Life, Love, and Liberty

Aster of Wellington says what I was thinking:

I would also point out the continuity of this sort of child prison brutality with the generally accepted patterns of childraising in general. While reading through this chronicle of abuses I couldn’t help but think that it sounded like a compilation of all the things I’ve seen or heard parents do or threaten to do to ‘their own’ children.

Conservatives often say that ‘criminals are just children who never grew up’- i.e., that ‘civilisation’ is the project of breaking the stubborn will of the stubborn natural barbarism of children. In this view, which is obviously linked to Christian notions of original sin (or equivalent ideas in other authoritarian religions and moralities), ‘making people behave’ is precisely ABOUT beating them down into submission- ‘productive citizens’ being those beaten down enough, and ‘respectable’ people being those who have accepted repression and control as the norm. According to this view, there is a natural link between the proper treatment of children and criminals- the first have noy yet, and the second have failed to, internalise discipline adequately.

Of course under such a system there can never really be too much discipline, or any real objection to brutality. This is the same mentality which justifies torture- and insofar as the ideology of racism is linked very strongly with the perception of nonwhites as ‘half-devil and half-child’ (i.e., less naturally self-disciplined than white people), it’s very strongly linked to racism. And of course this psychology is the natural corollary of oppressive systems as such, which of course function primarily by pressing people to do things they just plain hate to do.

But none of it is comprehensible aside from a certain view of human beings- as bad things which need to be made ‘moral’ by constant orders and harangueing… and a certain institutional treatment of children. I personally don’t see this torture camp as something distinct from ‘normal’ childraising- it is merely a more extreme form of the way children are usually treated by conservatives. I think this kind of atrocity is implicit whenever one’s natural approach to evil is to yell and moralise and shame.

- Comment on Charles Johnson’s blog

Well, I wasn’t thinking of it exactly in those terms, but I wholeheartedly support her message! I am a staunch unschooler who supports the right of children to decide how they want to learn.

For liberty!

For happiness!

For children too!

I will be writing more on these issues in the future. I strongly believe that the libertarian and anarchist movements must understand that context matters. In this case, the context that children grow up in will have an effect on the type of society we live in. If you believe that the “good” comes from discipline with children, then you will be more likely to believe that the “good” comes from discipline meted out to adults by other authority figures.

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

- Mark Twain

I am not entirely sure, but this quote may come from Instead of Education.

“Education… now seems to me perhaps the most authoritarian and dangerous of all the social inventions of mankind. It is the deepest foundation of the modern slave state, in which most people feel themselves to be nothing but producers, consumers, spectators, and ‘fans,’ driven more and more, in all parts of their lives, by greed, envy, and fear. My concern is not to improve ‘education’ but to do away with it, to end the ugly and antihuman business of people-shaping and to allow and help people to shape themselves.”

- John Holt

This is my contribution to the latest Carnival of Anarchy.

Sudbury Valley School

Fairhaven School

The latter link is the site for the school I visited for a week. I was presented with the choice of going there or coming back to Kansas City and then dropping out of high school. I ended up choosing the latter, but I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to go there. I’d like to share some of my thoughts on the experience, since Sudbury Schools are definite anarchistic institutions.

First off, I just recalled how incredibly anxious I was when my dad and I were driving to the campus for my first day of the week visit. My chest seemed like it was going to explode, but I did manage to lose my shyness sometime during that day. This was such a beautiful environment — although I wouldn’t say that the individuals there were always spectacularly out of the ordinary or kinder than young people would be in other environments — where all the trappings of a traditional school were nowhere to be found.

An image that’s stuck in my head is one of seeing some young folks — and I think the ages were probably between 5-10 — outside when I was looking through a window. They were totally unsupervised with no adults around to force them into some age graded cell block; Oops! I mean classroom. They were caught up in the exploration of the world on their own terms.

I remember participating in Counter-strike matches on a local area network and looking up the news on Antiwar.com. A student noticed this and I was able to explain my reasons for opposing the war to him. I also sat in on a visit by a student’s parent who worked in some kind of profession involving design. I can’t recall exactly, but I think it had something to do with motorcycles.

One of the beauties at this school is that the dignity of children was respected. A five year old student could write up a faculty member who they believed had violated their rights or engaged in some wrong. There was a judicial process involving both students and faculty that followed.

In reflecting on my experiences recently, I couldn’t help but contrast the spirit and beauty of Sudbury with the high school I went to in the 9th grade. I absolutely can’t stand the structure of traditional schools. They disgust me and bore me to no end. The only way that a child I am raising will ever end up in one is if they want to go to it. I would try to persuade them that unschooling or Sudbury is a better choice, but I would respect their decision. In the end, it’s about what they want for themselves. I wouldn’t want to be the enforcer of compulsory unschooling/Sudbury school laws.

A good book for prospective or current parents — or anyone else; for that matter — to read is John Holt’s Escape from Childhood: The Needs and Rights of Children. I think it may be out of print, but I do have a used copy on my shelf. I wonder if I could try to get the copyright holder to let me type it up.

The latest Carnival of Anarchy is a discussion on the intriguing topic of education and anarchy. It starts today and will be running until August 5th. I’ll copy and paste the announcement by fellow subversive, Eugene Plawiuk, for your viewing pleasure.

Our theme for our July Carnival is Anarchism and Education.

A.S. Neill, The Modern School, Free schools, Paul Goodman, Ivan Illich, homeschooling in a statist society, homeschooling in the age of neo-conservative anti-public education, pedagogy of the oppressed, Pablo Fiere, Fransisco Fiere, Emma Goldman, the origins of American public education in Nativism and the KKK, classical education, dead white men, deconstruction, academia, autodidactic intellectuals, working class intellectuals, education and class, post secondary proletarians, William Morris, Godwin, Shelly, Byron, Keats, Mary Wollstencroft, Mary Wollsencraft Shelly, the narodniki, Bakunin, Kropotkins Appeal to the Young, the SI, France 1968, read a book.

The carnival will run July 27-August 5th.

‘I never let my schooling interfere with my education’.
Mark Twain.

I am thinking of writing a post titled Viva Le Truants! I’ll probably also do a tribute to the late but still great John Holt too.

James Dobson is one of the most horrid figures on the religious right because of his authoritarian conception of child-rearing that Arthur Silber first brought to my attention. I gained a hearty chuckle from this parody of Dobson.