Debate? With no flames... I bet.
Peggy
> Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 14:26:13 -0000http://www.geocities.com/homeschoolmom124/home.html
> From: "mail_michele" <mail_michele@...>
> Subject: TCS
>
> Please excuse the off topic post. I was a member of this group
> awhile ago, and as I recall there were some pretty radical TCS
> adherents at that time. I just stopped in to invite any TCSers to
> join a group of homeschool debaters to debate TCS. We are a group of
> homeschoolers who like to debate -read argue if you like ;-)
> Anyway, most of the members are Christian (be forewarned - lol) and I
> think it might be fun to spar with such oppositonal view points.
> BTW, most members had never even heard of TCS, until I brought up it
> up as a possible topic for debate.
>
> So, if you have a few brave souls who would like to introduce TCS
> from your viewpoint and stay as long as you'd like to debate- Please
> Join Us!
>
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/homeschool-debaters/>
>
> I'll leave you now, and hope to see you there!
That's the owner's website.
Peggy
Nancy Wooton
on 11/25/02 9:09 AM, Peggy at peggy@... wrote:
Nancy
> I was a member of this groupWhat is TCS?
>> awhile ago, and as I recall there were some pretty radical TCS
>> adherents at that time.
Nancy
Nancy Wooton
on 11/25/02 9:09 AM, Peggy at peggy@... wrote:
and it's Nov. message archive says it has *3,429* posts already!
Who has the time??? (and I wonder what they're debating?)
Nancy
>> So, if you have a few brave souls who would like to introduce TCSI just looked at the this page -- it lists 50 members, founded Nov. 3, 2002,
>> from your viewpoint and stay as long as you'd like to debate- Please
>> Join Us!
>>
>> <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/homeschool-debaters/>
>>
>> I'll leave you now, and hope to see you there!
and it's Nov. message archive says it has *3,429* posts already!
Who has the time??? (and I wonder what they're debating?)
Nancy
Peggy
From: Nancy Wooton <ikonstitcher@c...>
http://www.sarahlawrence.org/Articles/FutureOfLiberty.html
It might give you an inking, this is a speech by Sarah Lawrence given to a
bunch of Libertarians...
Peggy
Transcript of speech given at the World Libertarian Conference in London,
Ontario, in July, 2000.
Taking Children Seriously: The Final Phase of The Enlightenment
TCS and the future of liberty
Sarah Lawrence
Taking Children Seriously (TCS) is the name of an organisation I founded to
promote the Libertarian educational philosophy.
How can there be such a thing as the Libertarian educational philosophy?
Aren't parents in a Libertarian society free to educate their children in any
way they wish?
Yes. But that doesn't make every possible choice morally right, or best for
the child, or compatible with the survival of the Libertarian society. To
satisfy these criteria, we must look more deeply than Libertarian political
philosophy which is basically about how a society can run without the
initiation of physical force.
What justifies both Libertarian political philosophy and TCS education theory
in my opinion is reason something which, I fear, has yet to emerge in the
spheres of education and childrearing.
Many parents do a very good job of bringing their children up to believe in
authority and obedience to dictators, whether parents or the state. Recently,
I had the misfortune to be present when someone I know was subjected to a
violent attack by his parent. I was very shaken and didn't throw myself
between my young friend and the angry adult, but I did manage to pluck up the
courage (once I poked my head up from behind the sofa where I was hiding) to
express the opinion that hitting children may not be the best way to deal with
disagreements, and that it may not be entirely morally unobjectionable.
Perhaps I was less diplomatic than The Parent thought appropriate, because he
accused me of trying to coerce him into changing his parenting practices, and
then played the children-are-property card: It's none of your business how
I raise my child.
I couldn't help wondering whether he would think it none of his business if I
were to pull out my trusty Smith and Wesson .44 magnum and start shooting at
his wife. Actually, they don't get on very well so perhaps that's a bad
example.
At any rate, I'm glad that when a thug was trying to kill my sister in broad
daylight on the streets of New York, the bystanders didn't take that view but
saved her life by intervening instead.
This Parent went on to say that my friend needed to be taught a lesson. Under
normal circumstances, since I think that such parents needs to learn better
ideas about how children learn, I would have removed my belt and offered to
teach him a lesson if that would help him learn, but in this case, he was
bigger than me and not living in a Libertarian paradise, I was unarmed.
When I mentioned my little exchange with the parent to a fellow Libertarian a
few days later, he accused me of wanting to make children wards of the state
and have Big Brother dictate to us in our own personal affairs. (A bit like
parents do to their children then. Of course Big Brother is only in charge
when the parents aren't there to dictate to the children...)
Now I know this may sound very surprising to those of you who are, at this
very moment, convinced that ISIL have made a big mistake in asking me to speak
here, and that you are listening to a rabid statist who wants to take away
parents' rights, indeed, whose ideas make old Bill Clinton look like a
positive paragon of Libertarian virtue, but if you have jumped to the
conclusion that I want to take control of children out of the hands of parents
and put it into Nanny er, the nanny state, that is, you are very much
mistaken.
If you were beating your wife for failing to have your socks sorted by colour,
and I were to express the opinion that that may not be the best way to nurture
your relationship and might conceivably be the wrong thing to do, would you
jump to the conclusion that I was arguing that wives should be wards of the
state? Not unless you are more Neanderthal than your average man in the
street! You would understand that I was asserting the idea that wives are
people whose control of their own lives should not be infringed.
Similarly, I certainly do not think that children should be controlled by the
state instead of parents. I think that they should control their own lives,
just as adults do. Indeed, TCS advocates raising children not just without
beating them but without doing anything to them against their will.
I am not advocating violating parents' legal rights. What I am saying is that
parents are right to behave in one way which is within their legal rights, and
wrong to behave in another way which is also within their legal rights.
But what does a particular theory of child-rearing, however right and however
libertarian in the everyday sense of the word, have to do with Libertarianism,
the political movement? I can tell from the incensed looks some of you are
giving me that you remain of the opinion that I'm some sort of PC adult-hating
leftist do-gooder with a touch too much arrogance for comfort, and that you
are still asking Aren't parents in a Libertarian society free to bring up
their children any way they like?
I can see that some of you are already firmly convinced that TCS must be
mistaken because according to Libertarian principles, as one of my Libertarian
friends said to me, If I want to turn off the TV until the kids have done
their homework, I can. It's my TV.
But that is confusing right and wrong with legal and illegal.
Now you may say, as my friend did, a trifle testily I thought, But why
shouldn't I confuse right and wrong with legal and illegal? I am free to do
that aren't I?, and I'll agree that there should be no legal impediment
standing in your way here, but is it a good idea? Will it help you meet your
preferences? Will it make you happy? Will it be right?
When parents say things like I paid for the TV so I can switch it off
whenever I like they are making the mistake of assuming that you can deduce
how to treat children educational theory from Libertarian principles.
I want to give you some examples to show that that is a grave mistake. I want
to show that a functioning Libertarian society needs knowledge which isn't in
the principles of a Libertarian society.
First I'm going to give you an example to show that a Libertarian society
won't survive if they have the wrong educational policy, that is, one that
doesn't actually promote Libertarianism in the next generation.
Given that this example will show you a society which adheres completely to
Libertarian principles but isn't viable, I am hoping that you will be
persuaded that Libertarian principles alone are not enough to make a society
viable.
For a Libertarian society to survive and flourish, it must have a way of
passing its ideas on to the next generation. Obviously, there's nothing
automatic about survival. I once had a particularly pleasant dream in which I
and a bunch of frightfully agreeable Libertarians bought a beautiful tropical
island, declared independence and were living in freedom for ever. When I was
rudely awoken at the unearthly hour of nine o'clock in the morning by my
neighbour having an argument with the gardener outside, I realised that not
only am I not living in my perfect Libertarian society, it was tipping down
with rain and I had to get to the Post Office to send off my tax return...
Anyway, imagine a group of Libertarians who somehow get political independence
on an island where they create their own ideal Libertarian society.
According to the principles of Libertarianism, they're now free to choose from
a vast range of possible lifestyles. They can grow as much cannabis as they
like without having to worry about being locked up or waking up one morning
to find that it has all been stolen. They're free to spend all their money on
their dependants instead of financing state sinecures. In particular, they're
entitled to bring their children up to be Libertarians. Or not to.
Suppose that these people happen to share a dislike for children, so they
don't have any. Suppose also that they don't write books or allow outside
visitors to view their society. Will their society thrive? Perhaps for a
while, but one thing we can predict without knowing any more about it than
that, is that because they're not passing on their Libertarian ideas, their
little society is not going to be the nucleus of the future Libertarian world.
Unless they perfect the technology of immortality, they'll eventually die out,
and then the society they created, no matter how Libertarian, will no longer
exist.
Now if you thought those Libertarians were strange, here's an even stranger
group: These people do have children, but they bring them all up as
communists. This may be an unlikely scenario, but just consider the logic of
it. There's nothing in a Libertarian society to stop parents doing that, is
there? They're free to bring up their children in any way they like, aren't
they? It's not illegal to be inconsistent is it? Not all the ways will be
equally good for the children. Not all will be equally good for the society.
Some of them will be perverse, some will be nasty, cruel, and morally wrong,
despite being legal.
By the time these perverse Libertarians are dead (or cryonically suspended),
and only the grown-up children remain, the children will have instituted a
communist government. Or maybe they won't have; maybe it's not so easy to
bring up children to be communists: the Eastern bloc's educational systems
tried very hard to do so, with only patchy success.
Closed cultures such as the Amish survive by suppressing all creativity and
innovation but unless you're part of such a culture it's incredibly difficult
to bring up children to believe any particular idea you intend them to believe
(as many a parent will tell you).
You can't calculate all the unintended effects of your actions, you can't
control every possible outside influence or calculate the effects of those
outside influences (though some parents do try you should see what lengths
my neighbour goes to, to but I digress). So maybe these children won't end up
being communists after all; but even the most optimistic among you will have
to agree that it's all too easy to bring up one's children not to be
Libertarians. Most parents already do that quite successfully.
So a Libertarian society, without violating any of the principles of
Libertarianism, could ensure its own destruction, simply by choosing the wrong
child-rearing ideas.
Now, you may be thinking that although what I've described is a logical
possibility, it's a little farfetched. Why on earth should parents who believe
in liberty choose to raise their children in such a way as to decrease their
liberty and to end up fearing and hating it as non-Libertarians do?
Well, in a way, I think that is just what you are doing (well, most of you
anyway), or are planning to do when you become parents. Most parents do this.
It isn't what you intend, but neither do most left-wingers intend to ruin the
economy, do they?
In a Libertarian society, it's legal to raise your children as communists or
Democrats or Republicans or to have all sorts of debilitating hang-ups, of
which the fear of freedom is a common example, or to make them unhappy by
inflicting every sort of psychological cruelty. Perfectly legal. Isn't it?
TCS advocates raising children without doing anything to them against their
will or making them do anything against their will. I hope you are already
beginning to see why I have little patience with libertarians who object to
this by citing the parents' legal rights. Yes, switching off the TV until they
have done their homework should be legal. But that does not make it harmless,
nor does it make it any less vicious, nasty or morally wrong.
There is a more general reason Libertarians need to think about more than just
a constitution or set of laws that determine when violence is and isn't
legitimate:
Installing the right laws cannot by itself guarantee that you will get a
society that lives by those laws. That requires knowledge. This is the second
link I want to point out between education theory and Libertarian political
theory.
Let me give an example:
There are two kinds of country which have the US constitution. There are those
which, after they have instituted the US constitution, get an open society in
which all the constitutionally-protected human rights are respected (such as
in the US itself), and there are those which just ignore the constitution.
Merely introducing a Libertarian constitution would not ensure that liberty
was actually respected.
(If you're thinking that the US isn't an example of a country in which all the
constitutionally-protected human rights are actually respected, and that in
fact the US constitution is often violated, that just makes my point more
strongly. If America isn't a place where the rights laid down in the US
Constitution are respected, what makes you think that, after it's replaced by
a new Libertarian Constitution, whether written or unwritten, the resulting
society will respect that constitution?)
In 1989, Nigeria instituted a constitution strikingly similar to that of the
US. But has it produced a society like the US in terms of rights being
respected? Not exactly. Not unless you're being very uncharitable to the US.
What's the difference? Would Nigeria become a Libertarian society if it were
lucky enough to have a constitution designed for it by the good people at
ISIL? No. If anything, adopting a Libertarian constitution would result in
even more of a mess.
When the US constitution was adopted in America, most people in the society
(or at least the people who counted) were intellectually convinced that this
constitution was right; but the overwhelming majority of Nigerians would be
convinced that the ISIL constitution was not for them. Much as it would be in
their interests to adopt an ISIL constitution, the idea is a non-starter. And
if it were somehow implemented, people simply wouldn't act that way. The
Nigerians couldn't even behave in accordance with the US constitution, let
alone a better one.
So having the right constitution or laws alone will not get you a Libertarian
society. You need the right sort of people. You need people with the right
ideas.
Now here is a third way in which education theory and Libertarian political
theory are linked:
Some Libertarians believe that children have rights, perhaps the same rights
as adults. An intermediate position is that children have no rights other than
to leave home and find new parents. At the other end of the spectrum are
Libertarians who believe that children are, more or less, property, because
the parents buy the food which makes up the molecules of their bodies. These
different versions of Libertarian ideas would have different implications for
how parents would be allowed to educate their children, even in a Libertarian
society even in a Libertarian-anarchist society.
For instance, at this moment there are thousands of children all over the
country who want to leave home (or to leave school, or refuse consent to
medical procedures and so on), and in many of those cases the parents are
violently overriding their wishes, with the authority and assistance of the
state as well as of most bystanders on whose assistance the parents choose to
call. Now imagine that an anarchist revolution is achieved. What will happen
next?
Some of the anarchists will regard all that parental violence as justified.
Others will regard it as the epitome of injustice.
The two kinds of people will think it legitimate violently to assist whichever
side they think is in the right.
If a civil war ensues this isn't so farfetched: something very similar
happened in regard to slaves, following an earlier revolution for liberty it
will be because although the individuals in that society agreed that violence
is legitimate only in self-defence they disagreed about which entities have
a self in the appropriate sense.
Now you may wish that everyone agreed with your particular conception of
Libertarianism. But although you may well have stumbled upon the ultimate
truth about what a Libertarian society should be like, you have to admit
you've failed to hit upon the ultimate truth about how to propagate that idea
to each other let alone to the next generation.
What we are discussing here is a kind of knowledge. This knowledge is
philosophical, it is epistemological, it is psychological. It is knowledge
that is necessary for the functioning of a Libertarian society, but it can't
be derived from Libertarian principles.
It's the knowledge of what sort of citizen would make a society which is
nominally Libertarian actually function as such. That includes knowledge in
the mind of such a citizen.
Does it include the knowledge of how to make such a citizen? Not exactly. I
don't believe it's either moral or rational to bring up children to propagate
a certain political view. Such a thing should be anathema to any advocate of
liberty, and in my opinion, to any decent parent too.
What I am trying to illustrate with these examples the libertarian society
that dies after a generation; the nominally libertarian society imposed on
people with non-libertarian ideas; the civil war about children's rights is
that a functioning Libertarian society will depend on the existence of
knowledge that cannot be obtained from Libertarian principles alone.
To discover such knowledge we must look to what underlies those principles
themselves.
In my opinion, their underlying justification is epistemology. Applied
epistemology is otherwise known as education theory.
It is important to seek an education theory that grows from the same roots as
Libertarianism, but it is a colossal mistake to try to derive educational
theory from Libertarianism.
The main reason I'm a Libertarian is that I believe that human beings are
fallible. That the powerful, in particular, are fallible and can't be trusted
to be right. Not kings, not bureaucrats and not parents or teachers either.
So I agree with Karl Popper that the question isn't who should rule? but
how can we limit the harm they do?
In education theory, the who should rule? debate is still alive and
virtually unchallenged. Should it be parents? Teachers? School boards? The
government? The UN...? (A better answer would of course be me.)
And as always when you start with that question, the answer is tyranny. The
real question is: how can institutions be set up within a family in such a way
that no one including the children is ruled.
So that differences of opinion can be resolved, not only without the
initiation or threat of force (which is as far as Libertarian theory can
possibly take us), but without force at all: by reason, which implies by
consent.
Libertarians today differ about many things I have already mentioned
children's rights but also whether, say, intellectual property is really
property, whether abortion is murder or not, and so on. What we really want,
and the whole point of a Libertarian society, and of a free society in general
as I see it, is not to entrench particular answers to such questions, but to
allow bad answers to be replaced by better ones. A fixed rule, such as the
parent is always right is inherently irrational and will systematically pick
the wrong answer. Family institutions that enforce such a rule are irrational.
As good Libertarians and good parents, we should want our children to be able
to correct our errors. And by able, we should mean not just legally able
(that is to say, they won't be thrown in prison or punished by their parents
if they try) but psychologically able to, which means that they won't feel
fear or guilt or the weight of parental disapproval if they try.
What we need what TCS provides is a completely different rhythm of family
life; as different as an open society is from a paternalistic dictatorship.
To understand Libertarianism you have to understand that living in liberty
isn't just a pleasant experience, like eating raspberries. Liberty isn't just
a good, it's a condition for goods to be created.
Similarly, tyranny the initiation of force isn't just an un*pleasant
experience, like having a large teganaria giganiticus* charging at your bare
feet from across the room (if you hate spiders, that is!)
As soon as you do think of it in that subjective way, you miss the point, and
lay yourself open to wicked arguments about tradeoffs So, Mr Irresponsible
Libertarian, how many children are you willing to see die of heroin poisoning
or in gun accidents, just to give you the nice warm feeling of living in
liberty?
It isn't that some people hate spiders, some people hate taxes. Those are
not the same kind of thing. The Libertarians' hatred of taxation is
structurally different. John Gray, who wrote that deplorably defeatist book
Liberalisms, disagrees, but he's wrong.
There is something more than personal preferences underlying the liberalisms,
in particular Libertarianism, and it does make sense, and it's reason.
The reason for the Libertarian hatred of taxation is that the institution of
taxation is, in an extended sense, irrational. Not necessarily in the narrow
sense that the word rational has historically been used, but in the most
general sense: There are patterns of thinking that can work (that is, create
the knowledge needed to solve the problems and meet the preferences of the
person doing the thinking), and patterns that can't work (except by unlikely
coincidence). For instance, logical deduction can work when trying to solve a
mathematical problem, but, as generations of exam-takers have found, prayer
cannot. Scientific reasoning can work when trying to understand the physical
world, but logical deduction in the absence of experimentation cannot, and nor
can prayer.
Rationalism is the theory that the patterns of thinking that can work are the
rational ones where the exact criterion for a process being rational
depends on which species of rationalism one adopts. The one appropriate to TCS
is the same as the one that I believe is appropriate to the liberalisms in
general and to Libertarianism in particular: it is what is known as critical
rationalism, but with the proviso that we include unconscious and inexplicit
knowledge and thought uniformly in our scheme of things. (Thus a rational
process need not rely on verbal reasoning.) As fallibilists, we don't expect
there to be a closed definition of rational: the exact criteria are always
under critical review.
To be rational in the fallibilist, critical-rationalist sense, a process has
to be truth-seeking, evolutionary, open to new ideas and to criticism of old
ones, avoid entrenchment of particular ideas, judge ideas according to content
rather than source ... and so on.
In science, these criteria lead to Popper's conclusion that theories about
measurable phenomena must be experimentally testable if progress is to be
possible. In political theory, they lead to Libertarianism. In psychology and
education theory, they lead to TCS.
The places where reason has gained substantial ground over the last few
hundred years, are specifically, in the areas of human rights, and in the
economy, and in science. If we call this the Enlightenment in the public
sphere, TCS is about extending the Enlightenment into the private sphere, and
specifically into the sphere of child rearing.
We ask, applying the same philosophical principles as underlie the
Enlightenment generally, what sort of institutions within the family promote
the growth of knowledge in the same sense that the external laws of a
Libertarian society promote the growth of knowledge in the society as a whole,
and the rules of the scientific community promote the growth of scientific
knowledge.
You can define a Libertarian society as one in which political issues are
decided by reason rather than force or blind obedience to tradition.
In a non-Libertarian society, if I earn a hundred pounds, the criterion of
choosing how that should be spent isn't unanimous agreement between all the
parties, it's voting, and ultimately the use of police power to take the money
from me against my will. Whereas in a Libertarian society, every possible use
of the money I earn has to have my consent. So in society at large, the
alternative to consent is force.
But in human relationships the absence of consent doesn't necessarily amount
to force. It's a wider class of behaviours, which includes force: there are
many patterns of interaction between people in close relationships that don't
resolve issues by reason at all, yet don't involve force either.
When a parent gives Little Billy a telling off, she may use no physical force
and no overt threat of force, but it is still not reason. Despite this being a
mere exercise of the parent's freedom of speech, little Billy does not
consent to it. Even while he is having the flow of ideas initiated in his mind
by the telling-off, he simultaneously wishes he were not.
When a parent gives Sally a choice between, on the one hand, taking out the
rubbish and having dinner, and on the other hand, not getting any dinner, she
is acting in such a way to put Sally into the psychological state of enacting
one theory while one or more conflicting theories remain active in her mind.
She is causing Sally to act literally against her will. Sally doesn't want to
take out the rubbish but fear of not getting any dinner effectively forces her
to do so.
Even making disappointed faces at your children to shame them into complying
works in the same way, psychologically, instead of causing a genuine, FREE
change of mind.
Some Libertarians I know force their children to eat everything on their plate
presumably not on the basis that there are starving children in Africa no
doubt they have some other pseudo-justification for this viciously immoral and
harmful practice, but the psychological effect upon the child is the same
either way.
It may not be state tyranny, but if you are being controlled by someone else,
it feels bad whether it is the state or your parent. And in both cases, life
would be better for all if reason were applied instead of force.
Reason also requires seeking truth, because if you are not seeking truth, you
are unlikely to find it. It is because rational processes seek a common and
objective truth that they tend to reach agreement, and it is this tendency
that powers the continual discovery of common preferences that replaces the
command structure of conventional education and parenting.
Seeking the truth requires remaining open to criticism and change, because
otherwise you will fail to drop false theories even when better ones are to
hand. Failing to drop refuted theories is incompatible with reason. But that
is exactly what a child is required to do, when he is coerced into learning
something against his will. He prefers one activity; perforce he engages in
another. This is irrational. And because it is irrational, it fails to create
knowledge. Rote learning isn't knowledge in the true sense, merely the
semblance of knowledge, just as inflated money is the semblance of wealth.
Judging ideas by their source rather than their content is incompatible with
reason so mother knows best, and because I say so are the archetypes of
irrational child-rearing just as much as using the parent's physical strength
to settle a dispute would be.
So what TCS asks is of a piece with what Libertarianism asks in regard to
politics and economics, namely: what rules of engagement in interpersonal
relationships have the property that rival ideas will be judged by reason (and
can therefore approach the truth)? This is what leads us to TCS educational
theory, whose most striking feature, especially to the newcomer, is the idea
that it is desirable and possible to bring up children without doing things to
them against their will.
Just as an economic transaction takes place only with the unanimous consent of
all parties, so TCS family life seeks the unanimous consent of the family
members including the children.
The TCS project is the construction of institutions within the family which do
for the growth of knowledge there what the public institutions of capitalism,
common law and so on do for the growth of wealth, science and other knowledge
that involves the cooperation of strangers. So TCS is the final, most
difficult, but also the most valuable, stage of the Enlightenment.
The future of liberty is TCS.
>on 11/25/02 9:09 AM, Peggy wrote:This is from:
>
>> I was a member of this group
>>> awhile ago, and as I recall
>there were some pretty radical TCS
>>> adherents at that time.
>
>What is TCS?
>
>Nancy
http://www.sarahlawrence.org/Articles/FutureOfLiberty.html
It might give you an inking, this is a speech by Sarah Lawrence given to a
bunch of Libertarians...
Peggy
Transcript of speech given at the World Libertarian Conference in London,
Ontario, in July, 2000.
Taking Children Seriously: The Final Phase of The Enlightenment
TCS and the future of liberty
Sarah Lawrence
Taking Children Seriously (TCS) is the name of an organisation I founded to
promote the Libertarian educational philosophy.
How can there be such a thing as the Libertarian educational philosophy?
Aren't parents in a Libertarian society free to educate their children in any
way they wish?
Yes. But that doesn't make every possible choice morally right, or best for
the child, or compatible with the survival of the Libertarian society. To
satisfy these criteria, we must look more deeply than Libertarian political
philosophy which is basically about how a society can run without the
initiation of physical force.
What justifies both Libertarian political philosophy and TCS education theory
in my opinion is reason something which, I fear, has yet to emerge in the
spheres of education and childrearing.
Many parents do a very good job of bringing their children up to believe in
authority and obedience to dictators, whether parents or the state. Recently,
I had the misfortune to be present when someone I know was subjected to a
violent attack by his parent. I was very shaken and didn't throw myself
between my young friend and the angry adult, but I did manage to pluck up the
courage (once I poked my head up from behind the sofa where I was hiding) to
express the opinion that hitting children may not be the best way to deal with
disagreements, and that it may not be entirely morally unobjectionable.
Perhaps I was less diplomatic than The Parent thought appropriate, because he
accused me of trying to coerce him into changing his parenting practices, and
then played the children-are-property card: It's none of your business how
I raise my child.
I couldn't help wondering whether he would think it none of his business if I
were to pull out my trusty Smith and Wesson .44 magnum and start shooting at
his wife. Actually, they don't get on very well so perhaps that's a bad
example.
At any rate, I'm glad that when a thug was trying to kill my sister in broad
daylight on the streets of New York, the bystanders didn't take that view but
saved her life by intervening instead.
This Parent went on to say that my friend needed to be taught a lesson. Under
normal circumstances, since I think that such parents needs to learn better
ideas about how children learn, I would have removed my belt and offered to
teach him a lesson if that would help him learn, but in this case, he was
bigger than me and not living in a Libertarian paradise, I was unarmed.
When I mentioned my little exchange with the parent to a fellow Libertarian a
few days later, he accused me of wanting to make children wards of the state
and have Big Brother dictate to us in our own personal affairs. (A bit like
parents do to their children then. Of course Big Brother is only in charge
when the parents aren't there to dictate to the children...)
Now I know this may sound very surprising to those of you who are, at this
very moment, convinced that ISIL have made a big mistake in asking me to speak
here, and that you are listening to a rabid statist who wants to take away
parents' rights, indeed, whose ideas make old Bill Clinton look like a
positive paragon of Libertarian virtue, but if you have jumped to the
conclusion that I want to take control of children out of the hands of parents
and put it into Nanny er, the nanny state, that is, you are very much
mistaken.
If you were beating your wife for failing to have your socks sorted by colour,
and I were to express the opinion that that may not be the best way to nurture
your relationship and might conceivably be the wrong thing to do, would you
jump to the conclusion that I was arguing that wives should be wards of the
state? Not unless you are more Neanderthal than your average man in the
street! You would understand that I was asserting the idea that wives are
people whose control of their own lives should not be infringed.
Similarly, I certainly do not think that children should be controlled by the
state instead of parents. I think that they should control their own lives,
just as adults do. Indeed, TCS advocates raising children not just without
beating them but without doing anything to them against their will.
I am not advocating violating parents' legal rights. What I am saying is that
parents are right to behave in one way which is within their legal rights, and
wrong to behave in another way which is also within their legal rights.
But what does a particular theory of child-rearing, however right and however
libertarian in the everyday sense of the word, have to do with Libertarianism,
the political movement? I can tell from the incensed looks some of you are
giving me that you remain of the opinion that I'm some sort of PC adult-hating
leftist do-gooder with a touch too much arrogance for comfort, and that you
are still asking Aren't parents in a Libertarian society free to bring up
their children any way they like?
I can see that some of you are already firmly convinced that TCS must be
mistaken because according to Libertarian principles, as one of my Libertarian
friends said to me, If I want to turn off the TV until the kids have done
their homework, I can. It's my TV.
But that is confusing right and wrong with legal and illegal.
Now you may say, as my friend did, a trifle testily I thought, But why
shouldn't I confuse right and wrong with legal and illegal? I am free to do
that aren't I?, and I'll agree that there should be no legal impediment
standing in your way here, but is it a good idea? Will it help you meet your
preferences? Will it make you happy? Will it be right?
When parents say things like I paid for the TV so I can switch it off
whenever I like they are making the mistake of assuming that you can deduce
how to treat children educational theory from Libertarian principles.
I want to give you some examples to show that that is a grave mistake. I want
to show that a functioning Libertarian society needs knowledge which isn't in
the principles of a Libertarian society.
First I'm going to give you an example to show that a Libertarian society
won't survive if they have the wrong educational policy, that is, one that
doesn't actually promote Libertarianism in the next generation.
Given that this example will show you a society which adheres completely to
Libertarian principles but isn't viable, I am hoping that you will be
persuaded that Libertarian principles alone are not enough to make a society
viable.
For a Libertarian society to survive and flourish, it must have a way of
passing its ideas on to the next generation. Obviously, there's nothing
automatic about survival. I once had a particularly pleasant dream in which I
and a bunch of frightfully agreeable Libertarians bought a beautiful tropical
island, declared independence and were living in freedom for ever. When I was
rudely awoken at the unearthly hour of nine o'clock in the morning by my
neighbour having an argument with the gardener outside, I realised that not
only am I not living in my perfect Libertarian society, it was tipping down
with rain and I had to get to the Post Office to send off my tax return...
Anyway, imagine a group of Libertarians who somehow get political independence
on an island where they create their own ideal Libertarian society.
According to the principles of Libertarianism, they're now free to choose from
a vast range of possible lifestyles. They can grow as much cannabis as they
like without having to worry about being locked up or waking up one morning
to find that it has all been stolen. They're free to spend all their money on
their dependants instead of financing state sinecures. In particular, they're
entitled to bring their children up to be Libertarians. Or not to.
Suppose that these people happen to share a dislike for children, so they
don't have any. Suppose also that they don't write books or allow outside
visitors to view their society. Will their society thrive? Perhaps for a
while, but one thing we can predict without knowing any more about it than
that, is that because they're not passing on their Libertarian ideas, their
little society is not going to be the nucleus of the future Libertarian world.
Unless they perfect the technology of immortality, they'll eventually die out,
and then the society they created, no matter how Libertarian, will no longer
exist.
Now if you thought those Libertarians were strange, here's an even stranger
group: These people do have children, but they bring them all up as
communists. This may be an unlikely scenario, but just consider the logic of
it. There's nothing in a Libertarian society to stop parents doing that, is
there? They're free to bring up their children in any way they like, aren't
they? It's not illegal to be inconsistent is it? Not all the ways will be
equally good for the children. Not all will be equally good for the society.
Some of them will be perverse, some will be nasty, cruel, and morally wrong,
despite being legal.
By the time these perverse Libertarians are dead (or cryonically suspended),
and only the grown-up children remain, the children will have instituted a
communist government. Or maybe they won't have; maybe it's not so easy to
bring up children to be communists: the Eastern bloc's educational systems
tried very hard to do so, with only patchy success.
Closed cultures such as the Amish survive by suppressing all creativity and
innovation but unless you're part of such a culture it's incredibly difficult
to bring up children to believe any particular idea you intend them to believe
(as many a parent will tell you).
You can't calculate all the unintended effects of your actions, you can't
control every possible outside influence or calculate the effects of those
outside influences (though some parents do try you should see what lengths
my neighbour goes to, to but I digress). So maybe these children won't end up
being communists after all; but even the most optimistic among you will have
to agree that it's all too easy to bring up one's children not to be
Libertarians. Most parents already do that quite successfully.
So a Libertarian society, without violating any of the principles of
Libertarianism, could ensure its own destruction, simply by choosing the wrong
child-rearing ideas.
Now, you may be thinking that although what I've described is a logical
possibility, it's a little farfetched. Why on earth should parents who believe
in liberty choose to raise their children in such a way as to decrease their
liberty and to end up fearing and hating it as non-Libertarians do?
Well, in a way, I think that is just what you are doing (well, most of you
anyway), or are planning to do when you become parents. Most parents do this.
It isn't what you intend, but neither do most left-wingers intend to ruin the
economy, do they?
In a Libertarian society, it's legal to raise your children as communists or
Democrats or Republicans or to have all sorts of debilitating hang-ups, of
which the fear of freedom is a common example, or to make them unhappy by
inflicting every sort of psychological cruelty. Perfectly legal. Isn't it?
TCS advocates raising children without doing anything to them against their
will or making them do anything against their will. I hope you are already
beginning to see why I have little patience with libertarians who object to
this by citing the parents' legal rights. Yes, switching off the TV until they
have done their homework should be legal. But that does not make it harmless,
nor does it make it any less vicious, nasty or morally wrong.
There is a more general reason Libertarians need to think about more than just
a constitution or set of laws that determine when violence is and isn't
legitimate:
Installing the right laws cannot by itself guarantee that you will get a
society that lives by those laws. That requires knowledge. This is the second
link I want to point out between education theory and Libertarian political
theory.
Let me give an example:
There are two kinds of country which have the US constitution. There are those
which, after they have instituted the US constitution, get an open society in
which all the constitutionally-protected human rights are respected (such as
in the US itself), and there are those which just ignore the constitution.
Merely introducing a Libertarian constitution would not ensure that liberty
was actually respected.
(If you're thinking that the US isn't an example of a country in which all the
constitutionally-protected human rights are actually respected, and that in
fact the US constitution is often violated, that just makes my point more
strongly. If America isn't a place where the rights laid down in the US
Constitution are respected, what makes you think that, after it's replaced by
a new Libertarian Constitution, whether written or unwritten, the resulting
society will respect that constitution?)
In 1989, Nigeria instituted a constitution strikingly similar to that of the
US. But has it produced a society like the US in terms of rights being
respected? Not exactly. Not unless you're being very uncharitable to the US.
What's the difference? Would Nigeria become a Libertarian society if it were
lucky enough to have a constitution designed for it by the good people at
ISIL? No. If anything, adopting a Libertarian constitution would result in
even more of a mess.
When the US constitution was adopted in America, most people in the society
(or at least the people who counted) were intellectually convinced that this
constitution was right; but the overwhelming majority of Nigerians would be
convinced that the ISIL constitution was not for them. Much as it would be in
their interests to adopt an ISIL constitution, the idea is a non-starter. And
if it were somehow implemented, people simply wouldn't act that way. The
Nigerians couldn't even behave in accordance with the US constitution, let
alone a better one.
So having the right constitution or laws alone will not get you a Libertarian
society. You need the right sort of people. You need people with the right
ideas.
Now here is a third way in which education theory and Libertarian political
theory are linked:
Some Libertarians believe that children have rights, perhaps the same rights
as adults. An intermediate position is that children have no rights other than
to leave home and find new parents. At the other end of the spectrum are
Libertarians who believe that children are, more or less, property, because
the parents buy the food which makes up the molecules of their bodies. These
different versions of Libertarian ideas would have different implications for
how parents would be allowed to educate their children, even in a Libertarian
society even in a Libertarian-anarchist society.
For instance, at this moment there are thousands of children all over the
country who want to leave home (or to leave school, or refuse consent to
medical procedures and so on), and in many of those cases the parents are
violently overriding their wishes, with the authority and assistance of the
state as well as of most bystanders on whose assistance the parents choose to
call. Now imagine that an anarchist revolution is achieved. What will happen
next?
Some of the anarchists will regard all that parental violence as justified.
Others will regard it as the epitome of injustice.
The two kinds of people will think it legitimate violently to assist whichever
side they think is in the right.
If a civil war ensues this isn't so farfetched: something very similar
happened in regard to slaves, following an earlier revolution for liberty it
will be because although the individuals in that society agreed that violence
is legitimate only in self-defence they disagreed about which entities have
a self in the appropriate sense.
Now you may wish that everyone agreed with your particular conception of
Libertarianism. But although you may well have stumbled upon the ultimate
truth about what a Libertarian society should be like, you have to admit
you've failed to hit upon the ultimate truth about how to propagate that idea
to each other let alone to the next generation.
What we are discussing here is a kind of knowledge. This knowledge is
philosophical, it is epistemological, it is psychological. It is knowledge
that is necessary for the functioning of a Libertarian society, but it can't
be derived from Libertarian principles.
It's the knowledge of what sort of citizen would make a society which is
nominally Libertarian actually function as such. That includes knowledge in
the mind of such a citizen.
Does it include the knowledge of how to make such a citizen? Not exactly. I
don't believe it's either moral or rational to bring up children to propagate
a certain political view. Such a thing should be anathema to any advocate of
liberty, and in my opinion, to any decent parent too.
What I am trying to illustrate with these examples the libertarian society
that dies after a generation; the nominally libertarian society imposed on
people with non-libertarian ideas; the civil war about children's rights is
that a functioning Libertarian society will depend on the existence of
knowledge that cannot be obtained from Libertarian principles alone.
To discover such knowledge we must look to what underlies those principles
themselves.
In my opinion, their underlying justification is epistemology. Applied
epistemology is otherwise known as education theory.
It is important to seek an education theory that grows from the same roots as
Libertarianism, but it is a colossal mistake to try to derive educational
theory from Libertarianism.
The main reason I'm a Libertarian is that I believe that human beings are
fallible. That the powerful, in particular, are fallible and can't be trusted
to be right. Not kings, not bureaucrats and not parents or teachers either.
So I agree with Karl Popper that the question isn't who should rule? but
how can we limit the harm they do?
In education theory, the who should rule? debate is still alive and
virtually unchallenged. Should it be parents? Teachers? School boards? The
government? The UN...? (A better answer would of course be me.)
And as always when you start with that question, the answer is tyranny. The
real question is: how can institutions be set up within a family in such a way
that no one including the children is ruled.
So that differences of opinion can be resolved, not only without the
initiation or threat of force (which is as far as Libertarian theory can
possibly take us), but without force at all: by reason, which implies by
consent.
Libertarians today differ about many things I have already mentioned
children's rights but also whether, say, intellectual property is really
property, whether abortion is murder or not, and so on. What we really want,
and the whole point of a Libertarian society, and of a free society in general
as I see it, is not to entrench particular answers to such questions, but to
allow bad answers to be replaced by better ones. A fixed rule, such as the
parent is always right is inherently irrational and will systematically pick
the wrong answer. Family institutions that enforce such a rule are irrational.
As good Libertarians and good parents, we should want our children to be able
to correct our errors. And by able, we should mean not just legally able
(that is to say, they won't be thrown in prison or punished by their parents
if they try) but psychologically able to, which means that they won't feel
fear or guilt or the weight of parental disapproval if they try.
What we need what TCS provides is a completely different rhythm of family
life; as different as an open society is from a paternalistic dictatorship.
To understand Libertarianism you have to understand that living in liberty
isn't just a pleasant experience, like eating raspberries. Liberty isn't just
a good, it's a condition for goods to be created.
Similarly, tyranny the initiation of force isn't just an un*pleasant
experience, like having a large teganaria giganiticus* charging at your bare
feet from across the room (if you hate spiders, that is!)
As soon as you do think of it in that subjective way, you miss the point, and
lay yourself open to wicked arguments about tradeoffs So, Mr Irresponsible
Libertarian, how many children are you willing to see die of heroin poisoning
or in gun accidents, just to give you the nice warm feeling of living in
liberty?
It isn't that some people hate spiders, some people hate taxes. Those are
not the same kind of thing. The Libertarians' hatred of taxation is
structurally different. John Gray, who wrote that deplorably defeatist book
Liberalisms, disagrees, but he's wrong.
There is something more than personal preferences underlying the liberalisms,
in particular Libertarianism, and it does make sense, and it's reason.
The reason for the Libertarian hatred of taxation is that the institution of
taxation is, in an extended sense, irrational. Not necessarily in the narrow
sense that the word rational has historically been used, but in the most
general sense: There are patterns of thinking that can work (that is, create
the knowledge needed to solve the problems and meet the preferences of the
person doing the thinking), and patterns that can't work (except by unlikely
coincidence). For instance, logical deduction can work when trying to solve a
mathematical problem, but, as generations of exam-takers have found, prayer
cannot. Scientific reasoning can work when trying to understand the physical
world, but logical deduction in the absence of experimentation cannot, and nor
can prayer.
Rationalism is the theory that the patterns of thinking that can work are the
rational ones where the exact criterion for a process being rational
depends on which species of rationalism one adopts. The one appropriate to TCS
is the same as the one that I believe is appropriate to the liberalisms in
general and to Libertarianism in particular: it is what is known as critical
rationalism, but with the proviso that we include unconscious and inexplicit
knowledge and thought uniformly in our scheme of things. (Thus a rational
process need not rely on verbal reasoning.) As fallibilists, we don't expect
there to be a closed definition of rational: the exact criteria are always
under critical review.
To be rational in the fallibilist, critical-rationalist sense, a process has
to be truth-seeking, evolutionary, open to new ideas and to criticism of old
ones, avoid entrenchment of particular ideas, judge ideas according to content
rather than source ... and so on.
In science, these criteria lead to Popper's conclusion that theories about
measurable phenomena must be experimentally testable if progress is to be
possible. In political theory, they lead to Libertarianism. In psychology and
education theory, they lead to TCS.
The places where reason has gained substantial ground over the last few
hundred years, are specifically, in the areas of human rights, and in the
economy, and in science. If we call this the Enlightenment in the public
sphere, TCS is about extending the Enlightenment into the private sphere, and
specifically into the sphere of child rearing.
We ask, applying the same philosophical principles as underlie the
Enlightenment generally, what sort of institutions within the family promote
the growth of knowledge in the same sense that the external laws of a
Libertarian society promote the growth of knowledge in the society as a whole,
and the rules of the scientific community promote the growth of scientific
knowledge.
You can define a Libertarian society as one in which political issues are
decided by reason rather than force or blind obedience to tradition.
In a non-Libertarian society, if I earn a hundred pounds, the criterion of
choosing how that should be spent isn't unanimous agreement between all the
parties, it's voting, and ultimately the use of police power to take the money
from me against my will. Whereas in a Libertarian society, every possible use
of the money I earn has to have my consent. So in society at large, the
alternative to consent is force.
But in human relationships the absence of consent doesn't necessarily amount
to force. It's a wider class of behaviours, which includes force: there are
many patterns of interaction between people in close relationships that don't
resolve issues by reason at all, yet don't involve force either.
When a parent gives Little Billy a telling off, she may use no physical force
and no overt threat of force, but it is still not reason. Despite this being a
mere exercise of the parent's freedom of speech, little Billy does not
consent to it. Even while he is having the flow of ideas initiated in his mind
by the telling-off, he simultaneously wishes he were not.
When a parent gives Sally a choice between, on the one hand, taking out the
rubbish and having dinner, and on the other hand, not getting any dinner, she
is acting in such a way to put Sally into the psychological state of enacting
one theory while one or more conflicting theories remain active in her mind.
She is causing Sally to act literally against her will. Sally doesn't want to
take out the rubbish but fear of not getting any dinner effectively forces her
to do so.
Even making disappointed faces at your children to shame them into complying
works in the same way, psychologically, instead of causing a genuine, FREE
change of mind.
Some Libertarians I know force their children to eat everything on their plate
presumably not on the basis that there are starving children in Africa no
doubt they have some other pseudo-justification for this viciously immoral and
harmful practice, but the psychological effect upon the child is the same
either way.
It may not be state tyranny, but if you are being controlled by someone else,
it feels bad whether it is the state or your parent. And in both cases, life
would be better for all if reason were applied instead of force.
Reason also requires seeking truth, because if you are not seeking truth, you
are unlikely to find it. It is because rational processes seek a common and
objective truth that they tend to reach agreement, and it is this tendency
that powers the continual discovery of common preferences that replaces the
command structure of conventional education and parenting.
Seeking the truth requires remaining open to criticism and change, because
otherwise you will fail to drop false theories even when better ones are to
hand. Failing to drop refuted theories is incompatible with reason. But that
is exactly what a child is required to do, when he is coerced into learning
something against his will. He prefers one activity; perforce he engages in
another. This is irrational. And because it is irrational, it fails to create
knowledge. Rote learning isn't knowledge in the true sense, merely the
semblance of knowledge, just as inflated money is the semblance of wealth.
Judging ideas by their source rather than their content is incompatible with
reason so mother knows best, and because I say so are the archetypes of
irrational child-rearing just as much as using the parent's physical strength
to settle a dispute would be.
So what TCS asks is of a piece with what Libertarianism asks in regard to
politics and economics, namely: what rules of engagement in interpersonal
relationships have the property that rival ideas will be judged by reason (and
can therefore approach the truth)? This is what leads us to TCS educational
theory, whose most striking feature, especially to the newcomer, is the idea
that it is desirable and possible to bring up children without doing things to
them against their will.
Just as an economic transaction takes place only with the unanimous consent of
all parties, so TCS family life seeks the unanimous consent of the family
members including the children.
The TCS project is the construction of institutions within the family which do
for the growth of knowledge there what the public institutions of capitalism,
common law and so on do for the growth of wealth, science and other knowledge
that involves the cooperation of strangers. So TCS is the final, most
difficult, but also the most valuable, stage of the Enlightenment.
The future of liberty is TCS.
Heidi Wordhouse-Dykema
Wow, the family's homepage is a little scary with floral pictures of
victorian mums holding adorable children and christian references.... Then
you link to the homeschool debate page and you get 'Rocky' music, deer
butting their heads together and a duck with it's dukes' up.
What a riot!
I don't want to handle that amount of arguing stress right now, but I'm
saving the link for later.
Heidi
victorian mums holding adorable children and christian references.... Then
you link to the homeschool debate page and you get 'Rocky' music, deer
butting their heads together and a duck with it's dukes' up.
What a riot!
I don't want to handle that amount of arguing stress right now, but I'm
saving the link for later.
Heidi
[email protected]
In a message dated 11/25/02 11:08:23 AM, peggy@... writes:
<< For a Libertarian society to survive and flourish, it must have a way of
passing its ideas on to the next generation. Obviously, there's nothing
automatic about survival. I once had a particularly pleasant dream in which I
and a bunch of frightfully agreeable Libertarians bought a beautiful tropical
island, declared independence and were living in freedom for ever. >>
Lovely.
So on one hand the Christian Right homeschoolers are raising the next
generation of Theocrats, and these folks who refuse to tell any personal
stories about their children are raising up Libertarians.
I just want to help my children become people who can choose to be Baptists
or Libertarians or whatever they want.
<<Judging ideas by their source rather than their content is incompatible
wit
<< For a Libertarian society to survive and flourish, it must have a way of
passing its ideas on to the next generation. Obviously, there's nothing
automatic about survival. I once had a particularly pleasant dream in which I
and a bunch of frightfully agreeable Libertarians bought a beautiful tropical
island, declared independence and were living in freedom for ever. >>
Lovely.
So on one hand the Christian Right homeschoolers are raising the next
generation of Theocrats, and these folks who refuse to tell any personal
stories about their children are raising up Libertarians.
I just want to help my children become people who can choose to be Baptists
or Libertarians or whatever they want.
<<Judging ideas by their source rather than their content is incompatible
wit
Tia Leschke
> Yes. But that doesn't make every possible choice morally right, or bestfor
> the child, or compatible with the survival of the Libertarian society. Topolitical
> satisfy these criteria, we must look more deeply than Libertarian
> philosophy - which is basically about how a society can run without theUnder
> initiation of physical force.
>
>
> This Parent went on to say that my friend needed to be taught a lesson.
> normal circumstances, since I think that such parents needs to learnbetter
> ideas about how children learn, I would have removed my belt and offeredto
> teach him a lesson if that would help him learn, but in this case, he wasThese two paragraphs just don't add up. A society can be run without the
> bigger than me and not living in a Libertarian paradise, I was unarmed.
initiation of physical force, but she needs to be armed, and would be in a
Libertarian paradise.
Tia