Don't treat children like they are insane. Part 1
It's never kind to believe one is not responsible for one's actions
One of the earliest attempts to cancel me on Twitter was in response to a couple of blog posts about progressive education and behaviour.
Blog post series: The Progressive Narrative on Behaviour. Part 1 - Part 2
In the first post, I wrote:
We are responsible for our actions. While there must be exceptions to this principle, they are exceptional. Schools are not psychiatric hospitals; children are not insane and discipline is not therapy. Refusing to hold children responsible for their actions can only stunt their moral development. We all need to know we can make the right choices, and we all need the structures that encourage those right choices.
In the second post, I wrote:
…with the possible exception of the very youngest children, if a child was genuinely unable to restrain themselves from misbehaviour, regardless of the consequences, that child would be insane. If you cannot stop yourself from doing something, not for any reward or in response to any threat, you would have gone mad. This is not a pejorative term for mental illness, this is what insanity has always meant. It is what we mean by “diminished responsibility” in criminal trials. It is clear that this is not the normal situation for children. What it is even more clear, is that while such a condition might absolve a child of responsibility for their actions, it would not be something that schools could reasonably address or treat. The argument for specialist provision outside of a mainstream school would be unarguable in the case of a genuinely insane child. To do anything else would be unfair both on the child, and to anyone who could be harmed by their behaviour.
Most of the objections came from people who think that pupils with SEND1 should not be held responsible for their actions. They concluded that by saying “children are not insane” because they are responsible for their actions, I was implying that SEND pupils are insane. This is perhaps a bit of a “Steel Man” version of their argument, as they did not acknowledge that they were criticising the implications of what I had said. They claimed I had called children with SEND “insane”. This was a remarkable complaint given that the original phrase I had used was “not insane”. The only reference I made to an “insane child” was when summing up the implications of an argument that others had used. It was also the case, as it often is on the internet, that many people gave the impression that they were offended that the truth had been spoken. Even when people cannot argue against the substance of what has been said, they will still insist it should not have been said.2
The issue boils down to an excessive willingness to defend badly behaved children by removing their responsibility for their actions. Some people who do this genuinely live in a fantasy world where many (perhaps most) punishments in schools are given to pupils with SEND for their involuntary actions. For these true believers, the search for new ways to declare actions to be involuntary is never-ending. There is no end to the pseudo-scientific ideas they will share, or the mainstream ideas they will distort, as long as it helps them paint that picture.
Some people who promote the idea that children are not responsible for their actions are less interested in persuading others that this is a scientific fact. They are more interested in claiming that this approach is compassionate. Sometimes this may be insincere “virtue-signalling” with no real argument. However, often it is based on two deep-rooted assumptions:
punishment of any kind is cruel;
the best way to reduce punishment is to reduce belief in the agency of the punished.
If no one is responsible for their actions, then nobody can be fairly punished, and that is kindness.
Blanket objections to punishment usually end up being incoherent or contradictory. Most commonly, those arguing against punishment either rename a punishment as something else (e.g. sanction, consequence), or fail to reject punishment in all situations. However, the big problem here is not the objection to punishment. The big problem is the idea that once one has been absolved of responsibility for one’s actions, one will be treated more kindly. This is not the case. The writer C. S. Lewis wrote about this in his essay The Humanitarian Theory of Justice in which he argued that sentencing people to the punishments they deserved was preferable to more “humanitarian” ideas about criminal justice.
According to the Humanitarian theory, to punish a man because he deserves it, and as much as he deserves, is mere revenge, and, therefore, barbarous and immoral. It is maintained that the only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the criminal. When this theory is combined, as frequently happens, with the belief that all crime is more or less pathological, the idea of mending tails off into that of healing or curing and punishment becomes therapeutic. Thus it appears at first sight that we have passed from the harsh and self-righteous notion of giving the wicked their deserts to the charitable and enlightened one of tending the psychologically sick. What could be more amiable? One little point which is taken for granted in this theory needs, however, to be made explicit. The things done to the criminal, even if they are called cures, will be just as compulsory as they were in the old days when we called them punishments. If a tendency to steal can be cured by psychotherapy, the thief will no doubt be forced to undergo the treatment. Otherwise, society cannot continue.
My contention is that this doctrine, merciful though it appears, really means that each one of us, from the moment he breaks the law, is deprived of the rights of a human being.
The reason is this. The Humanitarian theory removes from Punishment the concept of Desert. But the concept of Desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice. It is only as deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust. I do not here contend that the question ‘Is it deserved?’ is the only one we can reasonably ask about a punishment. We may very properly ask whether it is likely to deter others and to reform the criminal. But neither of these two last questions is a question about justice. There is no sense in talking about a ‘just deterrent’ or a ‘just cure’. We demand of a deterrent not whether it is just but whether it will deter. We demand of a cure not whether it is just but whether it succeeds. Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a ‘case’.
Lewis points out that the conventional argument against a harsh punishment is that it is more than the recipient deserves. However, if punishment serves a purpose other than desert3, it cannot be criticised on these grounds.
I will consider this in more detail in Part 2.
Special Educational Needs and Disabilities.
There were a few of the outraged who claimed to be offended by the very mention of the word “insane” because it is a slur aimed at those with mental health problems. However, it was impossible to take this objection seriously because a Twitter search showed that every one of them, without exception, had used words like “mad”, “crazy” or “insane” in their social media.
desert (noun): the quality or fact of meriting reward or punishment.