Socializing Children

Moved from FreeSchools. (And a good candidate for deletion.)

The difference with FreeSchools is what they don't teach. They don't teach blind obedience; stand up, sit down, walk to the door, walk in file, line up at the bell, wait until you're counted, shut up, listen to your superiors, show Respect (read 'submission'), don't expect to have any say, the system is more important than you are, you have no control, do as I say and not as I do, learn what I want you to learn, learn this now, now unlearn it, my goals are more important than your goals, et cetera ad nauseum.

No child needs to be beaten. No child needs to be humiliated. No child needs to have their ego shattered. No child needs to have their individuality crushed under a jackboot heel. On the contrary, it is only parents who project or create such needs in their children in order to cause others to suffer as they have suffered. It is exceedingly dangerous to confuse the diversity of children's intellectual needs with the fundamental unity of their emotional needs.

There is no fundamental need for totalitarian schools. If any such need exists at all, it's only as a superficial bandage to deep emotional trauma caused by abusive or neglectful parents.

In fact, boot camp is nothing more than systematic abuse specifically designed to create exploitable psychological damage in human beings. Blind obedience to authority and the willingness to kill another human being are deep psychological problems. Defending anything resembling military training within the context of children's education is obscene.

As far as children's emotional needs are concerned, there is indeed only a single "formula" ... with lots of different ways for parents to screw it up and as many different possible consequences.

Btw, "socializing" children into some social role is an inferior childrearing technique (or more simply "child abuse" if you're intolerant of such inferior childrearing); it may be the current dominant paradigm but that doesn't make it right.

Children will grow up to relate to society in some way. The results will vary. Institutions where children spend lots of time with lots of other people will have a big effect on that socialization. It isn't as if this isn't going to happen; the question how it turns out. I think different children (and the societies they will end up in) can benefit from different approaches in those schools.

There is only one predetermined good result. All others are inferior. The common result where people are overwhelmed, emotionally dependent on, or blindly obedient to society is bad. The "socializing" mode of childrearing where children are taught that their value stems from fulfilling a specific social role (eg, being "successful") falls in the same category. Raising people to believe that their goals should be entirely derived from society instead of society's goals being entirely derived from people is obscene, antihuman and totalitarian.

There can be no "tolerance of diversity" when you're talking about racism or plain evil. Why does anyone suppose this is the case with totalitarianism? Why does anyone believe that totalitarianism is "just another (valid) option"?

Children must be taught to value themselves (to have a strong ego and develop their own independent goals) and to care for their fellow human beings (to have empathy and act morally). Alternatives to this are illegitimate, inhuman and thus intolerable.

Children do not need to be socialized and they do not need to be "guided", they need to be helped to achieve their own goals, to believe that their goals have value, and to be emotionally independent. This is the exact opposite of "socializing" and "guidance" so in fact, socialization is not inevitable.

The focus on socialization as the be-all and end-all of childrearing, and the absurd idea that it is inevitable, is due solely to the fact that Socializing is the dominant childrearing paradigm in North America. In other places and in earlier times, parents do not care about socializing and it would be wildly incorrect to describe their mode of childrearing in terms of socializing. And for those few people who have gone beyond the Socializing paradigm to the next (and final) step in the long evolution of childrearing, there is no question that what they are doing is not socializing.

Where the preceding isn't a mass of unlikely assertions, it seems busy knocking down lots of straw men.

You obviously don't know much about childrearing in other countries. Korean parents believe that children must be taught to be social and so don't let them be alone. Japanese parents shame their children into conforming. Chinese parents teach their children that they must uphold the family honor. As far as I know, all parents socialize their children, just in different ways.

Is it your contention that parents intent on exploiting children as cheap labour, creating sex slaves, or bending them to their will are socializing their children? In most countries and in most periods, socializing is a by-product of childrearing and not a goal of it. Few people would wax on about the importance of producing hair cuttings or soiled diapers as important (let alone necessary) steps of childrearing, yet this is exactly the situation with respect to socializing.

In order for this discussion to be productive, we'll begin with a definition of terms:

'to socialize' is to deliberately mould (consciously or unconsciously) a child's value system into a form approved by society, for no reason than that it is approved by society.

The 'socializing mode of childrearing' refers to the 5th major mode identified by Lloyd deMause in his many works.

Parents in the authoritarian cultures of the Far East don't raise their children to fill any social roles so much as they raise them to obey. You could argue that this ultimately has social ramifications and thus qualifies as socialization. If you do, you would be diluting the verb 'socialize' until it becomes identical with 'indoctrinate' and stripping it of any unique meaning. The parent is the one that derives the benefit from the behaviour, and it's the parent who causes the behaviour. This stands in sharp contrast to modern Western societies where the parent doesn't derive any such benefit.

What's confusing the issue is the fact that parents in backwards societies like the Far East are extremely emotionally dependent on society, and they get their own goals from society. So when these parents raise their own children to obey them, the emotional dependence on society is passed along. But this is not socialization unless you insist on using the term in an extremely vague layman's manner. There is clearly a difference between the childrearing paradigm of 20th century North America and, say, 17th century North America. If you want to speak intelligently about the topic, "Socializing" applies only to the former paradigm. If you want to speak vaguely and say meaningless and trite things like "all childrearing teaches children how to relate to society", masking the crushingly obvious as some kind of mysteriously profound revelation, by all means continue in the vein you have been going.

This definition of "socialize" seems like a straw man too - "for no reason than that it is approved by society" - I doubt very many children ever get socialized by that definition.

Most children in North America do. This may be clear only if you know the history of childrearing. In the past, children were often thought of as chattel property. In paleolithic tribes, they were (and are) often not considered to be human beings at all. Even in Victorian times, children were merely thought of as an extension of the parent's will. Even in modern North America, there are still many parents who perceive their children to be extensions of their will, or chattel property, or "clay to be moulded according to the Will of God". This is clearly different from the now dominant (at least in advanced countries) childrearing paradigm where parents' goal is to raise their children to be useful social tools (to be "successful" or "happy" or "a good person" as defined by society).

Does raping a child teach them how to relate to society? Sure it does; it certainly teaches them to be fearful. So by the naive and meaningless definition of "socialize", raping a child is socializing 'em. But is it a deliberate attempt to teach them to relate to society in a subservient manner? No, and that is why it doesn't qualify as socializing by the technical definition.

You seem to be missing the point, which is that your preferred definition of socialization can apply *ONLY* to situations where the only reason for the socializing activity is to conform to the norms of society. I don't see where your subsequent discussion gives us any reason to think that this would be the usual case. Most people I know do things for multiple reasons, and families I know tend to be pretty complicated situations with many crosscurrents, which generally defy monocausal explanations. Hence I suspect the requirements of your definition are rarely met.

IOW, my definition is not appropriately context-free and assumes a great deal of knowledge about different methods of childrearing and human psychology in general. I'm sorry, but neither psychology nor child development are exact sciences. It helps if you accept that any small deviations from the monocausal explanation must be deferred until the monocausal explanations are dealt with in the first place; in general, there's no use looking at second-order effects if you don't understand the first-order ones.

When I read the comments here about traditional education being tantamount to child abuse and spirit-breaking boot camps, I have to wonder: How many of these comments are from adults who are viewing through glasses tinted by their own unhappy childhood experiences?

I won't claim that my own childhood was a delight, but I must have been out sick when they were whipping us into socially conforming robots, and beating the individuality out of us. And try as I might, I don't remember at all the room where they strapped us into chairs - Clockwork Orange style - and taught us to be servile slaves to the system.

"Parents in the authoritarian cultures of the Far East don't raise their children to fill any social roles so much as they raise them to obey."

Well, I guess that explains my experiences with my Vietnamese girlfriend. Anything I told her to do, she'd definitely be doing it before I could finish the sentence. Never talked back to me, assaulted me, or ordered me around either. H'yea, right! --PhlIp

Well, did you outrank her?

Since when does any man in any culture outrank a woman?

[Comments on a better way to educate moved to EducatingChildren.]

CategoryEducation