“Taking Children Seriously is not defined by noncoercion; noncoercion is not the point of taking children seriously, or axiomatic in it, it emerges from taking people seriously, which is informed by human fallibility and creativity and how knowledge grows.”
– Sarah Fitz-Claridge
From the archives: This was the second ever post on the email-based group discussion forum we called ‘the Taking Children Seriously list’. This welcome to the list was posted on 22nd November, 1994
[This old post is for historical interest only.]
Welcome to the “Taking Children Seriously” list!
My name is Sarah [Fitz-Claridge], and I edit and publish the paper magazine: Taking Children Seriously, whose aim is to act as a forum for considered discussions of issues which affect children. Our particular interest is in non-coercive education, and the sorts of questions we ask are:
- How does knowledge grow and how do children learn?
- How can we improve our relationships with our children?
- Should children have the same rights as other people or not? And why?
- What is wrong with the ways children are conventionally raised and educated? How can we improve upon this?
Taking Children Seriously, the magazine, is published only bi-monthly. Conversely the Taking Children Seriously list will provide an immediate forum for discussion, addressing issues as they arise in people’s minds. Thus it may solve practical and theoretical problems, creating real growth in our knowledge. I hope that it will bring together from all over the world individuals interested in thinking deeply about these issues. Finally, I hope that through these discussions, the list may provide support for those of us engaged in non-coercive education.
To get things started, here follows an editorial piece which will appear in Taking Children Seriously on December 1st, 1994. Your criticisms would be much appreciated.
(Note: the term “unschoolers”, coined by John Holt, refers to home educators who advocate non-coercive education, though sometimes defining “coercion” and “education” rather narrowly.)
The Meaning of “Coercion”
Unschoolers disavow “educational coercion”, and reject many conventional educational practices such as making children study mathematics text books. However, there is disagreement in the unschooling community about what is meant by “coercion”.
All unschoolers take the view that coercion is inimical to learning, but many define “education” very narrowly, and see no problem with, for instance, making their children clean their teeth regularly, or censoring their children’s television viewing (if they allow television viewing at all, that is). Furthermore, some unschoolers say that whilst they would not dream of making their children study any given subject, they nevertheless believe that there are some things whose value one cannot persuade children of but which are nevertheless essential to their future well-being. They agonise about how best to cause their children to learn these things, while still avoiding “coercive” teaching. We would describe all such unschoolers as coercive. Moreover, given the conflict inherent in their position, we think it likely that they will not be able to avoid coercion even in the narrow areas they define as “education”.
Statements of this kind tend to be taken as unwarranted personal insults. We do not mean them that way and we shall talk more about this in forthcoming issues of Taking Children Seriously. We start here, by explaining what we mean by coercion. …
There is not the space here to give a rigorous definition, so let us just define this informally.
If you are “behaving non-coercively towards a child”, we take it that the child is allowed to behave as he thinks best, not only without being punished (physically or psychologically) but without having any sanction imposed upon him whatsoever. So, for instance, we would describe every one of the following reactions as coercive: striking him, ordering him to do something boring or hateful to him, confiscating his property, scolding him, ignoring him, leaving the room, making him go to his room, giving him “time-outs”, making sad faces at him, withdrawing affection, withholding money, sweets, toys, or other “privileges” or expected items, or threatening to do any of these things. Telling him or letting him know in more subtle ways that he has disappointed or annoyed you is coercive if he is even remotely distressed by this. Physically restraining him is coercive if it depends on your being stronger than he is, or if it lasts longer than the instant required to give a warning—“that’s hot!”—of something he would want to be warned of. Furthermore, if you are a non-coercive parent, we would assume that your child can rely on you to help him to do what he wants to do (or to avoid doing what he doesn’t want to do) to the best of your ability.
Most parents, including unschoolers, disagree with us about whether refraining from coercion is right. They say that coercion, as we have just defined it, is natural, desirable and unavoidable, because unless children are treated in some of these ways some of the time, disaster will result. The sort of “evidence” they cite typically includes: children need to be trained to clean their teeth regularly because otherwise they will lose them in later life; children might cause long-term damage to their health unless they are encouraged to eat a healthy diet and avoid sweets; children need to be protected from unsuitable material on television; if I didn’t stop him, he’d do nothing but play video games all day; if my child runs into the road, I’ll hit him first and ask questions later, and I see nothing wrong in that, do you?; if he doesn’t go to bed now he’ll be tired all day tomorrow; children are inconsiderate and unreasonable, but with loving discipline, they can be trained to behave appropriately; it never did ME any harm.
We do not agree that any of these examples are evidence that coercion is necessary. But we are not interested in arguing about words. If unschoolers want to retain the word “coercion” to denote some narrower range of behaviours, then let them tell us what word to use for the things we want to avoid doing, and we shall use that word when discussing it with them. We could then agree that most unschoolers would not be coercive (in their sense). We too would not be coercive in their sense, but we would also refrain from a further range of things which they would do.
Again, when we say we “would” do none of them, we mean we intend not to. We try to work towards not doing so. We do not believe that children ever deserve or need coercion. We believe that every act of coercion on our part is not evidence of the children’s need or wickedness, but merely of a fault—a hang-up or irrationality—in our own psychological makeup. Such faults are to be expected, and we are not insulted by being accused of having one. Nor are we suffused with guilt, for it is no part of our scheme of things to believe or pretend that we are perfect. Like Karl Popper, we believe that error is inevitable in every human undertaking, but also that every particular error is in principle correctable. So we are keen to locate such irrationalities in ourselves and try to resolve them.
We think that most unschoolers are ambivalent about coercion. We stress that we refer to coercion in our sense of the word: they may not be ambivalent about coercion in their sense of the word, but they are ambivalent about whether to refrain utterly from making the child do things against his will, and to help him with things he does want to do. We are not saying this to make anyone feel guilty or anything. All of us have conflicts of this type: non-coercive education is difficult.
See also:
- How did Taking Children Seriously start?
- Consistent rules set in concrete or children thinking for themselves with parents available to advise
- Coercion prevents problems being solved
Sarah Fitz-Claridge, 1994, ‘Welcome to the Taking Children Seriously list!’, https://takingchildrenseriously.com/welcome-to-the-taking-children-seriously-list