In Defense of Teasing
Today teasing has been all but banished from the lives of many children. In recent years, high-profile school shootings and teenage suicides have inspired a wave of “zero tolerance” movements in our schools. Accused teasers are now made to utter their teases in front of the class, under the stern eye of teachers. Children are given detention for sarcastic comments on the playground. Schools are decreed “teasing free.”
This is an unfortunate development, thinks Dacher Keltner, because teasing has many important social functions. That may be, but this piece is full of misconceptions and poor observations. For example, to say that teasing has been “all but banished from the lives of many children” only shows that the author hasn’t spent much time observing children. And, while he acknowledges the good intentions behind the attempt to deal with bullying, Keltner sings the praise of teasing and says it is all too often mistaken for bullying. In fact, the opposite is true. Determining what’s bullying and what’s harmless teasing is very, very hard, and adults are generally unable to judge accurately when it comes to children. Later on, we hear about nicknames:
Nicknames are relationship-specific placeholders. They allow us to escape to the world of play, where we mock in affectionate fashion and critique the powerful in safety.
Sadly, they also allow us to mock in a cruel fashion and critique the powerless from a position of social authority. The conclusion:
In seeking to protect our children from bullying and aggression, we risk depriving them of a most remarkable form of social exchange. In teasing, we learn to use our voices, bodies and faces, and to read those of others — the raw materials of emotional intelligence and the moral imagination. We learn the wisdom of laughing at ourselves, and not taking the self too seriously. We learn boundaries between danger and safety, right and wrong, friend and foe, male and female, what is serious and what is not. We transform the many conflicts of social living into entertaining dramas. No kidding.
Earlier, we’re told teasing is an important part of what makes us human. That particular line is much overused. Seems like every grand theme an author wants to cover is essential to our humanity. And then they go on to describe how the same traits are found in other animals. Go figure.
But anyway: this is an interesting and provocative read. But it’s not very wise. In detailing the constructive mechanisms of teasing and paying only lip service to those who point out the destructive effects, Keltner manages to make it look like we need less regulation of teasing and that it’s all but eliminated from the lives of many children. On both counts, the opposite is true. Maybe the last line (“No kidding”) is meant to be an illustration of the gentle tease, poking fun at the morally outraged and overprotective. Unfortunately, having lived through many years of actual bullying in my childhood, I’m not really in a position to appreciate it. Evolution or no evolution.
