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Kindergarten philosophy

Emma Jane

by Emma Jane

23 Feb 05:55am

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Filed under: Children, Education, Kindergraten, Parenting, Swearing

43 comments

My freshly kindergarten-ed daughter has been learning all sorts of stuff at her new school.

This is how you spell sh_t. Photo:News.com.au

Last weekend, for instance, she missed a ping pong shot and chucked a McEnroe-esque hissy fit while bawling “oh s—t”. (Lesson from school number one: swearing gets results.)

When I launched into my umpteenth Why Profanity Really Isn’t Such a Great Idea for Five Year Olds lecture, Alice asked a bunch of questions along the lines of “what does s—t even mean?”,  “don’t YOU sometimes say s—t? and “does it count if I just say s—t quietly on my own?”

In short, she exploited my interest in teachable moments by repeating the objectionable expression as much as possible.

(Lesson from school number two: the use-mention distinction rocks.)

Alice’s next move was to claim that saying “s—t” was actually part of her school’s literacy program and something all children had to learn to do even if they found it – her word – challenging.

So I presented my umpteenth Why I’d Really Prefer You Didn’t Tell Whoppin’ Great Porkies About School position paper, leaving her gazing up in horrified amazement.

“But how could you have known?” she gasped. “How could you have possibly known I was lying?”

(Lesson from school number three: epistemology is a deeply mysterious and deeply disturbing business.)

At this point I tried to explain that I didn’t want her fibbing about important things not because she might get busted, but because it wasn’t a good thing to do.

“I want you to act well even if you think no-one’s watching,” I said, thinking how much easier these sorts of conversations would be if one was up for telling one’s child that God was hovering up in the stratosphere omni-observing for behavioural lapses.

The good (non biblical) news for non-believers struggling with dilemmas such as these, is that British pop philosopher Alain de Botton has pragmatically poached many useful aspects of religion to produce yet another of his excellent user guides to being a human.

As pit bull atheists and Rottweiler Christians rip viciously at each other’s equally indoctrinated ears, Religion for Atheists offers an optimistic détente for those of us passionate about living good lives yet anaphylactically allergic to Rick Santorum.

It doesn’t address ping pong-related profanity directly, but its suggestion that we view taxes as spiritually-enriching donations, that we muse on forgiveness while dining with strangers, and that we stage secular days of atonement at least as often as we lodge Business Activity Statements are very educational.

* Alain de Botton is currently touring Australia. He’s unlikely to be expleting.

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43 comments

Show oldest | newest first

    • acotrel says:

      07:36am | 23/02/12

      Kids that are brought up in a rule based environment with strong doses of guilt to enforce it, usually tell a lot of lies.

      Reply

    • I, Claudia says:

      08:15am | 23/02/12

      Absolutely correct, Acotrel. My parents were extremely authoritarian, and were then shocked - I mean, really surprised, for some reason - when my sister developed Borderline Pesonality Disorder and I developed a Conduct Disorder.

    • marley says:

      08:23am | 23/02/12

      Kids tell a lot of lies, period.  Teaching them it is wrong to tell lies is a key part of being a parent.

    • acotrel says:

      07:52pm | 23/02/12

      I cannot remember even one instance where any of my kids lied to me.  It simply did not happen. That is not counting the times when we were telling jokes, or playing cards.

    • acotrel says:

      08:11pm | 23/02/12

      Marley, I never told my kids there is a santa claus, sky fairies, invisible power forces, any of that crap.  If they asked a question, I always answered it honestly.  I rarely ever lie to my wife - only to spare her feelings, and if she does that to me I get pissed off. I cannot stand liars.  If I detect it I never listen to their bullshit, their garbage then falls on deaf ears.  Tarzan’s hairy friend is a case in point, why would anyone listen to that ?

    • Robert Smissen of country SA says:

      09:50pm | 23/02/12

      Acotrel, mate you kids tell whoppers, you don’t realise that they are because they are soooooooooooooo good at it! !

    • marley says:

      07:27am | 24/02/12

      Acotrel - please give us all a break.  The only bullshit you detest, or even seem capable of detecting, is that from the coalition.  When it comes from the ALP, you either don’t see it or lap it up.  And you’ve authored more than a bit of bullshit yourself - the ALP is internally democratic?  Hah.  So, enough with how much you detest it all.  You’re perfectly happy with bullshit as long as it confirms what you believe.

    • Al says:

      07:54am | 23/02/12

      So did you actualy explain to your daughter what shit means?
      That can tend to make it easier to explain why it’s not realy an acceptable word for a young girl to be using.
      The other thing I wonder is was she realy picking this up from her kindergarten or was she just repeating something that she has heard her mother use and as such thought it was an acceptable word. She may have been using the kindergarten as a scapegoat for the usage as she was getting in trouble for it. Kids tend to do that when they get in trouble they look for ‘who else can I blame for this’.
      I know my neice gets realy frustrated when I explain things to her based on reason and she can’t find a loophole, it tends to end in a tantrumn which lasts a few minutes but she also tends not to do the behaviour that started the issue in the first place again (at least while I am around!).

      Reply

    • iansand says:

      08:56am | 23/02/12

      It is interesting.  I rarely swear in conversation.  I don’t know why because I am not particularly prudish, I just don’t (in fact people actually remark when I do).  So my daughter (17) rarely swears in my presence.  I have not asked her not to, it is just that it is not part of the way we communicate with each other.

    • Floyd says:

      04:18pm | 23/02/12

      Yes, Iansand, you are the perfect parent with the perfect kids.  We’ve heard you go on about it before.

    • iansand says:

      06:37pm | 23/02/12

      No Floyd.  I don’t hit her, and she doesn’t swear in my presence.  If that is your definition of perfect I think you should get out more.

    • stephen says:

      08:01am | 23/02/12

      Tell Alice that lying is the first step to a criminal mind ... or the next thing she’ll want to do is attend a Telstra Shareholder’s Meeting and start asking smart kiddie questions like, ‘how come shares are at $2.37 and their involvement in the NBN hasn’t made my Momma rich’, (PHD candidates spend all their spare cash on company shares).

      I really don’t know whether children lying is so bad, if they know they are lying.
      Or if that’s the worst sort, (bit like a Telstra Executive.)

      Reply

    • Jane2 says:

      08:33am | 23/02/12

      Is this a discussion on what kids are learning or advertising for Alan de Botton?

      Reply

    • Rose says:

      10:01am | 23/02/12

      I’m not sure either, but the whole thing makes de Botton sound like one of those new age self help gurus, who peddle bullshit in exchange for some suckers’ hard earned cash.
      By the way, if your kindergarten kid swears, tell them not to, if they do it again punish them! Parenting isn’t rocket science (or philosophical gymnastics), parenting is deciding what you expect from your children and consistently enforcing it. It is also about deciding what you are prepared to to for your children and consistently living up to expectations. It is also about knowing your kids, understanding them and supporting them, while maintaining your core values.

    • EZ says:

      10:07am | 23/02/12

      I couldn’t work out what it’s about either

    • Chris says:

      08:50am | 23/02/12

      How about just living in the way you want your kids to live?  If you don’t want your kids to learn to swear - the don’t swear.  If you don’t want your kids to lie, then don’t lie to them or to others in their hearing.

      Kids pick up very quickly on double standards - and they are quite right to be outraged by it.  How about just modelling the right behaviour for our kids, rather than dictating it?

      It’s not fool proof (nothing is, really) - but it lets you avoid being a hypocrite and gives your kids a role model INSIDE the home.

      Reply

    • CBR says:

      10:13am | 23/02/12

      Of course kids pick up on double standards. But kids are also kids, and as wiser people have said, families aren’t democracies.

      My mother swears like a sailor, and yet by year 12 I was doing my absolute worst at swearing by saying “damnit”. Why? My sister and I weren’t allowed to swear. Thems adult talk.

    • Bill says:

      09:03am | 23/02/12

      Obviously Emma’s little brat learned that word from Emma herself, and now she is blaming everyone except herself for the problem.

      Reply

    • Scotchfinger says:

      09:24am | 23/02/12

      To call Mr de Botton a philosopher is insulting. The fact he loves Proust helps prove this point. Also, a child who uses reasoning to argue is not a philosopher any more than a child who applies a band-aid to another child is a physician. It’s this sort of rubbish that the Wikipedia generation loves to spout. If you need to ‘research’ on the internet to discuss philosophical ideas, you have just joined the endless queue of hoi-polloi trying to show they are more educated than they really are. Not of course inferring that Ms Jane falls in this group. But since when does the charming and funny discourse of a child become a learned diatribe such as what we may have heard in ancient Athens? Answer: since the pseudo-learning of the Wikipedia generation. End of rant.

      Reply

    • Bill says:

      09:45am | 23/02/12

      Who is this de Botton person? Never heard of him.

    • Scotchfinger says:

      10:11am | 23/02/12

      He’s the Don Burke of popular philosophy. The Carl Stefanovic of public intellectuals. Reading his books is like slipping into a bath of warm treacle.

    • Bill says:

      10:22am | 23/02/12

      Oh, I get it. A left wingers wet dream.

    • LostinPerth says:

      11:49am | 23/02/12

      @Bill
      There was a review on his book in last weekend’s Australian. From what I can remember from the review, which wasn’t very enthusiastic, he is a self-proclaimed self help guru. His latest book seems to basically take many of the moral and ethical codes of behaviour from various religions that could be described as “good” and attempts to encourage atheists to replicate the behaviour without a religious underpinning.

      As Emma said “its suggestion that we view taxes as spiritually-enriching donations (Bible’s give unto Ceaser what is Ceaser’s), that we muse on forgiveness while dining with strangers (confession & repenting), and that we stage secular days of atonement at least as often as we lodge Business Activity Statements (Jewish tradition of seeking forgiveness from others before seeking forgiveness for ineself from God) are very educational.

      It’s sort of a “be good for goodness sake” philosophy .

    • Scotchfinger says:

      12:02pm | 23/02/12

      @LostinPerth,

      My main problem with de Botton is he is utterly unoriginal. A century ago a very smart man named William James wrote a book on religious thought that discussed the same issues - what use is religion in a secular society? It would surprise me if this author had anything to say that has not already been said (and refuted), since the era of the Greek sophists. I hope he mentions the dept he owes to these genuine thinkers.

      He is a good writer however, easy to read, and I am sure he is no dummy.

    • Duff says:

      04:21pm | 23/02/12

      @Scotchfinger - you and Bill - together forever.  Lol.

    • acotrel says:

      08:01pm | 23/02/12

      ’ His latest book seems to basically take many of the moral and ethical codes of behaviour from various religions that could be described as “good” and attempts to encourage atheists to replicate the behaviour without a religious underpinning. ‘

      That sounds like fun !

    • Mr Pod says:

      09:50am | 23/02/12

      Little Emma has reached kindergarten, swears, has hissy fits and knows someone in the media.  She is ready to be elected.

      Reply

    • acotrel says:

      07:56pm | 23/02/12

      There is a very easy way to stop kids from swearing.  All you have to do is persuade them to tell you every swear word that they know.  They usually end up inventing words, and after that they usually never swear again.

    • Kika says:

      10:03am | 23/02/12

      That’s nothing. My sister was swearing the house down at 3. She still is. I’ve recently learned her word for when you are so fat your Gut rolls down over your pubic region. Starts with G. Rhymes with punt. Gross… that girl’s language is deplorable. Super intelligent though. Double degree Microbiologist-Vet.

      We learn from example and from peers. I thought I was being tough in grade 7 saying sh-it and -bl-oody. My sister was well onto the F word by the same age. My Mum always swore in front of us. Dad never did. If I asked Dad what a word meant he would say “I don’t know go ask Mum”.  He was more strict about it. I wasn’t even allowed to say f-art around him when I was 7. I had to say fluff.  The worst was when my sister and I were 5 and 6 respectively and she decided to call Dad an Idiot. I joined in the fun and said “Yeah”. So we both got our mouths scrubbed with soap. Didn’t do much… she’s still swearing and calling fat overhangs G*nts.

      .

      Reply

    • Scotchfinger says:

      10:55am | 23/02/12

      perhaps she can be a large animal vet and work on farms where they enjoy a bit of fruity language, although she may not get on with those farmers who are overweight.

    • Kika says:

      11:18am | 23/02/12

      Nope - she already is a Vet and wants to specialise in house cats. Whilst she is good with cows she is rather short (5’2) and preg testing them requires her whole arm and horses are too flighty and unpredictable and their owners are apparently worse than cat people for protectiveness and arrogance.

    • Scotchfinger says:

      11:32am | 23/02/12

      Short and has attitude… I like the sound her already (I am quite slim luckily). Although I have not of course actually met her.
      Doesn’t surprise me about horse people, the girls I see riding them tend to be private school and look pretty posh and princessy. Would not want to mess with Daddy the Lawyer.

    • Kika says:

      12:04pm | 23/02/12

      Or the racehorse owner… they are the worst. Highly protective at first. Once they are injured it’s off to the dog food factory.

    • Borderer says:

      11:14am | 23/02/12

      Swearing is ok so long as there is a reason for it, it’s about being human. Knowing that swearing is part of language and should be used in context is as important as speaking properly and being understood.
      Having good manners ties in with this, being respectful is the first step in being respected. If my kids wish to carry on then they get zero, reward good behaviour and reap the benefits.

      Reply

    • Economist says:

      11:32am | 23/02/12

      Swearing is simply cathartic. It should be encouraged in the right circumstances. Studies show you can endure more pain by swearing. It’s natural, but it has its place.

    • Chris says:

      11:36am | 23/02/12

      Totally agree with “being respectful is the first step in being respected”.  It works both ways, of course.  Although kids are kids, they still deserve respect rather than disdain - treating them with it generally means they will learn to reciprocate, not just to their parents but to others they interact with.  Doesn’t mean you don’t have to “be the parent” a lot of the time - but you can do both.

      Don’t necessarily agree with the swearing part.  Although it is becoming more accepted in modern speech, in my experience swearing is mostly used by people who want to punctuate something but can’t think of any better words to use to achieve the result.

    • acotrel says:

      07:58pm | 23/02/12

      @Economist
      Now I know why I swear when I see Tony Abbott on TV.

    • wearestardust says:

      03:38pm | 23/02/12

      Wait until you have a teenager and get into legalesque negotiations.  My son is studying law, but I think we could ditch the legal prefession and replace them all with teenagers.  For example: it took about 18 months to iron out all the loopholes in (what I thought was) my simple request: “don’t smoke in my car”.

      On other matters: just quietly, this idea that fundie atheists are incapable of enjoying the good things from religion - or indeed, that certain social goods can only be found in, and therefore need to be ‘stolen’ from religion - seems to me to a myth created by fundie religious people and from the same line of thinking as the idea that without religion one can’t be moral.

      I’m one of those fundie atheists zealots that everyone is so scared of.  I’m even a signed-up member of the Atheist Foundation of Australia.  but you know what?  Picking on some of the specific things that de Botton thinks I need to steal from religion to improve my life: I believe in community and I’m involved in community activities.  My absolutely lasting favourite pieces of music are Mozart/Sussmayr’s Requiem and Beethoven’s Coronation mass; one of my most moving experiences in respect of art was the 13th century religious carvings room in the louvre.  I believe in love, humanity, beauty, and the intrinsic value of every human.

      And most atheists I know are similarly inclined.  So I think De Botton is responding to need that isn’t there.

      Warming up to the theme, I completely and utterly reject the idea the De Botton peddles that religion is ethically superior to secular ethics: the religions which have ethics that I think are worth anything - eg the Quakers and reformed Judaism - explicitly and consciously think about their ethics from the perspective of humanity and society informed by secular traditions based on the value of humans as humans, rather than taking holy scriptures as being shopping lists of dos and don’ts under pain of terrible punishment.  And as for this idea of De Botton’s that there is nothing outside of religion to inform living the good life: I thought he was a philosopher?  The whole point, the central object, the fundamental purpose, of all philosophy since before Socrates has been to examine the good life.

      In other words: it seems to me that pretty much anything that a person who doesn’t believe in heavenly rewards might find useful to ‘steal’ from religion was in turn acquired by religion from non-religious sources.

      As a final thought: speaking as a fundie intolerantatheist: here is what I would like out of a secular society:

      - everyone gets a say at the public table, regardless of their particular beliefs or unbeliefs.

      - those who have religious beliefs get to believe and practice them.

      - those who don’t believe aren’t forced to follow the views of those who do (keeping mind that this isn’t just about people who have no religion at all: Muslims are non-believers in Christianity, and vice-versa)

      - everyone has the same rights and no-one gets to take them away just because someone’s religion says so (with the same qualification as in the last point).

      And these are pit-bull views, apparently.  Must be something I’m not getting.  I’m failing to see the unreasonableness of my (standard atheist) views.  Please, someone explain it to me.

      Reply

    • iansand says:

      06:41pm | 23/02/12

      You mean it took you 18 months to work out that “God says smoking in cars means you will go to hell” is the only, irrefutable argument.

      What do they teach people in Church these days?

    • Wholesale and retail says:

      04:54pm | 23/02/12

      Is kindergarten philosophy Tory Philosophy ?
      Next Kindergarten Philosophy Lecture is at 10 am 27 /2/12 Parliament House Canberra

      Reply

    • Canberra Kindy says:

      04:57pm | 23/02/12

      Kindergarten Philosophy at Big school ?
      Next Kindergarten Philosophy Lecture ?
      10 am 27/2/2012 Parliament House Canberra

      Reply

    • meme says:

      07:40pm | 23/02/12

      My 5 year old told me once that she “EFFING loved me”. She actually said the word EFFING. What to do about that ? Its super hard to explain “the F word” to a kid who doens’t even know what “F” ( the letter) is..let alone slang for it. Too hard. So, after a quiet chuckle, I just thanked her and told her I loved her too !

      Reply

    • acotrel says:

      08:04pm | 23/02/12

      Didn’t you say ‘i effing love you too ! ‘?

 
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