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Unit IV

Raising Children

(Chapters 12-15)

 

Childrearing should proceed according to the child's readiness in each realm: emotional, moti­vational, social, intellectual, and physical.  This unit shows that if children are to develop to the fullest, growth rates must be considered carefully and the environment planned accordingly.

 

Summary

 

The six visitors spend the morning visiting the community nurseries and schools.  They begin in the Lower Nursery, where all the children are infants in their first year.  A white-uniformed Mrs. Nash is in charge.

 

Each baby, in a separate cubicle with a large glass window, wears only diapers, and there are no bedclothes.  The air is filtered and temperature controlled, and each cubicle is fairly sound­proof.  The result is little or no laundry for bedclothes or diapers; there is protection against dis­ease; the infants need to be bathed only once a week; and they do not awaken one another.

 

"Looks like an aquarium," sneers Castle.

 

Mrs. Nash explains that the proper temperature for a newborn is 88 to 90 degrees.  At six months it is 80 degrees.  This information has been obtained by observing the babies carefully.

 

"Controlled temperature, noiseless sleep-aren't these babies going to be completely at the mercy of a normal environment?" Castle asks.  "Can you go on coddling them forever?"

 

Annoyances are introduced slowly, Mrs. Nash continues, depending upon the capacity of the baby to tolerate them.  The procedure is much like inoculation.

 

"What about mother love?" Castle asks.

 

Frazier points out that mother's love, father's love, all sorts of love are supplied in liberal doses.  It is not marred, he says, by coming from someone who is overworked or ignorant about child­rearing. (Chapter 12)

 

In the Upper Nursery, the children are I to 3 years old, amid Lilliputian furniture.  Since the environment is again temperature-controlled and humidity-controlled, they sleep in diapers without bedclothes.  At play, most are naked; a few wear training pants.

 

The discussion turns to frustration and jealousy.  Frazier explains that these emotions are al­most unknown-n in Walden Two.

 

"But emotions are-fun!" Barbara objects.

 

Some of them are productive, Frazier agrees, such as the strengthening powers of joy and love.

 

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But the high-voltage excitements of anger and fear are not necessary in modern life.  These negative emotions, once useful in the evolution of the human species, are now wasteful and destruc­tive, even jealousy, which is a minor form of anger.

 

When a particular emotion is no longer useful, we eliminate it, Frazier explains.  "It's simply a matter of behavioral engineering."

 

At this point, the group wants to understand behavioral engineering and Frazier, with a shrug of his shoulders, guides everyone to the shade of a large tree.  Here they await his discourse on this important topic. (Chapter 13)

 

In the early phases, Frazier worked with a young Planner named Simmons, studying all the great literary works on morals and ethics, searching for methods of imparting self-control.  The chief suggestions, however, came from clinical psychology: building tolerance for annoying situa­tions by administering them in small doses, according to the individual's readiness.  The process is like immunization.

 

In a lesson on dealing with frustration, subclass A3, administered at age 3 or 4 years, the child receives a powdered lollipop which can be eaten later in the day, if it is not licked earlier.  The children are helped with solutions: first putting the candy out of sight, then playing games, and later even examining their own reactions.

 

At a later age, the problem is made still more difficult.  The lollipop is hung around each child's neck.  The idea is to administer the lessons in carefully graded sequences, rather than accidental dosages.  Burris objects, however, that jealousy and envy cannot be administered in graded doses.

 

"And why not?" asks Frazier.  "Remember we control the social environment too at this age."

 

In the Forbidden Soup lesson, the children arrive for supper, tired and hungry, and find they must wait five minutes in front of their steaming bowls of soup.  Their task is to avoid unhappi­ness, which they learn to do by making jokes and singing songs, as easily as we might tolerate a five-minute delay at curtain time.

 

Later, when an appropriate level of readiness has been reached, jokes and games are not per­mitted.  The children must wait in silence, forced back upon their own resources.

 

Later still, they must deal with envy or jealousy.  Each child is designated "heads" or "tails, a coin is flipped, and the winners dine while the losers wait another five minutes.

 

Again, the basic concern is readiness.  The children are confronted with a series of gradually in­creasing annoyances, appropriate to their capacity to manage them.  If there is resentment in the forbidden soup, it is directed against Lady Luck, against the coin toss, not against the lucky din­ers.

 

"I must say," Castle protests, "I think you and your friend Simmons are really very subtle sadists."

 

Frazier points out that earlier Castle accused him of breeding "softies," and now he objects to tougher procedures.  The point, he insists, is that these challenging situations are never very difficult because of the careful schedules.

 

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Castle claims that these methods rob the children of motivation.  They take the spring from the watch, he says.

 

"That's an experimental question, Mr. Castle, and you have the wrong answer," Frazier re­plies.

 

"Would you relax control of the environment and let the child meet accidental frustrations?" he continues.  "But what is the virtue of accident?  No, there was only one course open to us.  We had to design a series of adversities so that the child would develop the greatest possible self-con­trol." (Chapter 14)

 

The living quarters and daily schedules of the older children show further evidence of be­havioral engineering.  When younger, they progressed from an air-conditioned cubicle to an air-conditioned room and then to a cot in a dormitory.  Now, at age 5 or 6, they live in separate living alcoves in groups of three and four.  After another year or two, they will move into small rooms until the early teens, with frequent changes of roommates providing a variety of living ex­periences.  At age 13, like adults, they become eligible for the larger, single rooms.

 

The group then tours the educational environment: laboratories, studies, workshops, and read­ing rooms, typically used in place of classrooms.  Many of the instructors are men, and it is not even clear that the children are in school.  The emphasis is not on traditional school subjects; it is on techniques of learning and thinking.

 

The touring group returns to the shade of their large tree.  The school is family and vice versa, Frazier explains, with no emphasis on grade levels.  The grade is an administrative device which disrupts the child's developmental process.  In Walden Two the child advances according to his readiness, with no distinction between grade school, high school, or college.

 

The library keeps only the most up-to-date, useful books.  Two or three thousand volumes are sufficient.

 

In the absence of low grades, expulsion, honors, diplomas, and so forth, Castle wants to know what is done about the standard motives for learning.  What makes the child want to learn?

 

"We made a survey of the motives of the unhampered child and found more than we could use," replies Frazier.  "Our engineering job was to preserve them by fortifying the child against dis­couragement."

 

Discouragement is introduced as carefully and gradually as other adverse experiences, begin­ning around six months of age.  Even the toys are designed for this purpose.  The child pulls on a toy ring, producing a bit of a tune or a pattern of flashing lights.  Later, the child must pull twice, then thrice, and then several times before the result is forthcoming, thereby developing a high degree of persistence.

 

The motives in education, Frazier explains, are the same as those in all human behavior, a drive .to control the environment.  It makes the baby crumple and recrumple a piece of noisy paper; it makes the scientist press forward with research.  Properly trained, or properly shielded from in­appropriate events early in life, people do not need extrinsic rewards and punishments.

 

 

 

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Castle complains that the Walden Two citizens will be too happy to be creative.  On the con­trary, Frazier replies, when the necessities and frustrations of life are satisfied, artistic interests will flourish, as will inborn differences.  With no barriers to educational and cultural opportuni­ties, each child will develop in its most appropriate ways, resulting in a broad range of talents and interests in the total population. (Chapter 15)