For those of you who don’t know, I make my living as a substitute teacher. I’m sure most of you find the idea appaling, but I really enjoy getting to work with kids. My favorite age group to sub for is elementary school. I find their enthusiasm and happiness refreshing. Yesterday was art day, and I was having fun walking through the groups of children, looking at their drawings and talking with the kids. As I passed by one group of second graders, I heard the following conversation,
Kid 1: Where do you go to church?
Kid 2: I don’t go to church.
Kid 1: If you don’t go to church, that means you don’t love everyone. It means you hate me.
Kid 2 just ducked his head and kept coloring, while the rest of the table continued to question him. I could see his cheeks turn red in embarrassment. This broke my heart. I love teaching little kids because of their love and acceptance towards everyone. Somehow, this cute little girl had lost these qualities.
I have made it a point to avoid all discussions of religion at school. I am a teacher, and it would be inappropriate. However, I couldn’t just let this kind of bullying slide. I took a seat at the end of the table, and started coloring with them. I hoped my presence would be enough to stop the conversation, but apparently I’m not exactly an intimidating figure. The kids kept badgering the little the boy, who was holding his own.
“You can’t love everyone if you’re not Mormon,” insisted the little girl. Her face was twisted unpleasantly in anger.
“Nuh uh,” said the little boy, “(a certain teacher) isn’t Mormon.”
It’s true. The teacher in question is Catholic, and she is one of the greatest people I know. The little girl was blown away. In her mind, anyone who was not Mormon should have fangs and and horns, apparently. She went back to coloring with a dazed look, as if her world had been fundimentally shaken. I can’t blame this little girl for her predujice. She’s 9. She doesn’t know any better. The fault lies with her parents and Sunday school teachers. Where are the lessons about loving thy neighbor? The story about the good Samaritan? I don’t know if they blatantly told her that non-Mormons aren’t as good as them, or it was implied, but either way is unnaceptable. I would feel just as horrified about a little girl who said that all Christians are stupid. Or a little kid who said that blacks are inferior to whites. Prejudice of any kind is wrong to instill in a child, and all of us should know better.
However, I do have hope for this little girl. She learned an important lesson when she realized she couldnt’ tell the Mormons from the Non-Mormons. She couldn’t pick out her fellows by “their special glow” or their “spirit”. I am hopeful that she will realize that everyone is deserving of respect and love, no matter what their beliefs. I hope all of us can realize that too.
There may be no blatant or even implied teaching in her church that non-Mormons are not as good (although being one of the elect and chosen generation comes to mind). But our minds naturally make stereotypes and associations that lead us, even as children, to have a certain level of “implicit prejudice.” Children, therefore, need to be explicitly taught that people who are different from (race, religion, etc.) us are not inferior.
I would recommend the book NurtureShock to anyone who has or works with children. It is a parenting book based squarely on scientific research.
Children tend to reflect most transparently the bigotry that adults are able to veil when it isn’t appropriate to show in public. I was raised LDS and this doesn’t surprise me. Mormon children are taught that they are special, that they are destined for something better than everyone else, and that theirs is the only true church. All non-Mormons will never be as happy as they are. While there is a way to put a positive angle on this message, and many Mormons do remain humble about their faith, it also embeds a substantial amount of elitism in Mormons. Private conversations frequently treat non-Mormons with disdain, and obviously this little girl picked up on it.
I agree, there is a substantial amount of elitism embedded in mormon beliefs. But it is possible for a belief that it elitist in nature to also be true. This is especially a problem with religion because most religious groups believe that their doctrine and practices are the most correct. Many religious people see their beliefs and practices as sacred, and all others as silly:
It takes wisdom and humility to not let your elitism spawn bigotry and discrimination. The examples we show to children are important. But research shows that children need to be explicitly taught that bigotry and discrimination are wrongheaded.
http://www.atheistcartoons.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/soclose.jpg
I recall one Halloween taking my kids trick-or-treating. While waiting on a street corner for them to go up-and-down the block, two young girls passed by me in their costumes. One said to the other: “Let’s go to that house.” The other replied: “No! Don’t go there! They aren’t Mormons!” My jaw dropped in shock.
What is most appalling about such situations is that those children already identify themselves as “Mormons”! Evidently it is because their parents have labeled them as such since toddlerhood –and they have since internalized it.
I fully agree with Richard Dawkins in this regard:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkd6CBBxmec
In no way do I want to defend any marginalization that occurs on the heels of these “childhood labels”. Parents owe their children better than that. But my experience living in the valley as a non-mormon is that this is a two way street – it is easy for us non-mormons to treat mormons as “other” too. People have just been sharing their own personal experiences (experiences accentuated by us non-mormons being a minority), but a Mormon might read this string of posts and read us as saying ‘look at what those damn mormons do to their children.”
On the Dawkins lecture: I see the point here but it strikes me as not that big of a deal. I don’t notice adolescents and young adults having all that much trouble rebelling against what their parents taught them when they were young. And I must disagree with Dawkins’ suggestions here. Dawkins says, “If we could just but break the cycle, of handing on of these opinions from generation to generation to generation, who could deny that the world would be a better place.”
Isn’t it rather naive to think we could avoid transmitting our beliefs to our children until that time when they are capable of rationally reflecting on them themselves? This strikes me as impossible to do, and even if it was possible it would not be a good idea. In fact, it seems downright stupid to me. So, here is one person who would deny that the world would be a better place.
One error here is believing that man is a perfectly rational animal, that all of our beliefs and motivations are purely rational. This persistent belief among secular humanists discloses nothing more than their inadequate anthropology. The formation of a person has every bit as much to do with the forming of their non-rational appetitive and spirited elements.
Setting that aside, I am left to wonder – should we not transmit ANY beliefs our children until that time they are capable of rationally choosing their own beliefs? My child is no more one who “believes honesty is good” than one who “believes honesty is bad” (if the criteria here is the mental maturity to assent to a proposition). So should I, in order to respect their precious rational autonomy and not “impose a transmission of beliefs”, raise them in a chaotic and anarchic environment? Does Dawkins have children? If so, did he teach them nothing until they were young adults? Did he “impose” his belief that scientific inquiry can disclose truth? Did he “impose” his belief on his children that getting an education is a good idea? That being honest, fair, sharing, hard working, kind, not hitting, saying you are sorry when you hurt others, etc etc etc are all good things? In fact, I rather suspect he used draconian methods to “impose” such tyrannical hindrances to his children’s autonomy – like forced solitary confinements (time outs) and other such methods. What horror – his children were shackled by the “handing down of these opinions from generation to generation” which forced their parents’ identity onto them and were hence robbed of their dignity and autonomy!
One might reply, ‘Oh, but in the case of those moral norms I am imposing true and good things for them to believe’. But wouldn’t a religious person say precisely the same thing about the beliefs they transmit to their children?
It strikes me that one of the main problems in our culture today is the failure to transmit ancient wisdom across generations (due in large part to the ‘dictatorship of relativism’ that has resulted from our ‘deconstructing’ everything), not the insistence on doing so! One of the lessons Heidegger teaches us (though it is one that Plato already knew) is that there is no such thing as an Archimedean starting point. We always find ourselves with beliefs and orientations (a “world”). This is unavoidable. The fetish with “absolute beginnings” (see Descartes) is a fool’s errand.
Instead of avoiding “labeling children” (which, again, seem pretty harmless to me), why not do everything you can to “impose” on your children the moral and intellectual habits that will enable a full life of reflection and flourishing. If you are doing that, I don’t see that it much matters if I call my kid “Catholic”. In fact, failure to “impose” and transmit the goodness of such things – BEFORE your child is capable of understanding the hows and whys of their formation – will result in your children not possibly living flourishing and reflective lives. Read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, it makes all of these points much better than I have here.
I love how this post defending the wisdom of our ancestors ends with “Read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics”
Kleiner: I think that Dawkins has responded to your assertions in his recent post:
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/486830-tradition-has-its-place-but-not-where-factual-knowledge-is-concerned
Again, I agree with him.
I agree with Kleiner that there are a lot of times when non-mormons treat mormons as the other group. I also agree that you should be teaching your kids the values you have.
The problem here is that we disagree with the parent’s belief of non-mormons handing out poisonous candy (or general mistrust). Then it seems to hit harder when a child, who we think of as a blank slate, gets instilled with values that we think are wrong (especially since it’s easier to mold minds when people are young, and they are less likely to change when they’re older).
Yes, it is said when parents teach their children from ungrounded fear/mistrust instead of encouraging a positive embrace of the dignity of all persons not matter what their beliefs might be.
oops, it is “sad” when …