We are
living in a time of violence. Four white policemen club a black man with
nightsticks 56 times. A young boy, just 12 years old, shoots to death his foster
parents. What can we learn from the increasing number of violent tragedies?
Many believe that social service agencies have failed to prevent such
violence. But it is not only agency procedures which should be re-examined.
The public school system, with its captive audience of young, future
parents, has a precious opportunity to provide crucial parenting
information. Yet few schools offer parenting classes.
Despite over 10,000 hours of school attendance, very few high school
graduates are prepared for the most important job they will have – parenting
their children. Few of these future parents are knowledgeable about such
crucial matters as prenatal care, childbirth options, breastfeeding
benefits, or compassionate infant care. Those few who do have useful
information on these topics probably learned it at home. Many educators are
beginning to see the harm that is done by filling children with disconnected
facts that have little relevance to their lives while denying them the
practical and humane skills they need to function successfully in the real
world.
Dr. Elliott Barker, Director of the Canadian Society for Prevention of
Cruelty to Children, who has spent over two decades counseling murderers,
rapists and other violent men, believes that our best hope for preventing
violence lies in educating future parents. He warns that “nothing is more
important in the world today than the nurturing that children receive in the
first three years of life, for it is in these earliest years that the
capacities for trust, empathy and affection originate. If the emotional
needs of the child are not met during these years, permanent emotional
damage can result. One major obstacle to adequate nurturing in the first few
years is the incredible lack of preparation for parenting. The current
elementary school curriculum should be scrapped and substituted with one
that covers every aspect of child care.”
The father of the 12-year-old boy saw a relationship between the “severe
discipline” the boy had received from his mother and the murders he later
committed. But did the mother learn from her own parents or teachers how to
parent with love and compassion? If she had been shown how to give her son a
more secure start in life, would the foster parents still be alive?
There is no way to answer these questions, but they must be asked. Surely
it is the responsibility of parents, teachers, and all those fortunate
enough to spend time with children, to contribute to a peaceful world by
treating these future parents with dignity, respect, understanding, and
gentle explanations, and by making in-depth parenting education available to
all young persons.
Those who would like to see information on parenting presented in all
grades should ask school boards why students are being taught such
relatively useless information as solid geometry, as few of us use such
knowledge in our everyday lives (and if we find that we need this
information as adults, we can easily obtain it at that time). After all,
what is the importance of such little-used information compared with a
knowledge of empathic As Dr. Barker concluded in his presentation to a
Senate Subcommittee on Childhood Causes of Criminal Behavior, “What I keep
coming back to is that it's like pouring cement. If you don't mix the batch
right, you are stuck with it, and you have to get at it with a sledgehammer
later – it's a slow, difficult and almost impossible process. In the first
three years of the child's life, the cement is setting, and parents ought to
set every other priority aside and do their best.”
School boards should be asked why our children are being given almost
none of the crucial information they will need later as parents to help them
raise emotionally healthy, caring individuals who will treat others with
empathy. For it is most of all the capacity to feel another's pain that can
prevent the murder of one's foster parents and the beating of a dark-skinned
man. beating of a dark-skinned man.
Television and newspaper reports, discussing the revolution following the
initial acquittal of the Los Angeles police officers, rightfully pointed to
the economic, social and political roots of the anguish and anger brewing
for so long among the members of minority groups. But until all children are
treated with empathy and compassion, are shown non-violent means of solving
problems, and learn about critical aspects of parenting before they
themselves become parents, blindness to violence will only continue among
police officers, jury members, lawyers, troubled little boys, rioting adults
and all those who express their outrage at violence with more violence.
This is one of a
limited number of articles from Natural Life Magazine presented on
this website for free. To read more,
please
subscribe.
