29 November 2004

Survival Skills

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Uncategorized.

An Israeli woman who commented to a posting on my blog two months ago said this:

“Part of education is to teach our children to function/survive within a group. Sometimes, more than reading, writing and ‘rithmetic, it’s the most important skill we can teach them.”

Maybe I’m reading too much into a few words, but the whole idea about ’survival’ snagged my attention. I can appreciate what she’s about, seeing she lives in Israel and belongs to a generation scarred by the Holocaust no less.

At the outbreak of World War 2, Hitler invaded Poland and subsequently stripped the Jewish community of their rights and dignity. 400,000 Jews were resettled in a 3.5 sq mile walled ghetto, previously occupied by 160,000 people. Within 2 years that number shrunk to 60,000 as starvation, illness, and executions took their toll.

As Hitler’s plans to gas the remaining Jews took effect, survivors finally found the courage to fight back. 28 days later, the rag-tag resistance was put down. Today the ghetto uprising in Warsaw is an inspiring story of heroism and sacrifice inscribed in the painful annals of man’s inhumanity to man.

Some historians wonder how a proud race of people could be so easily suppressed when they actually outnumbered their German guards in the ghetto. If death was already certain, why did they not resist and fight back? Yet the suppression of many by the few continues to be a sad reality even in our day.

I think of the time our own children were threatened by an unruly boy at the poolside when they brought their friend in for a swim. No rules were broken, but the bully didn’t like the looks of this ‘outsider’ and so they had to lie to save their own skin. Should they have stood up for their friend and defend their right? By walking away did they not encourage the bully to continue his aggressive ways?

The late author Mike Yaconelli told about the time when a group of adults and high-schoolers on a mission trip to build a church in Mexico were stopped by three tough-looking policemen. The heavily-armed policemen wanted to confiscate their borrowed truck which was loaded with supplies. All attempts at explaining merely agitated the policemen more and more.

Then a quick thinking teenager waved an official-looking document in the policemen’s faces declaring loudly that their truck was legally contracted for transport in Mexico. If they didn’t want trouble they would have to let the entourage go. The policemen relented, and everyone drove off. When Yaconelli asked how the teen pulled it off since the document clearly had no such clause, the young man coolly replied, “Yes, but they couldn’t read English.”

What do these stories tell us? They tell us that sometimes pat answers and homilies don’t always get us out of a tight spot. So I have been thinking, how do you teach your child about survival skills, or how to survive?

A good friend of mine told me that he has been raising his sons never to take ‘no’ for an answer. He said it’s to teach them negotiation skills. Say the kids have been told to finish reading three chapters before they can watch TV; Dad wants them to present their case, and perhaps argue for a compromise, like wrapping it up after one chapter instead.

Stand up to bullies. Lie if you really have to. Fight for your life. Negotiate and compromise. Don’t get pushed around. Survive. How do these ideas square with the Golden Rule, of loving God and loving your neighbour as yourself?

On the one hand, the Christian is commended to fear God and not men, to fear only Him who has power over our souls and not those who can destroy bodies. The Bible tells us that in a moral universe, some things are right and other things wrong. It also tells us that some things are worth standing up for, and if it comes to it, they’re worth dying for too.

On the other hand we are commanded to turn the other cheek, walk the second mile, bless our enemy. After all, at the center of our faith is a Saviour who suffered unjust accusations and finally laid down his life like a lamb led to the slaughter.

How do we actually teach these things in an increasingly hostile world? I mean, we adults don’t fare too well ourselves when faced with threatening situations and adversaries. How we need God to grant us wisdom to know what to do when the going gets rough – what battles to fight, when to stand, and when to walk away.

Of course, through it all and whatever the outcome, don’t forget that the day of accounting will come soon enough. Then all wrongs will ultimately be made right.

The idea of shipping our children off to a warehouse where they are
educated by strangers from a curriculum designed by politicians and
academic theorists is so strange and disconnected from the reality of
a child that we have to wonder how this could come to be a fact in our
society. Why would be want our children treated like this? Only by
being convinced that it is for their own good - or if we don’t happen
to agree, by being subject to fines and imprisonment if we don’t
comply - would we go along with this. After all, we allow ourselves to
be sent off, indeed we transport ourselves to be warehoused at work,
so we can imagine such a fate would be acceptable to our children.

The world that we live in has this kind of fragmentation to it. We are
fragmented: our workplaces, our schools, our society. Yet, we must
find a way to raise a whole child, one who can meet the future fully,
without fear, with an intelligence that can understand and move in new
and challenging situations.

Raising A Whole Child, Steven Harrison
www.LivingSchool.org

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