Nelle scuole italiche, come alternativa alla tanto paventata “ora di legalità”, si potrebbe proporre l’ “ora di illegalità”: il contenuto edificante è assicurato, soprattutto alle elementari.
A volte - lo avete notato anche voi? - i paesaggi “deturpati” dagli imbrattatori sono più creativi di quelli “deturpati” dalle ordinanze.
Fatevi solo una domanda: Italia, addì, anno del Signore 2012… è più civile infrangere una legge o promulgarla?
Today my guess is that making laws is on average worse than breaking them…
Vediamo ora, dopo aver predicato, come razzoliamo. Dilemma: per educare la bimba, meglio nascondere o ostentare la presenza in macchina di un segnalatore-autovelox?
… my colleague Alan Stockman faced this dilemma when his oldest daughter Gwendolyn turned three and curious.
Alan opted for the hide-the-detector strategy, lest Gwendolyn get the idea that all rules are made to be broken.The truth, of course, is that some rules are made to be broken and others are not, but philosophers as subtle as Saint Thomas Aquinas have grappled with the question of where to draw the line.For Aquinas the key criterion was conformity with natural law, which is all well and good for a
sophisticated adult, but Alan didn’t think his three-year-old was quite prepared to grasp the concept of a natural speed limit.
So to maintain his daughter’s respect for the rule of law, Alan lived without a radar detector for a few years. There would be time enough, as Gwendolyn grew older, to show her that between black and white there are many shades of gray.
I told Alan he had the analysis half right and half wrong. The part he had right was this: It’s true that a very young child is likely to be confused if you tell her that some laws are bad while others are good. But it’s wrong to conclude, as Alan did, that very young children should be allowed to
believe that all laws are good.My own inclination is to go the opposite route, by teaching the very young that all laws
are bad. As those children grow older and more sophisticated, they can be gradually introduced to the advanced Aquinean concept that some laws are actually just.
You walk a thin line with these things. I do want my daughter to know that policemen are good, in the sense that if you are lost they will help you find your way home. But I also want her to know that policemen are bad, in the sense that they enforce a lot of bad laws. I’ve talked to her
about this paradox, and she has no trouble grasping it.
