A recurring topic here is that of The Appeasers, those who believe that the best way to get bad kids to behave is to treat them better than other kids.
Here I intend to discuss the beliefs that underlie this course of action. These beliefs are theological in nature, dedicated as they are to describing their God: an object of worship and obedience known as The Child. These are the key doctrines of Child-Worshippers:
Dogma 1: The Child is born without sin. Unlike teachers, who are clearly tainted by Original Sin, all children are basically good. To suggest otherwise, particularly to suggest that there are bad kids out there, is to commit a form of blasphemy known as “labelling”. Because all children are good then all rewards provided for children are inherently deserved no matter what conventional morality might say.
Dogma 2: Anything The Child does that appears to be wrong is not His fault. This is a corollary of Dogma 1. Because children are inherently good, they cannot be responsible for anything bad that happens. Because of this it makes no sense to punish a child and anyone attempting to do so is guilty of sacrilege. Deities do not have to follow the normal laws of cause and effect. Therefore, bad behaviour can be caused by how adults react to it. For instance children might be badly behaved because a teacher shouted at them, even if it might appear to infidels that the children were shouted at because they were badly behaved.
Dogma 3: The Child is always the victim. Whatever happens, the fundamental truth is that any child is actually in the right and suffering for our sins. They may be suffering from poverty, discrimination or bad teaching. They are suffering at all times. They cannot have brought any problem on themselves and anyone who they don’t like must have been unfair to them.
Dogma 4: The Child has needs that must be met. If an apostate falls away from this faith and suggests that actually some children are perfectly fine, thank you very much, and should perhaps stop behaving like animals, then this indicates that their lack of faith has caused them to fail to diagnose the children’s needs. These are not like the needs of mortals. Normally people only need things for a particular purpose. These needs on the other hand are actually divine rights to attention and sympathy. The more unreasonable and unpleasant children are then the greater their needs.
Dogma 5: The wrath of The Child is always righteous. If a child verbally abuses you, hits you, or disrupts your lesson, it is what you deserved for your sins. You have failed to worship them sufficiently or appreciate their divine authority (probably because you failed to appreciate their victim status). All such wrath is a divine judgement on your impiety. If you were just nicer to children then you would be among the saved.
Dogma 6: The Child is not subject to normal moral reasoning. You might be aware that you personally can be tempted by evil. Children never are, and you can never assume that anything a child does has a questionable motive. It is your duty to excuse children’s behaviour for reasons, like poverty, being in a bad mood, or a lack of self-esteem that would never be an excuse in normal moral life.
Dogma 7: These Dogmas are psychological facts. Like other modern religions the beliefs of the Child-Worshippers are not just compatible with science, they are proved by them. All these beliefs correspond to psychological theories. These theories must be held to be true even if they have since been discredited or have no empirical basis. Insight into the true nature of children cannot be gained through any other domain of human experience, such as philosophy, history, literature, common sense, religion or even other types of psychology that have reached different conclusions.
Dogma 8: The infidels must be punished. Anybody who doubts these dogmas is a bad teacher. It is “scary“ that they might be let near children. They must be motivated only by hatred. Their inability to realise that all badly behaved children are disabled and poor suggests that they hate the disabled and poor, and probably black people too. All the things that you must never do to children, like judge them, label them, or punish them, can be done to these infidels. Indeed a belief that there are no bad children requires a belief that there are plenty of bad teachers.
Dogma 9: Any failure to find the promised land is due to apostasy. If after accepting all the dogmas, following the every whim of children and diagnosing their needs hasn’t led us out of the wilderness, then this can only be due to a lack of faith. Two signs of the apostasy of the people are most common and to be most roundly condemned. The first is “traditional teaching” which covers any practice that suggests a belief in discipline or academic rigour. The second is “a lack of resources” and is a failure to spend enough money on children, even though the money that had already been spent did no good at all.
Dogma 10: These dogmas do not apply to the priesthood. The high priests of appeasement reserve the right to withdraw all their own dogmas if it might affect themselves or their own children. A belief in the inclusion of badly behaved children does not mean you can’t send your children to a private school or demand severe punishments for any child who bullies one of your own offspring. Similarly any child who is a threat to an appeaser’s reputation for having “good relationships” with difficult kids must be punished.
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