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Do it for the Kids
Few can claim to be bigger fans of the comic strip "Dilbert" than I am. It is unerringly accurate in pillorying the stupidities of the cubicle-bound modern corporate environment. That is why I was so disappointed to find an unusually moralistic and annoying cartoon on my desk calendar the other day.
The scene is a park bench, upon which Dogbert (Dilbert’s nefariously intelligent talking pet) and a rather dense looking fellow are sitting. This is unusual in itself, as this fellow never appeared before or after. The scene was clearly contrived to make a point that must have been bugging Scott Adams. The dense fellow says, "I teach my kids that these things are right, and these things are wrong. Period. End of story." To which Dogbert replies: "Wouldn’t that teach them to believe anything they’re told without applying any critical thinking?" The fellow: "I don’t think about that." "Duh."
It is hard to know where to start with such a bizarre viewpoint. The utilitarian would probably ask whether or not it makes sense for society to ask our children to ignore, and hence relearn (if we are lucky) millennia of distilled human wisdom and moral teachings in order to practice their critical thinking skills. The moralist might reasonably question whether or not we really want our children to apply critical thinking to the question of whether murder is right or wrong. How confident are we that they will arrive at the right answer in a moral vacuum? And if they make a few misjudgments along the way – a la Columbine – are we willing to chalk it up to a "learning experience"? The parent might be justified in wondering what makes Dogbert assume children are capable of critical thinking at all. I don’t know for sure, but I am almost willing to bet that Scott Adams has no children. Only a person who views children as pint-sized adults could conceive of such a notion.
Beyond its sheer annoyance, this strip helped to crystallize for me a couple of basic, fundamental, critical mistakes we seem to be making in our current attitudes towards child rearing.
The first is directly reflected in the offending comic strip. We have imputed powers of distinction and critical thinking to our children that are completely beyond anything experience or science suggests. Children are by definition remarkably self-centered beasts. Their world revolves around serving their own physical and emotional needs. Much of "growing up" is the slowly developed recognition that other people also matter and that this has implications for how they ought to behave. From teaching kindergartners how to share, to imparting rules about controlling one’s agitated adolescent hormones, growing up is painful lesson after painful lesson about the boundaries that are essential to observe in a decent society. Left to their own devices, five-year olds will not share, and sixteen year old boys will not respect girls. To remove the boundaries of right & wrong and tell the kids to figure it out for themselves is a cruel and disastrous approach. Yet this is precisely the approach preferred by our public schools and cultural engines, and it is apparently bearing its sour fruit around us on a daily basis. Some have suggested that we are living off of the inherited "moral capital" of our ancestors, who took moral obligations far more seriously than we. One can almost see the moral capital wearing thinner by the day as we lose touch with the generations that imparted it. I am not sure we are up to rebuilding it. If we are not, then we are surely seeing the last days of American greatness.
A related issue is the complete reversal of sense of "obligation" between parents and children. The modern parent, especially the modern white bread suburban parent, apparently believes that all the obligations in the child-parent relationship belong to the parent. They are obliged to ferry the children about to a mind-numbing array of activities. They are obliged to buy the kids whatever outrageously expensive fashion item they want. They are obliged to give the children the "freedom" to get pierced navels and eyebrows or dye their hair pink. They are obliged to be non-judgmental. But what of the child’s obligations? They increasingly do not seem to have any, except perhaps to get good grades and stay out of major trouble. How many children have to do chores on a daily basis? How many are asked to put their desires in second place, behind those of the family, or even of their parents? Fewer and fewer it seems. This does not so much lead to "spoiled" children (which is caused by allowing children to extort their parents) as it does to a reinforcement of the natural "me, me, me" attitude of the children. The children becomes almost exclusively receivers rather than givers. They tend to confuse privileges with "rights" and proceed into life thinking that the highest social goal is to fulfill their immature desires. Frequently, in place of the solid, concrete sense of obligation to those closest to them, they substitute shallow and trendy concerns about the rain forest, or land mines, or the homeless. Concerns about which one can assuage one’s moral senses without actually having to do any heavy lifting.
Maybe I am a pessimist. Maybe we are in better shape than I believe. Maybe Dogbert is right – maybe critical thinking is a dandy substitute for moral boundaries. God, I would love to be wrong.