Taking criticism seriously
Criticism is not like a fluid you can pour into a mind, and the mind is not like a bucket able to passively receive whatever you want to pour in. As Karl Popper said, there is no such thing as instruction from without.
the bucket theory of the mind
“What does education taking children seriously look like?”
Children learn the same way everyone does when they are completely free of others’ expectations and other interfering impediments to learning. They learn by wondering about something, thinking about it, finding out about it, perhaps reading about it or discussing it or looking it up on the internet, all driven by their own curiosity.
“What do you mean by ‘problem’?”
A problem is something which gives rise to human thought—such as a conflict between two theories, a paradox or anomaly. It does not only refer to ‘bad problems’—conflicts between people, problems that seem to make people miserable, things we would rather avoid. Anything sparking thinking, including enormously enjoyable thinking, like when you notice something and wonder about it, following your curiosity wherever it leads, is a ‘problem’ in this wide sense.
“How do you raise a child to believe in freedom?”
This question is in effect asking “How do I mould and shape my child into a person who believes that individuals should be free from unwanted moulding and shaping by others?”
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.
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
“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?
“How do you handle the issue of other people coercing your child?”
Other people can behave badly, and we can view it as a problem to solve rather than being horribly distressed, wounded and irredeemably damaged.
Unnatural consequences revisited
How viewing other people as wilful perpetrators embodies the mistaken theory that problems are not soluble, and thus can interfere with problem-solving and result in our beloved children being distressed.
“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.
“Why did my mother’s coercive words fly out of my mouth?!”
There are probably antirational memes operating when parents are feeling compelled to go along with the standard coercive approach with their children despite their doubts about its rightness.
“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.
“Surely criticism is always good?”
he idea that criticism of others is always good is a mistake, just like it is a mistake to think that education is always good. It may be good if it is wanted, but not if it is unwanted. Coercive education is not and never has been Taking Children Seriously.
“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?
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.
Home education in Britain
Most home educators in Britain favour autonomous curiosity-driven learning, vs formal homeschooling.
The dark side of John Holt
John Holt was so critical of school that sometimes he appeared to suggest that even children who want to go to school should not do so.
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.
Karl Popper on the growth of knowledge
Understanding that knowledge grows through creative conjecture and inner criticism facilitates non-coercive interactions.
Why epistemology matters for parents
All interactions implicitly assume epistemological ideas, so it is worth considering what those ideas are and whether they are true or not.
Unschooling and Karl Popper
Popper’s work provides an epistemological critique of the teacher-directed learning model, although it appears that Popper himself never made this connection.
Popper’s epistemology and the everyday lives of children
Traditional education can be looked at a massive, standardized operation aiming to stuff the allegedly passive bucket minds of children.