Protected or Sheltered?

What’s the difference between protected and sheltered? I got to thinking about that recently, in part because of some observations of my own family, and in part because of overhearing a conversation at a social function. (I was hiding behind a potted plant and working out my escape route.)

Can someone, especially a child, be too sheltered? Oh yes indeed. Can a child be protected but not sheltered? I think that’s what parents who have been exposed to the world themselves want. An environment where the children grow up safe, but not innocent of the dangers and beauties of the Real World.

A man and a woman were discussing schools, and the man said that he’d considered sending his offspring to a private school, but he and his wife didn’t want the child to miss out on the “diversity and knowledge of the world” [his words] that the child would get in the public system. He didn’t want the child too sheltered. The woman made sympathetic noises, and agreed that exposure to diversity was a very important thing.

I managed to keep myself from leaping into the conversation. I survived public school, mostly, and that was back when the current definition of “diversity” wasn’t as strong. However, we had at least six very different cultural groups, at least half of whom were engaging in smouldering hostilities against each other at any given time. We nerds tended to lay low and concentrated on dodging the cross-fire (metaphorical.) The school didn’t have the “ideal” ethnic diversity that so many pundits and education specialists rhapsodize about, but there was a huge swath of socio-economic groups and cultures present.

We might have been “sheltered”, but some of us sure as heck weren’t protected. In an ideal setting, it would have been the other way around. We’d have all had the opportunity to learn about each other, to argue and discuss and sample other people’s cultures, without the risk of getting beaten up or having a car keyed, or just being caught when a fight spilled out of one area and into another. I know, rainbows and unicorns, and some cultures just don’t play well with others.

Today we have kids who are so sheltered from any sense of what the rest of the world might be like that reality, or even different ideas, terrifies them. I’ve encountered students who were aghast at historical events and could barely come to grips that things like that had happened, and sometimes are still happening. Heck, I met college students who fought tooth-and-claw to remain in their sheltered mental world, and some succeeded. They are all diverse in the same way, thinking alike, but with different colored exteriors. Sort of the diversity one encounters in a bag of M&Ms.

I have a feeling that that’s what the couple mentioned above envisioned public schools to be. They’re right, in the sense that if the child went to one of the area’s private schools, the child wouldn’t be exposed to a lot of cultural and other conflicts. And some of the schools are mono-cultural in the religious sense. Many aren’t. There is more economic variety than one would suspect, and a lot of culture-of-origin variety. Occasionally enough that teachers have to gently intervene and explain to one or more parties that “What you think that means is not what it means here in the US. Please clarify exactly you want/need/intend to do.”

Several major media outlets appear determined to shelter people from reality by presenting their own take on things. It gets old, especially for those of us who have functioned outside the cocoon for a while. People take religion seriously. Those groups of young men who accost young women in various places in Europe are not merely curious about culture and language. China’s presence in Africa is not benign and sparse. The world is not peace, love, and gentle native peoples who only “do that” because they have been corrupted by the West.

Too much sheltering is leading to bad results, both for the sheltered people and for society at large. We need people who have been gradually educated about the rough edged and hard spots on the road to the future. Risk is needed, and stuff happens. When a tornado hits, or someone with too many angry voices in her head grabs a weapon and goes amok, society needs people who can deal with the event and the aftermath.

There’s a healthy balance between too-much shelter, and too much “we’re all going to dieeeeeeeeee!” Believe me, I know. I avoided the TV yesterday because just the prospect of an ice storm sets off all sorts of problems for me. I’m better than I used to be, but the broadcast quasi-panic of “You must prepare! We might lose power! Trees might fall!” triggers a full-blown adrenaline dump and flight-fight reaction. No one around me needs that, most especially me.

So, how sheltered should children be? How protected should they be? What is the balance between cotton wool all over and turning them loose in a den of predators? I don’t have a good answer, besides to say that it depends on the kid. I’ve heard stories about a student who was too sheltered even for private school. I’ve also encountered kids who’s adventures in public school made mine look like a Quaker meditative peace retreat.

I fear that, as a society, unless we shift back to protection over shelter, the predators are going to carve a large swath before the sheepdogs and shepherds can regain the field.

 

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