Cappy

Last weekend a few of us involved with Reason Weekly attended the annual American Atheists Conference and, surrounded by so many that held an assumption about the nature of the universe similar to my own, I was once again reminded of the fact that atheism is just a conclusion. On its own it may represent a step in the right direction for a particular individual, but it is a point reached as the result of a path, a methodology. And it is that methodology that is important. It is that methodology that I hope to share with others.

I have met many atheists who are nihilists. Theirs is not a true disbelief in god or an embrace of reason, but rather a hatred of life. They are defined by the things they are against, the things they despise, the things they destroy. And this one conclusion that I share with them, that there is no god, is as morally and intellectually irrelevant to me as the fact that I share a support with many Christians for homeschooling.

What is atheism, anyway? It is simply the belief that there is no god. In a rational world such a word would have little use, like pointing out that one man is a biped. We’re all bipeds. And the term atheism is not intrinsically a support of anything, conceptual or physical. Exactly the opposite. It is an “anti” word, a word that means you are against something.

But I, and I hope you as well, do not like to think of myself in such a way. I am not someone who has a vendetta against god or the religious, I do not wish to define myself by the things I rally against. And if the entire world was atheistic it would be better, but not necessarily great, or even good.

I am not anti-god. I am pro-reason. I support logic, empiricism, universal principles. I support the Law of Identity and the definition of man as a rational, noble savage. I support philosophy and truth, and the idea that an understanding of each must be earned, tested, reevaluated and employed in daily life. I want a world without the concept of god only because I want a world where people embrace their minds, their capacity to learn, understand, grow and face challenges.

I am an atheist and I support atheism, but only as a outcome of the rational methodology that I use to understand reality. The concept of atheism is an central to my idea of self as is my belief that our senses can be trusted to unravel the world around us. The latter is hardly ever considered, because its proof is so obvious, its efficacy so self-evident, that I would have to assume that it is correct even in the act of questioning it. To me, atheism is the same. So long as I am rational, the existence of god is something I hardly need think about, unless somehow new evidence came to light about such a phenomenon.

Reason is the tool we have to understand reality, morality and ourselves. These are the things that define who I am, not the specific conclusions that I come to. You may call me an atheist if you like. But I would much prefer to be called a scientist, a thinker and a philosopher.

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I have decided to take the next step in my interest in and advocacy for unschooling. I am putting together a website that I hope will serve as a resource for people interested in unschooling, those completely new to the idea, and families currently unschooling their own. The site will house an unschooling reading list, along with reviews, steady updates on education and unschooling news, resources for unschoolers, and posts/stories/tips from unschoolers throughout the blogosphere.

There are unschoolers all over the web and I hope to make their own experiences easily available. There is constant news on education, providing ever more evidence against the efficacy of compulsory education, and I hope to make those stories known from a single source. And there are writers and speakers making incredible strides in the fight to bring an end to compulsory schooling, and I hope to help keep their works in the foreground. But far and away the most important goal is to create more unschoolers! To give more kids the opportunity that most of us never had: to run their own educations and follow their own interests, to become the people they are instead of the people school boards want them to be.

Currently I am collecting resources, blog feeds, twitter follows, book lists and the like in order to get the site off the ground. Design services will provided by the uncanny Cristian Popa of ReasonWeekly.com. If you know of any resources, blogs, books or articles I should check out, please let me know! Until then you can follow my progress at http://twitter.com/UnschoolJournal

Education

As some of you may know I’ve been doing a lot of childhood-related learning and introspection. The most direct evidence of this is the many posts on this blog regarding education and unschooling. But I’ve also been putting effort and time into understanding my own childhood and my own feelings towards children and the traditional family in general. As my own understanding begins to broaden, and I learn more and more about the nature of children and how that nature is stifled in compulsory schools, churches and bad families, I’ve also been able to see my reactions to children change immensely. It is an ongoing process, to be sure, but I wanted to share some thoughts I’ve had and a few of the specific experiences that stand out to me. But first a little background:

I grew up in a household where answers to probing questions (and when you’re a child, what questions don’t probe?) were “Because I said so” or “Because the Bible says so,” and the solution to so-called “bad behavior” was a belt. I believe now that actions such as this come from the incredibly evil assumption that children are born bad, and that their badness must be remedied by parents who are magically bestowed with the title of Paragon of Virtue by the simple act of reproduction. Especially in the South, at least in my experience, violence and bullying in the home are not only condoned but expected. “Spare the rod,” as it’s said. This violence is, of course, kept quiet. The fact that children are whipped on the buttocks is no accident. Is it both the easiest source for extreme physical humiliation, but also the easiest to hide. Once, I believe in junior high school, I rode my bike with a cousin down the road to a convenience store. Not a road really, a highway, populated by log trucks. It is hardly ever visited by more than a few trucks an hour, but it is dangerous nonetheless. When we got back, there was no discussion on the dangers of riding in such a road or the necessity for helmets or an attempt to connect or teach in any way. Instead I was struck across the lower back with a belt 16 times. I did not stop taking risks. In fact, since then I have taken much larger ones. I did, however, stop respecting my father. Violence can only get you obedience, nothing more. And before I hear cries that this man was only concerned with my safety, then please explain to me why bike safety was never discussed, helmets were never encouraged, and why I was allowed to ride on that same highway to a nearby relative’s at will? Moving on…

During high school I went to live with my mother, and my slightly older sister had a baby girl, Desiree. When she cried it was as if everyone in the house was being personally attacked. Looking back, it pains me to think that I reacted so anxious and bothered at something so natural and necessary. As Desiree got older it became apparent that while I had switched homes, the tactics had not. Spankings were a norm, along with bullying and unquestionable authority, from my sister and mother. I gain small comfort in the fact that I never carried out any of these spankings myself, as I often threatened them and turned her over to her mother.

Let me make one thing clear before I move on. Violence against anyone, and especially against children, who must live and grow with the largest power disparity possible to human beings, is abhorrent and entirely immoral. If you believe otherwise, please have the decency to tell me so that I can stop communicating with you.

It is no surprise to me that when I see Desiree now she switches between extreme openness - in an attempt to gain the affection she lacks - to extremely closed-off - in an attempt to avoid punishment and contempt just for voicing her opinion. She has the tendency to go completely still and quiet when you are angry with her. I watched this develop as she grew. Desi would declare a preference or desire, and she would be attacked for doing so. And so how can one expect anything but silence when you angrily ask her what she wants? She learned all too well that wants are something she must keep to herself.

For so long I was an accomplice to this style of parenting, unwilling to face the effects it was having on Desiree, and the effects it long ago had on me (something I will go into some other time). My younger brother had a child and my sister had a second. My sister’s brand of violence was somewhat mild, although still debilitating. My brother, however, had grown up with our father, and his parenting was a chaotic mix of demands for abject devotion and outright screaming and violence. But still I saw them on a semi-regular basis, and spent each trip tossed between elation at spending time with such wonderful kids and the agony of tiptoeing around the horrible parents in the room. As time went on and I introspected about my own childhood, and learned more about child development, the trips became more irregular and the steps not nearly as light. Then late last year a friend informed me that my brother was having a second child. With a second woman. Whom he hardly knew and is no longer with. I was amazed at how angry I became. I have since made it clear that I will not see him again until he seeks therapy.

I have since spent more time exploring my own childhood, discovering the principles and emotional intelligence one requires in order to be a good parent, and seeing the great struggle that children of even the most common families must endure just to keep their capacity for open thought, curiosity and empathy. I have tried to live by the rule that one should always side with the child, and that children are interested in reciprocation, affection and negotiation. That they wish to moral and rational just like the rest of us. That they can be trusted. And that as a parent, the child’s respect for you must be earned, just like you have to earn it from everyone else. Paraphrasing Stefan Molyneux (since I don’t know the exact quote): “We are choosing to bring a child into this world. She didn’t choose to be a part of our family. And so it is up to us to make sure that could she choose any family on the planet, she would still want to be with us.”

I still have quite a lot of work to do before I can really understand my own childhood, and even more before I could consider having a child of my own. Years of work. But already, just observing the way I feel and act around kids is consistently amazing. Seeing a child makes me grin every single time. Yesterday a dad was pushing a stroller and had another toddler on his shoulders, and I held the door open for them. Moments later I realized that I hadn’t even considered the father, I had opened the door for the kid on his shoulders. Today at the laundromat I watched a few kids play between the rows of washers and dryers. They were happy, but so polite and self-managing. Their parents didn’t constantly harangue them and I didn’t once see a child who had ran too fast or get too loud shoot a frightened glance at this mom or dad, awaiting the coming punishment. One of the kids, too small to join in on the running, strolled around watching everything. I mean everything. There wasn’t a time that I passed by that he didn’t hold eye contact, reading my expression.

What I hope to do in the near future is find a way to increase my knowledge of children and their learning process by getting involved either in the local unschooling community or tutoring of some kind. Or both. Before the current compulsory education system came into place (around 1915, and it’s been tweaked and “perfected” ever since then) children at even the young ages of three and four were doing incredible things. Now a child in public school who can spell “cat” by age seven is considered an acheivement of free education… The school is one of the many chains that hold children back, and it is the chain that I intend to dedicate myself to breaking. If children grow up knowing that they can ask questions, there is no limit to what answers they might find.

Ideas, Personal

I’ve moved on to John Holt, the man who began the unschooling movement and penned ten books on the subject of child learning and youth’s rights before dying in 1985. His own education in the minds of children began simply enough: he and colleague Bill Hull, who both taught fifth grade, would take turns teaching while the other observed the class. That is it to say, observe the children, quietly and individually, during the course of the class. Before I say anything else I want to point out what a stroke of simple brilliance this was, as well as, to me, a condemnation of the compulsory system which never does such a thing. He watched kids, one at a time, as they sat in class, and wrote down his observations and thoughts. From this we have the beginnings of what I believe is the first and only true theory of child learning, because a man simply chose to learn about children rather than just teaching them. But on to the point of this post… I wanted to touch on a couple anecdotes that Holt provides in How Children Fail that I think provide some excellent insight into child behavior.

The Balance Beam

In one class Holt had a beam balanced in the center which could be held in place with a peg. The game was used to teach kids about balance and weight distribution by placing a certain number of weights out a certain distance on one end and having a student place a certain number of weights on the other end at a distance they thought would balance it out. For instance, the teacher places 4 weights at 5″ out on one end, and the child is given 2 weights to place on the other end, which in this case would balance at 10″ out. To provide incentive for involvement, the students were divided into two teams. Each student would place his weights, then every teammate, one by one, would bet whether or not the beam would balance. Each correct answer counted as one point. Can you guess what happened?

It became all about strategy! Making the best guess to minimize the maximum possible loss, a decision rule in game theory called minimax. Children focused on hedging their bets and covering their bases, not only for the purpose of gaining points but also to be sure a wrong answer didn’t embarrass them. One student, after being asked to confirm her choice of weight placement, said “Yes, but I don’t think it will balance.” The predictions of other students were very similar in their vagueness. In every case the result was clear: the students were no longer interested in balancing the beam, but rather of beating the points and predictions system.

Few students ever figured out the balance beam.

The Q Shriek

While Holt allowed much more talking and freedom in his class than most teachers, he still needed quiet sometimes. So, rather than simply demanding it like most teachers, he created the Q. The rule was simply this: When he wrote the Q on the board, the class was to be quiet. Holt writes:

And then, slowly, the children invented or developed a delightful custom. When I began to write the Q they would all make some kind of hum or murmur or sound, which would get louder and louder, rising to a shriek as I boxed in the Q with a flourish. But as soon as my chalk hit the edge of the blackboard, completing the box, dead silence.

A year later Holt has his own fifth-grade class in another school, and again used the Q. This class, just like the other, eventually invented the shriek, never knowing that it had been done before.

Competing Objectives

The lesson drawn from this, I think, is that an educator’s objective in a game or class practice should never be assumed to be shared by the students. In the first case, Holt’s objective was to teach kids about balance and weight. But the children, in their brilliance, created their own objective, and attempted to make the game their own, focusing on the incentive rather than the goal. (Also, it’s important to point out that in future classes, Holt put the balance beam and the weights in the back of class, never mentioning it or attempting to teach it. Without his predefined objective hindering them, almost all the kids in the class, even some very poor ones, figured it out on their own.)

In the second case, Holt’s objective was to get quiet in the class. But the children reminded him that this must be their’s as well, and invented the Q Shriek to make it so. And Holt was smart enough to allow the Q Shriek, where other teachers would have stolen the only personal connection those kids had to a rule they chose to follow.

You see, kid’s do not naturally want to please teachers and parents, they do not naturally want to learn specific facts, but are rather content to follow their own interests and will learn as it becomes necessary to fulfill those interests. When forced to learn (very oxymoronic) or forced to obey, children will immediately substitute their own objectives, never focusing where the teacher assumes they will. We are going to talk about this more in the future, as we discover the fear and danger that surrounds a child in compulsory education, and the many, many ways in which the very nature of schooling pulls a child’s mind away from learning.

Education

Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto has a significant place in the canon of school reform literature in that he is the first to propose that when schools create children who can only follow rules and appease authority, they are not doing so as an unfortunate consequence of higher intentions. Rather, this is their clear and conscious goal.

In “The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher,” Mr. Gatto fills us in on what children are really being taught in compulsory school:

1. Confusion:  ”Confusion is thrust upon kids by too many strange adults, each working alone with only the thinnest relationship with each other, pretending, for the most part, to an expertise they do not possess.”
2. Class Position: “My job is to make them like being locked together with children who bear numbers like their own. Or at least endure it like good sports. If I do my job well, the kids can’t even imagine themselves somewhere else because I’ve shown them how to envy and fear the better classes and how to have contempt for the dumb classes. Under this efficient discipline the class mostly policies itself into good marching order. That’s the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.
3. Indifference: “I teach children not to care too much about anything, even though they want to make it appear that they do.”
4. Emotional Dependency
5. Intellectual Dependency
6. Provisional Self-Esteem: “Our world wouldn’t survive a flood of confident people very long, so I teach that a kid’s self-respect should depend on expert opinion. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged… The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents but should instead rely on the evaluation of certified officials.”
7. One Can’t Hide: “I teach students that they are always watched, that each is under constant surveillance… There are no private spaces… no private time… I assign a type of extending schooling called ‘homework,’ so that the effect os surveillance, if not the surveillance itself, travels into private households.”

In “The Psychopathic School” Gatto points out some of egregious (but ultimately obvious) problems with compulsory education:

It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of live and the synergy of variety; indeed, it cuts you off from your own past and future, sealing you in a continuous present much the same way television does.

It is absurd and anti-life to move from cell to cell at the sound of a gong for every day of your natural youth in an institution that allows you no privacy and even follows you in the sanctuary of your home, demanding that you do its homework.

When children are given whole lives instead of age-graded ones in cellblocks they learn to read, write, and do arithmetic with ease, if those things make sense in the kind of life that unfolds around them.

In “The Green Monogahela” Gatto describes his first foray into education as a substitute teacher. He soon learns of Milagros, a girl in the class of bad readers despite obvious skill. When he takes his case to the administration, he is not met with excitement and thanks, but rather with indignation:

“You have some nerve, Mr. Gatto. I can’t remember when a substitute ever told me how to run my school before. Have you taken specialized courses in reading?”
“No.”
“Well then, suppose you leave these matters to the experts!”
“But the kid can read!”
“What do you suggest?”
“I suggest you test her, and if she isn’t a dummy, get her out of the class she’s in!”
“I don’t like your tone. None of our children are dummies, Mr. Gatto. And you will find that girls like Milagros have many ways to fool amateurs like yourself. This is a matter of a child having memorized one story. You can see if I had to waste my time arguing with people like you, I’d have no time left to run a school.”

The administrator not only open criticizes Mr. Gatto’s intelligence, but immediately accuses the girl of fraud rather than having any curiosity whatsoever… And is it surprising? Among the many other horrid conditions of the schools he taught in, Gatto noticed a significant lack of curiosity and interest:

“…the inexplicable absence of conversation about children among the teachers (to this day, after thirty years in the business, I can honestly say I have never once heard an extended conversation about children or about teaching theory in any teachers’ room I’ve been in)”

Dumbing Us Down is an excellent work with many other lessons besides the few I’ve shared here. I would definitely recommend reading it (it’s actually quite short) if you are at all interested in school reform.

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