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Support Instead of Education

The Constructive End to Upbringing

The children are there, the adults are there, society is there – full of values, guidelines, boundaries, challenges. Everything is prepared and ready when a child is born. The adventure called Life can begin. Parents love their children, are a resource and a comfort to them, supporters and pillars. Why on earth is it still necessary to strategise raising them?

Well, raising someone is more than just the obvious. Upbringing is something special. Upbringing is the task and mission of ensuring that children succeed. That they become proper, well-rounded individuals. Upbringing is a calling, a cultural and civilisational mission: to turn children into human beings; to educate, shape and guide them, to instil the right values in them and to accustom them to behaviour that will ensure their survival.

Upbringing is indispensable; without upbringing, there is chaos and misery. Nowadays, we need more and, above all, better upbringing, better methods, better books, better training. Can there be any room for doubt? Everyone knows what happens when there is too little upbringing. When there is no upbringing at all – such a thing lies beyond imagination.

Who would seriously consider abandoning the act of raising a child? This notion is misguided and a bad joke. Standing against this idea is not only the science of pedagogy, countless educational books, and the engagement of numerous pedagogical professionals, but also life experience and a glance back at history.

But it is precisely this idea which shall be considered here. Not an idea that leads to chaos. Rather, an idea that opens up a novel and constructive path for both adults and children.

It begins with contemplating the portrayal of children. How do adults know what children are and how to deal with them? Who is knowledgeable enough to be asked? When adults were children themselves, their parents taught them what a child is: a young person who needs to be raised in order to become a proper human being.

But – and this is where the contemplation begins – this is only a depiction, an idea, an assumption, a hypothesis. Certainly, this hypothesis sounds true, because everything seems to suggest that children are people in need of upbringing, and so, everyone behaves accordingly. But children do not wear a sign on their foreheads that says “I need to be raised.” Adults see this inscription, but it is not really there, it is only in their habitual view, in their accustomed interpretation of children. And interpretations – conceptions of human beings – can become outdated.

For example, the conception that someone with black skin is not as proper and valuable a human being as someone with white skin, and is therefore suited to slavery. Or the view that men are the more proper and valuable people, and that, therefore, women should not be granted the right to vote. Or the conception that only a king can properly conduct affairs of state, not the people. Or, or, or. There are many conceptions of human beings, but they are always hypotheses, images – never proven facts of life.

The pedagogical view of children is also nothing more than an anthropological hypothesis. It cannot really be proven, but it is currently established as a basis for dealing with children.

Until a new anthropological hypothesis emerges and challenges the old image and established assumptions. Until someone comes along who no longer accepts the pedagogical view of children and seeks a non-pedagogical approach to them. And finds it. And begins to live according to their new hypothesis. And does not fail, but succeeds. There are such people around today.

These people come from constructive postmodernism, which recognises the equality of all phenomena as a fundamental principle. Nothing is truly superior to anything else: white people are not superior to black people, men are not superior to women, rulers are not superior to subjects, humans are not superior to nature, philosophies are not superior to other philosophies, religions are not superior to religions, cultures are not superior to cultures. And neither are adults superior to children.

If the paradigm of equality is taken seriously and made into the basis for everything, then the difference between a fully-fledged human being (the adult) and a not yet fully-fledged human being (the child) no longer exists – instead, it is recognised that both stand on the same platform: the platform of fully-fledged human beings. And then a proselytising attitude, which underlies the act of upbringing, no longer has a justified place. In which case, children are no longer raised; instead, something other than upbringing takes place between adults and children: personal relationships, as they exist between all other people.