The kids that reveal the flaw
By Mark Vernon on Saturday, November 21 2009, 09:13 - In the news - Permalink
That the children on the poster in the British Humanist Association's don't-label-your-children campaign are, in fact, the kids of famous Christians can't but help raise a smile. The BHA's defence is that it doesn't matter who the kids are: they represent 'everykids'.
But it seems to me that the entertaining coincidence reveals the flaw in the campaign. For there is no such thing as an anonymous child. Each child to be a child is a particular person, located in a particular context, with real factors and freedoms shaping their lives. To imagine that a child could be a person in the context of no such influences, religious or otherwise, is not to imagine a child but a non-child, a Stepford child, an individual that could not become fully human.
Comments
It seems to me that you just don't get the point. It's nothing to do with an "anonymous child". It's everything to do with influences, both good, bad and presumed.
This kind of argument has always struck me as asinine. Are the British Humanist Association going to campaign that we not call children born in the UK "British"? Is this not a label? The idea that children opt out of culture until adulthood strikes me as completely insane.
I like the language of 'anonymity' - as an impossible and frightening ideal. I wrote about this question of 'neutrality' in Timesonline, and whether religious education is a form of brainwashing. You can read it at: http://bridgesandtangents.wordpress...