What will people in the future think when they look back at what people now deem educational or not educational? People in the past also felt certain they were right in their views about what constitutes a proper education.
Punishment has a very high risk of destroying not only the desire, but also the ability to learn.
The survey showed that favouring coercion over any one issue is not a good predictor of favouring coercion over any other issue, even an issue that the majority considers more important. The fact that so many parents believe that so many others have got their priorities the wrong way round is very hard to explain in the conventional terms of ‘strict’ vs. ‘lenient’ enforcement of a larger or smaller core of objectively important things. Most of us can see quite easily the irrationality of many other people’s justifications for coercing children. But it is in the nature of irrationality that we cannot see our own.