"The Choice to Love"

We were all afraid of Mr. Turner. He was the principal at Meadowfield Elementary in Columbia, SC, and, it was rumored, he had a wooden paddle in his office with "holes drilled in it" so he could swing it faster. Even as an eight-year-old, I thought the physics of that sounded off, but I sure didn't want to test it. The most sure-fire way for a teacher to shut down disruptive behavior was to threaten to send the offender to the principal's office.

"Cultures of domination," writes bell hooks, "rely on the cultivation of fear as a way to ensure obedience."

As a boy, I valued my reputation as a "good boy." I valued the good opinion of my teachers and strived to shine in their eyes. I didn't always like or even understand what I was being taught, but I knew that learning was largely immaterial. The important thing was to convince the adults that the lessons were learned, which meant doing well on the quizzes and tests, yes, but more vital was to cheerfully abide by the rules. So that's where I focused my efforts, even as I risked being labeled a "teacher's pet."

I never came close to being sent to the principal's office. Avoiding sticks was easy for me. I was after those carrots. In other words, I fully accepted the notion that those with power could tell me what to do because, after all, they could mete out punishments. I wanted nothing to do with those, so I set my sights on the reward side of the equation. 

As a child, I struggled to understand kids who flirted with the punishment side, even as a part of me admired their courage, but I now know that my choice to be a "good boy" wasn't one that every child was capable of making. 

In all honesty, I doubt that paddle ever existed. I remember Mr. Turner as a large, chuckling, slightly fuddley man in the mold of Mr. Whetherbee from the Archie comic books. There were never any credible sightings of his paddle, let alone, actual evidence of its use. I suspect that the paddle rumor wasn't intentionally planted, but rather was the product of children who were regularly spanked sharing their fears with the rest of us: they knew that even loved ones had the potential to hit them. So even if the paddle was a fiction, the fear was real. I was a "good boy," but that doesn't mean that the threat of Mr. Turner's paddle wasn't a baseline consideration in every choice I made while at school.

Advocates for punishments value them as "motivation." And they are, I suppose, in that children learn to be motivated by fear. And fear is a powerful, yet deadly, motivator.

"In our society," writes hooks, "we make much of love and say little about fear. Yet we are all terribly afraid most of the time. As a culture we are obsessed with the notion of safety. Yet we do not question why we live in states of extreme anxiety and dread. Fear is the primary force upholding structures of domination. It promotes the desire for separation, the desire not to be known . . . Isolation and loneliness are central causes of depression and despair."

This is the real challenge of our age: isolation, loneliness, and disconnection, the natural consequence of a culture of fear. And that fear is used to "motivate" us. There doesn't even have to be a paddle. The rumors are enough.

Today, most children go to elementary schools where corporal punishment is off the table. You would think that this would contribute to lowered anxiety, but according to the American Psychological Association, rates of anxiety in children have been on the rise since well before Covid. 

Our obsession with safety is a product of our culture of fear. This has lead us to greatly limit, in the name of safety, our children's access to independent play, which in turn contributes greatly to increased mental health challenges, and specifically anxiety and depression. According to researcher Peter Gray, rates of mental health issues among children, even very young ones, have been rising dramatically over the past many decades and are now at the highest rates ever recorded. 

"We would like to think of history as progress," Gray writes, "but if progress is measured in the mental health and happiness of young people, then we have been going backward at least since the early 1950's."

"When we choose to love," writes hooks, "we choose to move against fear -- against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect -- to find ourselves in the other."

If being educated is defined as being equipped to deal with the world in which we find ourselves, it seems that this, the choice to love, is the most necessary thing in the world, more important that literacy, more important than math. And love is impossible as long as the paddle remains in the backs of our minds.

I like that hooks refers to love as a choice -- "The choice to love." As an early childhood educator, this is a choice that I strive to make every day. Fear is a powerful motivator, but connection is infinitely more powerful. Only when a child feels connected, can they be truly motivated from within. An obedient child is motivated by fear and sycophancy. A connected child is one who seeks even deeper connection through cooperation, agreement, and kindness. And that, ultimately, is what is most needed if our children, and our world, are to thrive.

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