“When parents try to look at things from the child’s perspective, try to think in terms of the possible reasons the child might have for wanting to do such-and-such—what problem she might be trying to solve—they stop finding all this ‘irrationality’ they currently see.”
– Sarah Fitz-Claridge
From the archives: First published in Taking Children Seriously 13, 1994
Coercion of children is often defended on the grounds that children are irrational and need to be protected from folly. Parents typically adduce certain things that their children have done, in support of this claim. Sometimes they don’t even bother to cite examples of real behaviour, instead merely asserting that children want to play with fire, try their parents’ medications, or run into the road in the path of an on-coming vehicle.
We do not accept that children are irrational. This is quite a difficult thing to argue about, because parents tend to think that their experience of their children confirms their view of children. The fact that Mrs A’s little Johnny ran in front of an on-coming car proves no more than the fact that Mrs B’s little Davey has never done so. Indeed, we think that this view of children as irrational (and thus the conventional treatment of children) itself has the effect of making children behave in these irrational ways.
Are children born rational? By rational, I mean specifically, that they are born with the ability to engage in learning behaviour—in a creative, evolutionary, rational process of problem-solving. A good illustration of the rational process at work may be found in the baby’s acquisition of language. This tiny being, who cannot know very much at birth, nevertheless acquires language. How?
In Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography, Karl Popper says1 of language-learning: “…the most astonishing thing is that this very early process is one of trial and critical error elimination, in which the critical error elimination plays an important role.” This rationality, this seeking answers to questions, this problem-solving ability, must be present in order for the evolution of the baby’s thought and language.
The baby, in effect, forms crude theories about language, refines them and refines them again, thus learning to communicate. In the absence of people to talk to, babies do not develop language, and do not even appear to develop much ability to think. That might be because such babies have no sources of error-correction, of criticism of their initially-crude theories. A vital part of the rational process of the growth of knowledge is theory criticism. If there is no means of criticism, or if criticism is somehow forbidden, the rational process is sabotaged, and potential growth of knowledge is lost.
To argue that a five-year-old is irrational, given the above definition of rationality, it is necessary to show that this child is not engaged in the rational process. Assuming the child has developed language, that will not be easy.
So here we have a five-year-old child, who is engaged in this learning process, but who lacks knowledge. Obviously if we do not explain to our child about cars and momentum, and speed and so on she may well run into the road. That is not a matter of irrationality; it is merely a matter of lacking knowledge. But because there is usually an assumption on the part of parents that a child is bound to act irrationally, parents invariably interpret every apparently stupid thing their children do as evidence of irrationality, instead of thinking about whether the child was acting in the absence of knowledge.
Because parents are so quick to conclude that their children need to be protected from their own folly, they don’t see what is really going on. They don’t see that if their children had known about cars and roads, of course they would not have done anything so stupid. Instead of thinking about how best to provide appropriate information for their children, they see the solution to all these sorts of problems as coercion. Rather than explaining the dangers, they yank the child out of the path of the car, smack her, and tell her not to do it again. Yes, many parents then go on to explain about cars, but by then damage may already have been done.
If parents could, instead, work from the assumption of rationality, they would see things differently. If they could think of their children as they might think of aliens landing here from a very different place (who therefore might do silly things purely because of their lack of knowledge about our way of life on Earth, not because of being stupid) parents would immediately start to see things in a different light. Behaviours that had previously seemed irrational would start to make sense.
If they could try to look at things from the child’s perspective, try to think in terms of the possible reasons the child might have for wanting to do such-and-such—what problem she might be trying to solve, or what theory he might be testing—they would stop finding all this ‘irrationality’ they currently see.
Notes
1. Karl Popper, 1974, 1992, 2002, Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography, 10. A Second Digression: Dogmatic And Critical Thinking; Learning Without Induction, p. 52
See also:
- “How do you tell pre-verbal children about dangers given that they do not understand explanations?”
- What sort of conflict is coercion?
- “What if they bring home objectionable literature?!”
Sarah Fitz-Claridge, 1994, ‘Children are not irrational’, Taking Children Seriously 13, ISSN 1351-5381, p. 4, https://takingchildrenseriously.com/children-are-not-irrational