Misconceptions about Taking Children Seriously
Misconceptions about Taking Children Seriously
knowledge is always conjectural
“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!
How to read this site
Ultimately, we all (including our children!) have to do what we ourselves think best, what feels right to us ourselves, not what someone else says is right. We are all moral agents in our own right. When we self-coercively override our own wisdom and do what someone else thinks we should be doing, we are acting wrongly by our own lights. No good can come of that. Treat this site as a source of speculative guesses and interesting arguments, not as an authority you should obey.
What Taking Children Seriously is, and what it is not
A 2001 take on taking children seriously.
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.
Rousseau’s Julie and brushing over differences
Why it might sometimes be better not to brush over differences.
Clarifying Karl Popper’s epistemology
Karl Popper’s theory prevails because it solves problems other theories of the growth of knowledge fail to solve, it is a better explanation than its rivals, and it unifies ideas previously thought to be unconnected.
Coercion is irrational
How (logically) coercion interferes with creativity in the mind.
Children’s welfare secondary to a dogmatic ideology?
What if our whole policy of maximising our children’s welfare is mistaken? We parents cannot maximise our children’s welfare without modifying our ideas and practices when they seem mistaken.
No dogmatism here
Ideas of what constitutes taking children seriously are open to criticism and revision in the light of new knowledge. I am under no illusion that my ideas are The Final Truth.
People are fallible statement-generating systems
Statements are true or false, not fallible or infallible; statement-generating systems are fallible or infallible. People are fallible statement-generating systems.