The Schatz Family is Not Unique: Why People Make Dangerous Choices (Pondering Pearl and Lydia Schatz) Part X

In only a few days, Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz are scheduled to return to the Butte County Courtroom in California for sentencing, months after they plead guilty for their respective roles in the death of their adopted daughter Lydia and for the injuries sustained by their other children related to their use of the discipline methods taught by Michael Pearl.

The United States Court System bears witness to other deaths and injuries to other children, some of which author Philip Greven notes in his book, Spare the Child: The Religious Roots of Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse. To those who wish to understand how Christians can make such dangerous choices to discipline their children to such an extent and how the practice is especially tied to Protestant traditions in the United States, please read Greven's book. 

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Using the Milgram Study to Understand How Pearl Becomes Appealing: Why Good People Make Dangerous Choices (Pondering Pearl and Lydia Schatz) Part IX

What We Can Learn 

From Milgram

In his book, The Lucifer Effect, Dr. Philip Zimbardo offers a list of ten primary elements of Stanley Milgram's Experiment that reinforced and enhanced the compliance of the study subjects. 

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There But For Grace: Why Good People Make Dangerous Choices (Pondering Pearl and Lydia Schatz) Part VIII

When I first heard about dear Lydia Schatz and her sister Zariah, I felt an eerie chill run up my back and a sick creaturely feeling in the pit of my abdomen, deeper and more cutting than just my stomach. The term “pit” could not be more fitting.

Not having managed to carry a pregnancy very far myself, most women at my old Gothard-influenced church held me at a distance. Two or three mothers who knew me well let me into their worlds, but I kept my own distance when they discussed some of the “methods” that they used with their kids. In the early nineties, one set of close friends followed the Ezzos meticulously, and I didn't ask much because I felt my own grief and insecurities when I did. I also learned that my honest questions about too many details were always followed with an equally defensive response from some of these moms asking, “Why do you want to know?” I learned to stick to matters that concerned cooking and gardening and the other topics featured in Gentle Spirit magazine.

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The Breaking the “Diabolical Will” of Infants in the IFB – Even at Hephzibah House: Pondering Pearl and Lydia Schatz Part VII

Warning:  This one's tough to read.

The news media tells us that the Schatz Family also adopted an infant from Liberia (along with Lydia and Zariah), a total of three children. We know that they used the Pearl Method to “chastise” the two older girls, but we are not told the age of the infant they adopted nor whether they also used plumbing line with the baby, too. (Please note that Pearl says that infants have a “diabolical will to dominate.”)

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The Calm Before the Storm Following the Schatzes' “Guilty” Pleas: Why Good People Do Dangerous Things (Pondering Pearl and Lydia Schatz) Part VI

On Blog Talk Radio (BTR), Jocelyn Andersen and I spent the past two sessions discussing the death of Lydia Schatz and an overview of Michael Pearl's teachings regarding “child training.” The first episode (2Apr11) gives a general overview of Pearl's ideas and what the Schatz Family experienced as a consequence of following his methods. The second episode (9Apr11) focuses specifically on the reasons that social psychology offers to explain why and how good Christian people like Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz can lose touch with their own rational thought when they follow a system like the one Michael Pearl has created, a system essentially enforced by Christian homeschoolers through social pressure. In addition to the undue authoritarian influence and the spiritual blackmail that Pearl prescribes, the majority of Christian homeschoolers enforce an elitist secondary system that makes a graceful and easy “exit” from Pearl's teachings even more difficult.

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Bad Apples or Bad Barrels? The Short and Long Versions of Zimbardo on the Lucifer Effect

I am very happy to discover two different versions of Dr. Philip Zimbardo's lectures about the content of his book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Become Evil.

In the longer version of the talk that was presented at MIT, he gives a more detailed description of how he looks as systems and how systems and environments promote bad behavior. It is, of course, a much longer video, nearly 2 hours long. There is also a shorter version, circa 24 minutes long, but it does not include as detailed of a description of the "bad barrel" promoting "bad apples."



LONG VERSION
(MIT Lecture - 1 hour 58 minutes)

SHORT VERSION 
(TED Lecture - 23 Minutes)

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Why Good People Do Dangerous Things (Pondering Pearl and Lydia Schatz) Part V: Pondering the Atrocities of the Jewish Holocaust and its Relationship to the Study of Obedience

Because I have discussed a few psychological studies, I believe that it is necessary to address the nature of those studies and the motivation behind why they were done. They were birthed out of a desire to understand the reasons why a whole nation of good German people could be influenced so strongly that they were able to commit such atrocities during WWII.

[As an aside note, this post on “What Goes on in the Soul of the Abuser” which quotes material from The Nazi Doctors may be helpful in understanding the leaders of groups, but it is not my primary focus today.]

On this site, I talk a great deal about manipulative behavior in Christianity, but I often approach it from a position that is informed by both the Bible and from observations about behavior. Some of that information comes out the study of why both individuals and groups of people behave in the way that they do.

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Why Good People Make Dangerous Choices (Pondering Pearl and Lydia Schatz) Part IV: The Milgram Experiment and the Pressure to Commit Evil for the Common Good

The events surrounding the death of Lydia Schatz leave most people wondering why and how good people like Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz could lose so much perspective that they could discipline their daughters to the point of lethal harm.  They trusted the teachings of Michael Pearl, but mere trust alone cannot account for the tragic events.  What other factors contributed to the blind obedience that they showed to the teachings of Pearl?  Social psychology has wisdom to offer.  As Philip Zimbardo phrased it, how many people would "electrocute someone if Hitler asked them to do it?"

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An Addendum Note About Lydia Schatz and the Correction She Suffered for a Mispronounced Word: Liberian Adoption and Reactive Attachment Disorder

“Whoever inquires about our childhood wants to know something about our soul. If the question is not just a rhetorical one and the questioner has the patience to listen, he will come to realize that we love with horror and hate with an inexplicable love whatever caused us our greatest pain and difficulty.”

Erika Burkart

In this previous post, I made note that, as was reported in the news media, Lydia Schatz collapsed while being punished (aka “Biblically chastised” in Pearlspeak) for mispronouncing a word. There has been some discussion online that eight year old Lydia was reading from a particular book and purposely mispronounced a word in what was understood as a willful act of defiance. According to Michael Pearl, every single time that a child misbehaves willfully, that child must be punished until they show [subjective signs] of repentance. I did not point out well enough that the family didn't necessarily use discipline for error (though this is sometimes this is the case in the way many people translate child training techniques). My overarching concern when I made my initial comment was motivated by a general concern that children disciplined with spanking in association with their schoolwork could make learning itself an unsafe experience.

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Why Good People Make Dangerous Choices (Pondering Pearl and Lydia Schatz) Part III: Defining Aggression as Normal, Acceptable, and Desired Behavior

Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz chose to follow the teachings of Michael Pearl, learning far too late that their duty to do follow Pearl's system in the right way, their trust in his system, and their loving intent proved quite inadequate, resulting in both serious disease in one child and death in another. In previous posts we discussed several factors that contribute to the perfect storm that causes good, normal, and trusting people to lose perspective, falling into dangerous and deadly patterns. “Moral disengagement” and “cultures of obedience” foster these evil consequences, but there are even more factors that contribute to the development of dangerous degrees of blind obedience.

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Why Good People Make Dangerous Choices (Pondering Pearl and Lydia Schatz) Part II: How Dehumanization (and Declaring War Against Family Members) Causes Moral Disengagement

How do good, kind, and loving Christian parents like Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz lose perspective to such an extent that they “find themselves” capable of inflicting harm on their children? I believe that these parents did effectively “find themselves” in such a position after trusting and following the child training methods of Michael Pearl, never expecting that his techniques would ever result in harm and death. What makes a person lose so much perspective so that they are no longer able to realize that they are creating harm and injury? Are regular people at risk for falling into the same kinds of errors? Surely that cannot happen to regular people... or can it?

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Why Good People Make Dangerous Choices (Pondering Pearl and Lydia Schatz) Part I: Virtue In Place of Unquestioned Obedience

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to hear John Bradshaw speak, and he is much different than the PBS guru that I remember. (The last time I heard him a few years ago, he said that when he did the PBS specials in the 1980s, he was dealing with repressed anger and that conveyed in his presentation.) In person and in recent years, I've found him to be engaging, deep, and loving, and I thoroughly loved his presentation. I'm also grateful for his new book, particularly the chapter entitled, “Were You There When Jesus Spanked the Children,” the subject of a upcoming post. In Reclaiming Virtue which discusses how we can foster moral intelligence and virtuous ethics, he notes that the religious beliefs of his past have recently become of greater significance to him and has found himself revisiting and reclaiming them. (Bradshaw was a well educated Catholic priest and had expert training in philosophy.) Read more about and from Reclaiming Virtue HERE.

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Why Good People Make Dangerous Choices (Pondering Pearl and Lydia Schatz): An Introduction

When considering the Schatz Family and the tragic events that occurred, we are faced with confusing dilemmas and difficult ideas. Along with the questions concerning the problem of evil, we often cannot fathom how good, decent, and loving Christians could have so blindly followed such a dangerous practice to such an extent. (For background on the story of Lydia Schatz, please link HERE.)

I would like present many reasons why people do choose certain practices and how they lose perspective, just like Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz did by following the teachings of Michael Pearl. They were loving and kind individuals who aspired to be the best examples of what Christianity represents, but their unfortunate choices and dedication to a misguided system of practices resulted in permanent disease and death among their children. They believed that the Pearl Method offered them the best and highest means of fulfilling their obligation as loving and dutiful parents in a way that would bring honor to God. '

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