Noah Marsh also choose to address a specific remark of Jay's, and I wanted to offer his additional perspective to further the discussion. I sincerely hope to hear back from Jay, but in the interim I will seek to address other issues.
If reading the above sentences leaves you perplexed as to what discussion I'm referencing, please start by reading Day 19 - Obedience as Virtue. If you then progress through each subsequent day to this most recent update, it will hopefully all make sense. If you're immediately reticent to go backwards because it will involve more reading, fear not, there are only two additional posts between where I have directed you and the present.
Noah Marsh
In his third paragraph, Jay Jones questions Dan's analogy of beating a child, i.e. spanking, by claiming, "It really doesn't hold water." First, I must say that analogies are never perfect. People select analogies on the basis of a dominant feature of correspondence important for the immediate point the author is making. Of course the analogy will not correlate perfectly in every aspect. With that in mind I still do not agree with Mr. Jones' claim, "It really doesn't hold water."
Secondly, the justification for Mr. Jones' critique misses an important point of Dan's analogy. While there are instances in which a parent does tell a child not to do something for his or her own safety, e.g. not to touch a hot stove, the majority of the directives that parents issue to their children have no impact on a child's welfare - safety. For instance, almost every parent that I know has told their child not to color on the walls. When a child violates that edict, punishment ensues, often by "spanking." Why must a child not color on the walls? I may be wrong on this, so please correct me if I am, but Mr. Jones would say, "[Because,] no shit [the parent] knows better than the non-obedient child." What does the parent know better than the non-obedient child? Why does that knowledge mean the child should not color on the walls? Often times I believe parents' demand obedience from their children to avoid their own embarrassment (I have seen many parent-child interactions on public transit that demonstrate this). What is the difference from learning not to touch a hot stove by burning one's self and by beating? The latter attaches the pain to disobedience while the former attaches pain to the harmful act. I believe Dan's analogy was chosen intentionally (correct me if I am wrong on this as well), specifically for this reason. Dan's analogy hold's more water than Mr. Jones allows for.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
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Those you might deem as taking a bad tact towards parenting (those that punish out of resentment) aside. What possible lesson could a parent be trying to impart by forbidding a crayon graffito? (Assuming that any parent may want to actually teach as opposed to simply guard and provide) Simple respect for personal property, not destroying what's not yours. A simple precept and in this case that respect can very well lead to that child growing up more the individual.
ReplyDeleteNow as for the whole hot stove/"beating" analogy: You can punish children after the fact because they can associate the two. While it is true that you're not supposed to punish a dog after the fact due to their inability connect the punishment and the action. However, at a young age, humans are of a high enough cognitive function that they can associate a response to the action after the fact. Children aren't Chihuahuas.
It seems that the underlying motive stems from an aversion to spanking. Would you be ok with punishing said crayola kid in some other means? Or of you the type that would do nothing but scrub the walls? Spanking and other forms of corporal punishment can be done without it stepping over the line of “beating”. I'm not going to get into parenting, its another topic. However, whatever your take on parenting, simply protecting your child is doing them a disservice. Dan's analogy asks the question: "Think for yourself; did your very first lesson involve learning that disobedience would result in physical pain?" There are a couple of flaws in the question. First, it assumes that the first lesson is the one you remember as the first. Perhaps your parents tried many different ways to get to you not steal/wreck others stuff/run in the streets and they just didn't take. Second, since humans cannot remember pain, (if you could your leg would hurt when you thought of spraining your ankle) unless you have lasting mental trauma the effects of spanking today is paled by whatever lesson you learned. Once again, I'm not going to get into what lessons a parent might impart.
Now, the question comes to a head when you try to extrapolate that out to obedience in adults. Personally, I disagree with the amount and reach of our laws and gov't. Laws should be almost exclusively about protection and safety.
As far as Dan's admitted violation of other's liberty goes. I don't know exactly what he's referencing or what gains were made (or what the cost was). And I don't inherently worry about violating people’s liberty. Especially if those people were incarcerated in GITMO. Do I think that there might be some innocent people or those that really don’t pose a threat? Absolutely. Are there innocents in the US penal system? We all know there is. Is that reason to release them all? No. However both the current and previous administration simply can’t find other countries to take them.
"Enhanced Interrogation" works, sometimes simple incarceration works. Hell, sometimes torture works, as Sen. McCain admitted to during his GOP acceptance speech. I'm not advocating torture, it’s iffy at best. People tell you what they think you want them to say. Nor am I asserting that the US tortures: Water boarding is not torture; we do it to our own. I’ve been in worse situations and I’ve done it to good friends, with whiskey, forcing them not to spill any. That is far worse and it’s really not that bad.
Jay Jones
I believe Mr. Jones' critique regarding the "crayon grafitito" analogy I provided earlier flawed, but I will limit my conversation to the lengthier and,I interpret, more important of his responses. I must first say I found the comparison of a child to a Chihuahua very timely as my wife and I have begun the process of buying a dog, which includes reading about training methods. I appreciated the irony. The rest of Mr. Jones' post I found inciteful and not as apt to insightful conversation.
ReplyDeleteI must admit I was shocked by Mr. Jones' assertion that a child ought to be punished after having burned himself or herself on the stove, "You can punish children after the fact because they can associate the two...at a young age, humans are at a high enough cognitive function that they can associate a response to the action after the fact." I did not have punishment after the fact in mind when I originally asked, "What is the difference from learning not to touch a hot stove by burning one's self and by beating?" I imagined a parent telling a child not to touch a hot stove and then as the child reaches towards it, the parent swats the child's hand away and then punishes the child in some way (I will address forms of punishment briefly below.) The action is not touching the stove, the action for which the child is punished is for attempting to disobey the parent's command. Mr. Jones is correct, a child can associate response with action. Unfortunately, punishments connect response to disobedience and not the item or practice to be avoided. It is this protecting of the child that does them a great disservice (see Mr. Jones' post just beyond the middle of the second paragraph).
Why must the child be punished? Mr. Jones implies people punish a person in order to teach them a lesson. (This is not true in all cases, but I agree this is the most common function of punishment within a parent-child relationship and therefore will respond accordingly.) The child has learned not to repeat that same action via the burn. The child learns the lesson prior to any inflicted punishment (corporal or not). What added benefit is there then in the punishment? A child, without what Mr. Jones' calls trauma resulting, can learn his or her lesson without the punishment therefore punishment is not necessitated. This is what I hoped to emphasize. If Mr. Jones, or anyone else, can produce a situation in which a lesson can only be taught through punishment, I will concede that punishment is useful in some instances.
Regarding the usefulness of punishment Mr. Jones' claimed, "It seems that [sic] the underlying motive [for stems from an aversion to spanking." The child has done nothing wrong by coloring on the walls and therefore does not need to be punished in any form (e.g., timeout, grounding, spanking, etc.). The problem with punishment is not the corporal aspect. What is the purpose of punishment? I attempted to get at this in my earlier response and in this response as well. The reason I want to focus on this that Dan's post asks this very question (in not this way). Dan seems to operate from the assumption that the purpose of punishment is to reinforce obedience, nothing more and nothing less.
If you (anyone) can only respond to or think about one thing from this post I ask you to try and answer the question:
"What is the purpose of punishment and what are the best examples of punishment fulfilling this purpose?"