Is teaching mutually exclusive with scaring?

 Lauren's dad asks of Lauren on page 65: "Don't talk about this (meaning the danger the community is in) anymore."

His rationale for this unfolds in the following pages. Lauren's dad believes that "it's better to teach people than to scare them," but the fact that he says this to Lauren means that he thinks all Lauren's done is scare Joanne. From Lauren's perspective we can clearly see this is false, though; Lauren's been speaking about what she believes to be true from what she has learned, and simply tried to break past Joanne's wall of denial. But clearly Lauren didn't chip all the way through, and Joanne then called on her parents to help her rebuild that wall. Nonetheless, what Lauren did was, to me, a raw form of teaching that her dad hasn't considered. Teaching people in this world without scaring them at all requires lying by omission and strengthening denial simply because of all the bad things happening.

Comments

  1. L. MoffittMay 7, 2021 at 7:31 AM

    It's kind of ironic that Lauren's father says this, because if anything, Lauren is being practical and reasonable rather than trying to scare people. While his words do make sense, he's almost twisting them to fit his purpose. And why can't you do both? Why can't you scare people into waking up and paying attention to what is being taught?

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