“Please don’t label me”
Forget the amusing story that the children on the latest atheist bus campaign are in fact sprogs of Evangelicals. What’s more hilarious is the thinking behind the campaign – “Please don’t label me – Let me grow up and choose for myself”. What kind of uncaring parents would take such an approach?
I discussed this with Reuben (he’s a smart kid for 18 months) who suggested that we could extend the campaign as follows:
“Please don’t label me as a ‘someone who knows how to the cross the road properly’. Don’t indoctrinate me with your Green Cross Code ideology – let me choose for myself how and when I cross the road and learn from my own mistakes.”
“Please don’t label me as ‘someone who rejects illegal body-wrecking narcotics’. Don’t indoctrinate me with your ‘Just Say No’ dogma – le me choose for myself whether I try drugs without having to listen to you tell me whether it’s right or wrong.”
“Please don’t label me as ‘someone who stays safe when playing in the kitchen’. Don’t indoctrinate me your ‘The hob is hot so if you put your hand on it you’ll burn it’ presuppositions – let me experiment with the gas flame to my hearts content and choose for myself whether or not to pull the saucepan off the cooker”.
“Please don’t label me as ‘someone who doesn’t use violence to get their own way’. Don’t indoctrinate me with your But it’s wrong to hit people’ prejudice – let me choose for myself whether I beat someone up if I don’t like what they’re doing.”
Sensible advice there I think from Reuben. After all, we wouldn’t want to to be forcing upon our kids the things we think are right, just because we as parents have chosen a certain path.
Any more suggestions for things that we should let Reuben choose for himself?
Peter, you really don’t ‘get it’ do you? Eliminating indoctrination of children is about stopping you teaching your children things that atheists and associated “liberals” think are WRONG, not things that they agree with.
It is clear to anyone who thinks about it that children from Christian families become the bed-rock of much of the church of the next generation and, I guess, atheists see an urgent need to reach deep into family life in order to break the cycle. This strategy was, of course, used to great effect in the last great atheistic political system… and, together with the unfortunate initial need to eliminate overly intransigent priests and laity, the removal of Christians from positions of influence in society, and the concerted “reeducation” of any Christians who spoke out of turn, led to establishment of the great communist Nirvana, which imploded so spectacularly twenty years ago. ;-)
Actually, my husband did think he was imparting important wisdom to our 4 year old in trying to teach her not to respect the stoplights or cross in the crosswalks. He said he was teaching her that rules are only guidelines for us to choose to follow or not as it was convenient. (I was very angry and we had a long talk about this.) This is a true story.
I found myself looking for the ‘Like’ button. How sad is that? Too much time on Facebook, no doubt!
What you really miss here is the fact that Reuben is pursuing an entirely logical and coherent application of Darwinian science as per the theory of natural selection.
Being confident in himself rather than feeling need to draw on the Flying Spaghetti Monster for an objective external definition and measure of how things are or should be, Reuben is able to play happily in the kitchen amongst serious hazards, secure in the knowledge that his superiority over lesser humans will be sufficient for him to both survive and reproduce. Of course, were he to suffer serious injury or worse there would be no reason to understand an emotional response as being anything more than a means of other people appropriating the lessons from Reuben’s demise.