Schools Use Force

Dear reader,

I've read the comments on my last entry, and I wanted to make a suggestion. I think we can all agree schools are not set up to deal with, say, a child who disagrees with the numbers in his multiplication tables. They simply cannot cope with their facts being challenged on a number of issues. But maybe this is rare and not entirely damning. What else is there?

Disagreeing with a school goes beyond the truth of the material. What if a child disagrees about which things he should learn today? About whether learning his multiplication tables is important? About whether he ought to sit in class, bored, or go read in the park? Schools have answers to questions along these lines, but they are often not the ideal ones. And schools do real harm by using force over this sort of issue. (And, by the way, schools must use this force or they would rarely teach the material in their lessons plans, true or not, to anyone.)

Dear Anonymous,

I'm glad you commented, and appreciate the opportunity to clarify my views. Please feel free to continue the discussion if anything I say seems at all lacking.

any suggested behavior or system of behaviors that, if taken sufficiently seriously (enacted by enough people with enough precision), would lead to disaster, is wrong

Here's where you start to lose me. At least, it needs refinement. For example: "Noticing her affinity and talent, I suggest that my sister study music. If a sufficient number of people studied music, there'd be nobody to [grow the food / collect the garbage / etc] which would lead to disaster. Therefore it's Wrong of me to suggest that my sister study music."

A refinement could be to say that I'm not suggesting that my sister study music per se (even though I am, but whatever), so much as I'm suggesting, abstractly, that she pursue Something She's Good At And Enjoys (and if everyone did this, disaster indeed wouldn't follow). Well, fine. But (1) such a refinement is a necessary part of the rule, then, and (2) it doesn't really answer any questions (because how do I know whether a suggested behavior or system of behaviors is sufficiently abstract and "admissible" so that the rule can be meaningfully applied to it? Have to check on case by case basis.)

I'm happy to concede that my introduction has numerous hidden premises. All philosophical writing does. The one you point out is notable because it is, perhaps, high enough level (see a future post for explanation) to be worth mentioning. In fact, I do think it is interesting. But an introduction cannot explain everything, so I am still not convinced it has a place there.

The main reason I think it does not is because I feel common sense supports my interpretation. To most people, the suggestion that your sister should study music does not mean you think your neighbor should. Instead it means you think there is something about your sister in particular that makes music and her a good match. There are people who think everyone should study music, but they generally specify that's what they mean, and are seen as having a different view. And I think similar logic will work with other objections too, hence the full explanation can go in a separate essay.

imagine a theory that it is good to force children to learn our best theories of math (put another way: teach them math, whether they like it or agree, or not, rather than suggesting to and advising children). If taken seriously (by future generations too), this suggestion will lead to the same math theories being passed on for eternity.

I don't agree. Unless you qualify this setup with more information than you've given, why can't the children of generation N (at least, the portion of them who become mathematicians), who were forced to learn their parents' generation's best theories of math, develop and extend those theories? Thus generation N+1's best theory of math is different from that of generation N.

Improving theories involves being open to criticism and change. But if the children are taught that certain math is the truth, unquestionable and objective, they will not be able to do that (assuming the teaching is sufficiently effective). It is only when children see theories as tentative conjectures and suggestions, rather than the way it is, period that they can correct and expand on our current knowledge.

We cannot insist that any specific theory should be taught to children, because we should hope that our theory might, in time, be improved.

A good way to create people who might be capable of improving our best current theories is to tell them what they are. I am not saying that this is necessarily the best or only way, but your position seems to be that it's a bad way. I don't see why.

Telling our children our best theories, and trying to persuade our children of them, is great. But deciding that our best theories are certain truth, therefore they must be taught to our children, and dissent/questioning/criticism must be prevented or punished because they are a deviation from the truth, is bad. The first attitude, using persuasion, is fallibilist and TCS. The second, using teaching, is infallibilist and wrong.

To help see the problem with teaching, think of lesson plans. The idea is the teacher will teach the material in the lesson plan to the students. If at the end of the day, the students do not agree with the material, the teacher is considered to have failed. In other words, the teacher is supposed to make the students agree instead of seek the truth.

Introduction to Taking Children Seriously

Dear reader,

Although I am a fan of TCS, I have not been entirely satisfied with the TCS material currently available. To that end, I've decided to write some of my own. I've begun with an introduction. Although the primary aim of my introduction is to interest new readers, and give them a taste for TCS (and even explain some things to them), I think seasoned veterans, too, can find value in it. Please do tell me what you think.


If you come to learn about Taking Children Seriously (TCS), and its proponents, one thing that may stand out is the strong emphasis some prolific TCSers place on philosophy. This is not par for the course in parenting discourse. Some of our concerns are things like:

- We want TCS to be true
- We want TCS to include only good explanations, selected with a very high standard for what is considered to make sense
- We do not want accepting TCS to introduce unexplained complications into our worldview
- We want TCS to be rationally defensible and do not want to ignore any known criticism of TCS
- We want TCS to be consistent with our best theories in other fields, such as morality, epistemology, and physics

And so we come to the question of why philosophically oriented people might be highly interested in parenting, and create a parenting philosophy (make no mistake, TCS is about parenting). One quick answer goes as follows:

If a person parents in such a manner that his children have no choice but to enact the same parenting method, then barring outside interference, this family tree's parenting practices will never change (and thus never improve). (Yes, we are aware that people marry outside their family tree, but we do not consider the possibility that a spouse might step in and stop bad parenting a saving grace -- the parenting is still wrong.) This may be an extreme case, but it still deserves some attention to see both how it could come about, and how it could be avoided, which is one issue TCS addresses.

You may object that no child will parent exactly the same way as he was parented, and thus things will change. While its true that there are fluctuations, we suggest that we should not rely on this sort of variance as our method for change. We cannot count on randomness to improve the world.

Now that I've mentioned the extreme case, I would like to share a more practical insight. It begins with this point: any suggested behavior or system of behaviors that, if taken sufficiently seriously (enacted by enough people with enough precision), would lead to disaster, is wrong. Now, imagine a theory that it is good to force children to learn our best theories of math (put another way: teach them math, whether they like it or agree, or not, rather than suggesting to and advising children). If taken seriously (by future generations too), this suggestion will lead to the same math theories being passed on for eternity. On the simple premise that some of our current math theories are imperfect, this is an entirely disastrous course of events.

This insight applies to more than just math. It applies to teaching any theories at all (as opposed to suggesting). We cannot insist that any specific theory should be taught to children, because we should hope that our theory might, in time, be improved. So what TCS advocates is a parenting philosophy designed around error correction which recognises that no matter how sure we feel, we may be wrong, recognises that children are people and may be right, and recognises the grave dangers involved in propagating ideas through force instead of persuasion.