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The Right to Love (Janusz Korczak)

In memory of Janusz Korczak -

The Right of a child to love and to respect

 

Growing up in what kind of world?

Children, youth, adolescents, teenagers etc. are all in need of special Rights, in particular the Right for love and respect (Janusz Korczak). To this can be added the Right to Childhood: a time free of responsibilities which adults share to make life possible and therefore a way to live happily in the present.

Still, the encroachment upon that Right is not only due to external reasons. Children are often more mature than adults because they are open. However, they have not yet a culture by which they could filter influences affecting their development and therefore face difficult, sometimes impossible choices. Of interest is that despite the absence of culture and in view of the world as it presents itself with all shortcomings, any child takes on all responsibilities regardless whether it can shoulder these problems or not. They are often more responsible than adults and this more to others than to themselves. That has consequences and needs to be balanced out over time. The time to give them that chance is called 'childhood' without which they cannot attain the 'cultural adaptation' they need in order to exist in the world.

All the more the need to understand how children can learn through cultural heritage how to prepare themselves for adult life. This heritage includes the stories told how people faced in the past challenges and solved questions of survival. There is always a difference between past and present made apparent by what awaits children in near future. They face this future as something unknown but already determined by what the adults fail to resolve. Such unsolved problems and questions are indicated by how politics and society attempt to shape the relationship between past and present. Under the pressure of globalization but also such political programs of intentions as 'no child should be left behind', such politics set the premises for further development.

Children do know once grown up they have to resolve as adults many of same problems but under different conditions .e.g. earning a living to feed the family. Of interest is what tension prevails in society at any given time due to this difference between immediate practical questions such as what work to take up in order to earn a living and larger questions such as why war and social poverty. Out of that tension between these two different levels attitudes towards politics are shaped.

In the absence of a general theory about social emancipation, cultural orientation linked to values of democracy seem to prevail in a local society facing all kinds of challenges, including the ‘global ones’. Mentalities are shaped accordingly but especially in terms of what is being referred to as the existence of an overall need that everyone abides to the 'law'. It is based on the respect of the opinion of the other but also what are 'individual' to 'equal' Rights? Here the protection of the individual against group pressure and even group terror is not possible without coming back to the dialectic of securalization by which is meant a process of institutional changes such as the separation of state and religion, so that each individual is guaranteed the 'freedom of conscience'.

That is not merely a constitutional question. The psychologist Piaget would link any concept of law to how children learn already when playing games how to translate moral values into 'rules of the game' and from there extrapolate to what is a law: 'nomos' (as opposed to 'physis') in the Greek language.

Children observe daily all kinds of violation of that basic value premise both in their own families but also in society at large. Even adults would turn the love of the child for them into a coercive tool so that the child goes against its own 'freedom of conscience'. Or else, as discussed by Piaget, they would preach moral values such as faithfulness in marriage but not uphold it in practice.

How children respond and shape their moral concepts accordingly to obvious and not so obvious violations, here Piaget observed some differences. In case of parents committing adultry, some children would see their parents for the first time as human beings, i.e. not perfect once they find out that either mother or father has not been faithful despite the marriage vow and the meaning of family as a stable institution, while other children would after such revelation deny both the moral law of faithfulness and the parents. Reactions seem to depend on cultural differences, i.e. not to discard a moral law only because it is not practiced and at the same time see the human being in realistic, not idealistic terms.

Idealism is prone to reinforce disappointments when a person does not fulfill completely the ideal or norm. Then a double negation of both the person and of the moral value follows. In many children that seems to legitimize absolute denial of a reality if not conforming to the prescribed ideal. If more disappointments follow, e.g. parents not keeping their promises, then children and youth are prone to nihilistic attitudes especially if they do not get any response to their critical ideas but are left in a void. (Robert Musil)

In absence of a cultural consensus about the need for childhood

If the observations of children in today’s world amount to something, then the response of children to the absence of ‘lawfulness’ means societies risk exposing them to arbitrariness. They are then prone to develop more ‘irrational’ than ‘rational attitudes’, the former implying staying for too long in a situation even if it has negative and more so self destructive consequences. This can take the child to the point of even suicide.

Lawfulness has to do with the existence of things in real terms but also how things are taken care of; on the contrary, the television world suggests unlimited powers and virtually everything at one’s disposal since things exist on the basis of being able to demand own Rights. Between these two different versions of the world there is no bridge, no mediation possible. It leaves children confounded by the Right to existence in one’s own Rights being obscured by this arbitrariness as if everything and nothing can exist. There is hardly any story being told that would make sense to children and the youth when it comes to dealing with the world and its people.

Of interest is that in the way things are taken care of or not (neglect of historical buildings but one such indication), society’s relationship to cultural heritage reflects to what extent there does exist a cultural consensus about the value of things and laws to which all prescribe as a way to move forward in order to make possible a life for all. The creation of such cultural consensus as value premise is the most important dimension of cultural heritage. Here basic concepts such as needs of people can conjoin in what guides children to understand and appreciate a certain development. Even more important are what experiences they make so that they can verify the assumptions they have about the world.

This process of validation is no longer possible once the cultural consensus no longer exists that childhood is needed as a way to reconcile this difference between experiencing the world anew while at the same time it is an old world in which many generations have lived throughout various civilizations. In the absence of such a consensus that a childhood is needed, the perception of what is possible within such a world changes for the worse. Like a regression to times before the free standing statue, a perception of the world without having gone through a childhood worth remembering would not have the depth and appreciation of what has become known already before and out of which many new things can follow if retold anew. That is exactly the crucial point to be made about the narratives of the world. Their very absence indicates that fewer experience childhood as a way to start rediscovering these stories about the way created a consensus in the past and what they did on the basis of such value agreement in terms of how they treated each other, the things they used for working and living, as much as how they came to terms with events happening in their time.

Once a world goes astray due to war and economic crisis resulting in hunger and families without a father, the pressure mounts on children to become an adult as soon as possible. That includes child soldiers or child prostitutes but equally all those new talents making news at an early age. While adults burden children with all sorts of unresolved problems and their own limitations, they do not see what this speeded up maturation process means to children: loss of a childhood.

If childhood as such is to have value for the future, it has to be remembered positively or as Freud would say ‘free of conflicts’. Children need to experience to the full their childhood years. Here they learn their basic orientation of life and begin to discover the world.

Loss of childhood means to be without real identity. The lack of identification with something positive can be attributed to lack of a memory base and that from an early age onwards. Just as cultural heritage of mankind is of great importance to society, so childhood memories for those growing up in such a world are needed. Both need to be brought together as the child grows up. This involves both formal and informal education, attending school as much as visiting museums, since learning about life means hearing all the stories from those who have gone through experiences out of which can be learned, provided there is also a willingness to learn out of failures. For only then will they as adults have a broader perspective on life and more so an international understanding of the conditions of peace because they learned already as children what collaborative work with others means.

Unfortunately there can be observed a tendency to lower the age as to when a child can be considered to be an adult.
Overtly it is argued that young people come to terms with the digital culture i.e. computers at a much earlier age than previous generations. Also it is argued that children are exposed already at early age to the full adult world. Everybody watches regardless of age the same movies and are lured by similar advertisements, media gags and other forms of entertainment that it does not make even sense to speak about a distinctive child or youth culture. The modern media with emphasis upon a certain type of entertainment tends to focus on the young as if the only dynamic force of society. That they are equally most vulnerable and susceptible to the lure to make quick money without need to work is not said as the overall problem of unemployment questions the need for extensive studies and more difficult learning and qualification paths. Working for the sake of humanity is considered to be a stupid thing to do.

Yet there is a downside to lowering the age as to when a child can be considered to be an adult. Often such demands by adults reflect a wish to escape criminal charges in case of sexual abuse. By transforming it into a consensual act because no longer committed with a minor these adults want to avoid being accused of child abuse. Unfortunately, not even the Catholic Church has yet made it explicit that any sex abuse will damage the child for the rest of his or her life as it will affect all later relationships adversely. It can be best described as driving the child to the extreme point of perversion of any truth and thereby come to deny what Sigmund Freud had identified as prerequisite for a healthy life: a happy sexual life.

The lowering of age has at the surface of things created an enormous media interest in ever more sensational news. Here some examples as to the consequences highlighted recently by the media:

Still, there is an international consensus that until the age of 18 any child deserves not only full protection but also needs undisturbed time and space in order to grow up. Yet if nature as natural heritage is being destroyed, where can children play in the mud and roam through forests as if Indians? And if the urban environment is devoid of any cultural heritage, especially the case in those newly constructed suburban settings where every house looks the same and no where any unique story, how can children begin to discover still traces of history? Where can they still listen to stories told by their grandparents and parents so that they can start thinking in other terms than the premeditated ones by the societies they grow up in?

But aside from children getting attention by the media at an ever earlier age and vice versa everything being done to prepare children for a highly competitive world from the earliest possible age on, there are some other, still more disturbing observations to be made:

Once destruction and brutality prevails due to the absence of not only social justice in both family and school, but kindness to and recognition of the other as human being absent in streets and social institutions, all kinds of ideologies will prevail to justify both the actions and radical remedies. Mostly they are suited especially for Right Wing Extremism and embody a kind of metaphysics of politics making it nearly impossible to argue for or against on rational grounds. It can be described as a confused mind trying to overcompensate own deficits with something else promising greatness. To the methods of deception can be added luring young teenagers with rock music to simplify the first contacts with the real stuff. It all begins with discarding claims of truth based on compassion for others and making everything depend upon what leading figures say in terms of an all powerful concept e.g. superiority of one’s own group. From there to outright racialism it is not far.

The loss of human reality and therefore the giving up of individual conscience as much the negation of practical judgment means denial of human possibilities to have a decent life and an understanding of politics in ‘rational terms’. Once politics becomes ‘irrational’, then reality is misconceived out of anger at the world. Everything is deemed as humiliating if it does not add to one’s own fiction of strength to cover up obvious weaknesses, and more so in denial of vulnerability as key human trait due to being over exploited at work and still rendered helpless, such state of affairs can easily be used by certain ideologies to let everything that stands in its way appear as potential object of destruction.

Children growing up in such a milieu without any positive models except some elusive hero figure who stands up to these conditions of injustice and social inequality will not see and go beyond such cult figures. How then differences between imagined and real solutions will play out, here the study by Horkheimer and Adorno about the makings of the ‘authoritarian personality’ can guide further reflections on this subject matter.

Depending what linkage between childhood memories and cultural heritage can be made, it will determine greatly the path taken by these and other children as they become adolescents and still later adults having to come to terms with such a world they seek to leave behind but more often cannot escape. There are not only the poverty cycles but also the rich who will perpetuate themselves often in a negative sense e.g. the Bush family and the illegal practices of sons who have a rich father to cover up their tracks until they know themselves how to stay a step ahead whenever they break the law.

In reality, fear of authority (law) will be matched by servitude and suppressed hate, if not devious ways to circumvent both people and law to serve own ends. Children who grow up in such families unable to articulate alternatives to such a strict order based on discipline and faithfulness to the leader will tend to copy that in their own more extreme fashion.

It is a vain effort to stay in their belief more sincere and true to the cause than their parents. Often children want to continue there where the parents have given up or left things undone. Oddly enough what is passed on and adopted to suit newer conditions, such as reading and other working skills, is a part of cultural heritage as well. If not corrected over time, it seems certain flaws and mistakes are perpetuated. How then undo the knots and avoid foregone conclusions. The problem is that this struggle against all kinds of determinisms is also a fight against limitations both real and set by society e.g. like your father you will become an alcoholic. Dostoevsky examined his own inclination towards a ‘gambler’ while others think in terms of their parents as unresolved conflicts because of having them never addressed openly and in a way so that both sides can come to terms with what is demanded not only of each individually but of the special father-son or mother-daughter relationship (or vice versa as the gender specifics can be altered).

Yet if more neglect than over protection leaves children exposed to reality before they have developed a culture to deal with all these challenges, they act out a hope- and helplessness that sends them crashing into all kinds of barriers. This is because they are without resistance. By giving in even though with more self confidence and some positive alternatives they would have stood their ground, these inner defeats and failures, socially speaking, they will look at themselves negatively. At the same time it exposes these children to massive generalized sweeps of identity claims under some common cause e.g. from doing something for society to becoming a soldier in Viet Nam (J.F. Kennedy, Johnson, R. Nixon). Mostly they end up joining a cause to make the state become still stronger, even if it means going to war. They want something which gives them meaning in a world known otherwise to be devoid of all meanings. They succumb then all too easily if not to highly manipulative slogan used by Bush who claims through the ‘war against terrorism’ to make ‘our great nation still stronger and safer’, then to the very opposite as was once the slogan ‘destroy what destroys you’ of those taking up arms against the state e.g. from Baader-Meinhof group emerging out of the failure of the ’68 protest movement to those joining the insurgency in Iraq and elsewhere deemed as world wide terrorism.

By being disorientated and disgusted from an early age with their immediate surroundings, they are dangerously ready to revolt more often negatively than positively. As repeatedly cases of children wishing to break out of the narrow confines of their families testify, they end up joining causes promising a different life when in fact they end up like the German writer Guenter Grass with the SS at the age of seventeen. Often they do it without realizing really in what mess both morally and physically speaking they will end up in. This is to say the critical level of children being over demanded involves many facets. As a matter of fact adults and the real world complicate things still further just when children are about to make crucial decisions and begin to transform themselves into adults.

At that crucial point in time children growing up face the biggest challenge of it all, namely whether or not to join the adult world under its conditions or decide not to conform but go instead against it. The philosopher Juergen Habermas would say all ‘either/or’ alternatives are the wrong ones but then to make things worse adults demand  of the children not to go against the world they have constructed but to join them in a what has become a way of life. Little is said that this requires acceptance of small and sometimes even bigger lies. The closer this gets to real power and decision making processes which do matter, adults demand of the children that they join in on a general ‘conspiracy against truth’ before being accepted by the adults as fellow adults, that is mature enough to be capable of making own decisions but only such which do not direct their efforts away from the existing world but more towards upholding such an order e.g. by serving as soldier in the army to protect the country. Of interest is that the term ‘maturity’ takes on another meaning as a result of such conspiracy. For it will include the ability to go against the inner most conscience and inclinations to stick to the truth no matter the consequences rather than accept any compromise as many children have seen already in their parents as to what this leads to, namely resignation and disenchantment in life.

Conspiracy against the truth as entry point into adult life

‘Conspiracy against the truth’ is therefore a real problem but it seems in terms of cultural heritage except for studies about ‘civil courage’ not much else exists in terms of museums which contrary to glorifying war would show war resisters and the need to question power whenever about to make ill fated decisions.

Instead of gaining orientation out of cultural heritage when the time comes for the youth to enter adulthood, it seems that they have first to assure the world of the adults that they no longer pose any threat to them. It will mean they will not challenge the adults in what they are already doing in this world e.g. working for a weapon producing company. If the youth growing up fails to protest and to question unethical principles of work, more and more they too will feel the loss of reality and end up just like their parents giving up the demand of any truth. Interestingly enough in Germany maturity is defined as resigning in reason based on the political insight there is no point to rebelling against such structures allowing even shipment of arms to Israel at the height of yet another, the Sixth Middle East War. The same goes for Israel’s request to have cluster bombs by which they can strike back at Hezbollah rocket launchers but which can maim civilians due to its deadly side impact according to Human Rights Watch.

As the example of Sparta in Ancient Greece exemplifies, the youth prior to being admitted into the circle of the elderly had to do something from which they would never recover. The youth of Sparta had to live for three days amongst the ‘helots’ and then after killing one of them get out before the other slaves found out. After having killed a slave they could never challenge the militant and aggressive attitude of the adults. Now they had done something terrible and therefore could no longer speak out against violations of human law. Upon entry into the circles of the elderly they had become already a part of this conspiracy against truth which alone would allow questioning the initiation rite or any other of the brutal practices in the state of Sparta.

Of interest is that Socrates was committed by the Polis for having corrupted the minds of young people, but then while awaiting his own trial outside the Polis, he did manage to convince a young man not to accuse his father in front of the Polis for having murdered another man because just a slave and therefore treated differently by law of the Polis. Why did Socrates want to convince the youth to uphold this dual law or a law with two different measures?

It seems the ‘conspiracy against truth’ is practiced in almost all societies especially when linked to war as way to defend itself. For example, memorial services with war veterans praise the heroes but ensure at the same time that the real memory about the cruelty and injustices of war are blended out. By claiming to do something great for the nation, it means that soldiers who do the actual killing in war and more so the commanders issuing the orders can never be questioned. That would be something unpatriotic. And even more so everyone can claim just to have followed orders.

More and more human truths no longer count, but legacies are spun and therefore the stories told but fabrications or even worse lies since none of these actions can be justified. It should not be overlooked that those doing things against humanity fear most of not being only found out but in being challenged by those still innocent: the children. They are still free in their conscience as long as they have not committed a ‘crime against humanity’.

There is an example of conspiracy of silence at work in the recent story of a boy missing in Veria, Greece. The boy has not been found since gone missing in June 2006. Originally five boys confessed to have killed this boy: a gifted immigrant child who had come from Russia and was near the top of his class. Since the news broke due to protest by the mother (she had missed already her boy for several days), and the police arrived, no real progress has been made in the investigation. The search and questioning by the police, psychologists and prosecutor of the children and the adults connected to them the closest, has continued. Yet it seems that a silence by all adults or of the whole community has been stone walling against all inquiries. In addition, the five boys have withdrawn their earlier confession while a mother is still missing her child.

The problem of violence can be linked to children forced to grow up in a world without truth and social justice no longer the principle of good practice. Arbitrary power and lack of freedom leads to mistaking identification of judgment with punishment and victims no longer able to question the motives of those who did it. The latter seem to have always the power to define who is the guilty one or more so if identified as a threat justify the going to extremes, including killing. The frightening thing is the tendency towards lynch justice by modern states especially in their use of the method of political assassination. There is no justice just punishment or more severe the death penalty executed immediately once a person has been identified by power as the guilty one e.g. Israel identifying Hamas militant leaders as having organized suicide bombers. It leaves out the usual civil right of ‘not being guilty’ until proven otherwise and this to be done in court where witness are heard and judges contribute to making this into fair trial. But in this in-between war and enacting upon the fear of terrorism the accuser e.g. the state of Israel has no longer such burden of proof in the ‘global war against terrorism’.

As communities go astray in materialistic cultures of consumption and ‘street fear’ making public places unsafe, it becomes also evident that ever busy parents have no real time for children. If children do not end up sitting in front of television or just play video games, then they go astray due to education not offering real orientation. Much time is wasted or rather consumed with importance given to the car as symbol of economic success despite this vehicle in its massive use destroying still more the environment. How to get out of the contradictions of such a world? Children ask but hardly get any answer.

The worst cases of children suffering in this world are the ones who are if not killed or maimed, then exploited from an early age on. If not through sex tourism and child trafficking then by being forced to do all kinds of child labors as the case with the camel jockeys in the Arabic world.

Coming to terms with horrific images

“The state of affairs on the planet is becoming more and more fearful. Hypocrisy is making me shake my head back and forth all the time. Disagreeing with why and how murder can continue, and now with the report that should have come out at the beginning of the war in Iraq, that soldiers were killing and torturing civilians, a repetition of images seen during the My Lai massacre cannot leave me, with media images of coloured blankets draping the civilians on the floor, killed by u.s. marines in Iraq. My head shakes in disbelief. Blix is asking for a ban on nuclear weapons, that the U.S. will not follow the lead to. Mass protests must follow this. I doubt an art show can change things, but a seed of how many artists are making political works on current affairs, does speak for the larger population.”
Eleftheria Lialios, Video Artist at Chicago Art Institute, 2006

Children are confronted daily with all kinds of images, the impact thereof not clear in terms of personality development and behavior towards others. Certain is once a critical age and adoslescence is entered, then these images play a huge role as the transition between childhood and adulthood has to be worked out. Conflicts with parents, school teachers, friends and others pop up almost every day. It is easy to be thrown out of balance. Hence to alleviate the transition, recourse is taken very often to what appeals to the emotions while promising to cover up mistakes, short comings of all kinds (even not looking beautiful or handsome enough to be attractive enough to the opposite sex) and uncertainties about the future. Here social media starts to play a huge role. It is known, for example, that all kinds of forces attempt to recruit youth as it confirms their position and secures their sustainability. A broad spectrum thereof of recruitment attempts exist from the state, including the military, to Extreme Right Wing or Left Wing movements. It is not made out how a youth will find his or her way through all these temptations and influences. The break-up of the inner core due to the family splitting up with father and mother divorcing one of the critical points that throws many children and youth off balance.

Further studies and discussions shall be needed to draw some practical conclusions out of the experiences made by Kids' Guernica, but surely here the Right for free expression of children and youth is being upheld at all times when Kids' Guernica actions are undertaken.

 

Hatto Fischer

updated 13.7.2012

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