Manuals of Instruction : Black Pedagogy, Telling a Child What to Think

Cultures that are Hierarchies of Power are not the 'natural order'. They are entirely human creations, born out of trauma. Every child born into a culture of hierarchical power and violence suffers the slings and arrows of that creation. No child left behind. Some deal with more adversity than others.

Black Pedagogy or Poisonous Pedagogy : the process of instilling a social superego in the child, to construct a basic defence against natural drives in the child's psyche, to toughen the child for later life, and to instrumentalise the body parts and senses in favor of socially or culturally defined functions.

Gender roles are an example of culturally imposed behavioural dynamics. As are the roles of Ruler and Heir. As are the roles of Soldier, Accountant, Magistrate etc...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisonous_pedagogy

Tell the child what to think, use coercion to ensure compliance, and you then can control the adult for life. Even if the adult resists, that can be used too.

We know is that there is written evidence going back many thousands of years regarding concrete knowledge on the processes of imposing the adult worlds will upon the natural child. We have a long recorded history of discussions on how to 'tame' children, how to forge them into the 'ideal adult citizen'  or 'warrior' to the extent that it can be called a scientific approach, mediated intentionally by adults carried out in the name of Institutions such as Churches, Crowns, Rulers, Governance and Education.

"Give me the child until 7, and I will show you the man!" goes back as far as the Spartan culture, and further back than that...

The simplest way I can think of to describe the origins of such practice emerge from looking at the reality; that those who hold power wish always to pass that power over to those who will continue to exercise power over others in order to preserve that power indefinitely. 'My legacy, my Kingdom, my Empire'.

Those who hold power over others will want, of course, to KNOW that they can trust those to whom they pass that power to. They will want to know that the power they so assiduously built over their lifetime, and that which they may have inherited, will remain, it will expand and it will not dilute.

In order to do this, those who hold and exercise power over others have to be certain about the psychology of those to whom the power is passed..

That certainty is the certainty of the ‘trainer’ with regard to the ‘tamed’.

A thought exercise - Imagine

If you are the Leader, and have gained your power by abuse, inheritance or by guile you will want to teach your own children to follow suit; you know that they will have to be as manipulative, as well versed in human psychology, as willing to be coercive or brutal as you were in your rise to power and your maintenance of that power.

If you co-operate or compete with other rulers to retain power over large territories, this knowledge about educating the next rulers, and their servants and assuring they are psychologically attenuated to be brutal, to rule with a sense of entitlement, will be shared or stolen, and it will be applied.

 Any new learning or observation that adds to the toolkit will be recorded and added to the knowledge, and will become part of the custom, literature and behaviour that is black pedagogy.

Because power is coercive it always meets resistance, and those that are resistance always learns new ways to resist, so the rulers are forced to ever study the forms and manifestations of resistance and devise and test new methods to quell that resistance or at least neutralise it. The rulers can never relax their vigilance.

As pesticides to ‘pests’ and herbicides to ‘weeds’ ….

An example in modern times….

It is interesting that the use of Ritalin and other similar drugs correlates closely with the banning of corporal punishment of children in schools - it replaces violence as the extreme way of controlling those natural children who react against the impositions inherent in compulsion schooling. Exams and targets are the less extreme mechanism of control... less extreme in that they are designed to encourage acquiescence rather than compliance.

By saying that the children’s behaviour is ‘caused’ by some chemical imbalance, the locus of investigation and ‘blame’ is moved away from societal causes of distress or resistance.

Another element of this problem is that the parents will need to investigate their own adverse childhood experiences, their own mis-education and social conditioning as a necessary and separate task to the actuality of day to day parenting.

This is a personal task, and yet it deserves social support.

Healthy parenting demands we learn ways to avoid adverse power dynamics in the day to day parenting experience with ourselves and our own children so that we can 'get out of the child's way' of his or her natural development. Parents and children are biologically designed to grow together, each maturing the other..

That requires some basic understanding of the natural child, it is helped if the dynamics of controlling others to protect oneself from hidden wounds and the suppressed feelings is also understood.

The problem for parents is they have to accept what for most parents is most difficult - that they have been 'set up' by the ruling class of this society and are not to be blamed or shamed for any of this, but must yet face it.

The good news is that children who are allowed their natural development will help the parents by being a natural and actual source of experience and information that helps the parents recognise where they are blocking or controlling their children to ward off awareness of their own wounds... and then the parent can take time to reflect on their own experience and heal it by working through to their original natural child perspective

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe