Comments on the lectures of Mr. Idan Amiel in Brussels on 21st January 2011.
Positive:
After 37 years in education, as a teacher and as a headmaster, I applaud the return of the Role Model through your approach. From the seventies up to recently it was considered inappropriate that an educator should raise a finger to warn that this or that behaviour was not acceptable. In NVR and NA limits are given back their central role in the socialisation of youngsters. How can a teenager find out who he or she is, if there are no boundaries that allow the young person to define an identity of his own? He needs an adult person to act as a reference to be able to do that.
A second important asset in NVR en NA is the principle of Delayed Response ( as in the Bookmark) . The important message underlying this is that emotions ( or at least the expression of these emotions and the conduct that follows out of them) are not absolute. That we are not the powerless slaves of our emotions and urges. That it is possible to put them on hold ( without denying them) and postpone the following chain of events ( the escalation). This sense of control is essential to reach self-esteem and to teach youngsters to work for and with delayed effects.
The Presence, so central to NA, is also a great advantage for the kids. They need this nearness. Even if they protest against restricting parents, they don’t want them to be indifferent towards them. Children would rather be beaten than ignored. One child , whose father did not want to have contact with his son any more, once put it to me like this: ‘I hear my friends complaining about their parents, that they don’t allow them this or that, but at least they have parents who care about them.’
Negative:
I am somewhat apprehensive of the Vigilant care and especially of the parent patrol. If this is not carefully monitored, I fear it may lead to Big Brother or may be captured by right wing fundamentalists. Of course we must watch over our children, but we mustn’t suffocate them. They should still have the opportunity to experiment, to fail and through failing grow to more autonomy.
In a similar way I feel uneasy by the stress on we-dentity versus i-dentity. OK, as far as the support from networking is concerned. Also OK when it is seen as a counterweight against our atomized society. I’m a supporter of Philosophical communitarianism in the sense as given to this philosophy by Charles Taylor. But one should keep in mind that there is also something like Groupthink.
Conclusion:
As a Peace activist I was glad to be given the opportunity to get to know NVR (and NA). I think a promising future lies ahead of it and I shall certainly follow its evolution.