Poisonous pedagogy, manipulation, "freedom"…

Göran Harnesk.

Some morning thoughts…

I saw our current minister of education in the morning sofa this morning talking with Göran Harnesk from Children’s Right in Society about a report they had done based on phone calls they have gotten to their help phone. A report about young people becoming burnout because of the pressure in the school. In this report you can read:

“The government’s new suggestions to school law is focusing more on punishments than supporting measures, which is at risk of making it more difficult for children and young people to pick up knowledge, quite contrary to the goal the government has put up.”

Strikes me what Alice Miler writes about children who are afraid for punishment and what this causes for how they function.

And by the way, what underlying outlook on children does this Jan Björklund have? Does he (and his supporters) believe that children are born in a way so they need control, restrictions etc? I.e., that they are born with some kind of evilness or drives or something they need to control and need help to control? They will be very grateful to us if we do this, at least later when they understand better (observe the irony?

“Instead of bringing fundamental, basic deficiencies in the school system in order and trying to find methods making the student grow the government try to cure symptoms with reprimands and downright punishments. For the teenager it is crucial to become seen, independently if one is clever or fail with ones studies.”

Alice Miller and her readers on Super Nanny methods (methods that have become popular here in Sweden too).

In good old style the minister didn’t listen and doesn’t show any empathy OR interest in hearing. Quite arrogantly and authoritarian. And this is opportune today for “authorities”! Nobody reacts or question this today. Less of all the press.

The leader for the liberal party in Sweden, minister of education in the current government, wants more controls in school; more grades, more orderliness.

And this is appealing to many people, something that is so scary. A lot of people need to act things out? Taking revenge? But on who should they react actually?

Very, very ironically; yes, young people need to learn, to be taught! For their own good. No grown up people need to learn or be taught? And least of all our minister of education!? Now he has the power too refusing to learn, to be taught. He can give other people (not least young people) a lesson!?

The “strong” leader many have waited for? He doesn’t listen to people and he says that children in school need more knowledge. But he has actually proved that he is lacking knowledge himself, for instance that he doesn’t know what research or science have found. What about trusting children?

Struck me that Stiglitz writes what the deregulation politics have led to. The ideas that if you leave everything to the market, trusting the market and the people there the market will regulate itself. And this about regulations and controlling... Hmmm...

I spoke with a colleague on Sunday evening (she is soon to become retired). This talk made me think. She thinks our freedom has become limited. I couldn't help comparing: while the market (and economy) has become deregulated the work labor has become more and more regulated and controlled? Is this a coincidence?

I can’t help thinking: who needs freedom and whose ravages should become limited? What have greedy people accomplished? But, also, from where does greediness (bottomless needs) come from in the beginning?

The actors on the market (the ones who owns a lot there, not we small share holders) have been given an enormous (??) freedom? And been given this on behalf of other people’s freedom?

Yes, have we ordinary people and “workers” become less regulated? Or more? Have we been given freedom or less since I came out on the labor market? No, our work has become (much) more regulated today. But we have at the same time (no wonder!) had to hear how free we are. We can organize and plan it as we want. In MY work (as teacher in music school) we have no written curriculum, we make our own schedules.

“Look how much freedom you have!"

Somebody else telling us what an enormous freedom we have! What is freedom actually?

I can’t help thinking further. Isn’t this symptomatic for the whole labor market? People on the labor market haven’t become freer or less regulated the last 15-20-25 years? But instead more? Despite regulated markets and economies and that we have had right wing governments in many western countries, including Sweden.

Something left wing governments are accused for because they are said to have been ruling all this time and thus are he responsible for the current state of affairs, which our bourgeoisie government now is trying to rescue us from.

How would it be if we had no governments whatsoever?

Does a deregulated market mean more freedom for its workers? And for people in general?

Maybe children should need more freedom and trust instead of less. But we can’t let grown up (harmed) people free always. Writing and saying this is dangerous? Because it can become misused.

Wondering further: Who of the grown up people are we giving trust and who are we not giving trust? Who do we trust and rely on and who are we not trusting or relying on?

Yes, we can trust too much and we can trust too little. Trusting too much can be naïve? And trusting too little can resemble paranoia? (both trusting too and much and trusting too little has reasons),

Do we trust the right people? And mistrust the wrong?

How do we define what “freedom” is? In the National Encyclopedia of Sweden you can read about freedom (my amateur translation), this article is very long, 1, 5 page approximately, and I will translate the first paragraph:

“Freedom [is] a central notion in ethics and in political philosophy. The notion gets its meaning in the ethics in that way that it’s a nature law to think that if people don’t have freedom to want to and to act, they can’t neither be made responsible for her/his actions and by rights not become rewarded or punished for if she/he is acting right or wrong. There are two main interpretations for this for responsibility required freedom, according to the compatibilism it is compatible with the determinism, the thesis that all that is happening has an enough reason, while it according to the incompabilitism is incompatible with this doctrine.”

I just simply wonder, can “freedom” for one person be the opposite for another?

To avoid empathy deficits we need to preserve all sides that are natural in a child. Not only develop "knowledge" in children in school.

Research has shown that many bright people are suffering from empathy deficits... But I believe they aren't born in this way. And our minister of education isn't demonstrating that he is respecting knowledge himself either actually!

Addition: On a blog whose owner is chairperson for the youth organizations in Sweden I found another blogposting about the BRIS-report. And I want to translate it.

The heading of it is in the style “A little anxiety for the future has nobody died from, have they?”

“I hope more people are catching on to the BRIS [Children’s Right in Society] debate today about young people’s performance anxiety. It’s surprisingly quiet from politicians’ side about the statistics that is pointing to young people’s ill-health, lack of support, loneliness, exposure, vulnerability, anxiety.

Yes, most young people today have an iPod, access to the net and freedom to chose. But is this a measure that most young people are feeling well? Children’s Right in Society put the finger on the lack of understanding from the environment for how a young person can experience her/his life situation.

It’s possible to find some explanations,* but you can’t wink at (close your eyes) to the consequences.”

How well said!

* See another blogger in the blogposting "The man who is afraid of safety" reacting at the (arrogant) talk on safety-addiction. Minimizing and belittling grassroots needs in contempt for weakness and nothing else!

And I have wondered, and can't help continue wondering, are those screaming loudest about freedom actually prepared to give (all) other people freedom? And those who have been and still are for (total) deregulations (when it comes to economy) are they for less regulations and controls for the work labor? Or maybe even for more regulations and controls. But maybe they are using other expressions for those things and with this they are covering their "ambitions" or purposes up (rhetoric).

After lunch quickly: Quite ironically: Those neoliberals talking loudly about freedom do they begrudge other people freedom; to express themselves for instance, and to express diverging opinions? Do those neoliberals show real, genuine respect towards other people? More respect for other people and their freedom (of choice, thinking etc.) than the man on the street shows?

The only important for them is that they get freedom if nobody else gets it they don’t care or that’s not their business?

Not loved…

I am going to visit this place, Dalhalla, this evening.

Madeleine Åsbrink in her bok "Starting Anew" at page 18:

“I was frightened to death being unloved, despised and rejected by all people, afraid of becoming totally alone.”

So she had, all her life, tried to adapt and to earn love? Being the clever, managing, and achieving. Was the eldest of three siblings?

She had to learn to say “no”. The response from her environment ranged from a clear lack of approval to acceptation of her and her boundaries. When others responded with sour looks or icing silence she at first started to question herself. She thought it was maybe wrong of her to say no and show what she stood for (did she actually know what she stood for?).

She started to choose what people she wanted to have around her in her life, who liked her for the one she was and is, and for the one she wanted to be.

This quickly led her further to a big and complicated territory for her, namely relations. Who was she in her relations? She discovered that she was the big, strong, driving, initiative-taking, responsible-taking – an one who gave.

She longed for something else, and started the journey towards mutual, reciprocal, warm and near relations. Many of her old relations disappeared during this journey, while others became deepened and new people came into her life too.

The relation with her husband came to a crisis of course. But he had started a parallel journey, and they worked things out with a lot of struggles and efforts, because she had feelings for him still. During this journey the responsibility has been put on the right places she thinks, each one of them take responsibility for their own words, actions, feelings and needs. The trust and relation had to be rebuilt again.

They have both realized that a near relation doesn’t come of itself, but is borne in a conscious work and daily efforts. Both must want to and contribute to hundred percent for a relation to blossom.

She sees herself around and thinks there aren’t many models, but in most cases it is one who wants more than the other in a relation. This makes nearness impossible, a nearness we all are longing for, but as many of us are unconsciously afraid of. Due to early experiences…

Actually Åsbrink writes about her early experiences and in the literature list Alice Miller’s “The Drama” is mentioned.

Phenomena in the society today...

I read a blogposting yesterday by a woman, Jenny W. (in her thirties I think, and married to a white man with whom she has a small son? So she isn't very old and is also married to or living with a white man!) which triggered this blogposting and many thoughts - and emotions. A blogposting with the heading (my amateur-translation) “Mohohohahah… Why (I have such difficulties with) white guys?”

She starts it with (my quick amateur-translation):

”OK, the freak-society IS here. I.e., the society where you laugh at other peoples’ ill health and sufferings, or with other words everything the Jackass-programmes have shown a longer time.

In the Jackass-programmes [I haven’t seen them, and didn’t know about them earlier. Their home-site?] young white men with impregnable [ointaliga] bodies have chopped, cut, burnt and tormented themselves in a sort of reality-slapstick/gladiator-plays-TV, which have been unassailable [oantastliga, not allowed to question] because the young men have themselves chosen to expose themselves for this. But the indisputable development of events [odiskutabel händelseutveckling] which lies in the pipeline for these sorts of programme-ideas are though a grave pushing of boundaries, where pain and bodily injuries are made to humour, which then imperceptibly [omärkligt] but implacably [obönhörligt] are made 'funny' in circumstances where people have chosen not to get hurt. But, hehe, isn’t it quite fun hey… Look when that CP-guy is sort of tripping over [snavar]… hehe, it’s mean, but, sorry folks, that’s who I am.”

This Jenny has read about the reactions to the hacking of a home-site of epileptics in USA in (young men’s) blogs here. A hacking which has caused epileptic attacks in some users and attacks of laughter in others (I didn’t know about this earlier either, which certainly is no loss actually!!). She suspects that what has been entirely destroyed (my free interpretation) in these young white men’s world order is the distinction between what one can laugh at and what one allow oneself to laugh at.

I am thinking of a lot of other phenomena in society.

Contempt for weakness…

What are they laughing at actually? Are they laughing off what they themselves have had to stand? But this is no excuse at all for their later behaviour.

And people are scorned, scoffed at for writing as they are writing, even if they aren't harming anyone and not forcing anyone to read what they have written…

Humiliation-TV...

See Bob Scharf’s essay on Reality-TV from the psychohistory-list.

And our current government has fired the highest boss for the Swedish Public Employment Service or AMS in Swedish Bo Bylund all of a sudden. With no real motivation. Quite authoritarian. The critic is hard from the trade-union’s part it stands in the paper today.

“An incredibly bad personnel-politics”

they say. And a woman in the trade-union wants an investigation/inquest of the conditions for the employment for governments’ offices, how they look, and how one do when the employees (highest up?) become “liquidated”.

Yes, what sort of tendencies are there in society today? Many boundaries are pushed everywhere? And quite authoritarian behaviours are allowed (not least in politicians, knowing "our best" for "Our own good" see Mller's "For Your Own Good - Hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence", in our current government not least, but also in our former prime-minister Göran Persson. Yes, where are the roots lying)?

See a female leader-writer about the affair with Bo Bylund in the leader "Arbetsförmedlingen söker ny chef" this morning.

Additional thoughts: what sort of models are our politicians? Quite arrogantly (mis)using their power?

The leader-writer in the link above ends her leader with thinking that the (political) opposition has a great responsibility in creating an offensive opposition-politics in this case (how unemployed are treated, and the demands on them as they have become and are here today) and be clear in how the safety-systems shall look in the future. I agree.

But as it looks now we have to get used to that the right are demolishing and pulling down more and more of the Sweden which is known in the world (??): security/safety for all.

No, I didn’t vote for the current government (and I will never vote for these parties)…

Read: “Why People Don’t Trust Free Markets. The new science of evolutionary economics offers an explanation for capitalism scepticism” by Michael Shermer (also see here about him). It ends as follows:

“The strongest reason for skepticism of capitalism, however, is a myth commonly found in objections to both the theory of evolution and free market economics, and that is that they are based on the presumption that animals and humans are inherently selfish, and that the economy is like Tennyson’s memorable description of nature: ‘red in tooth and claw.’ After Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species was published in 1859, the British philosopher Herbert Spencer immortalized natural selection in the phrase 'survival of the fittest,' one of the most misleading descriptions in the history of science and one that has been embraced by social Darwinists ever since, applying it inappropriately to racial theory, national politics, and economic doctrines. Even Darwin’s bulldog, Thomas Henry Huxley, reinforced what he called this ‘gladiatorial’ view of life in a series of essays, describing nature ‘whereby the strongest, the swiftest, and the cunningest live to fight another day.’

If biological evolution in nature, and market capitalism in society, were really founded on and sustained by nothing more than a winner-take-all strategy, life on earth would have been snuffed out hundreds of millions of years ago and market capitalism would have collapsed centuries ago. This is, in fact, why WorldCom and Enron type disasters still make headlines. If they didn’t — if such corporate catastrophes caused by egregious ethical lapses were so common that they were not even worth covering on the nightly news — free market capitalism would implode. Instead it thrives, but just as eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, so too must it be for free markets, since both are inextricably bound together.”

It stands for instance about Shermer at the Swedish site of wikipedia:

"Shermer har skrivit flera böcker som försöker förklara den allestädes närvarande tron på irrationella eller obevisade fenomen. 'Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time' handlar om flera udda idéer och grupper, inklusive kulter /.../. Han har ägnat hela böcker åt förintelseförnekelse ('Denying History,' skriven tillsammans med Alex Grobman), och tron på Gud ('How We Believe')."