4. Training versus Teaching

Punishment as Teaching

Training your children is a dangerous shortcut.

It's normal to want to train your kids, it's seen as necessary in order to keep them safe. I wanted to be able to stop my kids with a word, for situations like when a little one is heading for a cliff, or into traffic. Lucky for me, and for them, I changed my mind before my first daughter could walk. So we never trained them for that conditioned response. Result: a lot of hard work. We never really let them out of our sight, we've never had the luxury of giving them an order to stay put and then been able to give a majority of attention to anything else. We were always following them around, doing the leg-work to keep them safe.

Another result: now we have teenagers who still talk to us, who still are willing to listen. Communication lines are still open, and communication has always been enough. For years now, I can say with honesty, punishment has not even been a valid alternative. It hasn't been even . . . applicable. The times when it might have been are long gone by.

Alice Miller:

“Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person. In other words, to learn from the child, we must have empathy, and empathy grows as we learn.”

As I've said, punishment occurs when communication ends, and the authority figure resorts to some kind of coercion. When this occurs in a teaching situation, the teaching has turned to training. Training has other definitions, but this is the one I'm using: teaching by force.

 Several points about this kind of training:

Training teaches punishment, as violence breeds violence; indoctrination in the use of punishment comes free with every other lesson. No matter what the subject matter, if punishment is part of the process, part of what we learn is power dynamics, or 'might is right.' Punishment is taught continually this way, so that it's very effectively what is most taught, taught more often than anything else. Of course not that every arithmetic lesson or cooking lesson is taught with punishment, but behavioural things are. Early childhood stuff is: bedtimes, naps, eating, toilet training, and mostly, misbehaviours. For many of us, everything on that list will have had some punishment included with the lessons, and probably everyone will have had with the last one, with having our young misbehaviours corrected. The number of these instances will help to explain why belief in punishment generally is so prevalent, and virtually unquestioned.

Alice Miller:

“The claim that mild punishments (slaps or smacks) have no detrimental effect is still widespread because we got this message very early from our parents who had taken it over from their own parents. Unfortunately, the main damage it causes is precisely the broad dissemination of this conviction. The result of which is that each successive generation is subjected to the tragic effects of so called physical "correction." “

Training doesn't leave a lot of room for new learning, doesn't have any 'test for truth.' The trainee learns what is taught, or else. The right answers are the trainer’s answers, and that's the only check for the validity of the knowledge imparted, therefore, different trainer, different knowledge. Bad information can be learned as easily as good, and must be learned. It is far too easy for me to become expansive, to see far-reaching implications of this. Bad information can be passed peacefully also, of course, but first, the 'might is right' lesson isn't included, and second, the bad data can more easily be audited later on, without unconscious fear of punishment.

Training establishes a power dynamic, one in which the trainees - our children, for instance - are the ones taking the orders, the ones who have been conditioned to obey. This has long been a central tenet of child-rearing, the point of it, but it has a down-side, and a big one. The trained child grows up as a follower, set up, ripe and ready, to be led by everyone, not just his or her well meaning parents. Here's some potential leaders.

In childhood or youth:

peer groups

gangs

paedophiles

pornographers

cults

pimps

smugglers

military recruiters

And as adults:

all of the above

politicians

dictators

As before, there are certainly more, and perhaps some on the lists are questionable, but the general idea is there, and my opposing idea is implicit: un-punished children, children taught and not trained will be more able to avoid future abusive situations and be more able to think for themselves. And I submit, they will be happier.

Miller again:

“Hitler, Stalin, Mao and other dictators were exposed to severe physical mistreatment in childhood and refused to face up to the fact later. Instead of seeing and feeling what had happened to them, they avenged themselves vicariously by killing millions of people. And millions of others helped them to do so.”

Of course, she’s talking about severe mistreatment, but there’s a principle there; no amount of poison is actually good for you.

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Enough on this, probably more later.