The complete set of 198 Hints are available in paperback from the CYC-Net Press store.
Listen
One of Janusz Korczak’s student helpers was finishing a group activity when two boys started to fight. The other children sat down to watch, and so did the helper. Later that night Korczak asked about the fight and the helper replied: "I didn’t stop them because I was as tired as the rest of the kids and was glad to sit down – and I knew the boys wouldn’t kill each other." Korczak approved, saying it was "best not to intervene as long as the children are evenly matched and they aren’t harming each other. Stopping it only forces children to continue it later in another place."
Sometimes we are tempted to overdo our ideas about protection and safety – either because we have utopian ambitions for our program, or because we are afraid of what the neighbours or media will think if they see what’s going on.
We will always protect the vulnerable – initially – because our aim is to build strengths and self-sufficiency in them; and our aim is not to go on protecting them. We betray children when we misrepresent the world they will live in, and more so when we turn them, innocent and unprepared, into the realities of that world.
Childhood fisticuffs and a bloodied nose will prove to be the least of their hurts as they grow through life, and seldom will a man with a badge step in on their side when they hit rough waters. Better that they learn this now while we’re there to debrief and reflect with them – and to offer what Redl might have included in his idea of "umpiring services"!
