Contempt of children

This article, which I found through BoingBoing, really made me angry. In it, a mother describes being phoned by the police because she'd allowed her nine-year-old son to ride on a train alone.

"He – Izzy — has ridden this route solo a dozen times before. It’s a straight shot on a commuter train and, as always, he was being met at the other end by his friend’s family. But today’s conductor was appalled to see a boy riding alone.

For some reason, the conductor wouldn’t talk to me, even though Izzy called from the train when the ordeal began. The man had no interest in hearing me state what Izzy had already been telling him: We believe a child of 10 is perfectly capable of taking a half hour journey by himself.

So instead the conductor and his superior got off at Izzy’s stop and then, as the train just sat there (I’m sure no one was a rush to get to their families on Christmas day), they awaited the police. I got a call from the friend’s dad who was waiting to take Izzy home. “We cannot leave the station,” he said.”

'Why not?'

'The police have to decide what to do next.' "

It reminds me of an interview I did earlier this year with John Marsden:

“So people say, ‘don’t let children climb trees,’ or ‘you mustn’t write books where people are given realistic portrayals of the darker aspects of our society’. I get an educational magazine from England and they were describing a recent problem in a primary school where the local council had banned the grade one class from hatching eggs in the classroom because the school couldn’t guarantee that the eggs would be free of salmonella. You get things that are just completely insane, just being rapidly incorporated into normal education and child-raising.”

Marsden feels that such insanity is tolerated and even encouraged, by adults who feel a lack of control in their lives and set about, like bullies picking on the weak, constraining and restraining and infecting children with their fear.

“I think partly it comes from a contempt for children and adults enjoy the power they have over children.
“And children are very easy targets because no matter how bad a parent is, very few children will ever find the courage to confront a parent because the consequences are so awful that the child can’t confront them and will just have to tolerate the excesses of the parent.”

Dark days indeed.

Contempt of children

This article, which I found through BoingBoing, really made me angry. In it, a mother describes being phoned by the police because she'd allowed her nine-year-old son to ride on a train alone.

"He – Izzy — has ridden this route solo a dozen times before. It’s a straight shot on a commuter train and, as always, he was being met at the other end by his friend’s family. But today’s conductor was appalled to see a boy riding alone.

For some reason, the conductor wouldn’t talk to me, even though Izzy called from the train when the ordeal began. The man had no interest in hearing me state what Izzy had already been telling him: We believe a child of 10 is perfectly capable of taking a half hour journey by himself.

So instead the conductor and his superior got off at Izzy’s stop and then, as the train just sat there (I’m sure no one was a rush to get to their families on Christmas day), they awaited the police. I got a call from the friend’s dad who was waiting to take Izzy home. “We cannot leave the station,” he said.”

'Why not?'

'The police have to decide what to do next.' "

It reminds me of an interview I did earlier this year with John Marsden:

“So people say, ‘don’t let children climb trees,’ or ‘you mustn’t write books where people are given realistic portrayals of the darker aspects of our society’. I get an educational magazine from England and they were describing a recent problem in a primary school where the local council had banned the grade one class from hatching eggs in the classroom because the school couldn’t guarantee that the eggs would be free of salmonella. You get things that are just completely insane, just being rapidly incorporated into normal education and child-raising.”

Marsden feels that such insanity is tolerated and even encouraged, by adults who feel a lack of control in their lives and set about, like bullies picking on the weak, constraining and restraining and infecting children with their fear.

“I think partly it comes from a contempt for children and adults enjoy the power they have over children.
“And children are very easy targets because no matter how bad a parent is, very few children will ever find the courage to confront a parent because the consequences are so awful that the child can’t confront them and will just have to tolerate the excesses of the parent.”

Dark days indeed.