Early Childhood Training Without Sunday School

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The old ball and chain made the following remark one day, making me stop and think.  I had just said that there seemed to be some evidence for the belief that the decreasing religious belief in people generally did result in declining moral values.
“Well, sure,” she said at once.  “We got that thumped into impressed on us week in, week out.  Now, without the preacher to do it, someone else has gotta do it.  It’s common sense.”  [She was pained by the implied violence in the phrase "thumping in", which was not the one she remembered using, and I had paraphrased freely.]

I had, of course, gone on the assumption that moral values were intrinsic, and people don’t need to be told them.  Kids, in particular, I assumed, would know right from wrong instinctively.  But on further reflection, I have to change my mind.

Moral values, and certainly those that can almost be derived from ethical principles, are buried in our minds somewhere, and can be dug up on deep reflection.  I feel that kids do truly know some basic principles instinctively.  But I think a certain sort of social logic supersedes their instincts, and they begin to act cynically, unless what we adults consider right conduct is constantly presented to them.  Furthermore ---and I suppose child psychologists know all this sort of stuff from their textbooks, or maybe they know the exact opposite--- the sort of things that we can present to a kid as making sense will vary with their age.

Bear in mind that the thumping reminding has to take place frequently, and regularly.  I know.  Tough order.

Suppose we go on the assumption that “Jesus won’t like that” is a definite loser as a basic axiom of conduct.  What can we tell a kid to support what we think a kid should do?

An eye for an eye, the Golden Rule, retaliation, and all that jazz

Do As You Would ...

An interesting book written by a 19^th century clergyman Charles Kingsley is Water Babies.  This book has two fairies, or supernatural figures, anyway, visiting the subject of the book, a little boy.  One of them is BeDoneByAsYouDid, and the other is DoAsYouWouldBeDoneBy.  Unfortunately, I was given this book to read as a child of eleven or twelve, and I did not see the difference between the two principles (which the two characters kept enforcing, or teaching).  If you know all about this, just skip the next few paragraphs.

‘Be done by as you did’ is the Mosaic Law: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, intended to forestall escalatory retaliation.  In terms of secular military and political principles, it was the general practice to extract a bigger penalty than the original offense warranted: you slap me, I slap you twice.  You’d better watch it.  Present-day punitive action is almost exactly the same; Al Qaeda kills 3,000 odd random New Yorkers, we take out more than ten times that number, on various pretexts.  The Mosaic Law expressly forbids this, and it must stand as a shining example of philosophical advancement of its time.  Obviously, if the Biblical accounts of the Exodus have even an iota of truth to them, it would have made sense to put a stop to a vicious cycle of retaliation, which would have decimated the number of the Israelites who survived the migration eastward.

Presenting this minimal standard of behavior is not difficult.  “I don’t want you fighting for any reason,” you could say, “but don’t ever let me hear that you hurt the other kid worse than he (or she) hurt you.  That is not civilized.”  Look: if you need to invoke an authority, invoke Moses.  He was a great leader, you can say (which he certainly was), and this was his rule.  No hurting the other person more than you got hurt by him or her.  This is the Iron Rule.

My wife was also insistent that more basic rationales have to be presented.  “Sesame Street did this very effectively,” she said.  “The basis for civilization is Cooperation.  It isn’t difficult to persuade a child that cooperation is good.”  She’s absolutely right.  Ethical theorists have chased down this idea of Cooperation as a basis for society and labeled it Enlightened Self Interest, putting a beautifully cynical face on a very commonsense idea.  It is better to work together, than to work against each other, a basic lesson that was learned about the time nomadic patterns of existence gave way to farming as a way of life, where family teamwork was imperative for success, which spread to social living at many levels.  Society and cooperation are inextricably bound together, which is something our gun-loving, individualist GOP cowboys haven’t quite picked up on.

(Anyway, why is it called the Iron Rule?  Well, once upon a time, there was a guy called Iron Man ...)

The Golden Rule, to which the Water Baby graduates after having mastered ‘Be done by as you did,’ was the ‘Do as you would be done by’ rule, which is more pro-active.  Do good to others, so that they will, one hopes, do good to you in turn.  This is (as far as I can tell) not something to bring up in times of active conflict, but at a time when a friendly overture might be appropriate.  The Golden Rule is about pre-emptively making a friendly gesture, rather than forestalling an inappropriately harsh retaliation.  Any kid will buy into this idea; in fact, it is precisely this sort of idea that a kid is more likely to buy into than an adult.  You don’t have to bring Jesus into it at all; you only have to prepare the kid for possible minor disappointment.  If a kid makes a friendly advance and is rebuffed, with minor attitude adjustment, it can hurt a lot less than other sorts of disappointment, especially if you make the suggestion simply from the point of view of suggesting that junior puts him- or herself in the other’s place, rather than if you lead junior to expect a reward from the overture.  These are kindnesses that one can sow, the fruits of which can come much, much later.  And no supernatural agency need be invoked at all.

Again, Sesame Street beautifully presents this idea under the general heading of Cooperation, and I remember my own family advocating the principle of cooperation whenever I came home to complain about some sort of conflict in school, or among my friends.

I want to make it perfectly clear that I’m making this up as I go along, and if you think this is all crazy, you’re probably right.  But my wife and I have raised four wonderful children, and at least some of them were not raised in a religious environment at all, so some of the claims I make, even indirectly, are not entirely without justification.

The most demanding teaching of Jesus is encapsulated in the following verses from Matthew:

You have heard that it has been said, you shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

This is a teaching seldom or never actually practiced by The Faithful, though they are ever eager to pay lip service to the ideal.  Eastern religions have parallel teachings; the basic idea is that one must have pity on one’s enemies (or those who set themselves up to be one’s enemy), since evil has a way of turning back on its agent.   Despite the disparity between the number of those who are aware of the teaching, and the number of those who follow it, the principle is well understood, and it seems to me, actually believed.  Why do I say this?  Because the principle of boomerang evil is widely found in literature, from ancient Greek drama to modern Theatre, to Science Fiction.  The agency has drifted from The Gods to Fate, or Karma, some mysterious force in the universe that keeps account of actions and motives.

The idea behind the teaching is great wisdom, that is, assimilated study of human nature, and experience.  When you take up the "sword", you usually die by the sword, but kindness "begets" kindness, in experience as well as in our hopes.  So how can you tell a mere kid to turn the other cheek?

You really can’t.  This is behavior that has to be backed up with example, and unless we're prepared to show how it works, we can’t be teaching it.  The basic symmetrical principles will have to work, except for special occasions where an example is possible. Turning the other cheek is very advanced stuff, and not for kids.

Arch‘’“”