Who decides the fate of children

Author: Li Fang Wanxiang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-05-01
Features: The teaching rod can be considered a teaching tool, but why is this teaching tool referred to as a "whip"? This raises some profound questions. The term "teaching rod" implies a certain degree of violent connotation. In people's memories, the whip is often associated with animals or slaves, yet even today, we still use it in the classroom to discipline our children. The punitive function of the teaching rod may be an addition imposed by people, but in this regard, it is no different from the disciplinary ruler held by private tutors in ancient times. Both were used to intimidate students, creating a fear of violence to ensure their obedience to authority. The teaching rod is essentially a symbol of teachers' authority, and under the premise of nationalized education, teachers' authority largely derives from the formal authority of the state. When students go to school, they actually establish a direct interaction and feedback relationship between the individual and the state, directly facing state authority. When they leave school and return home, children often still face the rod or "family law" in the hands of their parents, constrained by parental authority. It can be said that our children, from a young age to adulthood, are subjected to an environment of coercion and control, where they learn and grow. In such an environment, the first thing children learn is often to "obey," and obedience means submission. Over time, this not only leads to the fragmentation of children's personalities, their spiritual degradation, and the loss of subjectivity and independence but may also result in the development of many contradictory traits and distorted characteristics, such as being overly ambitious yet underachieving, talkative yet unable to act, willful yet lacking individuality, fragile yet arrogant, hateful yet timid, intelligent yet lacking creativity, and socially inept yet yearning for recognition. These personality and spiritual traits of children might have been suitable in traditional agrarian societies or feudal societies, but in modern industrial societies and market economies, they are likely to be ill-suited.
Abroad, parents also engage in authority education, and children learn to obey authority from a young age. However, the authority they obey differs slightly from ours. They emphasize obedience to the authority of rules, whereas we teach children to obey personalized individual authority, such as parents intentionally instilling in them a sense of "reverence" for them or teachers. From reverence comes obedience. Children abroad are often more afraid of rules than of people, showing a strong sense of reverence for rules but not necessarily for individuals. In contrast, our children are generally more afraid of people than of rules, or even if they fear rules, it is only out of fear of the individual authority that enforces them, rather than fear of the non-personalized public will or public authority that rules represent (at home, it is a negotiated agreement between children and adults). Therefore, when authority is present, our children obey the rules and act according to them, but their behavior may differ depending on whether their parents are present or not. On the streets of our city, pedestrians crossing at traffic lights will certainly behave differently depending on whether a traffic officer is present or not. In other developed countries, however, pedestrians generally behave the same way whether a traffic officer is present or not.
When educating their children, foreign parents also emphasize teamwork and unity, but their unity is often unity under a specific goal, working together to achieve a common objective.