Phew. Well, after the analysis and hypothesising of earlier, I’ve since enjoyed a day of Sunday papers, chocolate and sandpit fun. Whilst I would do anything I could to avoid it, if I believed it was ultimately necessary to prevent harm, I would be prepared to use coercion as a parent and it would be naive to pretend otherwise. I’ve not quite arrived at my conclusions about punishment, though, to be honest. Nevertheless, with what I said on Friday as my starting point....
"If you have never developed a loving relationship with a trustworthy primary care giver; if parental responsibility has been delegated to various state institutions; if you have only ever been taught through physical or mental coercion and never allowed to really learn; if rational, critical thinking has been devalued, and someone else has always decided on your behalf what is right and wrong, good and bad, important and unimportant; in short, if neither your body nor your mind has ever been adequately respected – how can you ever be capable of showing respect for yourself or other people? How can you ever be trusted?"
... I hope that our path will never be too fraught with conflict. Reading Carlotta’s experience of the autonomously educated young people she has recently spent time with; learning about the varied days of Grit and the gritlets; following Debi’s journey with R; I am so angry that ladder-climbing, box-ticking bureaucrats and fake charities with their snouts in the trough have the power to meddle unnecessarily with such rich, diverse and successful family lives.
The next spanner in the parenting works has now been helpfully lobbed in by Gordon Brown and David Cameron. Seriously, are the majority convinced by either of the parties’ proposals for compulsory-voluntary service? Or are the sheeple sufficiently well brainwashed versed in doublethink by now?
I wrote about it the first time round, and my views have not changed. It’s a ridiculous idea. Attempting to build a stronger society through enforced altruism is precisely the sort of flawed principle I’ve been growling about over the weekend. Once again: short-sighted, lazy, utterly arrogant and doomed to failure. And that goes for his latest plan to enslave children, too.
