So far, it seems like you’re taking kind of an opportunistic stance: if the message is sufficiently extreme (such as the WBC) you can blast them for politicizing their children, but when the message is something closer to what you agree with (climate change, gun control, queer rights) you can say, “Well, I don’t know the situation well enough to make that judgement.”
As for myself, I can make a blanket statement instead of running down a list of individual cases, because my take on the subject is sufficiently universal: there’s nothing wrong with a parent teaching their children their politics. I don’t need to go case by case, because my answer isn’t going to change based on special pleading related to the specific child. My issue with WBC isn’t that they’re raising their kids with their politics, my issue is that their politics are horrible, and that applies whether they’re trying to convince their children to follow their politics, or whether they’re trying to convince adults.
Yes, again, that’s sort of the whole point I’m trying to get at. You, being human, aren’t really equipped to make the sort of judgments you’re making. You don’t have the insight into people’s family lives to know if a kid is being exploited, or if a kid is expressing their own will. Further, I don’t think you’ve really made a case for those being different things. Take your hypotheticals; is the teen going to the pro-choice rally doing so of their own free will, or are they doing so because they were raised by pro-choice parents who taught the kid the importance of pro-choice policies and the necessity of public protest to protect those rights? Your placing a lot of emphasis on direct facilitation - if, in that example, the parent replies, “Great! I’ll give you a lift to the protest!” does that now tip the situation into the other category? If not, how much direct influence does the parent have to express before it becomes inappropriate?
Us, being humans, make judgements without having absolute knowledge all the time.
You’re quite a bit short of “absolute” here.
I can live with that.
look, I don’t know what people are arguing about here. I interpret OP to mean he/she dislikes when parents drag their kids along to a protest, put signs in their kids hands, and tell them “say what I tell you to say.” The kids don’t understand what a protest is, much less what mom and dad are telling them to protest. The kids are being used as pawns.
You’re skipping over a lot of middle ground. There’s also:
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Mom and Dad are going downtown today to march for women’s rights. We don’t like the new president and we think he doesn’t respect women, so we are going to join a huge crowd to show him that the country DOES support women and that he better not forget it, or make any laws that aren’t fair to women. Do you want to come with us, or stay with grandma?
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This family supports women’s rights, and we are going to join the march downtown today. Your mom and i would really like you to come with us, to show the world what this family thinks. Will you come with us?
I’m sure you can, but it does serve as a useful barometer for how seriously people should take your opinion on this subject.
There is always middle ground. Is my opinion useless unless I make a public statement about every single variation possible? Must I withhold judgement on any unless I make judgement on all?
As it stands, you’re accusing thousands of people of exploiting their kids. That’s a really serious thing. I just don’t think a famil in a “March for Science” photo should be accused of such, even if they let Sissy hold the sign while she rides on Daddy’s shoulders.
Bullshit. You are superimposing what I said about a couple of groups over all groups across the spectrum. Go to the link I provided in post #12, then tell me there is no difference between what is happening in those photos and letting little Sissy hold a sign as she rides on Daddy’s shoulders.
Once again, I have not even suggested that all examples are exploitations of children. Is anyone here suggesting that there are no examples that might qualify as exploitation?
How quickly they forget. . . . .
Really? Because I interpret the OP as wanting to take an obvious dig at Greta Thunberg as somehow being “manipulated” while disallowing any defence of her.