In the bible, both Old and New Testaments, it is axiomatic that a child is a gift from the Lord: “For it was you who created my being, knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139); “Truly children are a gift from the Lord, a blessing, the fruit of the womb” (Psalm 127), and the child is often the image of our trust in God’s goodness: “As a child has rest in its mother’s arms, even so my soul” (Psalm 131).
All the biblical stories regarding children are uplifting, if sometimes a bit unsettling. Think of the Matriarch Sarah, wife of Abraham. She struggled for years to have children, and eventually gave birth at the untimely age of 90 to Isaac (Genesis 21), and then Abraham nearly killed the boy before the angel intervened (Gen: 22)! Touch and go, yet the message was always the same: the importance of human life, especially of defenceless children; not to be sacrificed to any “god” – which was common in neighbouring societies, and was even practised in Israel, according to some of the prophets. Abhorrence at child abuse is not a recent principle or stance.
At any rate, the bible is full of charming stories of childbirth: think of Moses, hidden by his mother in the wicker-basket to evade the murderous machinations of the pharaoh’s decree of infanticide (Exodus 2), or the very touching tale of the birth of Samuel which ended the anguish of his long-barren mother, Hannah (I Samuel 1). In the gospels we have the charming story of the parents bringing their children to Jesus so that he could lay his hands on them and the punctilious disciples trying to prevent them. Whereon the Lord uttered the immortal words: “let the children come unto me; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt: 19:14). From the biblical, with its stress on the value of human life, let us move to the literary, with its celebration of the magic of childhood.
To paraphrase the opening line of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: It is a truth universally acknowledged: that childhood is a time of magic. Youngsters are intuitively innocent, inquisitive, adventurous. They are always seeking, always asking, they know no limits. They are innocently awake to the unimaginable, to the more-than-natural. It is easy to envisage the squeals of innocent childish delight as Lewis Carroll told the story of Alice in Wonderland to the Liddell sisters: Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole and the many humorous, fantastical, utterly entertaining adventures that were to follow. What child, or indeed adult, could not find hilarious the foibles of Mr. Toad & Co in The Wind in the Willows?
Witness the famous editorial in The New York Sun (1897) entitled “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus”. This was a reply to a certain Virginia O’Hanlon, a child who had sadly told her father that her schoolmates were maintaining that there was no such thing as Santa. He wisely advised her to write to the editor of The New York Sun, and thus was promulgated the immortal reply. It begins: “VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age.” Hopefully, encouraged by that editorial, Virginia reclaimed her innocent joy and excitement as she awaited Christmas morning in order to discover what Santa had left for her. That sort of entirely natural thrill and anticipation won’t last forever, but will become a treasure trove of memories to warm the heart years later among the more sombre and serious times of adulthood.
And yet, unavoidably there are scars on our human journey, as we move from the innocent halcyon days of our childhood, to the more serious, sober times of our adulthood, when we begin to become responsible, serious, sophisticated. Yes, I doubt that any childhood is entirely free of the distressing or disturbing; whether it’s due to unkind family circumstances (e.g., poverty, violence, addiction, etc.), or personal temperament. For example, when I was a child, I was afraid of the dark, worried that there might be a bogey man under the bed. So I’d put a wedge between the door and the frame, so that a sliver of light might shine into the darkness. This helped to assuage my fears and I slept soundly. And within a few years I had left that childish fear behind me, realising that, as St. Paul says, ‘We know that there are no idols, but just the true God’ (I Cor 8:4).
I also remember an occasion which I found most unsettling, though it was of short duration and left no lasting psychic scar. In 3rd class, the dentist visited the school and I needed an extraction, which was scheduled for the next day in a local clinic. I’ll never forget the momentary panic I felt as the rubber mouth covering was applied and I inhaled the gas that was to knock me out. Thankfully the science of anaesthetics has made great progress since then.
These minor unpleasantries come to mind when I think about the effects our current insanity will have on the children – some effects, in fact, having already occurred: infants in creche being forced to wear a mask, or special-needs children being forcibly masked, without even the awareness of their parents, let alone their consent. This is most disturbing, and if we lived in anything like an honest society, surely there would be very serious questions asked about such behaviour. But we live in a society where the elite call the shots and where there is next-to-zero accountability.
What are the likely long-term consequences on the children of these disastrous policies? Nobody has any clear idea, though child psychologists may be able to make some conjectures. I also offer a few prognostications, all pretty dour, seeing that we’re living in a dismal society, heading in the long term for disaster for the next generations. I mean, wearing a mask for hours on end in school may not have any immediate negative effects on the pupils (though I would argue otherwise), but what consequences might it engender later on?
I cycle past the primary school and I see the children racing and jumping about in the yard, with their usual carefree glee; then I see the masked teacher! Could anything be more preposterous? I presume the teachers are following union rules. But the children are so happy-go-lucky, not a worry in the world – what a breath of fresh air. Yet what does the fact of their teacher being masked have on them? What consequences? That young age is very impressionable. What subliminal messages will be communicated? That life is inherently dangerous? That one should always be wary, suspicious? How calamitous!
What might be some of the consequences on the children of our current enforced lunacy? School windows open in the middle of winter, teachers in the classroom and school yard with half their faces covered, secondary school students having the mask on? I don’t know, but I genuinely cannot think of one positive effect of this kind of carry-on. But I can certainly speculate as to some negative results. Masks, after all, are symbols of fear; you wouldn’t wear one if you weren’t afraid of something or other.
1. Instead of being relaxed and carefree, people become nervous, anxious, uneasy. A certain exhilaration, natural to living in this beautiful world, is being replaced by an atmosphere of fear.
2. A consequent suspicion of school mates and neighbours, because who knows, that perfectly healthy individual approaching me may actually be the carrier of a terrible, contagious disease. People who are naturally gregarious and outgoing may morph into a species which is neurotically doubtful, and scared of their neighbour. This is one of the most insidious pathologies of this “pandemic”: exchanging people’s natural sense of trust in the goodness of life with a psychotic sense of miserable menace lurking everywhere.
3. What may happen regarding children’s trust in authority figures, especially parents and teachers? As children, of course, they respect and maybe revere these figures, seeing them as sources of knowledge and wisdom. But what might happen years later when the now young adult begins to wonder: why was mother or father wearing a mask as they brought me to school? Was it normal behaviour? And what about my teacher, wearing a mask in all weathers, both inside the classroom and in the yard? I’m betting that at least some of these people will begin to question or doubt the reliability of these “authority figures”, and this will lead to further fragmentation & breakdown.