A physician’s conscience – more on the Nanny-pedagogy and demands on harder grips…

"In TV-programmes like 'The Supernanny' children are taught to do as the parents say – without understanding why. This sort of 'poisonous pedagogy' goes against an upbringing characterized by humanism."

[Slightly updated August 18]. Threats and punishments are not the recipe to get more order in the school and in the homes the physician Lars H. Gustafsson means. He is critical to the ”neoauthoritarian movement.” And says that he sees a trend where it is said that children shall learn to obey and follow the grown ups’ order.

He is worried for a return to old times where children and adolescents were taught to obey for to get away from punishment(s) (something they didn’t get away from how much they even tried I think).

This kind of treatment (with punishments) can lead to that we get “obedient soldiers” without personal responsibility to lean back on in difficult situations Gustafsson says. Blind obedience (and what has such obedience led to?).

My addition: and probably also people with a need for revenge and for to punish other, weaker, people!! And today the society approves of this too!!! Why do so many approve of this? And see what the American neurologist Jonathan H. Pincus writes in the chapter “Hitler and Hatred” in his book “Base Instinct – What Makes Killers Kill.”

Gustafsson (who has been working as child and school physician) says that it has become more and more common with being put in the corner. But today this is called something else: put on “timeout benches” or “rowdyism mats.” Benches and mats where kids have to sit for a couple of minutes (or more) if they have done something “wrong.” Nobody really asks (or dares to??) ask seriously why children are behaving as they are!! And call punishments as the right method in question!! If this maybe isn’t more of the same.

And in the British TV-programme ”Supernanny”, which is sent in Sweden too, the parents are taught to use a “naughty chair” where the kids are placed if they aren’t doing as the parents say.

People supporting methods like these are probably defending methods that once (severely) harmed themselves, but this is too painful to admit to. They had to believe this was done for their own good and thus they are probably the strongest advocates for methods like these, and this is really horrible and very tragic. And even more horrible when they get power positions, the higher the worse (as becoming ministers in governments, or leaders for schools etc.).

And why do they get those positions? Why don't more people oppose to this? Is it because so many have been badly treated as children in turn? And not only by grown ups around them, but not least at home? I think that IF we grew up under ideal circumstances we would be more immune (or even totally immune) to later bad treatment, or recover quicker from later bad treatment. But such ideal circumstances don't exist? But this is no excuse for not trying to improve our treatment of kids. With that ideal circumstances don't exist. And for anyone (therapist, psychologist even less) to say that "Each generation has to recapture its own." Because the recovery is so hard, so we should try to avoid as much as possible from the first beginning. Even though recovery is possible to that degree so you can live a decent life. But in too man cases with A LOT OF hard work! A work that COULD have been unneccesary. And should be unneccesary.

Instead of passing this forward those people should get help to call their own experiences in question by a society that started to talk much more openly than is the case about those things. And we ought to be a much more enlightened society today really. But it seems to be a backlash in the whole society (all over the world) not only in this respect, but when it comes to human rights and respect for each other in all.

Of course programmes of this kind influences the debate in Sweden and how grownups are behaving towards kids Gustafsson means (but why were they accepted from the first beginning I wonder???). The last years many licensed programs for education of parents with the roots in the same philosophy have become introduced in Sweden. They are building on the same thoughts on tighter reins and a firm discipline.

He refers to older times when corporal punishment strengthened the verbal imposing of shame. Children were also confined in the own room, in a basement storage space or a dark wardrobe to think over its sins!!! What ”sins” I wonder??

The child advocate Andrew Vachss thinks that

“...of all the many forms of child abuse, emotional abuse may be the cruelest and longest-lasting of all.”

"Emotional abuse is the systematic diminishment of another. It may be intentional or subconscious (or both), but it is always a course of conduct, not a single event. It is designed to reduce a child's self-concept to the point where the victim considers himself unworthy—unworthy of respect, unworthy of friendship, unworthy of the natural birthright of all children: love and protection."

To avoid the pain of such bad treatment we tend to use defense strategies, for instance by blaming ourselves, and thinking it’s something wrong with us, instead of calling the received treatment in question. And by this we tend to reenact the same thing with those with less power than we have later, and think we are doing this “for their own good”!!

Gustafsson says further that the darkness in the wardrobe should remind us of how dark we were in our souls. And even in homes that were more humane there existed “whining-wardrobes.”

Gustafsson says that he becomes sad when he hears all the demands on more order in school and home, all the talk about rougher treatment and punishments as the solution to (all) problems. But this is something that permeates the whole society is my addition!!! To moralize and put yourself on high horses.

We are on our way to return hundred years back in time he thinks. I agree.

A personal conscience isn’t created through demands on order and discipline, through orders to feel more empathy and understanding for other people. Such things can only grow from inside! Yes, I agree, through genuinely respectful treatment of children from the first beginning of their lives. But you CAN recover later, if you meet people that are able to confirm you and show you what true, genuine respect and love is. And we CAN become more respectful in our way of meeting young people, but it’s probably a very painful work.

The examples on how bad things can turn with peoples’ consciences through an upbringing built on threats and punishments are in fact many. But we don’t really discuss them or talk about them!!!?? We still believe that some people are born evil (or at least with bad genes).

Right to the WWII the German school (and the treatment at home) was characterized by blind discipline (see about blind obedience and its consequences), where threats and punishments were pedagogical tools for creating obedient students. Those young people later defended their support and cooperation in the Holocaust with that they only obeyed order.

And their suppressed anger (from the early treatment) got an outlet in the annihilation of Jews etc.

The personal conscience can never become formed via threats and punishments. And therefore the blend of new and old views on the bringing up of children that is growing stronger and stronger in Sweden is unfortunate he thinks. I would say it’s horrible. What sort of human beings are created by this way of treating young people – and very small children??

We should instead settle account with our own individual and personal history to the degree that is possible, but yes, this work is a tough work for many, many because of the pain that such treatment caused in our early childhood. To recover from such treatment is a hard work in many cases. And isn't this a reason as good as any to treat kids better?

And that people became harmed has nothing to do with a special vulnerability, i.e. the roots don’t lie in some genes that makes us more sensitive than other people (and by the way; is sensitivity bad).

And what sort of problems, and to what degree we get problems later in life from those early experiences, has with how badly treated we were and if we had the luck or not to encounter one or more person that could help us realize on some level that we were bad and unfairly treated by people who in fact didn’t show love, and not with genes I think (but it's eaier to blame genes than our parents or their substitutes). But we had to believe that they (our early caregivers) loved us and did what they did for our own good.

And it’s awful when people act this out - in politics for instance, as I think happens today, with our current government and (too many of) its supporters...

Addition after lunch: see about Corporal Punishment in the United States of America; Number of Students Receiving Corporal Punishment, by State School Year: 2006-2007, and Number of Students Receiving Corporal Punishment, by State School Year: 2006-2007 (students with an without disabilities).

Addition August 18: And how is it with emotional punishment (and manipulation)? Why is manipulation needed?

See what Alice Miller writes about conscious and unconscious manipulation in therapy for instance.

And also see the interview "Violence Kills Love: Spanking, the Fourth Commandmentand the Suppression of Authentic Emotions."

Only students that are thriving and feeling well are learning anything of value...

Quickly: Two books in one of my book clubs looked interesting, both written by the Swedish child and school physician Lars H. Gustafsson.

About the first “Student health starts in the classroom” you can read (in my amateur translation from Swedish):

“Only students that are thriving and feeling well are learning anything of value.”

Gustafsson writes about the school’s ability to meet students in a warm, emphatic and at the same time well-informed way.

One chapter is about the conception “normality” – what’s actually “normal” concerning children?

Do children with needs for special support get the support they need and are entitled to he also wonders. And are those at the same time allowed to stay in the community?

He also wonders how the school can shape or mold what a good community governed by law is in practice and about the importance of close and confiding cooperation between students, parents and the school’s staff.

In the other book “Guiding children” he is discussing different forms of bringing up of children; the more authoritarian shouting for more rules and order and a more democratic building on mutual respect and where the adult acting as a guide for the child.

My addition: I don’t think the child (any child) is born evil or with destructive or self destructive drives. If it acts in that way it has reasons. The environment ought to be prepared to hear about those things and deal with them. But if there are no or few such people in the child’s environment I hope the net can confirm those kids and tell them that what was done was wrong!!!

And here is Lars H. Gustafsson’s blog! And see this article about the Nanny-pedagogy and poisonous pedagogy (in Swedish).

The new, real heroes after the greediness's Lords - or remove the barons from office...

Le Commencement d'un monde de Jean Claude Guillebaud
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In a long interview with the French journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud (writing about media in the French “Nouvel Observateur”):

”The medias today are lacking backbone. They don't have any goal any longer, more than earning money. In former times one looked upon the medias' freedom as an indication on how the democracy worked in a country.

But now the medias have become radioactive, they poison the democracy.”

Guillebaud has collected a lot of warnings for the coming financial crisis. Everything has been said, all the time, he means.

But the ones warning didn't get any space in media. Instead the medias tried to make us believe that this economical meltdown was entirely unpredictable. The medias tried to silence all contradicting voices.

Guillebaud thinks the medias was the greediness's Lords instruments.

And today it's the ones causing the crisis who are still given space in the medias to tell us how to solve it. The ones warning have no say not even now.

This is what happens daily in Sweden even in public service the Swedish journalist Maria-Pia Boëthius thinks in the article "Remove the barons from office."

On the question who the new heroes are, after the greediness's Lords, Guillebaud replies (in my maybe a little free translation from a Swedish text) :

“All the million people who try to perform an honest work, and who are the real foundation for our existence on this earth.”

“But you don't see them in the medias?”

the interviewer asks.

“Exactly”

Guillebaud replies. A lot of people are working hard to manage their lives and earn their living, and are working entirely in the shades! And they don't earn a lot of money, despite a lot of hard work.

And apropos media: everywhere there is a debate that the paper newspapers are dying out. Or at least the morning papers are dying. However, they want support from the people now. But they let the readers down. They are about committing suicide of fear for the death.

Imitating Internet and the evening papers instead of restoring the honest journalism. They are to blame themselves, but this doesn't impede our needs for honest daily papers.

Found something Alice Miller writes at page 87-88 in her book “The Body Never Lies – The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting” *:

“The playwright Henrik Ibsen used the phrase 'pillars of society' to refer to those people in positions of power who profit from the mendacity [lögnaktighet, osanning] of the society they live in. I hope that those people who have recognized their own story and freed themselves from the lies of conventional morality [the fourth commandment] will be the pillars of a future society built on conscious awareness.

Without the awareness of what happened to us at the outset of our lives, the entire fabric of our culture seems to me to be nothing other than a farce.”

* about this book: "Miller also discusses how institutionalized religion itself can contribute to the crushing guilt that prevents us from being healthy and conscious adults. She urges society to realize that the Fourth Commandment -'Honor thy father and thy mother'- offers immunity to abusive parents. Indeed, she argues, it is healthier not to extend forgiveness to parents whose tyrannical childrearing methods have resulted in unhappy, and often ruined, adult lives.

In a stirring rejection of the 'Poisonous Pedagogy' that pardons even the most brutal parenting, Miller examines the cyclical nature of violence and abuse. Parents and guardians who abuse their children, both physically and mentally, leave them embarrassed and hurt. The inability of most children to properly express such feelings causes them to perpetuate the cycle by lashing out at their family, friends, and, above al1, their own children, who will inevitably do the same.

Throughout The Body Never Lies, Miller offers a calm and encouraging voice. Indeed, The Body Never Lies, through its illuminating and provocative insight, affords us a unique understanding of the immense healing powers of the adult self and the body."

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?