Two interesting, and interestingly related, stories from Ann Althouse today. In the first, the State of Virginia sued to force a 16 year old with Hodgkins Lymphoma to continue with his chemotherapy over his objections. Starchild Abraham Cherrix disliked the side-effects of chemotherapy and his parents deferred to his position. Rather than force him to continue through three rounds of chemotherapy, with a cure rate of 85 to 90%, his parents allowed him to take an "alternate treatment" from Mexico consisting of a herbs including licorice and red clover, taken four times a day along with prayers as he drinks it down.
In the second, Muslim kids in New York are taken out of public school and sent to Madrasses. The boys spend nine hours a day for two or three years memorizing the Koran in Arabic, a language most don't speak. If they succeed, the boys and 10 people they nominate get to go to Paradise. New York doesn't seem to have a particularly good explanation as to why they didn't catch this earlier. The New York Times treats the whole thing as something of a lark, and hopes that it won't cause an anti-Muslim backlash. Two of the boys are the sons of an endocrinologist from Pakistan; another's mother is the son of a US born lawyer for the New York city of Mount Vernon.
Taken seperately, these stories serve up a smorgasbord of blog topics. We have issues of education, of state competence and incompetence, or the boundaries of freedom. How much should we defer to people over their treatment? What if they are parents deciding for a child? What if the child is 16? Should we require public education, should we allow private schooling or home schooling? Is taking out two or three years to memorize the Koran nuts, or is it an honor?
When I was a clerk after law school, one of my co-clerks was convinced that the government was incredibly stupid to allow parents to raise their own children. Rather, he thought that the only rational system was to remove kids from the parents at a relatively young age, to be raised by the state. He was untouched by arguments that it wasn't really up to the state, or that the state -- just being people -- wouldn't be any better at raising kids than just handing them out to random people on the street, the system we use now. I'm not now convinced that he had a point -- he was actually completely out of his mind, with this being one of his more sensible proposals. But we continue to be bedeviled by what seems, on the surface, to be the rather easy question of the extent to which we should defer to parents, which is to say, not very much if they step out of the fairly broad path of social conformity.
Taken together, these stories cancel each other out. Abraham, as he prefers to be called, is not to be sacrificed. The State reached a settlement with him in which he will receive traditional, mainstream treatment, but his alternative "medicine" will be accomodated as much as it can be. The Madrassa is going to add a couple of hours of traditional school subjects next year. In the meantime, the kids have a true achievement -- memorizing the Koran -- that will bring them honor in their community, pride to their parents, and, if we're lucky, maybe a little shame to public school teachers who eschew rote memorization because they don't realize what their students are capable of.
We have one extreme: have the state take the kids. We have the other extreme: treat children as if they were adults and defer to their wishes. We have the safe path in between: impose our will, realizing that our will is imperfect.
4 comments:
It sounds like the Abraham case was settled sensibly: we don't let minors kill themselves if we can avoid it, so he should be forced to have the treatment and if they want to throw him a bone re the mumbo-jumbo to avoid a fuss, so be it.
The case is much more difficult where the Abraham is an adult. Then I guess you have to decide whether he is sane or not.
Allowing the NY Muslim kids out of proper education strikes me as exactly the kind of terrorism-fostering 'multiculturalism' trap that US bloggers accuse the rest of the world of falling into.
And I'm sure that the blogosphere is saying that in this case, too. But I'm not sure that there's any evidence to support that theory: anti-western terrorists seem to be middle-class kids with engineering degrees.
The real question is how much, if any, damage does it do to miss two or three years of elementary or middle school. As I think that what we really learn during those years is how to show up on time, sit still and concentrate, I think that learning the Koran by heart is probably better "education" then whatever self-esteem building pseudo-knowledge these kids are missing.
"anti-western terrorists seem to be middle-class kids with engineering degrees"
True - a common theme when these people are caught is TV interviews with ex-classmates who are bewildered that their 'normal' pals could end up committing hate crimes. And they always seem to have been taken to Pakistan for brainwashing.
" I think that what we really learn during those years is how to show up on time, sit still and concentrate, I think that learning the Koran by heart is probably better "education" "
Also probably a bit true, but rather pessimistic, though I can't speak for American schools... Nonetheless, you've surely got to draw the line somewhere - if learning the Koran by heart is a justifiable alternative to normal eduction, why not any other form of crackpottery, like learning the entire scripts of 'Will and Grace' by heart, or painting a thousand horses' heads purple, or studying sociology?
1989 - 1990 seems awfully late in the century to be naming a kid "Starchild".
As long as they don't take anyone with them, I don't see any problem with letting adults, sane or not, refuse treatment for anything, even if it'll kill them.
Unless there's a public-safety issue, it's also a sin for Christians to force treatment upon adults, since that was the path of Lucifer.
Now, it is my opinion that there is much to be said for Luci's position, but the Big Guy nixed it, and if forced to choose between polar opposites, I agree with Him. (As I'm sure that She is relieved to hear).
I just wish that there could have been some in-between solution.
In any competent school, missing three years of elementry education is missing A LOT. Far better to miss three years of high school, where most of the "self-esteem building pseudo-knowledge" is actually taught, and in any case, after one has learned critical life-skills like reading and basic math. And sitting still and concentrating.
As Brit implies, memorizing the Koran in a foreign tongue ain't that great an accomplishment. The skills necessary to do so may have practical applications elsewhere in one's life, and it's a neat party trick, like being good at Trivial Pursuit, but otherwise it's completely useless - unless one also learns Arabic, which is in-and-of-itself A Good Thing.
Far better to learn the Koran by heart in English, although even that may or may not be of any use in one's life. As would be memorizing the Bible as a child.
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