God, Darwin, and Sturgeon Heights School Division
Dr. Michael Sosteric | May 09, 2012 | Comments 3
Ah school. Frolicking days of care free learning in positive and loving environments right? Guess again. Schools are contested grounds and parents, administrators, and teachers struggle to find equitable, democratic, and positive ways to raise the next generation of citizens. But what does that entail? Better yet, what do we want to teach our children? Do we want to teach them love, acceptance, and tolerance, or do we want to model judgment, punishment, and disdain. Children learn by watching what the adults do so as adults we should be careful what we do to our children.
You know, I believe in God. There, I said it. I do. I believe in consciousness, and I believe in Spirit, and I believe in The Fabric and I believe there is something else other than the empty material universe that the atheists like to espouse. I also, for the record, believe in evolution because the evidence says its true, and I don’t think the two are incompatible. In fact, I think the two can work together, even live happily in the same room. So I often don’t get what the fight is about.
Brain pain the same for ego blow, physical punch
WASHINGTON (AP) — To a part of the brain that registers pain, the distressful reaction from social rejection if just as great as from a poke in the eye, according to researchers who measured the neural reactions of people who thought they had become outcasts in a game.
In an experiment at UCLA, researchers monitored the blood flow in the brains of people who had been led to believe that other players in a computer ball game were intentionally excluding them and refusing to let them play with the group.
The shock and distress of this rejection registered in the same part of the brain, called the anterior cingulate cortex, that also responds to physical pain, said Naomi I. Eisenberger, a UCLA researcher and first author of the study appearing this week in the journal Science.
(read more).
Having said that, however, I need to also say, I don’t believe in everything. I don’t believe there is a devil, for example. I don’t believe there’s some evil guy out there going to burn you in hell for making a mistake or two. I also don’t believe in “karma.” I don’t think the universe is one big prison cell where the bad “go down” and the good “go up” [in birth]. I also don’t believe in the “father” god or the “mother” earth. I believe that, as humans, we have to grow up and take responsibility. Also, and I’ll be honest, I have a particular problem with any representation of “god” as some punishing sociopath who forcibly isolates, confines, shames, and then mutilates and burns his own children just for making a mistake, but whatever. I also believe in freedom of belief and I think you can believe whatever you want and teach your children whatever you see fit. So, if you feel its OK to teach your kids that God’s gonna get them, or that the universe is an empty shell devoid of consciousness, or that it is OK to forcibly confine and torture people, go right ahead. Just keep my children out of it, and don’t punish them for believing something different.
So, the question a lot of you reading must be asking now is, why I am saying this? Well, let me tell you. This morning I learned that my children are going to be forcibly excluded and stigmatized [read story] because we believe differently than some parents at a recent school board meeting. It doesn’t matter what our beliefs happen to be because nobody cares. It is only important that we don’t believe the same way as those parents at the meeting and for that, my kids are going to have to pay. They are going to be punished, basically. They are going to taken out of their classroom for a few minutes every morning, excluded from morning observances, and locked away in a room with the other “infidels” where they will all have to struggle with the subtle feelings of dirty shame that are going to result from what a senior panel of Canadian judges ruled way back in 1988 was a discriminatory, exclusive, coercive, and stigmatizing practice that denies fundamental charter rights.
Now, you’d think this would be a problem for the people running the system, but it is not. As Terry Jewell of Sturgeon Country School Division says, this is just the reflection of “parental choice.” After all, democracy rules. And besides, the school lawyers checked some words written in the Alberta Constitution and concluded there was nothing in that that said it was morally wrong, or ethically suspect, to exclude, stigmatize, coerce, and deny fundamental charter rights to our children. So, it is all good.
But honestly, I gotta say, as a parent I’m not a happy camper this morning because now I’m going to have to find another school to send my children to, or I’m going to have to home school them, or maybe set up a charter school outside the system, or perhaps drop them off at school a few minutes late every morning because frankly, I’m not going to expose my kids to reoccurring “morning abuse.” I want them to grow up healthy and feeling good about themselves, I want them to show respect for others and their beliefs (even if they think they are wrong), and I never, ever, ever want them to think its OK to take people who are different in any way and forcibly isolate and exclude because, as the research demonstrates, that hurts. And if you think I’m over reacting, check out this UCLA MRI Stud that demonstrates that social exclusion and isolation is experienced in the brain in exactly the same way that physical pain is. I mean, as a parent, would you want your kids poked in the eye first thing every morning at school?
p.s.
If you happen to be a parent in St. Albert, Alberta, and your kids go to Sturgeon Heights School, and you want to explore some alternatives (like pooling resources and hiring a lawyer, thinking about a home school program, or a car pool that drops the kids off a few minutes late in the morning, or a charter school), contact us.
Discussion Questions.
- What is the nature of democracy? Does democracy presume tolerance and inclusion>
- What are the psychological and emotional consequences of exclusion? What do children learn when the authority figures cart them off from their peers and isolate them by themselves?
- Do children have charter rights and is majority rule a justification for denial of charter rights?
- Discuss what you believe to be the psychological and emotional consequences to exclusion, discrimination, and coercion. Do you have personal experiences? Share them.
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Filed Under: Classroom Controversy • Michael Sosteric
About the Author: I'm a sociologist at Athabasca University where I coordinate,amongst other things, the introductory sociology courses (Sociology I and Sociology II). FYI I did my dissertation in the political economy of scholarly communication (you can read it if you want). It's not that bad. My current interests lie in the area of scholarly communication and pedagogy, the sociology of spirituality and religion, consciousness research, entheogens, inequality and stratification, and the revolutionary potential of authentic spirituality. The Socjourn is my pet project. It started as the Electronic Journal of Sociology but after watching our social elites systematically dismantle the potential of eJournals to alter the politics and economies of scholarly communication, I decided I'd try something a little different. That something is The Socjourn, a initiative that bends the rules of scholarly communication and pedagogy by disregarding academic ego and smashing down the walls that divide our little Ivory Tower world from the rest of humanity. If you are a sociologist or a sociology student and you have a burning desire to engage in a little institutional demolition by perhaps writing for the Socjourn, contact me. If you are a graduate student and you have some ideas that you think I might find interesting, contact me. I supervise graduate students through Athabasca Universities MAIS program.
As sociologists we know that discrimination, devaluation, of anyone’s beliefs is entrenched in stigma. I might suggest that these people who make the rules in organizations, do not understand the damage that is done to children, who have the right to participate in school. Robert MacIver (1949) the famous sociologist, suggests that difference is what makes society what it is. Children should have all the rights to be exposed to all kinds of beliefs. Parents need to feel that their kids can go to school, without being excised for what their parents teach them. Sociologists should be involved in this debate, because we can help in some way to correct this situation. Stigma of any kind is terrible, no matter how you cut it. Children are the pawns of idiot policy makers who have nothing to do but create doctrines, ideologies and rules, that exclude ppeople who are different. Robert
This is Robert again. I forgot to mention one thing about this article. Devaluation, prejudice, discrimination, social isolation, are all parts of the social psychological concept of stigma.
I could never understand why prayers can’t be done prior to school. I grew up going to Catholic school and we’d say the morning prayers and then go out on the playground and bully each other, call names and form groups based on popularity that included exclusion. But if you followed the majority and said what they said and excluded who they said should be excluded you would be “in”. Good stuff that prayer business in school.
Good behavior comes from home and is developed through healthy social connections that teach inclusiveness.
What is democracy? Rights, membership and a sense of belonging. Majority rules never works because it is always that large class that will have the upper hand which doesn’t allow for innovation from a diverse pool (the minority) of people. I should probably cite where I got that idea but at the moment they’re all blending together andI am feeling slightly too lazy to dig through the pages. Rawls, maybe but in anycase it is the common good that is found in overlapping values that should be recognized in an inclusive community. (There are the incommensurable ideas that are considered to be ‘good’ and so by picking from the overlapp you get the best and even better when the survey is gathered from all of the people and not just the board members.)
Yes, we have experience with exclusion (parent and child) from attending a Catholic grade school. They openly used the term “shun” as if it made the act holy, as if they were renouncing the evil sin that we are by referring to us when using it. Why? Well because we stopped being so submissive and began to ask those hard questions.
The psychological and emotional damage caused by exclusion? These children are lonely and often desperate for friendships. I can say that the ‘emmergent hand at work’ that is causing social exclusion and forcing children to play with children (who are involved in crimes such as drugs, pornography and possibly human trafficing) get them involved in crime. It’s that invisible hand that is shoving them aside and pushing them into a catagory that is chosen for them. I say no friends is better than bad friends.
To comment on your question about charter rights for children I would believe that the right would apply to them if they are citizens of Canada.