Chookie wrote:

Not sure I understand what you are getting at here. I want my kids to be
respectful and obedient. I also want them to think for themselves. The issue
is teaching them when they OUGHT to disobey, and that judgement, IMHO, is
difficult enough for adults to make. A child is definitely going to find it
difficult to distinguish between disobeying a teacher because the teacher is
asking them to do something immoral, and disobeying because the teacher is
nasty.



Thank you, that was pretty much what I was getting at. Even an
unpleasant teacher is likely to give a student the benefit of the doubt
once in a while if the student is consistently well-behaved and polite.
Formal politeness, as Miss Manners has pointed out, gives both adults
and children the freedom to say, nonverbally, "I have the right not to
like you or be friendly, ever" without being rude.

Another problem, as you hinted, is that molestation is hardly the only
way adults might exploit kids. Even parents might use their kids to
help them shoplift, for example. Or, there are many cases of teens who
get seriously hurt in their after-school jobs because their bosses
ordered them to do dangerous tasks that are illegal for minors to do,
and the teens couldn't figure out how to say no without risking getting
fired, assuming they knew the tasks were illegal in the first place.
(And, of course, many families simply cannot afford to have their teens
lose their jobs.)

Lenona.