How Your Child Is Educated Shapes His or Her Ideology.
by
Dean Gotcher
"The child takes on the characteristic behavior of the group in which he is placed. . . . he reflects the behavior patterns which are set by the adult leader of the group." (Kurt Lewin in Wilbur Brookover, A Sociology of Education)
"It is usually easier to change individuals formed into a group than to change any one of them separately." "The individual accepts the new system of values and beliefs by accepting belongingness to the group." (Kurt Lewin in Kenneth Bennie, Human Relations in Curriculum Change)
"One of the most fascinating aspects of group therapy is that everyone is born again, born together in the group." "Few individuals, as Asch has shown, can maintain their objectivity [their belief, i.e., their faith in authority, be it in their parent's, their teacher's, their boss's, their leader(s), or God's authority] in the face of apparent group unanimity [especially when "the group," excluding, i.e., rejecting them (because of their "ridged," i.e., "prejudiced," i.e., unadaptable to 'change' "negative" attitude, i.e., their holding onto the father's/Father's restraints) is heading down the road, hand in hand, with their carnal desire of the 'moment,' "enjoying" it without them]." "What better way to help the patient [the student, your child] recapture the past than to allow him to reexperience and reenact ancient feelings [resentment] toward parents in his current relationship to the therapist [to the facilitator of 'change']? The therapist is the living personification of all parental images. Group therapists [facilitators of 'change'] refuse to fill the traditional authority role: they do not lead in the ordinary manner, they do not provide answers and solutions, they urge the group to explore and to employ its own resources. The group [must] feel free to confront the therapist, who must not only permit, but encourage, such confrontation. He [the student, your child] reenacts early family scripts in the group and, if therapy [if his classroom experience] is successful, is able to experiment with new behavior, to break free from the locked family role he once occupied. … the patient [the student, your child] changes the past by reconstituting it." (Irvin D. Yalom, Theory and Practice and Group Psychotherapy)
"The individual is emancipated in the social group." (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
Karl Marx wrote: "It is not individualism [the child under the parent's, teacher's, boss's, ... God's authority, being personally held accountable before them/Him for his behavior] that fulfills the individual, on the contrary it destroys him. Society ['compromising' for the sake of affirmation] is the necessary framework through which freedom [from the father's/Father's authority] and individuality [to do what he wants to do, when he wants to do it, without having a guilty conscience] are made realities." (Karl Marx, in John Lewis, The Life and Teachings of Karl Marx)
"Part of the dialectics of the process of winning independence from parental authority lies in using the extrafamilial peer group as a foil to parental authority, particularly in the period of adolescence." (Bradford, Gibb, Benne, T-Group Theory and Laboratory Method: Innovation in Re-education) "In the dialogic relation of recognizing oneself in the other, they experience the common ground of their existence." (Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge & Human Interest, Chapter Three: The Idea of the Theory of Knowledge as Social Theory)
By "shifting" education from 1) preaching commands and rules to be obeyed as given, teaching facts and truth to be accepted as is (by faith), and discussing (at the one in authorities' discretion) any questions that might come up (providing the person is able to understand, there is time, and they are not challenging or questioning authority), 2) rewarding or blessing those who obey and/or do things right, 3) chastening or not rewarding those who disobey and/or do things wrong, and 4) casting out or rejecting any who question, challenge, defy, disregard, attack authority to the dialoguing of opinions to a consensus 'changes' the child's paradigm (how the child feels, thinks, and acts, relates with "self" and others, and responds toward authority) from honoring and obeying authority to questioning, challenging, defying, disregarding, attacking it instead.
"There are many stories of the conflict and tension that these new practices are producing between parents and children." (David Krathwohl, Benjamin S. Bloom, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Book 2: Affective Domain)
"Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin ["lusts," i.e., carnal desires of the flesh and eyes] unto death, or of obedience [to the Father] unto righteousness?" Romans 6:16
© Institution for Authority Research, Dean Gotcher 2018