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I think it looks quite cultish to outsiders when they see a small child repeating whispered cliches on a stand. Amen, Sam. That is my least favorite aspect of our culture – although I must say that I have seen it FAR less often over the last few years than I used to see it. I know some members who used to do that with their kids stopped doing so when the top leadership said it’s not appropriate. Thankfully in my ward, we’ve moved away from “I know the church is true. I know the Book of Mormon is true. I know Thomas S. Monson is a true prophet.” towards sincere testimonies which don’t use these cliches but are in folks’ OWN words. I’ve never understood the waterworks aspects of testimonies either – if it’s so good, why are we weeping? Thankfully children don’t do that generally. While sticking to my guns about the previous points, our church produces confident (not necessarily good!) public speakers. We often get asked to do talks. Non-member friends of mine usually have trouble doing this, but we’re so used to sharing out the talks, and taking classes practically from when we’re crawling. This is definitely what’s known as a transferable skill.
I’m sorry I don’t get on here as often as I used to. John Holt pretty much sums up what I tried to express here:
http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/john_holt4.html . I’d also recommend reading Alice Miller and Maria Montessori for more light on this subject. I don’t agree with everything the Natural Child Project posts, and I have a few questions about some of Holt’s assertions in the article referenced, but for the most part he says what I tried to. If “contempt” is too strong a word for some stomachs, I stand by “condescenscion,” which I see all the time in the Church.I love substituting in Primary, because of the time I get to spend with a small group of children in a classroom, trying to deal with them respectfully and not as an authority who deserves their deference just because of my age. Sitting through the chirpy and syrupy manipulations in Sharing and Singing Time is paying dues, and often leads me to wonder if the Primary program as we have it is irredeemably toxic, too corrupted by school models to be worth the time. I consider it abominable and wrong to require children to sit still in rows by age, just as I consider it generally a waste of time to insist that adults sit quietly for as long as we do listening to recycled banalities in our grown-up meetings.
This past week, they were teaching pre-baptizeds “I Stand All Amazed.” The chorister linked “That He should extend His great love unto such as I” to Jesus’ special love for children. No! The hymn is from an adult point of view. Teaching children under the age of accountability to identify themselves as “rebellious and proud” souls is apostate Puritanism. There followed a lesson about sin and repentance. Nobody mentioned Christ’s revelation to Mormon that “little children cannot repent.” When the teacher asked “how do we repent?” I raised my hand and said “first you need to be eight years old.”
“Now behave,” she replied.
Yes, there is something in children’s vitality that looks like rebelliousness from our hide-bound adherence to our rules – most of which would be revealed as power plays if we had the courage to face our own unconscious. That “rebellion” is of God. It is not the same as the rebellion of a soul whose mortal life has progressed to the point of accountability for her knowledge of good and evil.
Sometimes it sucks to go through the work of dealing respectfully with a child. Roy made a good point: it helps to be freer and quicker expressing your frustration. But I, who grew up under the kind of bad authoritarianism that I suspect is all too common among respectable members of the Church, can’t allow myself much license in saying “just do this because I said so.” Recognizing the upbringing I had, I have to constantly bring into question how I present myself to my child. Of course this is hard, and it’s much easier to hide behind rules and authority in “bringing up children in righteousness.”
Every child is a fresh indictment of our failure to make an acceptable world.
Do you see this as unique to or worse in Mormonism than elsewhere? I’m asking to try to understand.
No, I don’t see it as unique to or worse. I see it as disappointing that it’s not better in an organization that prides itself so much on having so much additional truth. I have to qualify and clarify: I do see this phenomenon as intensified in religious culture. I mentioned Puritan attitudes: the Church still has a bad Puritan hangover. I do also see a particular danger of sentimentality in a culture like ours that teaches optimism. But I do also recognize that we’re not the only religion with that problem either.
I would say the issue you describe is not only not unique to Mormonism, it is not unique to religion and it is prevalent in education, public and private. I have been an educator for many years and I am firmly convinced that most elementary teachers are bullies. I can’t blame them because the system is set up for them to be bullies. Teachers are the all knowing oracles there to impart their vast knowledge to the imbeciles before them whether they want that knowledge or not. Teachers are tasked with forcing that knowledge upon them and forcing the children to conform to their will. They are in a position of great power over innocents that cannot defend themselves even if they knew how. And Montessori, for instance, doesn’t really change that – while there is a little more choice there the base requirement and power are the same. I’m not so sure the church is outside the societal norm in this respect. You do point out in the example you gave that children are not taught full truth by some in the church and that children are sometimes taught things that aren’t doctrine. That’s not limited to children, it happened to me and that’s why I struggle to StayLDS. DarkJedi wrote:I have been an educator for many years and I am firmly convinced that most elementary teachers are bullies. I can’t blame them because the system is set up for them to be bullies. Teachers are the all knowing oracles there to impart their vast knowledge to the imbeciles before them whether they want that knowledge or not. Teachers are tasked with forcing that knowledge upon them and forcing the children to conform to their will. They are in a position of great power over innocents that cannot defend themselves even if they knew how.
This is BS! I’m not going to stand by and let that kind of insult be levied against teachers. Shame on you. Teachers are inexplicably one of the most hated groups in America and they don’t deserve that. I know many teachers and I don’t know a single one of them that I would consider to be a bully toward innocent children. On the contrary, elementary school teachers are almost universally people who struggle to stay in their career because of the low pay and high demands, yet they stay because they love teaching kids.
[Edit note: The moderators rightfully wouldn’t let me use the longer term for BS, but please substitute it in when you read this post, and don’t miss the exclamation point.]
I have been a school teacher, and I have spent most of my adult life in education one way or another. I agree with On Own Now that the vast majority of teachers are not bullies, but I also agree with Dark Jedi that education (especially universal, public education) generally is established in such a way that compulsion is an integral part of the system. Truly individualized instruction is very rare, and group instruction that does not fit the needs, personalities and learning styles of all of the students can mimic bullying in a very real way – even when those who work in the system would never dream of bullying anyone outside a compulsory system. I’ve been involved in educational reform on multiple occasions and believe strongly in the need for systemic change in how we educate our children. I would never call most teachers bullies, but I absolutely would describe the system as having such tendencies. Unfortunately, it is brutally hard to break through that established system and remove those elements.
Having said all of that, I think the inclusion of education in this thread is excellent, since it illustrates both one of r&b’s points and also the extreme difficulty of the overall issue.
There are some things we simply must teach children in order to try to ensure their productive survival in society – and insisting on doing so for ALL children causes issues for many children that wouldn’t exist if we exempted the most difficult children from our attempts.It’s a two-edged sword: attempt to educate all and fail some who would succeed without the extremes or fail the extremes in order to maximize the benefit to the majority. In the Church, we have chosen, philosophically, to attempt to educate all – and that inevitably causes issues regarding distractions, delivery methods, teacher ability, etc., including the tendency to act in ways that sometimes can be controlling, ineffective or less than ideal, constraining on certain types of children, etc. I think most of the issues addressed in this post actually are based on that central philosophy: that
we need to attempt to educate everyone but that we have to do so in a volunteer organization. That effort leads to homogenization and stifling of creativity that feels and is restrictive for natural explorers or those who simply are different. In that way, it is no different than what public schools face, minus the volunteer status of those involved. (but, given the pay level of many teachers and the tendency to purchase necessary supplies with their own money, many of them might as well be volunteers)
I am a product of the public school system. So is my wife. So are all of my kids. I am also a product of the Church’s programs for educating children. So is my wife. So are all of my kids. I have absolutely zero complaint about any of it. I have never, not once that I can think of, experienced any form of either “contempt” or “bullying” from anyone assigned or hired to teach or lead me, my wife or any of my children. The vast majority of people I’ve interacted with in these roles have been kind, caring, sacrificing people. They aren’t all… there have been varying degrees of skill and even dedication. I’ve known a minority of these people that didn’t enjoy doing it. I’ve disagreed with approaches of a few… but “contempt” or “bullying”… absolutely not. Can it happen? Of course. Does it happen? Of course. But these blanket statements that the Church harbors “contempt for children” or that “most elementary teachers are bullies” are grossly unfair and uncharacteristic of this site. Maybe on a different thread we can have a discussion about how to improve our approaches with children that doesn’t start with the premise that all the world’s evils are caused by elementary school teachers and primary choristers. But I’m done with this ridiculous thread. See you on the more productive ones.
I was going to reply but Curtis best me to it lol. I have quite a few teachers in family and as friends. Yes a few have been “bullies” but most have spent so much time off the clock to fight and work against a broken system designed for the Industrial Age. We are now well past that and it is doing more harm then good. Like wise the same system in the LDS church is having the same problem. I see a huge parallel here but manis fist itself in different ways. The same friends and family as teachers that are trying to change the outdated harmful
System in the school also have a problem with the system in the church. The similarity is that the “system” is designed to teach from the outside in by those of “authority”.
The problem lies that with this view goes the philosophical argument that “children are vessels to be filled” rather then “vessels from which they express themselves and their interest and desires of what they want to be and we create and cultivate it”. I deplore the very idea that children are empty vessels to be filled and am for the latter.
The last 3 decades have shown the latter to be much more predictive and less harmful.
Here is a video touching in the subject in a school and parent type setting. Dealing with the idea that children are not empty vessels to be filled but creative and productive when nurtured according to their own inner self. Not from the system or patents desires to project their wishes into them.
I feel the exact same can be said inside the church and see much more positive results before we had the proper research to show the harm in the ” empty vessels to be filled philosophy”.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TqzUHcW58Ushttp://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TqzUHcW58Us” class=”bbcode_url”> I hope we can move toward that model for the benefit of humanity and charity. It would help the individual, the society and the world if we learned what the child wants and sees in his interest , that is of himself, rather then the authority figure telling the child since birth who he is and what he should do.
It seems a good idea at first, but then they grow up and completely miss their potential and real happiness by for-filling it.
For the record, I and my entire family (and my wife’s entire family) also are products of the public school system. There are serious issues I could describe which we experienced over the years, but teachers being bullies was only an issue with individual teachers – and it was far from the norm. Again, a system based on compulsion and homogeneity almost inevitably leads to actions that can mimic bullying in the sense of requiring conformity – but that is very different than people actually being bullies or actually bullying.
[ Admin Note]: If this thread is to remain open, it probably needs to shift toward a discussion of what we can do to make sure we, individually and/or collectively, do not hold children in contempt in any way – or act in an unnecessarily condescending way toward them. It probably needs to shift into a more positive, constructive mode at this point. That direction might allow productive discussion. Anything else probably won’t.
I am what you in America might call an abuse survivor, I don’t like that phrase myself. Physical and emotional abuse, not sexual (that I remember). While I had inspirational teachers, there were many genuine bullies who taught me – my parents could have sued some of them in fact. I can trace some of my current issues directly back to such folk. I won’t go into many details but I was certainly thrown down a flight of stairs, had my nose broken, was knocked unconscious on at least one occasion, rendered unable to speak properly for a while, and on one occasion a female trod on my foot for a prolonged period with a high heel. Funnily enough, when I became a big lad, they stopped picking on me in the same way.
Is it any wonder I’ve had issues with self-confidence and esteem, or that I still retain a slight speech defect? Or that despite trying to forgive these people I still feel hate and anger towards some of them?
One of the most celebrated teachers of one of my schools (long before my time) had been in a Japanese POW camp, and had a penchant for touching and thrashing boys’ bottoms. This recently came out in the press. He had rooms named after him, was considered a hero despite being a sadistic pervert.
The teaching profession certainly has some strange, damaged individuals in it, with control issues. I’m just glad they’re not all like that.
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