Coercion warps knowledge structures

“If you acquire an idea in a way that does not solve a problem but exacerbates it, then you lose for the future all information about whether it is true or false, and thus have no means of improving it.”
– Sarah Fitz-Claridge

From the archives: Posted on 11th December, 1994

Kolya Wolf has pointed out that coercion warps the child’s knowledge structures. If one is gaining new pieces of knowledge and each one is slotting into an existing problem and solving it, then it will be ready for future improvement: when one finds that that solution is not sufficient and one needs to find an even better one, then psychologically one is in a situation of having a solution that was satisfactory, but now isn’t (in the light of a new development in one’s problem situation). Conversely, if one is in the situation in which the new ideas one is acquiring do not solve an existing problem but exacerbate it (which is the case when one is coerced) then there will be no way of telling that there is something wrong with this theory.

Kolya Wolf always says to young people applying for university places that it is vitally important that they study a subject they like, not for the reason one might think, but for this structural reason: that if they go into this next year expecting to dislike what is happening to them, they will have no way of knowing whether this was the right decision or not, because whatever happens, they’ll dislike it. It is only if one goes into a decision expecting to like it that one will ever find out if one is wrong.

Take the example of somebody who is trying to decide whether to try his luck as a rock star or to join the military. The theory that joining the military is good goes like this: you won’t like the military but it will give you a secure job and good pay. So you are going into it knowing you’ll dislike it, and if that was the wrong choice to make, you will have no way of knowing, for the rest of your life. There will be nothing to tell you whether you made the wrong decision. Whereas if you go into the music business, and it turns out to be unenjoyable, you can reconsider what you are doing. What will ever make you reconsider the military? That is a small example of what is true of all knowledge: if you acquire it in a way that does not solve a problem but exacerbates it, then you lose for the future, all information about whether that was true or false, and thus have no means of improving it.

David wrote:

“My almost-six-year old is well on the way to being able to reflect on his own behavior (except in moments of stress, when he falls back on habit). My four-year old is somewhere in between—in some ways, she seems more sophisticated than the almost-six-year old.”

You seem to be using obedience as a measure of rationality.

“Children seem to advance from a concrete stage that doesn’t recognize others as having competing desires or wills to an increasingly abstract stage capable of reflecting on their own behavior and their own cognitive processes. Most of rational discourse about behavior requires the products of later stages of mental development.”

It is true that language is an enormous help in solving problems together, but even in older children or adults, it is not the major component. Explicit reasoning always involves a large inexplicit component as well. In principle there is no reason not to be able to reach common preferences with young children. It is not always easy, but this does not dominate one’s life—or need not. And the more coercion one resorts to where there are problems, the more difficult one makes it for oneself later, because the children then won’t trust one not to override their wishes, so won’t bother to make the effort to create solutions to problems.

“Before children have acquired these products, reason seems to them like just another weapon that adults use to suppress the child’s will.”

That is probably true in your case, but simply because it is true in your case. It is just another weapon to suppress the child’s will; furthermore, by “reason” you mean ‘reasoning’ them into what you already ‘know’ is right.

“Now, what lesson do I draw from this? I think that non-coercion (largely in Sarah’s sense) is an ideal to be aimed at, and that any variation from that ideal requires careful consideration, but I don’t believe it is practical in all cases or at all times, or for all children.”

This “careful consideration” must be according to criteria that are not open to criticism, because otherwise, the fact that this child disagrees with these criteria would lead you to think that they can’t be satisfactory. This suggests that you are not actually considering it at all—that you already ‘know’ the answer.

I don’t think non-coercion is an ideal to be aimed for. That is a bit like saying that human rights is an ideal to be aimed for in the conduct of the police, because there will always be the odd rotten apple. There is a difference between countries where human rights is the basic rule by which the police operate, and countries where it isn’t the basic rule. There is a world of difference between countries where it is the basic rule but things go wrong for structural reasons, and countries where it isn’t the basic rule and the object of the police is to deprive people of their rights, and where they of course will say “human rights is a great ideal to aim for, but in particular cases we must give careful consideration to whether it is justified or practical or not.”

See also:

Sarah Fitz-Claridge, 1994, ‘Coercion warps knowledge structures’, https://takingchildrenseriously.com/coercion-warps-knowledge-structures