History of VET in Europe

This Section further discusses the fishers’ perspectives of violence among their children as they relate with them in the community. The fishers argue that children without strong identification with their parents are more likely to display violent behaviour in the community and elsewhere. The fishers also suggested that putting their children through child labour is a meaningful and creative way of dealing with aggressiveness and violence in children in the community. The following are some of the comments the fishers made,

Atta Soldier

………Because we see our children as naturally violent and aggressive, we are worried that they might create problems for us when they go out.

You see as a parent you need to always find something meaningful like our fishing work for the child to do instead of wasting his strength on anything useless like fighting others in the street….

3‘dream of turning white’ (that is, the wish to attain the level of humanity accorded to whites in racist/colonial contexts) as it comes into conflict with one’s being in a black body, and in a racist society, which make this wish impossible (Hook,, 2004a, p. 117).

Atule Aban

…..I always ensure that my children are around me because I want them to know that I am their only hope. So they must identify with me all the time. This is my way of checking on them not to be violent or aggressive. I channel their aggressiveness to better use. I need workforce. So I direct their violence into something meaningful. You might call that child labour……

Maame Adjoa Dede

Children see being violence as very normal way of life. My children need me to be there to suppress that part of them. So that they become well behaved. I need to be there to ensure that their violent or aggressive nature is put into a good use like fishing….this is in order with the way of life of the community….

These comments suggest that the fishers in the community viewed humans as violent species (Freud, 1930). The fishers’ comments reinforce Freud’s (1930, p. 85) argument that “men are not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love”. Freud believes that men are rather animals who have ‘a powerful measure of desire for aggression that has to be reckoned as part of their instinctual endowment’. Therefore, for the fishers, communal life for the individual constituent elements of humanity requires a deep, ‘intentional restriction of many natural tendencies’ (Freud, 1930, p. 86). Freud argues that the failure to do so is the only true existential element society consistently faces.

For the fishers, children need to be attended to as a way of ensuring that “their violent or aggressive nature is put into a good use like fishing”. This bespeaks of Sigmund Freud’s idea of sublimation. By this, I mean a situation in which socially unacceptable behaviour are unconsciously transformed into socially acceptable actions (Freud, 1930). This, according to Sigmund Freud, might possibly lead to a long-term conversion of the initial impulses or behaviours. I choose to call this Violence Transmutation. By violence transmutation, I mean the attempt by the fishers to transform violence or aggressive impulses of their children into creative energy. In other words, it takes the energy of something that is potentially harmful and turns it into something useful. Like Freud, the fishers believe that this process of sublimation is a sign of “civilisation” which allows the children to function “normally” in culturally acceptable ways.

The following are added evidence derived from the fishers’ comments;

Mina Akua Komfo

…..As a parent you need to help your children to develop a good conscience and integrity by helping them to supress their bad ways before they go out there to create bad name for the whole family. Charity begins at home….. My only problem is in my house my children can’t exhibit those aggressiveness. But they will do when they go out there into the community. This is because out there it is accepted for them to misbehave…

Esi Tawiah

…Children need everyday control and surveillance because of their destructive nature. You need to always let them know how bad it is for them to behave in certain unacceptable ways. So, that they will not try such things at all. As a parent make sure that your children feel bad for whatever undesirable acts of violence and aggressive acts they engage in……these are natural with children. So parents need to help them to control that…if not the children can destroy themselves with their own aggressiveness…

These comments resonate with Sigmund Freud’s (1930) argument that humans develop a conscience, or what he calls “super-ego” as a result of repression. The fishers’ comments suggest that they believe in ensuring that their children know the difference between acceptable and unacceptable behaviours. The children are made to understand that violence or aggressive behaviours are not desirable. So the children must ‘repress’ that.

The comments suggest that fishers’ as parents believe that children have a natural urge to be violent or aggressive as already stated. Be that as it may, when a fisher as parent says

“NO” to his or her child for exhibiting any act of violence or aggressiveness, the child represses his or her natural urges toward aggression and destruction. Thus, according to Freud, through what he calls “civilisation,” in the form of parental repression, thwarts the natural instincts common to the children to be violent or aggressive. Freud further argues that these are turned inwards toward the self and become ‘bad conscience’. This makes us feel bad about doing those things we are told not to do as we grow up (Freud, 1930).

These also illustrate Sigmund Freud’s (1930) argument that aggressive energy could build up and produce illness unless released, ideally in acceptable behaviour. For instance the fisher woman, Esi Tawiah’s comment that ….if not the children can destroy themselves with their own aggressiveness… lends support to Freud’s argument.

The fisher woman, Mina Akua Komfo’s comment that But they will do when they go out there into the community…. suggests how the “restraints of civilisation could be loosened allowing aggressive and violence instincts to turn outwards” against others in the community (Freud, 1930, p. 225). The comment suggests that the “external environment”

of the child other than his or her home (Mother and father) could be permissive of violence or aggressiveness. In such a situation children of the fishers no longer turn the aggressive instincts toward themselves in the form of a bad conscience, they turn them loose on others in the form of rage and violent actions. The fisher’s comment suggests that their children’s natural urges to be aggressive and violent could only be repressed when they are home with their parents. It also suggests that the children have their way when they are out of their homes or out of the sight or control of their parents.

Furthermore, some comments from the fishers during a focus group discussion (8^rd July, 2014) suggest how children in the community are violently put under surveillance or control by their parents, so that no child can run away from work and be engaging in fights on the street. Esi Bortey puts this way: the government through the police is always watching me just like the way I am always watching my children. On the other hand, one of the fishers (Akua Tom Brown) puts it this way, “sometimes some of the fishers over control and monitor their children. So such children end up becoming kuborlos (street child) and stubborn the more. This brings to mind Freud’s (1930) argument that there is no need for the creation of a restrictive surveillance system through merely the ability to suppress the destructive urges of humankind. Freud argues that there is the need to find a method of successfully stimulating the super-ego while suppressing the id, perhaps through a careful balancing act against the ego - the id’s rampant desires are too dangerous to leave unrestricted and unregulated. This, however, must be done in a manner so as to avoid the overstimulation of guilt and abuse, and of other control structures, that may trigger revolt, a definitively unwanted, counterproductive, latent behaviours (Freud, 1930).

The next section explores how the fishers’ feel about laws surrounding children.