I’ve been wondering a lot recently about what one should tell children about the world. I wouldn’t want to be so grandiose as to call this “education”. More, a bit of uncertainty about what to tell children who ask things, what to tell them proactively, and (perhaps most importantly) what should not be told to them at all. (NB: by “tell”, I don’t mean once. I mean consistently, over time).
I am certain that there are some things that it would be unethical to tell children. For example, it would not be ethical to tell things to a child in order to obtain obedience by inducing a permanent state of fear, because (I am reasonably sure) that would be very likely to have a lasting and damaging influence on their emotional and intellectual development, which would cause them to suffer, without any countervailing benefit.
I think, but am not certain, it is unethical to tell children things which are objectively false (as best we can tell) and which (unlike the ordinary healthy fantasies of childhood) are likely to lead to long-lasting and systematic belief in falsehoods. This is partly because I think it is important to understand what is true and what is not. But also because, for systematic belief in falsehoods to be maintained, one has to adopt ways of thinking which reduce cognitive dissonance, and allow the truths which challenge that belief to be rationalised away.
By way of example: it would not be ethical to tell children that the world is flat, and that contrary views are part of a huge conspiracy. This (manifestly) would be a false thing to tell a child. And maintaining that belief, in the face of the evidence to the contrary, would probably necessitate telling the child an even bigger falsehood: that such conspiracies exist in the world, that all of the contrary evidence is fake or wrong, and that a vast swathe of people in the world are either stupid or are liars seeking to keep the population ignorant.
And it would probably also necessitate systematising damaging ways of thinking, like confirmation bias, communal reinforcement, deliberate avoidance of new information or dissenting views, and myriad other fallacies and bad habits. Mental acrobatics of that sort would be necessary to hold the falsehood up.
There are many examples of this sort of thing in everyday life. Things which (I stress) I would not want to shelter a child from, but would strongly want to avoid being told to a child repeatedly, unquestioned, as fact, over time. The odd bit of wrong here or there is of no consequence at all. And bits of wrong which are asked about and explained are positively valuable.
Some of these sorts of things I mean are:
- The idea that modern medicine (and vaccination in particular) does more harm than good, is mostly about money, and that alternative medicine is more effective (an idea whose adherents are responsible for many premature deaths)
- The idea that some groups of people, different from the child in some irrelevant way, should be treated differently and should not have the same civil and human rights as everyone else
- The idea (perhaps obviously at this point) that there exists a personal god with an interest in human affairs, who can influence our lives, who has set rules to govern our conduct, and to whom we should supplicate ourselves
These things don’t occupy my every waking thought, by any means, but they do occasionally crop up in challenging ways. Partly because all three of the above examples are represented in my family and friends (to varying degrees). But also because of the existence of people and groups who proudly espouse these views, systematically, to children and everyone else.
People like Rev Dr Mark Griffiths, author of One Generation from Extinction, and recently a guest on All Things Considered, whose contributions contained more euphemisms for “indoctrinate” than I could keep track of. People like the Child Evangelism Fellowship, the Coalition 4 Marriage. Campaigns like JABS. Perhaps worst of all, state-funded faith schools and laws requiring acts of collective worship in all schools.
Certainly, I would not want to overreact to this kind of thing. There is an abundance of nonsense in the world for anyone who wants to seek it out, and by and large, the best reaction is to ignore it all (or make fun of the silliest things). But I do find myself angered by people who proudly describe the ways in which they indoctrinate children who are too young to discern truth from fiction.
I’m not sure where the boundary lies between behaviour which I find distasteful but is nonetheless acceptable in a free society, and behaviour which is categorically wrong and should be prohibited along with corporal punishment and child abuse. I am sure it is in the wrong place now. And I am sure there is a vast grey area sitting in the middle.
Mostly, I am concerned about these things, and a little unsure of how I should chart the waters. And I find myself concerned about the kinds of environments in which I’d be happy to leave my child to her own devices.
Or more importantly, to other people’s.
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You should have a chat with me about it sometime. Indeed it would be great to have you – or you + family – round for supper and chat about it. Its something I’ve thought a lot about. One of the things I did a lot (and enjoyed a great deal) in my student years was being involved in child evangelism and being part of various Church’s youth work. I was fortunate (blessed?) to have been involved with some very good people doing it and had some excellent training.
One simple point is that, below a certain age, if you are fun to be with and an adult and you do fun things with children then, there will come a point that they will just believe anything you tell them. They will be willing to accept what you tell them. We were taught that it was vital to guard against that – as I am sure you do to. You do not want to overbear the will of your children.
So there’s an exercise in helping children work through what they think. This is not just learning to think for themselves but encouraging them to do so and to think critically about what they think and are told.
Much of the time I was working with children who had grown up in the church, so the problem there was one of getting them to think about what they had *mostly* accepted as read from their parents (see we evangelicals want people really to believe not just to go along with it – aren’t we annoying?).
I wouldn’t worry about either C of E schools or acts of worship in school. For the most part I think they act as a general vaccination against the true faith – especially if you discuss it with them critically. The traditional singing of hymns in school services (which doesn’t happen in most schools now) worked excellently as a vaccine since it was effectively an attenuated form of Christianity – sufficiently invasive to encourage antibodies, but not so much as to properly infect.
I am sure its possible to give an intuitive understanding of both Bayes’s Theorem and the principle of extremalising entropy in selection of priors that will mean that they end up with really good inductive capabilities. With you as a father I am sure it will be excellent.
My father very strongly believed I shouldn’t be indoctrinated and one thing he was very keen on was that I should be aware that “Father Christmas” did not exist. I am very pleased I was brought up that way. The story (as told to me) was that it was fun to *pretend* there was such a person but there really wasn’t. That is just as fun – perhaps more so – as actually believing nonsense like that (or the tooth fairy) and you don’t start off by telling your children a falsehood which you should not do.
Of course I have faith that if they do think rationally about the world they have a better chance of becoming Christians – but there’s nothing you can do about that.
“well, some people believe that…” is a good way to start any sentence where opinions conflict. And “…while other people believe…” is a good half-way point.
An excellent finish is “now can you think of a way to find out which is true”?
If you can teach them the skills of enquiry and at least the spirit of ‘scientific method’ – i.e. just ‘cos it happens once doesn’t mean it’ll happen ever time, and how to carry out basic research (with your help at first), that’s most of the job done. Likely scenarios include:
Helping them make traps / burglar alarms that santa and the tooth fairy would set off.
Get them to try praying for something to happen and see if it does. They could try meditation and see if that does anything. Perform a Crowley Magic ritual. Wave a magic wand, shout abracadabra and see if a rabbit appears.
Re: pharmacy – look up “how many people died of x after taking y” online. (though this might be an encouragement to take illegal drugs).
Re: racism/classism/xenophobia – discuss the differences between peoples, but stress that we probably seem strange/different to them too.
Sorry, ‘s late. That’s all i’ve got for now.
R’spect Harry. Good question.
I agree with what Francis said, which sounded sage to me. I’d also add…
I’d say a proper pyrrhonist approach to reasoning is a good start, and some scientific method. Yet ultimately science as a belief system rather than a tool is in my view hollow and unsatisfying. There is no inherent purpose, and no real answers within. All you can legitimately say scientifically about the ultimate ‘why’ questions is that you don’t know, can’t find out, can’t ask anyone. Staring into the nihilistic abyss, wondering if anything is staring back.
For me, being a Christian is like having visited another country that other people deny the existence of. The kingdom of God, as it were, is a place I’ve been to, so I don’t fear discussing it or feel threatened by people’s arguments. Doesn’t mean I’m closed off to discussing it; it just means I have a different evidence base. I don’t think it requires a less rational approach to life, even though I think rationality is inherently limited (I.e. why do we think that our thought processes have any more significance in the scheme of things than wind rustling through a tree?). It’s easy to pay lip service to toleration of other viewpoints where actually you’re condescending and believe others to be intellectually weak. Not that you are Harry…I mean simply that the road can take one there.
Having a nearly five year old and a two year old I’m learning that a) their reasoning doesn’t work as I thought it would and b) it isn’t what you say but what you do that matters. So don’t worry about all this too much – instead be honest. The most authentic thing you can do is demonstrate you change your mind about stuff.
By the way, modern medicine is often pretty feeble and poorly conceived in scientific terms. Sometimes it does more harm than good, and sometimes it is all about money. Jabs the organisation is still dead wrong and dangerous with it – MMR clearly has a massive net benefit. Yet many doctors and medical researchers are also dead wrong, and some are dangerous too so Jabs don’t have the monopoly on that.
I finish with quoting one of my favourite political speeches, by Ben Franklin – who incidentally wrote his memoirs just up the road from where I am now…
“I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error. Steele a Protestant in a Dedication tells the Pope, that the only difference between our Churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrines is, the Church of Rome is infallible and the Church of England is never in the wrong. But though many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as of that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain french lady, who in a dispute with her sister, said “I don’t know how it happens, Sister but I meet with no body but myself, that’s always in the right — Il n’y a que moi qui a toujours raison.”"
Well, Francis already nailed the first one. What about Santa Claus?
I think it’s quite possibly down to age. There’s a time when it’ll be okay to say “I personally think / believe but it’s important for you to come to your own conclusion” and gently introduce the concepts in the Balony Detection Kid.
However, kids will have to reach a certain level of cognitive maturity before you can do that. Up till then I think it’s question of playing along. Less about any concept of god and more about pirates/ninjas and fairy princess ballerinas
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I’d be interested to hear from parents if god even comes up much before kids go to primary school.
Thanks all for the replies. Much food for thought. David – it would be interesting to talk about rational skepticism more, and the differing evidence base. That’s something I’ve often wondered about.
On the Balony Detection Kit:
I admire Popper a great deal – one of my favourite philosophers – but falsificationism is too limited a basis on which to carry out philosophical induction. Narrowing “science” to falsifiability is overly restrictive. The problem is that nothing historically descriptive can be falsified, but it is surely coherent (at least in my view) to assign truth values to past events, even where they were not observed by me.
So, evolution by natural selection and the existence of Jesus Christ as a historical figure are both (in my view) true, but neither are falsifiable in the strictly Popperian sense (Christian’s often claim more things about Jesus which are in some sense falsifiable[*] but there mere fact of his past status as a historical figure isn’t one of them).
I think a Bayesian approach is better. It is based on Cox’s axioms – so in some sense any other way of acquiring knowledge is either an approximation to the truth or wrong. Second, it encompasses things like Occam’s razor in a more rigourous fashion. Actually applying the razor does allow for subjectivity (as I have seen) whereas a Bayesian result lays bare any assumptions that it makes and controls them via entropy.
Something I have thought was very important, even from the earliest, is to say that you don’t know when you don’t. Really everything we “know” is simply weighted with different probability values, all subject to constant revision (ideally by Bayesian inference if we are consistent and honest thinkers – easier to say than to do). It is possible not to tell any untruths and very worthwhile.
This runs counter to educational philosophy where dishonesty seems to be the order of the day (cf all colours being made of RGB or valency being explained in terms of an 8 electron outer shell). My experience with children asking questions is that you can explain almost anything in simple terms and leave enough qualifications in there that they understand they are being told part of the story but not the whole story. Good children’s literature gives examples of this. It is also what lawyers do when giving online advice, so it was useful practice
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