My son attended a model-building workshop for kids 8-12 years old. First they had kids brainstorm about what kinds of things are needed in a mixed-use urban site; then they had the kids ask the “community members” (parents willing to spend 3 precious weekend hours introducing their children to collective creativity and architectural planning processes) what they would like the new construction to include. Then it was time to build. The leaders told the kids about all the materials they could use: cardboard, fabric, paper, plastic, yarn, scissors, double-sided tape, markers, glue sticks, cellophane, and glue guns. For the latter, there was a separate work station and a dedicated volunteer to help oversee safety.
As soon as the leader described the hot glue gun station, one of the mothers interrupted. “We say, warm glue bonders,” she proclaimed, sitting tall and make-up-less in her chair. There wasn’t a hint of an upturned lip or wry wink; she was dead serious.
Really? Glue guns create violence? Shall we ban staple guns, too? Squirt guns? Are we so at risk of random acts of violence that we have to take the entire word gun out of the lexicon? Maybe we should get rid of knives, too, and rename them all as spreaders or food-take-aparters. Find a friendly pink name to replace hatchet. In fact, let’s get rid of all violent vocabulary. Let’s not kill anything, not an idea, not the lights, not a spider, not an ant, not a mosquito, not a chicken, not a cow, not a pig, not a tree, not a weed, not even a virus or single bacterium. We’ll have flowery language and warm glue bonders and rapid staple implements and spreaders and we’ll allow every thing that ever was granted the force of life – every carrot and every cancer cell and every mass murderer – to live long and prosper. We’ll strip our military and Secret Service of all weapons, send all our soldiers home, use the money for vegan environmental global climate change peace policies.
We will turn off the TV and pay no mind to the two armed bank robberies that happened in broad daylight, just a couple months apart, in our sleepy little town. We’ll pay no mind to those who are currently building bombs or contemplating murder or who are on the registered sex offender list now living within blocks of our public schools. We will whitewash every aggressive impulse until all we do is spout platitudes. We’ll use our words. All we need is love. We just need to be nicer. We will overcome with kindness. Can’t we all just get along?
The woman who unilaterally imposed her aggressive and unyielding PC-speak was there with her shy, awkward son, the only child – at least 8 years old, remember – frightened to enter the conference room because he was convinced the downtown building would fall down. The mother spent the first 5 minutes of the workshop trying to convince him he was safe, and even got the leaders corralled into reassuring the boy the building was safe. All the kids are beaming and proud in the final group project photograph; except this woman’s son, who wouldn’t smile for the first photo, then absented himself from the second one, when his mother prodded him to smile.
Ironically, as a parent helper in elementary school craft projects, it’s me who got hot glue burns – not the kids. I’ve feared stapling my fingers to the back board on the rare occasions I’ve held a staple gun, but haven’t done so. The danger in these activities is from carelessness and distraction, not anything inherently evil in the tool. I’m pretty sure we were all safe in the building (with the exception of an earthquake, but perhaps we’d be safer in a recently built, up-to-code downtown office building than in the 1940’s post WWII building-boom house I live in). But something’s up for this little boy, and I think he’s in grave danger. It’s not the glue guns and staple guns and stick pins and thumb tacks of this unpredictable world that put him at risk. This boy is surrounded by unchecked political correctness offered up as a futile attempt to allay someone else’s fears. He is being raised with small-minded self-righteousness and a complete unwillingness to understand human nature. And he’s frightened.
Instead of policing the vocabulary of everyone with whom her son comes into contact, and relentlessly trying to stamp out (ooh, that’s a harsh phrase, isn’t it) violence – which can’t, after all, be eradicated from the human or any other animal species, here’s what I propose this woman teach her son:
Teach him what is strength and what is weakness; teach him how to stand up for himself and for those less empowered by society; teach him how to marshal his aggressive and violent urges into healthy and constructive activities; teach him to identify when he is safe and when he is truly in danger; teach him to how to evaluate if any given individual can be trusted with something like a steak knife, glue gun, Swiss army knife, pistol, rifle, or human speech.
Hmmmm. Did I take this too far?
I think you cut right to the point.
Er, articulately pointed out a critical idea.
Er, nicely said a nice thing. Nicely.