Taking Children Seriously

Is “time out” time off, or is it serving time?

Are schools inherently coercive, or is that just a property of all (or nearly all?) existing schools, and come the revolution, could there be TCS schools?

Did you hate being bossed about by your parents and teachers? Have you developed a life strategy of “my way is the only way” to prevent others coercing you? The problem is that in applying this to your children, you do to them the very thing you hated as a child – and you cause them to grow up to do the very same thing to their own children.

TCS parents do not force their children to study. They do not try to manipulate them into it. They do not push them. They do pay attention to what seems to interest their children and facilitate their exploration in that sphere, and in any related spheres the parent thinks the children might find interesting. But if children are not pushed, how could they ever become, say, a mathematician? What would this process look like? David Deutsch paints a word picture that may help.

Surprisingly, you might think, the answer is yes.

Sometimes it helps to step back and get things in perspective.

An argument about children's legal rights, addressing the issue of how children might be protected under the law even if their legal rights were the same as adults'.

Do not assume that a child is acting irrationally just because he or she wants to go to school.

How close is the thing we TCS folk call “coercion” to “coercion” in everyday usage?

One important concept in TCS is that of common preferences. Common preferences are policies that all parties after a successfully resolved disagreement prefer to their initial positions: everyone gets what they want.

“Finding common preferences” and “solving problems non-coercively” have exactly the same denotation (meaning), but somewhat different connotations (suggested implications).

David Deutsch is very untidy and very successful.

It is often asserted (usually by school teachers) that if children are not forced to go to school or, at the very least, to study an externally-imposed curriculum, there will be big gaps in their knowledge at the end of their education. Is this true? Is it any less true of children subjected to a standard curriculum? Is it a problem? And if so, which children will be better able to fill any gaps later: those who have been subject to a curriculum, or those who haven't? Mike Fortune-Wood has the answers.

To ensure that your child loves visiting the dentist, read this!

This is a slightly modified version of a post which appeared on the TCS List on Sun, 29 Sep., 1996.

Sarah Fitz-Claridge

Parents whose children don't go to school often worry that their children do not appear to be doing much academically, or not doing much that seems worthwhile or valuable. If you are such a parent, it is worth subjecting your theories of what constitutes “worthwhile” or “valuable” to the strongest criticism you can. Try to think about learning and education much more broadly.

Sometimes, previously-schooled children ask for assignments, and then when they get one, lose interest and don't complete it. The reason for this phenomenon may be that doing an assignment takes the intrinsic interest out of the subject-matter. But it is of course quite normal, and indeed good, to start things and not finish them. Contrary to the theory that one should always finish things one starts, it would be irrational to act otherwise when finishing no longer seems a good idea.

Forget assignments. They are a complete waste of time for all concerned. If your children ask you for assignments, they are probably asking you to help them discover what interests them. In most cases, instead of designing assignments, the thing to do would be to try devoting that creativity to the problem of helping them discover a new interest or passion. The capacity to find things one enjoys is a vital form of creativity, and one of the most easily damaged by academic-style coercion. Conventionally the evidence of this damage is systematically hidden (because parents and teachers make children spend most of their time jumping through worthless hoops) until it is far too late and they are adults who are mysteriously unable to find any fulfilment in life despite the ‘marvellous opportunities’ afforded by their extensive education and extra-curricular activities.

It would be nice to be able to be perfect. Unfortunately, we're human, and we have to do the best we can now, not wait.

Computer programmers have a word for it: “executed”, but what are we really talking about?

This piece by Elliot may help some understand TCS ideas about coercion and solving problems.

When your child's room is such a mess there is only a rumor of a floor.