Russian Parents Are Advised To Teach Their Children To Defend Their Autonomy.
What are you teaching yours?
Our elementary school is currently in the midst of something called A Season for Non-Violence, a brainwashing extravaganza complete with sayings from pacifist poster boys like Gandhi (after and before his conventionally aggressive stages), selective quotes from MLK, and contemporary gems like “If you want peace, you need justice. If you want justice, you need fairness. If you want fairness, you need development. If you want development, you need democracy.” The principal had a fifth grader read this one over the school radio this morning (note to self: schedule a deprograming session).
Our students are taught something the educational bureaucracy believes to constitute conflict resolution methods. Their social strategies appear to work with relative success in a highly regulated environment and with generous assistance from Big Pharma. The playground at lunchtime is a sight to behold: at least six adults circulate at any time, and the principal manages to line up boys at the basketball hoop to take a total of three (three!) shots before yielding his turn to comrades and returning to the end of the line.
Our school advises students against even talking back to aggressors because, in administration’s view, the aggressor merely wants a reaction, and he gets it with the pushback. I have to remind my kids that the reaction a bully is seeking could be as slight as an upset look in a classmate’s eye, and, in any event, his final goal is to dominate, which is what he or she gets if all good kids fold.
I find our school district’s take on playground violence extremists, provincial, narrow-minded and dangerous to boot. People around the world have different — and more sophisticated — approaches.
For instance, in a Russian edition of Parents magazine, two psychologists weighed in on the subject of teaching children to fight back (the Russian term давать сдачу, to give some change, is quite evocative). Now, some Russian commentators in the West raised questions about one of them since, among other transgressions, he had appeared on the Russian state TV. Maybe so, but since my main goal is to to raise awareness of how Russian society deals with verbal and physical aggression of children, the fact that he may have the official stamp of approval is significant in this case.
Maria Vishnyakova, the first psychologist contributing to the feature, takes a reasonably non-violent approach. She starts with the observation that Russian society is generally aggressive, and that sooner or later the child will have to reckon with that. Nonetheless, she advises against encouraging children to fight back, teaching instead ability to verbalize feelings, introspection and avoidance. If a child is systematically attacked on the playground Vishnyakova suggests that parents tell children to:
[…] avoid [the bullies], don’t play with them, and in the event they approach confidently state “I don’t want to play with you. You fight (or call me names)!” If that doesn’t work, ask the teacher for help. Please note, this strategy can’t be considered snitching, something that typically worries dads. The bully is first approached head-on, we are not encouraging the child to act behind anyone’s back. However, if the bully didn’t hear, there is no options other than to get adults involved.
Note the special concern the author pays to snitching, which is considered a serious transgression in the Russian underworld and beyond. Also note that this is judged to be mostly a fathers’ concern since such actions appear unmanly, a reality this psychologist seems to respect.
This is not the only difference between Vishnyakova’s advice and that of American childhood development specialists. She doesn’t go as far as offering to socialize your children with a presumably misunderstood bully as some do here. She also encourages parents to teach children how to talk back to a bully in an age-appropriate way.
Yet it’s the family psychologist Evgeny Idzikovsky who brings the fireworks. His answer to the question is so starkly different from what an American parent expects to hear, it’s worth reprinting in full.
It’s advisable to teach a child in a way that his understanding of the world would reflect the reality such as it exists. This is why we teach daughters and sons different skills. “Give some change” is the right wording, but only for a boy. That’s how a guy gets accustomed to defending his boundaries.
The wording above is pretty much an anathema to Americans. The current pop culture iconography shows women as equal in strength to men, we allow women to fight in the frontlines, a suggestion that men and women are in any way different, and that our conduct should naturally follow our biology, can be found discriminatory. Russian thinking favors the ideal of men defending their women, a task for which the men are groomed starting in early childhood regardless of the wishes of the educators.
I know many teachers and educators disagree with me because they often ask parents to teach children to not fight back. This is stupid. Any behavior appropriate for the situation at hand is normal. What is abnormal is to instill into him the idea that he is obligated to tolerate and has to restrain himself at the moment when others don’t.
When teaching your child new skills, please don’t forget that this is your child and his physical and mental health are more important to you than physical and mental health of other children.
Even those American parents who subscribe to the it takes a village point of view, agree with this sentiment deep down inside. Unfortunately, too many prefer closely monitoring activities of children to independent problem solving. That’s why moms and dads closely ally with school administrators who, for their own reasons, prefer that no conflict happens on their watch. Russian administrators may have similar aspirations, but when parents are not on the same page, there is not much they can do. Idzikovsky further argues:
Make a decision, what do you want, do you want you child to be indecisive in a difficult situation? That can happen if you follow the advice of educators and teach him to restrain himself and avoid scuffles. Or is it better if after a fight he will be asked to refrain from such behavior and he will respond with “Well, I don’t know”. The most socially adequate behavior can be best expressed in a single phrase: act as prescribed by the situation. By implication, if aggression is verbal, respond verbally, but if you are hit, don’t just stand there with your hands folded; this is simply dangerous. Without a doubt, children should be instructed to refrain from unprovoked insults and throwing the first punch. At the same time, don’t box him in. In certain situations physical aggression can be an adequate reaction to non-physical aggression. Your child is unlikely to chart an ideal course of action, he is not yet able to do it, but putting him within a rigid behavioral framework is not advisable. Under such conditions he will absorb a one-sided model of behavior and will not acquire flexibility necessary to take the single right decision in an extreme situation. There are psychologists who advise teaching children to not throw the first punch, but this is a limiting condition, and I wouldn’t use it.
Although my teachers in the Soviet Union advocated a wide variety of often contradictory methods to address bullying (they were most definitely on the “it all depends” bandwagon), not throwing the first punch was pretty standard. That was three decades ago.
First of all, to suppress emotions is harmful. We are biologically predisposed to express emotions, especially anger, malice and aggression. In a circumstance when a child can’t strike back, when he is forced to bend, he feels humiliated and insulted. But he can’t do anything about it. Whatever he chooses to do, he loses: if he restrains himself, he feels lousy, if he hits — he will be berated. Any boy who finds himself in such situation is full of desperation. Perhaps for this reason contemporary dads who went through this kind of trials in their own childhood teach their children to strike back. In other words, they are teaching their kids adequate behavior.
American society appears to be moving in the opposite direction.
Secondly, if some kids are consistently forbidden to fight, a moment will come when they blow up, grab a chair and break a peer’s head. Incidentally, such instances are not at all rare. Don’t let the conflict reach the boiling point. Don’t let the atmosphere get that charged. A typical children’s fight will rarely end with broken bones. Preschoolers and even elementary and middle school students are incapable of striking with great force simply because they lack the body mass. Therefore if your child returns a punch, nothing horrible will happen. The aggressor will feel bad. And in this case I don’t have much compassion for him. It’s absolutely natural for a man to feel the consequences of his own aggression on his self. Perhaps next time he will change his behavior.
I understand Jordan Peterson, for one, has similar ideas about flare-up of violence here and there serving as a deterrent to a large-scale conflict. They are yet to reach the educational mainstream, and they probably never will.
I discovered this Russian feature on the day of Parkland shooting. Obviously high school shootings are complex phenomena that can’t be reduced to a single cause. Decline of the role of fathers in the lives of the American children is one, overgenerous use of prescription medication is another. And yet I can’t help noticing that over the course of last two decades, while grade-school children have been prevented (or at least discouraged) from learning to resolve disputes on their own terms, multiple high schoolers have for whatever reason gotten to a place where they are gunning down their own classmates. Could kindergarten scuffles teach children to both let out some steam momentarily and restrain themselves from escalating in the future? Can use of fists in early childhood prevent that of AR 15 a decade later?
I found the Parents magazine article via this tweet:
Below is the controversial paragraph:
Incidentally, it’s especially helpful if a girl gets her comeuppance. The moment she picks a fight, the girl stops being a girl and becomes an aggressor. And she has to be struck. This is simply normal. And don’t forget that if a boy is constantly attacked by bullying girls, and he is forced to withstand the ensuring mockery, his sexual orientation can be negatively affected. Is that what you want?
The idea that a boy can be made into a homosexual if he is forced to endure beatings by girls is hogwash of course. On the other hand, I wonder if girls, in Russia, gang up on gay boys who wish to play with them, and if this behavior is responsible for cause and effect confusion on Izdikovsky’s part.
The difference between boys and girls is real, but it exists on a different level. When girls fight between themselves, it’s one thing. They follow the same ground rules as boys: to strike back a girlfriend is appropriate because you are defending your boundaries. However, don’t get involved with boys. That’s because a girl can’t physically win the conflict. Teaching skills in which she cannot succeed is pointless. Yes, when the children are young, theoretically they are equal in power, but if she gets accustomed to fighting boys, sooner or later this will end badly.
I’m not sure this advice is equally valid in America where, for all you know, any woman can be packing heat, something that every man has to take into account. A gun is a great equalizer.
I also have to note that I don’t recall any even half-civilized Russians giving such advice in the 70’s or 80’s. All we heard was “Do not hit a girl. Ever”. There was also a lot of “Scuffles are unbecoming of girls”.
I’m not convinced that a young woman can become so accustomed to fighting boys in her childhood that she fails to notice that they had grown bigger and more intimidating. That would be exceptionally stupid and probably require copious amounts of brainwashing along the lines of “everything men can do, we can do better”.
At the same time, connecting this advice to the recent legalization of family violence in Russia, and to the fact that violence against women is rampant in that part of the world seems a bit specious. Old-fashioned reasons such as growing up in a violent family and substance abuse are probably more important. Moreover, highlighted sidebar comments, presumably by Idzikovsky, should be taken into consideration:
An Honest Battle: From the get-go instruct all children regardless of sex to never hit opponents on face and head. At the same time we have to understand that neither boys nor girls can properly measure the power of their strike and the ensuring consequences before about 14–16 years of age. At this time explain to your teenager where human body is most vulnerable, which blows are allowed and which are prohibited unless his or her life is under threat. 12-year-old son needs to learn to block and restrain but not hit infuriated girls.
So, technically, Idzikovsky is not advocating violence against women. The argument his detractors seem to make is that the advice he dispenses for early childhood will eventually, and against his own recommendations, lead to wife beating. Perhaps, but I have to see the evidence.
Girls should learn to respect the physical power of others. Even though any girl’s risk of being knocked out for verbal assaults is not great, ladies of all ages need to understand clearly: a gentleman is not to be provoked. There is always a chance of running into a man who will not be constrained by social norms.
Idzikovsky ends his recommendations on a pacific note:
If the conflict persists and a girl is systematically harmed by peers, teach her to solve the conflict socially, by asking adults for help instead of striking back in response. Incidentally, a boy should be informed about this tactic as well. Of course children need to be taught to resolve their conflicts independently, but if that doesn’t happen, they need to ask grownups for help.
That part is pretty interesting considering the general Russian taboo on snitching as well as the author’s own masculine approach.
My main reason for translating this piece has nothing to do with free range parenting, excesses of feminism or even the Bill of Rights. If my readers, like me, are alarmed by Russia’s meddling in the US elections however insignificant it was, they should take a note of aggressive tendencies of our adversary. If they believe that Putin fixed the election, they should be shaking in their boots.
From the moment they take their first steps, Russian boys are instructed that to defend their interests is righteous. Their personal wellbeing is ranked higher than that of their opponents and even higher then social taboos, such as snitching. They are taught to fight to win. They don’t bother assembling street fighting forces of women. All Russian men should be presumed to have been in multiple scuffles and understand and respect the nature of power.
Can the US protect its superpower status with distorted ideas about human nature and physical force? The way in which a democratic society conducts its foreign policy reflects cultural attitudes towards power. These attitudes reflect personal experiences of the people, and today’s youth is growing up under most unrealistic, artificailly arranged conditions. We‘ve been idealizing Amazons armed with social justice ditties (see the opening paragraph), who, if faced with Russian men, are sure to find out which modes of masculinity are outmoded and which modes of femininity might prove to be toxic.
