[continued from the open shelf]
“What does ‘humanist’ mean?” Delaney asked.
I swallowed. You’d think that, given my current work, I’d have sat myself down at some point and worked out guidelines for such inevitable moments:
CONTINGENCY 113.e
Requests for Definitions
iii. Term: “humanist”
Subset 2: Age 5-6
Children in this demographic cohort who make a direct request for the definition of “humanist” and/or any of its etymological class members (e.g. humanism, humanistic) are to be referred to Article 6, section D of the Humanist Manifesto, except in Arkansas and Hawaii.
Lacking such a road map, I simply answered her question. In retrospect, to my surprise, I even answered it correctly.
“A humanist is somebody who thinks that people should all take care of each other, and that even if there is a heaven or a god, we should spend our time making this life and this world better.”
“Awesome!”
I should note that Laney (age 6) uses Awesome! to signify everything from “I find that rather astonishing” to “That’s something I didn’t know before, and now I know it!” The latter meaning was in play here, I think, the word Awesome! signifying a new piece of the world clattering against the bottom of the piggy bank of her receptive mind.
Later that evening, after she’d been read to and sung to and tucked and kissed, I went back to my study to close up for the night. Scattered on and around the recliner she’d been sitting in were The Humanist Anthology, Tristram Shandy, The Kids’ Book of Questions, The World Almanac, The Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, The Simpsons and Philosophy, Cosmos, and Bulfinch’s Mythology. I reloaded the shelves and went to bed.
One week later, during our afterschool snack-chat, Laney informed me excitedly that there are nine different religions in her class.
“Nine, wow! How do you know there are nine?”
“We’re talking about different religions, and Mr. Monroe asked if anybody wanted to say what kind of religion their family believed.”
I was not surprised to hear of some diversity. There are lots of South Asian kids in the class. Compared to the demographic mayonnaise I had pictured North Atlanta to be, I’ve been thrilled with the diversity here. “And there were nine different ones?!”
“Yeah, nine…” She looked at the ceiling and began to rattle them off. “Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Baptiss, Jewish, Chains…” (”Chains” is probably “Jain,” one of the most benign and respectable religious traditions on Earth). She counted on her fingers. “Anyway, I can’t remember all of them.” She suddenly beamed. “And I was the only humanist!”
I paused for a week or so.
I am adamantly opposed to labeling children, or even allowing them to label themselves, with words that imply the informed selection of a complex worldview. Dawkins hits it right on the head when he refers to a long-ago caption on a photo in The Guardian. The photo was of three children in a Nativity play:
They are referred to as “Mandeep, a Sikh child; Aakifah, a Muslim child; and Sarah, a Christian child” — and no one bats an eye. Just imagine if the caption had read “Mandeep, a Monetarist; Aakifah, a Keynesian; and Sarah, a Marxist.” Ridiculous! Yet not one bit less ridiculous than the other.
That incisive analogy is Richard’s greatest contribution to secular parenting. I completely agree, as (I am increasingly convinced) do most nonreligious parents. Once a label is attached, thinking is necessarily colored and shaped by that label. I don’t want my kids to have to think their way out from under a presumptive claim placed on them by one worldview or another. So prior to age twelve, I won’t allow my children to be called “atheists” any more than I’d allow them to be called “Christians”–not even by themselves. (More on the ‘age twelve’ comment in a later post. Remind me when I forget.)
So my first impulse was to give the usual cautionary speech: Now be careful not to stop thinking. There are still too many questions to ask, too much you don’t know. Someday you’ll be able to make up your own mind on this, but it’s not time yet.
I looked at Laney, still beaming proudly through a mouthful of Nilla Wafers. At the time she had learned the meaning of humanist from me, I didn’t know she had said to herself, That’s me. She was obviously delighted to have had something to say when all the other kids were claiming their tribal identities, and clearly had no idea of the dark chain reactions set off in the fundamentalist mind by the word “humanist.”
“So what did Mr. Monroe say?”
“He said that was cool!” And I’m sure he did. He’s a great guy. No evidence of dark chain reactions in him, nor in her classmates.
“And he asked what a humanist believes,” she continues.
“What’d you say?”
“I said a humanist believes the most important thing is to take care of each other and the world.”
If she had called herself a secular humanist, I would have protested. But what is there about believing ‘the most important thing is to take care of each other and the world’ that requires more time and thought and study? Is she impeding her thought process by declaring this — or is this a value, like honesty and empathy, upon which she can build her search for an identity? There are, after all, both religious humanists and secular humanists. Erasmus and Paine, two great heroes of mine, were among the former.
Humanism has no connection to atheism for her. The definition I gave her even included the option of believing in a god and being a humanist. By calling herself a humanist in the broadest terms, she hasn’t bought into complex metaphysics; she’s simply embraced a concept that even a six-year-old can sign on to. And in the process, she introduced her classmates, and her teacher, to a new idea, and associated it with her smiling, eager, proud little face.
So Laney’s done it again — she’s taken my armchair abstractions and turned them inside out, making me realize that not all worldview labels are ridiculous or harmful for kids. Some can even serve as catalysts for the next stage in a child’s process of finding her place in the world. And the next. And the next.
photo by Paula Porter
Good for her. I totally agree with you on labelling young kids. My daughters group of friends were on a big kick with “who’s a girly girl, and who’s a tomboy?” a while back, with the implication (there are boys in the group) that being a tomboy was the coolest thing. Sophie was labelled a girly-girl, so I jumped in and reminded them that she was the one who got them all to dig up my garden with their bare hands looking for worms a few months ago. Those labels aren’t so simple!
-Kelly
Comment: matsonwaggs – 28. January 2008 @ 11:58 am
Awesome!
Comment: KristenMary – 28. January 2008 @ 2:14 pm
Dale, how and why did Laney make the (or a) connection between “religion” and “humanism”, in order to answer as she did? Did you somehow tie the two together for her?
Also, do you think the absence of a label is itself a label? If kids grow up without religion in their lives, why should they (or we) be concerned about admitting it?
Comment: Theo – 28. January 2008 @ 4:33 pm
I wondered that too! She apparently understands “religion” to mean “what a person believes,” so when the teacher asked “what religion does your family believe,” she chimed in with her belief that people should take care of each other.
Perhaps when I gave her the definition, she said to herself, “Huh. Then I’m a humanist!” So when her classmates were saying “I’m a Hindu, I’m a Baptist,” she naturally came out with “I’m a humanist.” (Also my definition included ref to god and heaven.)
In one semantic sense, yes. But I don’t see it carrying the same degree of baggage nor the same need to “unburden” one’s self later on.
Goodness, I hope I haven’t implied that. I don’t believe for a minute that they, or we, should be concerned about saying that they are growing up without religion. But that sort of ‘tribal identity’ thing is something else, another level of need. I’m trying to define the marked difference between (1) growing up without the controlling influence of religion and (2) growing up as a declared atheist. They are two quite different things. My hope is that “humanist” can give them that sense of belonging (to a general philosophy) without becoming something they have to wrestle with later.
I may change my mind about that, who knows.
Comment: Dale – 28. January 2008 @ 5:09 pm
While I agree 100% with Dawkins about not forcibly giving children religious labels, I do think that labels exist one way or another to help us find our identities.
“Also, do you think the absence of a label is itself a label? If kids grow up without religion in their lives, why should they (or we) be concerned about admitting it?” Good point, Theo!
I was brought up without religion, and also without labels like “atheist” and “secular humanist”. When a friend, class-mate or teacher would ask about my religion, it felt a little weird to me, at the time, to not have a religion label. I’d usually stammer out, “I’m…..nothing”. Kind of confusing and depressing for a kid (in hindsight, I wouldln’t have it any other way). I think that it’s okay for a kid to have a humanist label — especially if she chooses it herself.
I think you handled Delaney’s question and subsequent school experience marvelously, Dale. Cool story!
Comment: bornagainheathen – 28. January 2008 @ 6:23 pm
[...] McGowan, editor of Parenting Beyond Belief, wrote about the definition of humanism that he gave to his six-year-old. A humanist is somebody who thinks that people should all take care of each other, and that even if [...]
Pingback: Green Oasis » Humanist Hopes – 28. January 2008 @ 7:47 pm
Oohh, paging Nica Lalli, author of Nothing: Something to Believe In, (cover blurb by moi, so it MUST be good
). The “Nothing” label is Nica’s sine qua non.
Comment: Dale – 29. January 2008 @ 8:53 am
After googling “sine qua non”, I couldn’t agree more with Nica’s “nothing” label. For a few, brief moments growing up, it was odd to be the only kid in my neighborhood to not have a religion label. In 4th grade, I met a religionless class-mate, and her friendship helped me feel normal
.
My religious label is nothing, nada, and I’m glad.
Oh yeah, and why 12 years old to start the self identification with the “isms”?
Comment: bornagainheathen – 29. January 2008 @ 5:00 pm
I’ll get into that in another post, but here’s the short answer. I still wouldn’t let someone else label my kids at that age (including me), but it seems an acceptable age for them to begin trying on hats themselves if they wish to. That’s part of the (heh) sine qua non of the teen years, after all. But I continually chant the mantra “change your mind a thousand times if you want” to keep their feet out of the cement.
Twelve or thirteen is recognized as the “coming of age” in many cultures, the point at which a qualitatively different kind of reasoning seems to take hold.
Comment: Dale – 29. January 2008 @ 5:08 pm
The Arsonist’s Guide to Writers Homes in New England?????
Do tell.
Comment: leslie – 29. January 2008 @ 6:04 pm
OK. Brock Clark. I get it. Whew.
http://arsonistsguide.com/backstory.html
Comment: leslie – 29. January 2008 @ 6:13 pm
[...] Belief, The Meming of Life) told his six year old daughter, when she asked. It comes from a post on labels: “A humanist is somebody who thinks that people should all take care of each other, and that even [...]
Pingback: Humanism, Labels and Parenting – 16. February 2008 @ 6:21 am
I’m very concerned about my neighbors questioning my daugher on what church she goes to and what religion she is. I’ve instructed her to reply with a simple “I’m not religious.” But when we’ve had this discussion she replies with a “Can’t we just believe in God? If I tell them I don’t then they will scare me with those stories about the place with Satan all that fire.” This leads into a discussion about not being afraid of that more than values or morals. I’m trying to introduce more of the positive discussion of humanism into the conversations.
Comment: LOWEN – 13. November 2008 @ 11:13 am
[...] as fodder for my talks. In preparing for Connecticut a few weeks ago, I came across this paragraph in a post about restrictive labeling of kids, and the fact that my youngest helped me see that “humanism” (sans [...]
Pingback: The Meming of Life » Preparing kids for the next world Parenting Beyond Belief on secular parenting and other natural wonders – 21. April 2009 @ 12:26 pm
Dawkins’ example is a complete non sequitur and definitely a lot more ridiculous than the other. In the context of the caption (a photo of a Nativity play, for Christ’s sake
it may make decent sense to talk about the children’s religious tradition. It would have been different if the picture was of kids hanging out at the Davos World Economics Forum.
I don’t like labels, either, but this just isn’t a very convincing argument, IMHO.
Comment: nonplus – 21. April 2009 @ 2:20 pm
@nonplus:
Whether it’s a Nativity play has nothing whatever to do with his point that religious identity equivocates far too easily between received tradition and assumed personal conviction. The statement “I am a Christian” can mean “My family of origin practices Christianity” and/or “I am a person of Christian convictions.” Dawkins protests that the first is actively assumed to imply the second — and a child is denied the right of choice.
In the full context of the original passage, he suggests a clearer way to designate religious tradition separate from personal conviction by saying “a child of Christian parents” or “a child of a Christian family.” This acknowledges the affiliation without falsely implying an informed personal choice. I think the analogy illuminates this perfectly.
Comment: Dale – 21. April 2009 @ 3:05 pm
I tried finding the original article but didn’t have any luck (do you have a link?)
BTW, I wouldn’t disagree with Dawkins on the difference between “child of a Christian family” and a “Christian child” and why the former is better. I just think that his analogy without changing the context of the photo is a bit of a straw man argument. He would have a point if the children’s religious affiliation were mentioned under a photo of, say, them playing soccer.
Maybe the quote just struck me as odd because personally, when I hear a religious label attached to a child (”a Muslim boy”) I always read it as “a child coming from a Muslim family” rather than as “a child of Muslim convictions” and thus it doesn’t really bother me (when the context warrants talking about religious affiliation). When I hear the label attached to an adult, I run into the same ambiguity that Dawkins argues against.
But I can completely see how others may not make that distinction. Weirdly enough, when I hear the adjective “Christian” in Czech I more or less hear it as “Humanist” (thanks to how my grandfather used it) but when I hear the same in English, I often hear it as “irritatingly faith-professing” (thanks to having lived in Texas most of my life). Language is funny that way and we all bring our own baggage to it.
Comment: nonplus – 01. May 2009 @ 7:14 am