Teach children a twisted look at success

Teach children a twisted look at success

"The agent state - people allow others to direct their actions and then transfer the responsibility for the consequences to the person giving the orders" Milgram (1974).

For many adults, escaping work is simply spending time without "telling the man" what to do. It can safely be asserted that the vast majority of adults are naturally opposed to the level of control they undergo at the workplace, however necessary that control may be. Even when a friendly boss delivers orders in a courteous manner, a strong desire for autonomy remains.

When I played conkers, marbles, army, snowball fight or glide at schoolyard ice cream, it was combined with a certain degree of autonomy with roughly agreed rules, whereby infringement of these rules was taken care of with a collective justice of my young peers. Wrong and right were self-taught and self-taught as a result of everyday experiences without the controlling influence of adults. These are the generations that grew into adults with a respect for authority, but also a fear of it. Blind obedience under the harsh gaze of authority has been clear throughout history and the consequences are horrible. In the end, people who have been able to develop and learn for themselves, that all important feelings for good and evil, have been victorious.

Nowadays, in the absence of conkers, marbles and other terribly dangerous activities, and amidst test-oriented pressure learning in the classroom, you would think that at least children would be able to rule themselves on the sports field. Unfortunately, the adult perception of 'success' has stretched its ugly tentacles to get into the foundations of even that pure bastion.

A few months ago I was asked to accompany a group of year-3s and guide them to an indoor cricket tournament. As a result of a pod-mix up, our children were trained prior to the competition - in hockey. In order not to be put off, the general assignment I gave to our budding cricketers, hit the ball, ran fun. Now fast cricket gives the rival teams 200 runs each. We ended up with a score just under 200 because despite their (our) lungs bursting and glorious runs between the wickets, we inevitably fell prey to 'stumping' and the resulting six subtractions. Nevertheless, a smile on pink cheeks was the order of the day and children were rightly proud of their efforts. Then your school came.

In contrast to my own jumping around and cheering, the coaches of the other team pulled a static and stony look. Initially I put it down to some form of professionalism or not being dragged into their own game (which I thought, given that certain team and cricket would bring fear into the opposition). Before the first was actually over, I (and fortunately not my team of 8-year olds) quickly understood the reason for the stony fizzogs mentioned above.

Debt can not easily be masked by decent people (and I know that your staff are decent people). But something in the 'to please the man' system has unfortunately gone wrong. Every time a (different school) batsman put plastic willows on plastic leather, their trained feet remained planted and did not run.