Help your Child Withstand Ideology
The one thing they need to know to withstand everything else…
Introduction:
A child going to school today may be made to feel predefined, predestined, and powerless as an individual. Your child may feel recognized only by the immutable color of their skin and defined only as a member of that group.
CRT is currently driving this, but note: CRT is not taught in K12. It’s worse. Teachers have been “updated” by educators to use CRT principles for teaching not just history but all subjects. Everything is to be examined through the lens of racial struggle. Exactly how and to what degree this is practiced varies widely everywhere. Individual teachers have latitude. Some are probably minimizing it. Some are enthralled by it and doing all they can to comply.
CRT is not history. It is a way of teaching history that seeks a particular response from the student. I strongly agree the full history of the USA should be taught. Nothing should be hidden. However, education should be directed to a child’s mind, not to the amygdala. Fear and shock are tools of indoctrination, not of education. The appropriate age to introduce shocking material is that age where the child’s feelings about it do not overpower their reasoning ability.
I’m writing this to try to help all parents and all children, especially those parents who can’t homeschool or send their kids to a different school. You can fortify your child to withstand this messaging. Here’s what they need, and what they are not getting from anywhere:
Individuality as Empowerment:
As a parent I suggest you encourage your child to identify as a unique individual. They need to know it is their own character, their own choices and actions in life that will define who they are. At the earliest possible age, kids need to understand that character is the primary definition of a person. And they need to know that their skin color, their culture, race or economic level of their family are important too, but not nearly as important as their individual character.
They also need to know why this is so vital: It’s because they have the power to shape their own character. They can choose their actions. They can change their outcomes. They can choose to think, to learn, to become who they want to be. As children, they have more of this power to shape themselves now, at their early age, than they will later in life when they are embedded in their own history.
In contrast, their skin color, race, culture, etc., are things they can’t change. These things should not be their focus. They are the background. Bring the things they can change into their foreground and help them experiment with volitional choices and the consequences of their actions. Show them they are in control of their own future. Show them they are individuals.
You can do this as a parent. It may seem that kids don’t need any encouragement to be wilful individuals. But this is an illusion created by their natural behavior. They naturally do it, yes, but they do not naturally know it. This is what you can help them with. Help them know it. (And this will also help them control it, a benevolent side-effect for sure!)
This sense of individuality is not being taught in school. It’s not taught anywhere. Those who write about race are not writing about individuality except to denounce it. And this will lead to disaster for these kids, black, white, brown — for all and everyone. Kids who come to identify primarily with their group will naturally identify with prejudicial and historic characteristics ascribed to that group. This identification can induce and maintain deep feelings of inadequacy, guilt, shame or feelings of superiority, or feelings of hate and distrust of the ‘other’. There is no healing here, only helplessness and surrender. Nothing good will come of this preoccupation with collective identity.
So how does building a strong sense of individuality help your child?
Children who know they are individuals with the power to define the person they are becoming can withstand the forces of racial determinism. A black or brown child can use this knowledge to resist the idea their skin color has already defined and limited their potential. White kids will learn about the atrocities committed by white people, people who may even have been their direct ancestors. Instead of hating themselves because their “whiteness” makes them irredeemably complicit and responsible, they can realize they have the power to be a good person, their own person.
Armed with this knowledge, all kids can say to themselves, “Well, I’m not ever going to be that way!”
Teach them. Empower your child to say this and mean it, and do it. You can work this teaching into all kinds of ordinary daily interactions with your kids. If you can do this well, it may even turn out to be a more positive, durable and effective solution than homeschooling or private school. It depends on your specific situation and the school choices open to you.
One thing is for sure: Parents must now be vigilant about the education their children are receiving, starting from child care on up through K12 and beyond. I hope some will find my advice helpful.
Afterword:
This is the first article I’ve written here on Medium. It’s not the one I’ve been working towards. It just emerged as today’s imperative. I truly hope it helps some parents and some children. And yes, I know full well that individuality as such has been put into the negative column and is considered a bad thing. This is how decline manifests. The problems are constantly highlighted, while the solutions are forbidden. Individuality is attacked from both left and right. We almost never hear the words “individual freedom” in politics anymore. In my view, this is an indication of the power of individuality to overcome tyranny no matter where it is coming from.
