The evolution of culture
How anti-rational memes sabotage culture, education and the Enlightenment.
society
Deschooling Society, by Ivan Illich: a book review
“All over the world the school has an anti-educational effect on society…” – Ivan Illich, 1971, Deschooling Society
Why do parents coerce their children despite having been through it themselves?
If parents knew that they could reject the conventional approach and it would not ruin their precious child’s life, many more would do so. If you cannot see that rejecting the status quo is not only right, but also will not have any disastrous unintended consequences, it feels safer to stick with the tradition of paternalistic coercion.
Surely children need to learn to deal with restrictions to prepare them for life in society?
How do you distinguish between restrictions on our behaviour that are good for us and those that aren’t? The restrictions on our behaviour that are good for us are ones we agree with. And when we agree with them, they are not restrictions on our behaviour anyway.
Respecting other people’s wishes
When I go to other people’s houses, I try to abide by their wishes in respect of their property and so on. I try to make my visit add to their lives rather than detract from them. I try to be sensitive and (to the extent that I think they will want this) helpful in a non-intrusive way. We all want to do the right thing, including our children.
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.
Punishment as a teaching tool
Punishment has a very high risk of destroying not only the desire, but also the ability to learn.
Taking Children Seriously and fallibilism
We believe that it possible for human beings, through conjecture, reason and criticism, to come to know and understand truths about the world, including truths about the human condition and about specific people, and including truths about matters that are not experimentally testable. We do not believe that we possess the final truth about any of these matters, but we do believe that our successive theories can become objectively truer—with more true implications and fewer errors.
Taking the free world and children seriously: an anecdote
As Karl Popper said, “our own free world is by far the best society which has come into existence during the course of human history.”
The heavy societal pressure to coerce children
The societal pressure on parents to control and coerce their children can be immense.
All choices restrict future choices
All choices restrict future choices. The real question is whether one is learning and growing through one’s own free choice, or not.
Who counts as a rights holder?
If you deny the autonomy of one group of individuals, what tyranny can you NOT justify?
The social, educational, economic and political oppression of children
Parents and teachers do far more to oppress children than the laws do, and could perfectly legally desist from most of this oppression if they so chose. There is no legal requirement upon parents to punish their children for a wide range of perfectly legal activities, yet they choose to anyway. There is no legal requirement upon parents to insist that their children live with them, and yet parents whose children seek other guardians usually invoke their legal right to force the children to return. There is no legal requirement to deny children freedom of association, and yet many parents do deny their children that. There is no legal requirement to assault children, yet, in the name of discipline, many parents do so. There is no legal requirement to deny children access to information in the home, yet many parents go to extreme lengths to do so. There is no legal requirement upon parents to subject unwilling children to extra-curricular activities such as piano lessons and Girl Guides. Indeed, there is no legal requirement for parents to force their children to go to school, yet most do.