Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Violence is not necessary in the education of children

To: julia.robinson@gmail.com cc: Subject: a hasty retreat Ask yourself, and think for a moment ‘Why is it bad to discipline a child by hitting them?’ What did you get? Did after all of your ruminating did you come up with ‘It just is?’ It’s difficult isn’t it? It takes time to even formulate an idea against such a preposterous idea. It took me a while to come up with:
1) Violence causes emotional and psychological scars that can grow into debilitating emotional disturbances now in and in their adult lives.
2) The child closes down to real education and learns only how to avoid a perilously close, waving stick.
3) They stop sharing, fear of loosing a pencil and therefore being hit, is a stronger motivator than sharing pencils and learning together. A healthy society is one which shares and loves. One that with it’s own security can go on to develop, invent, organize. And
4) and probably the most important, it hurts and feels bad.
But violence fits in nicely with the closed Nepali society here. Bound by religion, adults having been beaten as children, show zero emotion. I don’t know if they have feelings, or can’t relate to them, or simply can’t show them. They are closed books. So how can they relate to others emotions? They have in-scalable walls fortressing anything remotely personal. Maybe from living in such big families, or such a repressed Hindu society. Sri Aurobindo Orphanage - The Terror of Truth posted by julia at 3:54 AM

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