this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2024
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This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.

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Anon plays spin the bottle (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 2 weeks ago by Early_To_Risa@sh.itjust.works to c/greentext@sh.itjust.works
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[–] kwomp2@sh.itjust.works 39 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

If there is even just a chance that others wouldn't understand, let alone disapprove you associating with kid X, you can accomplish 2 things by ousting them: 1. You get rid of the potential disapproval (wich is mostly just insecurity) 2. You help an ingroup getting rid of unambiguousness, by drawing/strengthening the border to the outgroup, while with the same move placing yourself on the inside.

I work with kids, and so far I think this is the objective rationality behind most or at least many acts of cruel exclusion.

The only long term, non authoritarian solution is the kids developing a moral compass, that makes violent exclusion more important to them than short term insecurity-management and of course beeing less insecure. (Plus the "weird ones" often have fluffin interesting perspectives)

As we can see in comments like "shower more" even many adults didn't recover from the competitive-acceptance-bs other kids/their parents/ this fucked up society gave them.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

kids developing a moral compass

Yeah, not happening. I've really tried, and the most effective thing is providing external consequences for undesirable behavior, as in loss of privileges. I was a pretty chill kid, and I can't say I had a properly working "moral compass" until my mid-20s, if that. I didn't bully anyone, but I was secretly happy when bad things happened to people I didn't like.

So yeah, stick with the first two, you'll probably have more success than trying to instill morality into kids who are still harboring resentment at not getting to pick the first slice of pizza last week.

[–] kwomp2@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yes, happening. Empathy and morals (which are party sort of systemized empathy) do develop. Needs time and good relationship circumstances though. I'm in outdoor pedagogy and I'm pretty sure kids make a lot of progress with some help here and there.

School as both the no 1 pedagogical field and an institution of selection and disciplination (hello competition, hello human market) isn't a great place to progress in that.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Needs time and good relationship circumstances though

Yup, and time is the issue here. My kids are way better than their peers IMO, and my kids' teachers have said as much (not sure if they're just buttering me up though). But they're still amoral little jerks a lot of the time. They'll get there eventually, but my point is to not rely on that and instead mitigate the worst of it while their moral compass is getting calibrated.

[–] kwomp2@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 weeks ago

That sounds good and healthy to me. It's definetly part of any pedagocial role to mitigate the worst. I mean I strongly advocate for hope in the good in kids and teach/allow them to make this world a better place than we managed to so far, responsibility and all kinds of compasses. But surely they are idiots and need to rely on us mitigating that!