For a long time I've been interested in democratic schools.
The idea of democratic schooling is not to treat the kids as some kind of untermenschen, as is the common practice nowadays, but as actual human beings with free will, capable of responsible behaviour and so on.
In practical terms it means that children are allowed to do whatever they want unless it's against the rules. The rules themselves are established by a school legislative body consisting of all the citizens of the school, pupils and teachers alike, on one-person-one-vote basis. If you don't like a rule, you can propose to drop it. If you are able to win the argument in the legislative assembly it will be dropped.
If you break a law you will be investigated and judged by a judiciary committee. The committee, once again, is selected from all the citizens of the school on equal basis.
Even staffing decisions, which teachers, given the limited budget, should stay and which should leave, are done collectively, on one-person-one-vote basis.
The best known school of this type is Sudbury Valley in the US. Less known but older and probably the first school of this type is British Summerhill school.
There's a film about Summerhil school (here). I guess it's supposed to give parents the idea of what the school is about. It follows couple of different troubled kids and shows how the free school helps them to solve their problems. It's basically an advertisement. You are supposed to feel all warm and fuzzy and, eventually, enroll your kids in the school.
But then there's this documentary (here). It doesn't try to explicitly push any message. It just follows the kids for few months. Now, this is where it starts getting interesting. It begins in a period when kids have voted to get rid of bedtime rules. You are shown the school assembly where they are discussing whether it was a good idea or not. You see that some of the kids are so tired they are sleeping on the floor. When, at some later point, bedtime is reestablished, you can watch the kids appointed to enforce the rule trying, with mixed success, to get other kids go to the bed.
You can also follow how they are trying to deal with bullying. And you have no clear idea whether they are succeeding or not.
It's one big dumpster fire and I can imagine that most parents, after watching the documentary, would be hesitant (to put it mildly) to enroll their kids in a democratic school.
And this, unsurprisingly, reminds me of an actual democracy.
In your civic education classes you get this rosy picture of a well-though system with universal ballot, checks and balances and so on.
Then you look at the reality and it's one big tire fire. It's not at all clear what's happening and even, whether it works as expected or whether it's failing at a massive scale.
And when you think about it, a kid that went through a democratic school, who, in her formative years, dealt with tire fires on daily basis, is going to accept this messy reality without much fuss. She'll just roll up her sleeves and say: "Oh my, this smells bad. Let's have a look at how to fix it."
And now I am finally getting to my point.
Until recently the democratic education was the only mechanism I could think of to counterbalance the modern style of parenting, where the kid basically lives in a prison camp, is driven to the school by the parent, then, after the lessons, he is personally handed by teacher back to the parent. To make sure that kids can't make a free decision even in out-of-school hours, there are activities and, of course, lots of homework. Also, suburbanization means that the kid can't even go to a shop by himself until he's old enough to get a driver's license.
Now imagine such kid turning eighteen and suddenly facing the dumpster fire of the real democracy. I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up with PTSD.
However, in past few months some things happened that made me reevaluate my views on the topic.
First it was a march against corruption in politics organized by Slovak high schoolers.
"How peculiar," I though and haven't given it much thought.
But since then I see the pattern reemerging elsewhere. And the current fight of US kids to tighten the gun ownership laws is the most striking example so far.
But it's not only that kids are willing to protest what they see as wrong. What's really surprising is how competent they are doing it. They can organize the protest. They are good at keeping it non-violent and focused. They are eloquent. They apparently understand the mechanics of the political game. They understand that they cannot rely on the grown-ups to fix things for them. It's almost as if they graduated from a democratic school.
Yet, these are the very same kids that can't do as much as fart without adult supervision.
So here's what I think this may be about: You body may be imprisoned until you are sixteen, you may not be allowed to do anything on your own, but as long as you have a phone, you have access to the big tire fire that is Internet. Your spirit roams free the vast expanses of human knowledge, human failures, human politics. You can engage with other on topics of your choosing. You can see how others react and learn how you can cooperate. You are attending a democratic school in your own head.
And then, when the time comes, you are ready.
April 2nd, 2018
Interesting thinking…
Not how I would have predicted it. My prediction would have been that the kid as internalized the situation as normal, and therefore very hard to fix. Too hard to fix to bother. A kind of fatalistic attitude often attributed to Russians and other people of ex-communist countries.
There are a lot of people pointing out that the movement has had a lot of ideological backing. I haven't investigated those claims, and frankly I don't really care - less guns are going to be good for the US anyway. But *if* it's true it somewhat undermines your point here. My prediction: there is ideological backing, but also a real grassroots movement.
Heartwarming as this all sounds, I don't buy it one bit.
Case in point: spend a little bit of time on Twitter.
Kids might have picked up politics, but only in the same sense as in "politician". i.e. manipulation, propaganda and deception
I try to shelter my Twitter timeline from politics, from everything that permeates the barrier is fueled by outrage (1), and it is never intellectually honest. This is equally true for the left and the right (and whatever else).
(1) https://markmanson.net/outrage
This is the mechanic of polarization: whatever makes it into your filter bubble is always an example of how hateful the outgroup is. And inside the bubble, it's just self-reinforcement without any inkling of critical thinking.
I'm young (27) but when I look at documentaries and archive videos, I can't help to feel a sense of nostalgia for an era of political debate I never knew. It *seems* like in the 70/80s the political debate was much more elevated, issues were really being discussed, and they were much less populist in nature.
Maybe I'm wrong, but it feels like today, people understand all the cheap (and not so cheap) tricks that work so well to shift popular opinion. It's an arms race, and everyone's firing nukes, with pervasive-tracking + targeted influence as the nuclear option.
And so my point: you're right that the kids these days are less isolated from the dumpster fire. But what they learned is not how to fix things, but how to build weapons of political alloy.
There can be (even possibly effective) political action, but there can't be compromise or consensus, because goodwill has vacated the debate. The truth doesn't matter, arguments are merely soldiers.
This is a bit bleak and I'm not too sure what to do about it. It's probably impossible to re-educate people that are unwilling. What about there kids? Emphazising an hyper-critical mind seems promising. Something like the rationalist curricula (2). But to roll that out? Man, that's hard.
(2) https://www.lesswrong.com/
Also, I think it does take a certain amount of self-knowledge and logical thinking in order to realize the importance of critical thinking. Are people (kids?) going to chose that path when they can fight their cultural wars with seemingly effective weapons they picked up along the way? I doubt it.
Anyway, this is a pretty open bit of rambling. I'd love to know what you think about it.
Thanks for writing your thoughts down!
First of all, the entire article is just my impression. I have no hard data to back it.
I've actually tried to find studies of democratic school graduates, but haven't found any. (Admittedly, I haven't tried too hard.) For example, it would be interesting to know how they would fare in Migram's experiment. Or Asch conformity experiment. Or, for that matter, in Stanford prison experiment.
The closest I've got was a book on interviews with former Sudbury school pupils. And that one is a mixed bag. Some of them have been mostly passive within the school's political system. Some have actively participated. The latter group, encouragingly, seemed to have quite a wide spectrum of political inclinations. One of the most interesting interviews was with a very stern and conservative mindset. She actively despised the chaos of the school, yet she still took an active part in its political life. After the school, IIRC, she worked in law enforcement.
Overall, there's seemed to be a natural gradient of attitudes, but amount of politically active kids was higher than I would have expected. It may be a selection bias though — those that were willing to give an interview may have been more politically active.
Another thing to take into account is that Sudbury Valley school was founded 60 years ago and it still exists. Given that it's basically run by kids, any kind of serious political problem (dictatorship of bullies, firing all the teachers or somesuch) would have probably lead to parents withdrawing kids, school losing funding and being closed. The fact that it haven't happened is worth considering.
As for people from the Ostblock, hey, that's me! I've grew up under communist regime and so I can speak about it first hand. The mindset we have ("the fatalistic attitude") wasn't caused by a tire fire. If you are looking for fire tire that was first stages of revolution in Russia. And back then it was a real explosion of political and artistic activity. The fatalistic mindset was imprinted into people later on durig the hong years under Stalin, Chrushchev and Brezhnev where everything was perfectly solid and perfectly stable, nothing ever changed any anything you did could not possibly have any effect on anything. And that's not the kind of thing we are facing today.
Who cares? In politics you can't do anything without having all kinds of strange bedfellows. If Hitler's support for X prevented you from doing X, you would give Hitler an easy way to control you.
Anyway, I can't say much about the state of affairs in US, but in recent protests in Slovakia (including the student protests) the organized were very careful not to associate themselves with any political party.
I do.
So you hear those who are shouting the loudest. I am not surprised.
That gives you a way to do a small scale experiment. Are you still in contact with your high-school classmates? What are they doing nowadays? Hate mongering? Keeping low profile and hoping it will all pass? Trying to fix things? And how do the ratios compare to those of the classmates of your parents?
Once again, I have no hard data. In the press I hear both narratives: "Majority of kids have voted against Brexit!" and "The kids are supporting neo-Nazis!" But every time there are some numbers (as in polls) it seems that kids are more reasonable than their parents.
I am not sure. It may look like that because the politics was an elite sport back then. To me it seems more like listening to some senile aristocrats babbling in a club. Post-war years were interesting though. Also 60's. Less dignified, yes, but more content.
Yes, if we survive the incompetency of nation states we'll arrive at the world where a single teenager, in the proverbial parents' basement, could elicit a disaster of the size of the holocaust. But that's not limited to influence ops. Once there will be "build your own microorganism" set on sale for $30 in WallMart it will take only one idiot to create a superbug that will kill us all. The saame applies to other technologies.
I have zero idea how to deal with that. The good news though is that most people don't want to do that and would actively oppose it if given a chance. (Once again no hard data, but try to make a survey among people you know.)
Funny, I've just chatted about that with a guy from MIRI the other day. I, personally, think that this kind of stuff is interesting for 1% of the population and thus it's not going to solve the problems with 99% people doing irrational things. My feeling is that other, much more down-to-earth, things, like organizing and protests will have much more impact (at least in the short term). Specifically, because that kind of thing tends to create social capital. And social trust is a good antidote to any kind of manipulation.
Although democracy is more malleable to changes than benevolent dictatorship model of open source projects, the rules are difficult to change in large groups.
Here are my observations.
In a large group without explicit legislations, rules tend to evolve naturally among people. Customs become natural laws. The rules are difficult to change, but they feel natural. If you don't like the rules, you need to look for other groups. Don't bother with changing rules. You can see this kind of natural law in somalia in the form of xeer.
In a large group with legislative bodies, rules unpredictably change according to who are in charge at the moment. It's difficult for most people to change rules, but the rules tend to change unpredictably. Don't bother with changing rules. This is a case in democracy.
Stability can be both good and bad. It is bad if you don't have alternate groups to choose from. It can be good when people are trying to push bad changes. In any case, you should have options to choose from. What's important is freedom to choose among alternatives. If you don't have alternative options to choose from, you are a slave, and you are screwed. What happens when you can't leave a company where people are demanding silly things that you don't want to do? People think it's ok to push you around and treat you like a slave.
If you like to, you can cast votes, but don't expect a change without having a large voting bloc under your control. In democracy, statistically, the power of a voting bloc is the square of the number of people in the voting bloc. It means a small elite group that has a large voting bloc under control can crush large groups of unorganized people. The global group of executives is actually a huge labor union that can crush mere employees. It wants to prevent other labor unions from existing. The end result is that 3~5% of the population control the rest.
I think having alternative options is a lot more important than democracy. Democracy tends to devolve into oligarchy. Monarchy tends to lend itself to oligarchy. I think anarchy in the form of alternative options is important.
I myself want to allow my potential children in the future to choose unschooling, and I'll recommend unschooling to them although I won't prevent them from going to schools if they want. I think education became so good that on the internet, people can learn most things that universities teach. Many people are screwed in public schools because their parents or governments don't give them alternative options, and other bullies think it's ok to push them around because they can't leave. I don't want governments to remove options for me and my potential children. I think texas is an interesting place where unschooling is allowed. I can perhaps get unschooling for my (potential) children by tinkering with citizenship and permanent residence permit in my neighboring countries.
unschooling (meaning freedom) sounds perfect after they learn to read and to write, to do some basic arithmetic.
Beyond that, all levels of school except a few graduate programs seem to be deliberately designed as day-care centers disguised as higher order goods. Disguise quality ranges widely and some schools openly act more like day-care.
I'm going to take advantage of that public good (day-care is pricey) when it becomes available for my young son who can't even talk yet, much less walk. At this point he seems to enjoy his time in the waist-high jail area we setup with a bunch of distraction toys that make noise and blink :0
The problem is that public schools are bad as day-care centers.
Because schools are not selective, they accept all sorts of bullies and psychopaths.
I was abused by bullies and psychopaths when I was in public schools.
I would not want my children to be abused. I'd rather pay for proper day-care or keep him/her near my private home office.
If you can't find affordable day-care, find relatives who have a lot of free time and pay them. You can even hire nannies until your child learns reading, writing, and basic arithmetic.
It's not feasible to protect them against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Moreover there are many powerful, hidden opportunities created by exposure to that sort of trauma from the beginning! At a very minimum one benefit of receiving bully abuse is the ability to recognize whatever form or manner we've been subjected to.
Recognition is probably the first important step in developing the skill of withstanding such pressure. While exposure to bullying runs the risk of internalizing social trauma in a non constructive way, it also lays down a foundation for developing the skill of toughness and thick skin.
Hey I saw a wonderful book title the other day that must contain all sorts of solutions and lesson examples to help develop that… although I haven't read it, there's still a great lesson to be applied merely by this book's title—the proper application of which lends directly to an impenetrable defense and successful positioning against all forms of bullying:
"The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" by Mark Manson
I've learned to grow thick skin after I became 28 years old. All abuses I received before that age didn't teach almost anything at all but only screwed me further by sending me into the downward spiral of all sorts of indulgences.
Plus, parents can be terrible creatures to children when children violate their parents' value systems.
To actually learn to withstand abuse, one needs a sophisticated mind capable of proper self-reflection. I'm not doing self-reflection properly, yet.
One needs to choose to open itself to abuse in a controlled manner. Otherwise, you will be overwhelmed by infinite amount of emotions, and it's very likely that you won't learn anything. There's a difference between learning and performance. You can't expect your children to learn anything from uncontrolled infinite emotional data. Your children need scaffolding for many years.
Even, lions protect their children from all sorts of traumas until they become old enough to hunt in packs. It's usually a new alpha male of the pride that kills children of the previous alpha male. People often mistake killing children by a new alpha male as education and promote abuse as education. It's not education. It's just abuse.
Did you ever see how adult women who are supposed to care for children abuse young kids at a cheap day-care center? They kick and smack children with fervor. I guarantee your children will become worse under that kind of abuse.
At least, parents deeply care about children and will actually try to teach. Psychopaths and bullies don't care about you or your children. Psychopath would definitely stab your children's eyes with a fork without a hesitation.
Why you think this is the case? What about the free decision of not going to a school? I mean, a parent that actually let the kid make this decision (assuming the kid decides to not go to the school), the parent will get punished by the state.
I'd like you to read another Rothbard's mini-book "Education"[^1], and well, I think a lot of articles from these two tags[^2] resonates well with your opinions. I do enjoy reading them btw
[^1]: https://mises.org/library/education-free-and-compulsory-1
pdf: https://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/Education%20Free%20and%20Compulsory_3.pdf
[^2]: https://fee.org/articles/topics/learning & https://fee.org/articles/topics/education
In USA, many states allow home schooling. Texas allows unschooling.
Oman, a country in middle east, doesn't have compulsory education.
Those are just places that I know.
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