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[SCA] Pennsic policy games
The big new bit of stupidity -- this time not from the SCA board of directors -- is a new Pennsic rule that minors, meaning people under 18, cannot attend classes without being accompanied by an adult. I guess it's just too dangerous for a 16-year-old to learn Italian dance or a 17-year-old to learn how to spin wool, or something. This is totally bizarre, as there is not a general restriction on teenagers at Pennsic. They can go (unaccompanied) to shop (even to the blacksmiths!), or to shoot archery, or to watch the fighting, or to any private camp they choose. (Kids under 12 are more restricted.)
Sadly predictable is the reaction of many people in the face of the ensuing discussions. The original rule said minors had to be accompanied to classes by a parent or legal guardian, which is totally crazy, and in the face of much protest they "clarified" that they really meant a responsible adult, meaning any adult appointed by the parents, and not something involving legal process. And today, with that change, people are saying "oh, well that's not so bad then" and "that's reasonable" and "we can find people to take our kids to classes, then". It's as if they've forgotten that the fundamental policy itself is broken. They're saying "oh, if you're just going to take an arm rather than costing me an arm and a leg, that's ok then". Hello? And it only took a day! Amazing.
I'm not saying people need to Stand Up And Do Something Now, because I don't know what we can do. Yes, I want to fix it, but I don't know what to do today to do that. (I can think of small, tactical things to do to mitigate the damage, but that's not a solution.) It seems obvious to me that there is something deeper going on, and I'm not dialed into it. But I do know that it's a short step from "well, that's less bad" to "that's ok" (we're seeing this already) to "of course that's reasonable and you're a reckless idiot if you don't agree". We've seen this before from the SCA (mandatory membership, no wait an unjust tax instead, to point to biggest but not sole case) and it's certainly not unique to this organization. Heck, we see it in marketing too; remember New Coke?
Regardless of where it happens, its success depends on people focusing on the here-and-now and not taking the longer view. I guess hill-climbing is a popular algorithm. (For the non-geeks, this means you take an alternate path if it will directly improve on where you are, but you rule out paths that make it worse -- even if those paths then lead to something much better.)
I'm talking here mostly about process and meta-issues. As for the base question of how we treat children (of all ages), the best comment I've seen has been from Cariadoc, who wrote: "I have long held that there are two fundamental views of children: That they are pets who can talk, or that they are small people who do not yet know very much. The wrong one is winning." This non-parent says: yes, that.
Sadly predictable is the reaction of many people in the face of the ensuing discussions. The original rule said minors had to be accompanied to classes by a parent or legal guardian, which is totally crazy, and in the face of much protest they "clarified" that they really meant a responsible adult, meaning any adult appointed by the parents, and not something involving legal process. And today, with that change, people are saying "oh, well that's not so bad then" and "that's reasonable" and "we can find people to take our kids to classes, then". It's as if they've forgotten that the fundamental policy itself is broken. They're saying "oh, if you're just going to take an arm rather than costing me an arm and a leg, that's ok then". Hello? And it only took a day! Amazing.
I'm not saying people need to Stand Up And Do Something Now, because I don't know what we can do. Yes, I want to fix it, but I don't know what to do today to do that. (I can think of small, tactical things to do to mitigate the damage, but that's not a solution.) It seems obvious to me that there is something deeper going on, and I'm not dialed into it. But I do know that it's a short step from "well, that's less bad" to "that's ok" (we're seeing this already) to "of course that's reasonable and you're a reckless idiot if you don't agree". We've seen this before from the SCA (mandatory membership, no wait an unjust tax instead, to point to biggest but not sole case) and it's certainly not unique to this organization. Heck, we see it in marketing too; remember New Coke?
Regardless of where it happens, its success depends on people focusing on the here-and-now and not taking the longer view. I guess hill-climbing is a popular algorithm. (For the non-geeks, this means you take an alternate path if it will directly improve on where you are, but you rule out paths that make it worse -- even if those paths then lead to something much better.)
I'm talking here mostly about process and meta-issues. As for the base question of how we treat children (of all ages), the best comment I've seen has been from Cariadoc, who wrote: "I have long held that there are two fundamental views of children: That they are pets who can talk, or that they are small people who do not yet know very much. The wrong one is winning." This non-parent says: yes, that.
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Suppose you are trying to get to the highest point you can, in a large area filled with hills and valleys. The easiest plan is to look around, and always take a path which goes higher than you already are. If there's more than one, pick the steepest, or whatever looks the highest. If they're equal, flip a coin.
This will get you to a local peak, but you will then be stuck. Every path away -- including all those that lead to higher hills -- starts by going down from where you are. Your plan will never let you do that.
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It's called the "Door-In-Face" technique.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique
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I am also not keen on the idea that parents, even if not expected to shepherd perfectly competent teenagers to class, bear the onus of finding someone to do that chore. If the kid misbehaves in class, are both the child and the proctor ejected?
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Strike.
Stop being complicit in the abusive system.
By participating in Pennsic U, one is saying by one's actions that getting to have one's fun is more important that one's principles.
Start canceling classes now with politely formal letters explaining you can no longer in good conscience endorse or support PennU, and you, collectively, have a chance to repeal it by War.
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:->
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I do disagree about children being "small people who do not yet know very much." At least as far as current theory runs, people's brains do change as they get older, and it isn't just getting more information. The essence of the complaint is correct here, however. There is nothing about a 13 year old that requires treating him or her as a potentially dangerous beast tolerated for the sake of others as opposed to actual people capable of learning.
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The idea of sheltering children until they're 18 and then sending them out in the world, completely missing that period of supervised maturation, seems counter-productive to me. Of course I'm not a parent, but in watching the younger generations as they grow up, I don't have the impression that it's working too well.
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I wish I had signed up to teach this year so that I could withdraw my class from the university and move it to a private venue. But I can encourage others to do so. I wonder what kind of participation level would be needed to have an effect. (I am, alas, not optimistic about SCAdians being willing to act, having lived through a much bigger fiasco with very few people seeming to care. But that is not a reason to not try anyway.)
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Yeah, the A&S area is way safer than random private camps in secluded areas, just to pick one example. The idea that a teen can't go to a well-attended class on Viking clothing, but can go hang out at Vlad's until dark, is broken. What behavior are we trying to encourage here? I want event attendees of all ages to feel welcome, not ostracized. The very young require special handling, and all parents need to be held accountable for the behavior of their children (up to evicting them from events if they are persistently negligent), but that's nothing special about the SCA -- the same should apply in any public or communal place. Yet the folks in charge are trying to make rules way more restrictive than those of any place else I can think of. It's probably a CYA thing (fear of liability) without much regard to the effect it has on the people involved.
If I were teaching this year I would adopt the following policy: anyone who wants to attend my class is welcome. Some adults are short, incontinent, or inarticulate; that someone is three feet tall or in diapers or unable to participate in discussions is not my concern, and it would be rude and invasive for me to inquire. People with limitations are constantly hounded by nosy people, after all, and I would never want to put them on the spot. So there. But as I alluded to the original post, that's tactics and mitigation, not strategy and a fix.
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There are a bunch of huge cognitive leaps that kick in at various stages, although they vary enormously even among adults. Some kick in very young. For example, the idea of "object permanence" does not generally kick in until about age 3 or so. "Object permanence" is the idea that an object as permanence. This is why the "peek-a-boo" game works on babies. Babies don't know that your face is still there when it's covered. It's something they learn not simply through experience, but because at some point they develop mental capacity to actually store, absorb, and remember the specific experience and generalize it out to all experiences.
A young child generally lacks an ability to foresee long term consequence. Again, that's not a lack of knowledge/experience thing. Its a cognitive inability to generalize out from specific information to an abstract, indefinite future.
Another raft of changes kick in at puberty, which are often masked by the fact that other physical changes are releasing lots of hormones that play hob with emotional reactions and processing.
All of this is gross generalization, and is also based on the current prevalent theory of cognitive development (or at least, the parts with which I am current). understanding around this stuff changes a great deal, and individuals vary wildly amidst these general rules. There are certainly children who acquire particular cognitive abilities at a very young age, and adults who lack more than basic ability to generalize from specific data.
The bottom line is that there really is a concept of "age appropriate" that is neither pets nor small, less knowledgeable grown ups. An 8 year old child has characteristics as different from a 4 year old child as from a 12 year old child, and treating an 8 year old like a 12 year old is not any better for the child than treating an 8 year old like a 4 year old.
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This whole rule is silly and pointless, and there have already been several excellent examples of why posted both here and on the AE message boards. The simplest solution that *should* make everyone happy is that the individual teacher of an A&S course has the right to restrict the attendees of their course as he/she chooses in regards to age, and the PennsicU administration should enforce and support their right to do so. It would then be the teachers' duty to ensure that any such restrictions are posted in their class description so there are no surprises for any potential attendees.
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B) I'll be attending Pennsic for the first time this year (Sun-Fri of War Week). How do people not camping together generally arrange meetings, as I'd be delighted to see you again? I'll be with the Barony of Carolingia, as my friend with whom I am going is Carolingian, and there are some other kosher-keepers camping there.
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These sorts of things tend to be a little haphazard unless everyone involved is organized in advance. While this may be changing, I think most of us still don't carry cell phones there. :-) There's no central message board, alas, so you look for people in their camps or where you think they might be, and if you don't know what people look like the latter can be challenging. Here are some ways to find me:
- in Polyhymnia, a sub-camp of Debatable Lands, on block N10, which you can find on the map or by going to the Serengeti (that'll mean something to you once you're there) and scanning the landscape for this house. We have a message board in camp in case the person you're looking for isn't home.
- In the performing-arts tent Monday evening at 8PM, where I'll be performing with the Debatable Choir. I'll then be staying for the performance by I Genesii so that won't be a good time to sit and schmooze, but it'd be a fine time to meet and make arrangements for later.
- In the audience at the performance of the Pennsic Choir on Thursday (I think 6:00?).
And now that I know where to look for you, I will strive to do that too. What name do you go by in the SCA?
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People go to a class that teaches them the basics of a programming language and its' syntax, and they think they know programming.... You kids get offa my Token Ring network!
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http://blog.fosketts.net/2010/07/16/fibre-channel-token-ring-fcotr/
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Lest anyone draw a wrong conclusion, though, please note that the commenter who asked is a history teacher, not a programmer.