Thursday, December 1, 2011

Links Related to Lydia Schatz, the Michael Pearl Method of Child Training, and First Time Obedience


Created Apr 2011;  Updated 4Sep13;  19Feb25
Click here to read the entire series on the archive.

Michael Pearl is a minister within the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement that denies that they are, in fact, a Christian denomination. He wrote a book called To Train Up a Child that identifies children as evil adversaries from birth who seek to control their parents, and this necessitates the breaking of their will through aggressive corporal punishment. He teaches that parents must defeat their child's will in this manner, and if they don't, it is tantamount to casting their child directly into eternal hell themselves. Infants who are old enough to cry are old enough to be “switched,” and he recommends specific techniques including binding of infants and the use of flexible plumbing supply tubing that creates deep muscle damage without leaving many visible marks. Many children suffer renal failure because the free-floating muscle fragments enter the bloodstream and lodge in the kidneys, causing acute renal failure. 

Pearl has not been found legally culpable in the related deaths or the many cases of binding and renal failure in children whose parents employed his methods. Most of the cases of morbidity from child abuse that involve his methods are often closed to the public when litigated in family court never make the press. Some are captured and documented at Homeschooling's Invisible Children website.

Hana Alemu Williams, an Ethiopian adoptee, died from neglect and abuse at age thirteen under the care of her Evangelical Christian homeschooling parents in 2011. The parents also abused another of their Ethiopian adoptees who survived and testified at their trial. They are now serving long prison sentences for Hana's death. Seven year old Lydia Schatz, a Liberian adoptee who was homeschooled, died from renal failure in 2010 which resulted from punishment for mispronouncing a word which was deemed to be willful rebellion. Her sister Zariah who was adopted with her was also discovered to be in renal failure at the time of the death but received treatment and survived. In her book, The Child Catchers, Kathryn Joyce reveals that the birth parents of the girls were alive and well in Liberia at the time of Lydia's death, believing that they were signing their children over to a program that would allow their children better educational opportunities. Joyce's book also details other cases of physical abuse and abandonment among the many African adoptees of Nancy Campbell, a notable leader in the Quvierfull Fundamentalist Christian movement. Four-year-old adoptee, Sean Paddock, died of asphyxia in 2006 when his parents employed Pearl's methods.

This thorough series of posts on this blog explores the ideological pressures used against these homeschooling parents and the moral disengagement that results from the thought reform promoted through the writings and among the followers of Michael Pearl. 




HOW IDEOLOGY CAN UNHINGE PERSPECTIVE:
Explaining How Parents Can Fatally Abuse Their Child
In Service of a Perceived Greater Good

Why Good People Make Dangerous Choices (Series of posts pondering Pearl and Lydia Schatz)

ESSENTIAL READING ABOUT MICHAEL PEARL:





FIRST TIME OBEDIENCE

First Time Obedience and Unquestioned Submission (Pearl-style, authoritarian discipline)
        • A review of the principle of sacerdotalism and parental convenience (as a control issue in dysfunctional families) as rationales for requiring FTO and “leaps of faith” required under multigenerational faithfulness.
        • Review of the tendency to make every banal daily activity one of great eternal spiritual significance as a consequence of works-based salvation. Includes a discussion of viewing personality traits that do not fit the belief system’s paradigm as sinful as well as the building up of all gender related activities as sacramental for the impartation of inward sanctification.
        • Blog host’s personal experience with inherent personality traits treated by parents as sin, the idolatry of seeking parental approval, and the consequences of requiring unquestioned submission with the use of guilt and shame that predisposes one to easy brainwashing and compliance with thought reform. Includes a section from Biderman’s Chart of Coercion addressing the powerful effects of devaluing individuals in religious settings.
        • Discussion of the development of how perfectionism, works-based salvation and First Time Obedience squelch problem-solving skill and prevent the development of critical thinking under the guise of multigenerational faithfulness.
        • Discussion of the development of how perfectionism, works-based salvation and First Time Obedience squelch problem-solving skill and prevent the development of critical thinking under the guise of multigenerational faithfulness.

Voddie Baucham on Corporal Punishment and Shyness in a Young Child from Under Much Grace on Vimeo.


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