From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Thu Sep 18 2003 - 22:03:57 BST
Hi Gert-Jan, Matt, All.
Gert-Jan asked:
> 7) Why is a policeman allowed to hit a hooligan, but is a teacher not
> allowed to hit a kid that the teacher can't reach intellectually or
> social? And why was it allowed in the old days? What should a teacher
> do, if he doesn't want to use this biological jungle-language?
Matt answered:
> I think that's a great question. I think that teachers are rightly told
> that they cannot hit kids, unlike cops, because kids are not fully
> formed adults. The trend to want to treat kids as if they are little
> adults is a bunk idea that has got to go. The reason kids learn so well
> is not that they are naturally more creative or that they are more
> open-minded, but because they are unpatterned.
> Whatever--the point of that for beating kids is that one of the moral
> intuitions we've created is that we should not punish, especially
> physically, that which is still in the process of becoming patterned.
> Its not completely their fault, they don't know.
Pirsig chimes in:
"The Victorians didn't really believe in those old Puritan biological
restraints the way the Puritans did. They were in the process of
breaking away from them. But they paid them lip-service and the old
"spare the rod and spoil the child" school of biological repression was
still in fashion. And what one notices, when one reads the works of the
children of those traditions, is how much more decent and socially
mature they seemed than people do today. The 1920s intellectuals strove
to break down the old social codes, but they had these codes built into
them from childhood and so were unaffected by the breakdown they
produced. But their descendants, raised without the codes, have
suffered. What the Metaphysics of Quality concludes is that the old
Puritan and Victorian social codes should not be followed blindly, but
should not be attacked blindly either. They should be dusted off and re-
examined, fairly and impartially, to see what they were trying to
accomplish and what they actually did accomplish toward building a
stronger society." (Lila, chp.24)
Platt agrees:
Don't let your kids suffer. Wack the unruly ones. If your school won't
let you enforce discipline, find a school that will.
We're reaping the whirlwind of the hippie generation who have infected
the school system with their kooky flower power. They have no idea of
the strength of the biological forces that churn just below the surface
in kids. (Refer to initiation rites that made headlines recently.)
Especially with kids, it's sometimes necessary to be cruel to be kind.
The best teachers practice tough love, recognizing the constant battle
that goes on between the biological, social, and intellectual levels. A
teacher (parent) must be fully aware of these conflicts and have full
confidence in acting to defend the higher from the assaults from the
lower.
Lots of schools have police roaming the corridors because teachers lost
the authority to uphold basic social behavioral standards.
Consequently, in too many schools today, inmates run the asylum to
satisfy their biological pleasures.
Catholic schools as a rule don't have these problems. Kids know their
disruptive biological urges will not be tolerated.
Platt
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