print“An anonymous sage said that ‘expectations tend to be self-fulfilling’: expect nothing and you’ll get nothing. In the United States, if kids so much as dial 911 in an emergency, they are decorated for bravery. Mitchell Hults, the boy who gave police the description of the perpetrator’s white truck, has been hailed as a hero by the sheriff and showered with awards and gifts. This, for merely reporting what he saw! If the consensus in society is that doing the bare minimum is an act of supreme courage; then failing to perform basic obligations must be considered the norm.
In The Constitution of Liberty, Friedrich A. Hayek insisted that ‘The assigning of responsibility is based, not on what we know to be true in a particular case, but on what we believe will be the probable effects of encouraging people to behave rationally and considerately.’ In other words, don’t fall for the tyranny of low expectations; let your teenagers know you expect them to behave rationally and considerately.”
The excerpt is from, “Hornbeck & the Tyranny of Low Expectations.”
Update: Considering the comments received, I should have called the column “Hornbeck & The Tyranny of No Expectations.”
Ilana,
Congratulations on having raised such a wonderful daughter. You are very blessed and as they say in my family, “daughters will take care of you as you get older.” (Grandma, 1970, Los Angeles, Ca.)
Is it possible that Shawn Hornbeck is a self-centered, low-brow kid and is STILL a victim? [Of course he is a victim. I said so here] He was eleven years old when he was abducted, and under this weirdo’s spell, became a blank, uncaring teen. Who knows what lies this weirdo said about his parents (they don’t care about you, they are uncool, etc…)
If Shawn is of the low-IQ, plastic baby bottle, poisoned vaccination generation, well, who could expect more?
Interesting article. But with every story of a child’s “heroism” there is also a story of people acting in despair. [Individual differences in human nature?! Gosh, what a concept!That does not mean we should accept the lowest common denominator] If you read up on the Holocaust, some children ended up beating their weak parents for a piece of bread. Others ran from them and did not help them survive the marches. This is because of they were no longer living in our humane world. Hopefully your daughter will not have to bear daily torture to test your theory she would let you know if she were captive. You seem to jump to Shawn being a teen-ager. His matuarity level stayed the same as when he was first terrorized. [Amazing how much you know–these are assumptions; hearsay taken as fact.] We can all feel better by saying, “my child wouldn’t do that”, but your child has also never been threatened with her life and the life of her family. [Again, all I said is that I know my girl would have e-mailed or called; she’d be too scared of my long reach not to. But obviously, according to the Tyranny of NO Expectations, even a call, when the abuser is away, is too much to expect] She hopefully has never experienced repeated rape.
I can’t believe you are slamming Shawn Hornbeck like you are. You have to take into account the age he was when he was abducted, his maturity level, his background, awareness, etc. etc. You’re making assumptions that he liked living there because he didn’t have to go to school [O’Reilly said that; not me]. Some kids like school! You’re making way too many assumptions when not all of the details have come out yet. Also, Steven Staynor was free to come and go as he pleased after a few years and he could’ve left much earlier than he did, but he didn’t until someone else was kidnapped. He was with his captor for seven years. Everyone says they would’ve done this or that in a situation, when the plain truth is that no one knows exactly what they would do until it happens to them! [All I was asking for is a phone call. Is that too much? Talk about the Tyranny of NO Expectations] And here’s another truth-we don’t know what our own kids will do either, no matter how much we tell them or train them. Don’t judge until it happens to you!
“Again, all I said is that I know my girl would have e-mailed or called; she’d be too scared of my long reach not to.”
Parents say this kind of thing all the time about their kids. “My kid would never steal” “My kid would never kill”. You believe your kid wouldn’t do these things, you don’t know. But I happend to agree that your kid most likely would have if you raise your daughter with the same values that your write about.
Your statements also illustrate that upbringing is essential to how people behave. Your daughter was raised in a way that makes you feel she would have acted more sensibly (in addition to her own natural temperament). With a different type of upbringing maybe Shawn would have clued in too (but none of us know his home situation – it seems every parent is ready to ball their eyes out on TV when their kid goes missing but are not prepared to instill values and good jugdement in them when they’re around).
But as I said in a previous post, I know personally that if at the age of 11, I was kidnapped and lived in a totally carefree situation of No Expectations and where all my immediate wants were fulfilled, I’d have basked in it. Any child that would consciously remove themselves from the situation at that age most likely would do so because they missed their parents, but not out of some heroic (inherent or taught) volition compelling them to do so. [Great, by extension, we can infer from what you say that, if we wish to avoid the Tyranny of No Expectations, it should not be considered wrong to point to Shawn’s obvious deficiencies, while still considering him a victim.]
Related aside: Just imagine what Ilana Mercer would be like today if she was born to illiterate parents with no access to books. Statisics suggest that you wouldn’t be penning brilliantly written articles today.
Ilana was clearly not raised by illiterates, but then, neither was Hornbeck. So, what?
As for the larger question, the modern left is all about determinism. No victim could have avoided victimization by acting more safely or reasonable. And the victimizers themselves are also victims of society, or poverty, or racism, etc., so that they, too don’t really bear any responsibility for anything. Crime isn’t a travesty, it’s a tragedy, to these people.
Ilana is saying phooey to all that, and I am with her. This kid was a victim of a crime AND he could have escaped easily. No matter whether he “really” had free will, or not, he should have either exercised it on his own behalf (assuming it exists), or he should have been programmed by his parents to act differently (assuming no free will). Either way, his performance in the actual thing was poor. Whose fault it is, I don’t really care.
The modern left says: don’t tell anyone they are “poor” at anything, not in Lake Woebegon!! We can’t be (gasp) judgmental! It might…. ohmigod…. hurt someone’s feelings!
Our son is 8 years old and can with supervision operate a backhoe, Bobcat, riding lawnmower, forklift, chainsaw, give directions to find our house, turn a double play, read the Bible and pronounce some of the hard words, ride a motorcycle, shovel snow, teach a dog how to bounce a basketball, tie 5 Boy Scout knots, knows most cuss words and not to use them, knows that tobacco, booze, and sunburns are bad for you, and can tell others about Jesus, even at school.
I don’t want to judge, but when I first saw the Hornbeck kid on the news I was wondering how he was able to keep his ears and lip pierced being so ultimately mistreated for all those years. Still, I in no way want to uphold the actions of his captor. But with all the news of contact with the outside world, WHY DID HE NOT DO SOMETHING TO LET HIS Parents KNOW HE WAS OKAY??
“Great, by extension, we can infer from what you say that, if we wish to avoid the Tyranny of No Expectations, it should not be considered wrong to point to Shawn’s obvious deficiencies, while still considering him a victim.”
Absolutely.
Hello, I just finished reading your latest piece: Hornbeck & The Tyranny Of Low Expectations. In a word, GREAT! I am 100% in agreement. I am not a mind reader but I’ll tell you this: Just looking at Hornbeck’s expressions and “reading” his eyes, (I know) this kid has something to hide.
Sorry to say I wouldn’t trust this kid further than throwing my home. I am not diminishing what he went through. But… as you state in your article, he did not try very hard to reach his parents!
Best Regards,
Dennis Richards
Man, this IS a tough one. Having a 13 years old daughter (my precious angel), I would be devastated if anything like that, God forbid, EVER hasppened to her.The truth of the matter is that there is obviously something very “fishy” in this story. This kid looks like he was out “camping” and it’s time to come home. As we all know, we live in a “PC” society, where one has to be extraordinarily carefull, not to hurt “someone’s feelings”. We are all just too sensitive and wimpy to deal with the truth. We have no clue as to how he was treated prior to his “abduction”. Furthermore, the kid looks in great shape and always smiling before the cameras. Who knows what REALLY took place.