It is always frightening to discover how few children tell their parents or another adult of these things and how few of those adults who have been told believe them or do anything about it.
Sorry to be flippant, but the title of your post led me to expect a very different subject. (Michael Halliday is a well-known linguist, whose functional grammar model is the basis of one of the OU courses I teach!)
Read Fungus The Bogeyman. Of all the books ever written for children, this is the one that explains the truth: grown-ups make noises that sound a bit like talking, and can be manipulated into doing stuff, but they never actually listen to children.
Yeah, maybe that's a generalisation. Maybe your parents listened to you. But a significant minority of parents - and, quite possibly, a majority of all adults - completely switch off their brains when children say anything that isn't a reply to a direct question. I'm sure that 'yes, dear, run along' and a distracted smile while they are clearly thinking of something else is an indication that, in general, they mean well and would be deeply offended if another adult told them that they don't care; but it isn't listening.
What's actually happening isn't necessarily evil, or indeed uncaring: Kids are by nature self-centred and try very, very hard to attract attention; as a result, the adults around protect their sanity by tuning them out. But if you can observe a house with children - and it's difficult, because you're there, and the children will try to engage you because they know you're interested - you might be shocked by just how rude adults are. The better parents - in fairness, most parents - will pick up the 'out-of-tune' tones of a child in genuine distress.
But what would you pick up in a child's behaviour if they have adapted to the fact that bullying - or, indeed, buggery - is a perfectly normal part of their school environment? What if they've learned to answer the formulaic 'how-was-your-day' with a bland answer in the certainty that you weren't listening to that, or to anything else they ever say to you?
Which is, of course, why 'Fungus' is such an uncomfortable book for parents: yes, it's a picture-book, but it was actually written for them.
As replies to comments go, this is rather harsh in tone: but the uncomfortable truth is that children's lives often are harsh. And I know that a lot of adults won't want to believe that. It's also difficult to show people - nowadays, with all the concern about child molesters, you can't watch large groups of children at play for any period of time. But if you ever do, you'll see some harrowing scenes - and a small minority of children who are very, very good at not being noticed and not projecting any feelings, in a learned withdrawal that is the antithesis of what you would expect a child to be. Some teachers are trained to spot this; many choose not to know what it means.
The Church of England? Who knows? The phrase 'interfering with the choirboys' had become a figure of speech a century ago.
I'll put in an interesting anecdote about the Roman Catholic Church: sometime in the early 1980's, I read a short piece of news buried in the middle of our local paper, The Leicester Mercury. The sessions had convicted a priest from Nottingham of 'sexual assault' (unspecified) against a child, and he received a sentence which (from memory) was five years' imprisonment. These cases came up every year or so, and as long as no-one told the News of the World, that was all you ever heard of it.
Th interesting part is that the courts allowed him to serve his sentence under the supervision of the Diocese of Nottingham in a closed community - a 'retreat' that we would once have called a community of penitents - on a Scottish island. From what I found out - and the second time I asked, I had good reason to be circumspect, and made no reference to what had prompted the enquiry - the community was self-supporting and operated without electricity or any of the conveniences of the twentieth century, and that many of the those whose vocation led them there lived out their entire lives on the island and were buried there.
I have no idea whether the place still exists. But I noted it as a remarkable concession to the Diocese.
Years later, when the child abuse scandals started coming out in England and in Ireland, I remembered that little story in the Mercury. The lesson in it is that the Roman Church has had mechanisms to deal with this kind of thing for a very long time - they work with the civil authorities, and are permitted within the framework of the criminal law apply their own punitive sanctions with the approval of the courts. Or at least, some Dioceses chose to do so; it is manifestly the case that some bishops chose to do nothing, even though well-established mechanisms existed.
I have no doubt whatsoever that The CofE has mechanisms of its own. Nor that their bishops were and still are criminally culpable in their refusal to use them.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-26 04:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-26 05:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-26 06:05 pm (UTC)Read Fungus The Bogeyman. Of all the books ever written for children, this is the one that explains the truth: grown-ups make noises that sound a bit like talking, and can be manipulated into doing stuff, but they never actually listen to children.
Yeah, maybe that's a generalisation. Maybe your parents listened to you. But a significant minority of parents - and, quite possibly, a majority of all adults - completely switch off their brains when children say anything that isn't a reply to a direct question. I'm sure that 'yes, dear, run along' and a distracted smile while they are clearly thinking of something else is an indication that, in general, they mean well and would be deeply offended if another adult told them that they don't care; but it isn't listening.
What's actually happening isn't necessarily evil, or indeed uncaring: Kids are by nature self-centred and try very, very hard to attract attention; as a result, the adults around protect their sanity by tuning them out. But if you can observe a house with children - and it's difficult, because you're there, and the children will try to engage you because they know you're interested - you might be shocked by just how rude adults are. The better parents - in fairness, most parents - will pick up the 'out-of-tune' tones of a child in genuine distress.
But what would you pick up in a child's behaviour if they have adapted to the fact that bullying - or, indeed, buggery - is a perfectly normal part of their school environment? What if they've learned to answer the formulaic 'how-was-your-day' with a bland answer in the certainty that you weren't listening to that, or to anything else they ever say to you?
Which is, of course, why 'Fungus' is such an uncomfortable book for parents: yes, it's a picture-book, but it was actually written for them.
As replies to comments go, this is rather harsh in tone: but the uncomfortable truth is that children's lives often are harsh. And I know that a lot of adults won't want to believe that. It's also difficult to show people - nowadays, with all the concern about child molesters, you can't watch large groups of children at play for any period of time. But if you ever do, you'll see some harrowing scenes - and a small minority of children who are very, very good at not being noticed and not projecting any feelings, in a learned withdrawal that is the antithesis of what you would expect a child to be. Some teachers are trained to spot this; many choose not to know what it means.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-26 06:32 pm (UTC)The Church of England? Who knows? The phrase 'interfering with the choirboys' had become a figure of speech a century ago.
I'll put in an interesting anecdote about the Roman Catholic Church: sometime in the early 1980's, I read a short piece of news buried in the middle of our local paper, The Leicester Mercury. The sessions had convicted a priest from Nottingham of 'sexual assault' (unspecified) against a child, and he received a sentence which (from memory) was five years' imprisonment. These cases came up every year or so, and as long as no-one told the News of the World, that was all you ever heard of it.
Th interesting part is that the courts allowed him to serve his sentence under the supervision of the Diocese of Nottingham in a closed community - a 'retreat' that we would once have called a community of penitents - on a Scottish island. From what I found out - and the second time I asked, I had good reason to be circumspect, and made no reference to what had prompted the enquiry - the community was self-supporting and operated without electricity or any of the conveniences of the twentieth century, and that many of the those whose vocation led them there lived out their entire lives on the island and were buried there.
I have no idea whether the place still exists. But I noted it as a remarkable concession to the Diocese.
Years later, when the child abuse scandals started coming out in England and in Ireland, I remembered that little story in the Mercury. The lesson in it is that the Roman Church has had mechanisms to deal with this kind of thing for a very long time - they work with the civil authorities, and are permitted within the framework of the criminal law apply their own punitive sanctions with the approval of the courts. Or at least, some Dioceses chose to do so; it is manifestly the case that some bishops chose to do nothing, even though well-established mechanisms existed.
I have no doubt whatsoever that The CofE has mechanisms of its own. Nor that their bishops were and still are criminally culpable in their refusal to use them.