"... it is apparent to anyone who has taught others that the teacher learns more than the students do. Teaching is a much better way to learn than being taught. Schools are upside down. Students ought to be teaching ..."

That's a great quote, and so true! Unfortunately the site doesn't seem to work. Can you paste the pdf here for me perhaps?

I think your son is right about punishment even though you never taught him that, in the sense that punishment has been encoded in all cultures and religions I know of, so it's no wonder it somehow came to him anyway! Education by praise alone is a quite modern invention borne perhaps by certain politically correct sensitivities. But even in this culture, turn on the TV to watch any new movie, and you'll see people punishing other people with violence, even in shows and movies that are not based around action, like rom-coms. One could say that punishment "is in our blood".

You can't really remove punishment, it will just take other, sneakier, forms. For example a student will sit at the cafeteria with other students and gloat about how much praise she received from the teacher today, thus making the other students feel pangs of pain inside them, which was exactly her intention. We'll always prefer some thing to some other thing, which means we'll always compare, which means we'll always hurt someone, so punishment of some form is inescapable, even if we get rid of the physical violence, we will adapt so that psychological violence will hurt just as much, just as very white skin reddens against a mildly strong sun.

But you kinda answer this in the 'What children want is not praise, but encouragement.' section, which I like.

In reference to the title, I'll ask: from a system's perspective, why would you want to solve any problem (whether it is by treating an acknowledged problem, or deflating it by saying it's not a problem)? For example you say "From a systemic point of view, a super-construction already prevails, namely the view, generally perceived as valid, that "people from different cultures inevitably come into conflict"." But wanting to bring peace to a situation is also a construction, right? Why do you have that desire? Why do you believe that peace and order is good and violence and chaos is bad? Why do you want to help that child? I think the answer is: because there's always the threat of violence looming. If the child's behavior becomes worse and worse, she'll end up in jail or something worse. If, on the other hand, the child was a king like Nero or something, she could act any way she wants with impunity. The only reason you want to "help" and instill order is because there is the possible threat of violence or something very negative associated with the future of this situation. At the end of the day we respond to negative and positive reinforcement like dogs, and the systems approach is no different I guess since its goals are also shaped by those twin forces.

"Basically, it is not so important which concrete example you choose, it is mainly to irritate the children and to arouse their interest with surprising questions - this I understand as an aesthetic approach."

It can also be seen as manipulation by someone who's smarter! It's a form of violence, in a way! :P To put this discussion a little bit into the determinism arena, at the end of the day we are all atoms. And atoms behave, let's say, more or less like billiard balls. And if you want to move a billiard ball, you have to hit it. In humans, we can also use persuasion, manipulation, etc. But it's just one billiard ball wanting to move another billiard ball. You are invading a person's space, in a way. You are doing something the other person does not already want to be done to him. The wanting comes only later. And, in this sense, it's a "violation". The "wanting coming later" is like the encouragement point you made, which comes before (whereas praise comes after, it's too late in the game). Similarly, as a billiard ball that wants to influence another billiard ball deterministically, the force and desire exists only in you, not in the other billiard ball (if it existed in the other ball, it would have already moved). So you use whatever method you choose to make the world change in the way you want, to make the push (by using violence, manipulation, persuasion, whatever). It always comes before, without permission, in the space where permission was not even possible, so in that very basic sense it's always a form of violence, and the child will only later be thankful for it (like being forced to learn mathematics, a foreign language, his own language, etc.) If we take the example of a "permission" that is often talked about: the permission a woman grants a man to have sex together, the feminist "yes". But if you go back, before that yes, you must, ultimately, arrive at a point where the "yes" was not possible. So, for example, in order to get that "yes", the man had to be polite, let's say. When did the woman exactly choose to accept politeness as something desirable for her? Or he has to wear nice clothes. When exactly did the woman decide that good clothes = "yes"? At the end of the day, we have a society enforcing values upon people through mass brainwashing. The first things that shape us are not chosen, they are forced upon us. And if a person discovers that some of those forcings are negative (for instance, the magazines that promote a certain view of how women or men should look like), then good luck trying to change people's opinions and "yes-es" about it!

I like what you did by taking just a single pic and making variations of it that express the post's developing thread! It's creative, like many of your thoughts. You made a lot of good points, as usual. My favorite and perhaps funniest section was where you pointed out how adults would not sign a contract in real life, how it would make them feel, and how it makes the girl stand out in a negative way.