The evolution of culture
How anti-rational memes sabotage culture, education and the Enlightenment.
error correction
What Taking Children Seriously means to me—the freedom to make mistakes
Having the freedom to learn from our mistakes is important for children too, not just us. Recalling coercive interference from our own childhood can spur us on to keep taking our children seriously as best we can.
Free to learn: the immorality of compulsory schools
The school system isn’t wrong in the sense that it’s further from the truth than Karl Popper. It’s wrong like the Catholic Church was wrong in refusing to accept Galileo’s heliocentrism and in locking him up so as to protect their worldview.
Don’t think for them
Our coercion of our children boils down to thinking for them, and expecting our children to follow our instructions. But children can think for themselves.
Criticism scheduling and privacy
Unwanted criticism can cripple thinking, destroying the means of error correction and the growth of knowledge.
“Surely it is cruel to force people to live with the consequences of the ideas and preferences they had when they were children?”
If, when you were five, your parents had told you that you would thank them later for the coercive education to which they were subjecting you, would you have believed them or not? And what would have made you think that they were lying to you?
“What is the psychological impact of not taking children seriously?”
Whatever might happen in the future, it will still not have been right to behave immorally today.
“Are you advocating that the children should rule the parents?!”
Life does not have to involve either ruling or being ruled. Instead, we can stand side by side with no one ruling, all of us free to be in control of our own life, solving problems individually and jointly, and having fun doing so.
“What about instilling values like freedom, fallibilism and the idea of taking children seriously?”
We may subscribe to the values of rationality and taking children seriously, but when it comes to detail, we may well be mistaken about particular aspects of it. So instilling anything, including those ideas we most value, is a mistake. We want our ideas to be corrected. We want our children to be able to correct our errors, not be saddled with them.
“How can I drop the anti-rational part of my mind that interferes with me taking my children seriously?”
When you struggle against or take a coercive approach with another person, the natural response of that person is to defend their corner and fight back. The same happens inside our own minds. When you are fighting a part of your own mind, that causes the part you are trying to stamp out to dig in, to entrench itself, to defend its corner more vigorously.
“How can I become more aware of anti-rational parts in my mind?”
Drop the second guessing and scrutinising and judging. It is as toxic for us as that kind of thing is for our children. If you are not feeling free—free to think, free to be and free to act in accordance with your own ideas, your thinking flying free as a bird—it might be that you are seizing up your thinking with scrutiny and judgement, objectifying yourself as a parent.
“If antirational memes are compelling me to coerce my children, what hope is there?!”
There is every reason for hope! And the fact that we have noticed that coercing our children is problematic is progress compared to how things were in the static society of the past. (And hey, maybe the fact that coercionists these days seem to feel more need to justify their advocacy of coercion is itself progress?)
“Why does it sometimes hurt to think about Taking Children Seriously?”
Life can be messy for all of us. Sometimes when we try to make improvements, part of our mind panics, and that can hurt.
“What if…?” questions revisited
Losing sight of others’ good intentions is a mistake. Reacting badly, as if truth is obvious and we ourselves are in possession of it, tends to be coercive.
“Who am I to criticise someone else?”
Not all criticism of other people’s ideas is good. Indeed some of it actually interferes with the person’s own criticism in their own mind. Wanted criticism is valuable. Unwanted criticism can be coercive and destructive of knowledge-creating processes that are happening.
“How do you intervene noncoercively when one child is attacking another?”
Meet the aggressor where she is, without resistance, as opposed to disapproving from above; see it from her PoV; what was this about?; what led up to this? How can we proceed positively from here?
“Is it necessary to reject authority?”
Knowledge is conjectural, and we are all fallible. When everything is open to question and we do not hold anything or anyone as an authority, we are free to correct errors that otherwise would have kept us stuck and miserable. Yay!
“What do you have against coercion?”
Coercion impedes progress by impairing error-correcting processes. “The right of the parent over his child lies either in his superior strength or his superior reason. If in his strength, we have only to apply this right universally, in order to drive all morality out of the world. If in his reason, in that reason let him confide.”
“What is Taking Children Seriously?”
Taking Children Seriously is a new VIEW of children—a non-paternalistic view: like other groups of human beings, children are people, not pets, prisoners or property. Full people whose lives are their own, not a different kind of person – full, equal humans who should no more be coerced and manipulated and moulded and shaped by others than we adults should be.
Taking Children Seriously: a new view of children
Taking Children Seriously is a new VIEW of children—a non-paternalistic view: children do not actually need to be controlled for their own good. An Oxford Karl Popper Society talk.
Is Taking Children Seriously revolutionary?
Taking Children Seriously is neither utopian nor revolutionary. It is fallibilist and respects tradition as well as the growth of knowledge.
Creativity and untidiness
David Deutsch explains why he says that he could not be very productive without also being untidy.
Karl Popper on the growth of knowledge
Understanding that knowledge grows through creative conjecture and inner criticism facilitates non-coercive interactions.
Why giving children rules and boundaries is a mistake
Children are not born knowing the truth, so we should tell children our best theories, explain why we advocate certain forms of behaviour and not others, and try to persuade them through reason of the truth of our own ideas, but not coerce, manipulate or in any way pressurise them into enacting our theories. For our theories may be false: even becoming a parent does not confer infallibility upon us!