25 March 1999, 843 words
Anyone who has observed small children for any length of time would have been struck by two things: that children are naturally curious and naturally own-way.
Anyone who has then observed adults would notice how incurious and conventional the majority of them are. Clearly, the social pressures designed to suppress our inborn individuality are remarkably effective. But, when you don't strike a balance, there is always a price to pay for defying Nature.
One of those prices is social violence. Except when it is adopted as a principle, violence is often is a rational response to specific external conditions. The population geneticist Alan Rogers has calculated from actuarial data that young men who live in oppressive conditions (such as American inner-city males) should, rationally, discount the future steeply. And, sure enough, that is what these young men do. They take risks, live for now, use drugs, do whatever they must for short-terms gains, whether those gains are money, sexual partners, pleasure or status. In a situation where the future holds no promise, such behaviour is entirely adaptive. Deferment only makes sense if investing a resource will bring returns later.
Violence can therefore be reduced only by ensuring that youths have long-term options and, in the short term, by giving them effective non-violent means of resolving conflicts. This relates to an important point that has emerged during the recent debate on violence in schools: that schools are only a microcosm of the wider society. Indeed so. But the important point is that schools are a microcosm and, as such, is amenable to moulding in ways that the wider society isn't. And this process has a reciprocal causation. Thus, what happens in schools also determines how the future macrocosm of the society will be shaped.
At the macroscosmic level, then, measures must be taken to bring our education system more in line with the needs of the economy and the needs of the society. The former requires technical expertise; the latter requires a vision of what we want the society to be. Naturally, therefore, the former task is relatively easy. The latter, if we are to depend on our political leaders, will be confined to producing obedient citizens who believe in God.
Technically, revamping the education system so it produces people trained for available jobs would help ensure the youths apply themselves more to their studies. Teenagers are smart enough to know if their learning would be useful or not. Ideologically, this does not mean that our education system must abandon its core goal of "bringing forth". Indeed, this aspect may well prove even more crucial in mitigating the problem of violence in schools and the wider society. In an essay titled 'Useless' Knowledge, Bertrand Russell noted, "The two things most universally desired are power and admiration. Ignorant men can, as a rule, only achieve either by brutal means, involving the acquisition of physical mastery. Culture gives a man less harmful forms of power and more deserving ways of making himself admired."
Studies have demonstrated that even very young children have an innate sense of fair play and justice. Therefore, if that sense is continually outraged as they grow up, it will eventually result in rebellion. And if such rebellion has no other recourse but violence, then violence will surely occur.
The social measures I have mentioned are more important. But, psychologically, encouraging children's natural curiosity can help them to deal with conflict analytically in later life. This may also allow rebellious impulses to be expressed in non-violent (though not necessarily non-disruptive) ways. But for any of this to happen, teachers must themselves be trained in habits of objective thinking.
Such an attitude might actually make teachers' jobs easier. After all, in the debate over school violence in the past weeks, many of the students interviewed have asserted that teachers must treat them with respect if they want to be respected. As a former teacher myself, I am inclined to agree with the students. In the The Society of Mind scientist Marvin Minsky writes, "Why don't we like to feel compelled? Because we're largely made of systems designed to learn to achieve their goals. But in order to learn to achieve any long-range goals, effective difference-engines [problem-solving processes] must also learn to resist whatever other processes attempt to make them change those goals. In childhood, everyone learns to recognize, dislike and resist various forms of aggression and compulsion."
Authoritarianism, as our politicians and other leaders in every sphere so amply demonstrate, is the refuge of the incompetent. To hold the youths responsible for the violence in schools is absurd. Their violence reflects a failure on the part of the adults, from parents to teachers to social leaders. But since our Prime Minister wants to pass laws to punish delinquent children more harshly, and since the Attorney General wants to reduce the hanging age, and since Adesh Nanan wants to make religious teaching compulsory, it will be difficult to persuade lesser mortals that such measures will only worsen the situation.
Copyright ©1999 Kevin Baldeosingh