Rearing Violent People

Twink (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Fri, 26 Dec 1997 19:25:07 -0500 (EST)


At 11:02 AM 12/26/97 -0800, Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> wrote:
>> Swiss psychotherapist Alice Miller's horrifying book on the subject
>> of 'poisonous pedagogy' -- "'For Your Own Good': The Roots of
>> Violence in Child-Rearing" (Virago, [1987] -- is an inclusive and
>> comprehensive descriptive and explanatory account, which answers the
>> basic question: "How would you have to bring up a child, for him or
>> her to be a violent adult?"
>
>Anyone who claims to come anywhere close to answering a question
>like that can be immediately dismissed as a crackpot. There are
>so many completely unstudied and misunderstood aspects of learning,
>socialization, genetic predisposition, and blind chance involved
>in child-rearing that any claim of any "scientific" result in it
>is utterly specious.

I would not go that far. I would say it is good to ask the question, but
know its limits. I would be suspicious of anyone who claimed having
a child exposed to, say, grunge music for one year would turn into an
axe murderer.:)

Daniel Ust
See and long for me at:
http://www.mcs.net/~tshell/ust/homepage.htm