Committed to finding ways out of the coercion/self-sacrifice mire of conventional parenting. We are variously critical rationalists, libertarians, home educators, attachment-parents, but we take our ideas where we find them.
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I've isolated the problem with the Key Stage One maths syllabus now. It doesn't distinguish betwen actual maths (or arithmetic or whatever) and applying the ideas to real-life situations. It just mixes them all up together, in an attempt to transform straightforward "Maths" (school level) as we understood it in the 1950s (say) into New Maths... something relevant! Hip! Cool! and altogether... (rips up textbook in despair).
My random guess is, this leaves kids understanding ever less about how maths matters: so confused, they can't apply the simplest thing to any real problem at all. I mean, if you wanted to know who swam a length of the pool fastest, would you time all the children and put them on a bar chart? If you wanted to work out how to spend your £10 Christmas money, would you write down the prices of all the nice toys in the shop and then arrange them in ascending order? On the other hand, being really practised and confident at mental arithmetic would actually really help, a lot.
The way it is now, maths becomes just "that weird stuff we get tested on at school". Perversely, the opposite effect than was likely originally intended. Although, some people have a very vested interest in keeping the education process surrounded by a dark cloak of smoke and mystery. They're called School Educators. I wonder how long till they realise the Home People have got the drop on them by now...?
There's a big march against war in Iraq in London today. Whatever your views, please do read this blog: click now on Salam Pax (aka Where is Raed?). The title means "peace" in two different languages (gold star to those who know what they are!) and it's written by an Iraqi in Baghdad. We Salam fans check in most days just to make sure he is still around, so far because his criticisms of Saddam make him vulnerable but maybe soon we'll just be wanting to know if he made it through the night.
This is what Salam has at the top of his blog:
"the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do." - Samuel P. Huntington
If you think the issues are simple, read Salam. If you think ordinary people in Baghdad support Saddam and hate America, read Salam. If you think Western peace protesters are helping Iraqis, read Salam. If you think the Americans are without fault, read Salam.
What does this have to do with parenting, rational or otherwise? This: parents have a responsibility to think long and hard about the moral issues facing us in the world today, about which side they are going to stand up for in any conflict of values, and about the real human lives that lie behind those debates. Otherwise, how can they be good advisors to their children about how things are?
Many of you no doubt consider the idea of war a moral outrage and a reckless endangerment of the world. I personally see it exactly the other way round. But whatever your views, don't forget to feed your conscience with some sound knowledge and healthy arguments before acting (or marching) on what it tells you. Thoughtlessly aligning with the wrong side in a major conflict can be disastrous, as history enthusiastically reveals.
One of the things we don't try to do on the Rational Parenting blog is redefine the language. Although agreeing on specific definitions can be useful when discussing complex ideas in epistemology and philosophy, blogs don't have the time or space for such detailed analysis (although the Rational Parenting website explains consentual coercion-free parenting in more depth for those who think it sounds crazy, and the TCS website has much deeper ideas and arguments again).
But there is another reason for not trying to fix the ideas embodied in words that already exist: the ambiguity of language can sometimes be a very positive practical asset and an aid to understanding.
When adamant anti-coercionists are arguing with conventional parents (and of course, most if not all parents are inevitably conventional in some respects), they are often liable to resort to accusations of unwitting wrongness and irrationality. "You are doing bad things without realising it!" may well be true in millions of cases, but very very rarely is it a useful thing to say from the viewpoint of the addressee.
Why is it useless to tell other people that, in your opinion, they are unwittingly f&*^%$g up? Firstly, because it's your word against theirs: without good arguments and illustrations, they may rightly think not only, "So what?" but also, "What do you know about me anyway?" Secondly, because, with good arguments and illustrations, the f*&^%$g-up part is rendered irrelevant anyway. And thirdly because, it's true of everybody, in all sorts of circumstances, so there is no way to be sure that they are the ones f*&^%$g up rather than you! (although those good arguments help, of course).
So, what does accusing people of unwitting dumbness have to do with the virtues of ambiguous language? Fallibility. Fallibilty is the (philosophical) theory and/or fact that nobody can ever know with absolute certainty that they are right about anything they think or say ever. At any time, any one of might actually be dreaming, or mad, or something, and if we were then we might not know about it. The reason for this is that we are physical beings (erm, I think, something like that, bear with me), and the implication of it is that someone else might be righter than you, and/or think differently than you are assuming with your best theories, and you wouldn't necessarily know it.
So, if someone seems to be completely wrong and idiotic from something they said, we should assume they might not be, unless or until we have genuinely strong and convincing evidence that they are; and even then, we should argue with their stated ideas and not tell them "You're an idiot!" if we actually want to change their mind and make the world a better place. When language is ambiguous, we should be aware of this, and assume, unless or until we have genuinely strong and convincing evidence to the contrary, that they mean something good and genuine, which we may not have identified yet, and ask questions rather than short-sightedly dismissing their ideas as rubbish. The only exception is when we're almost completely sure there is nothing we can learn from those people anyway, and are merely sharing our own superior thoughts out of benelevolent generosity. Which, maybe that can happen, I don't know.
"Don't tell me!" spoken by a toddler might mean: don't order me around/ don't give me that type of information/ don't repeat that sentence/ I did not want you to say that thing/ I am upset about what you just said/ I am not in the mood for instruction or advice right now.
"Tell me!", conversely, might mean: give me some clear instructions/ save me time by directing me the way you want (I trust you enough to be happy with that)/ explain certain information to me/ answer my questions/ stop withholding certain facts.
Is "telling people" coercive? The answer is, it entirely depends what you mean by "telling people", and even then, it entirely depends on the situation and the wishes of the individuals involved. Coercion and/or deep irrationality can't be diagnosed from a few sentences in an email. You have to know a person well in real life to understand how they use language in anything more than a very generalised conventional way.
Language is not a science; it's an art. The knowledge it embodies is multi-faceted, complex, and sub-verbal, in the sense of being embodied in the words, but not extractable from the words so one can set it out like a patient etherised upon a table. To put it another way, our language is an institution, a tradition requiring respect; and one which seems to me fortunately very largely impervious to the attempts of radicals and ideologists to rearrange and alter it to fit their agendas.
When ideas change, the language always follows. New concepts come up, and new words grow to meet them. Old ideas die, and the words that clothed them fade away peacefully too. But the concepts themselves always lead the way, because ideas are what change the world, not altered words.
What does a non-coercive parent say to a toddler demanding, "Tell me what to do"? Words are ambiguous. Assume the best. The worst will die from being left unwatered.
I am looking closely at Key Stage One maths today (don't ask). Having given up trying to work out the syllabus from the syllabus (this is why teachers need years of training, so they can understand abject unintelligible nonsense) I decided instead to work out what the curriculum is from the actual tests (again, don't ask).
This has led to some amusing categories of kinds of required knowledge so far, such as, "using a ruler to measure" and "fractions, by counting pictures". But some interesting patterns are emerging.
Most obviously, this kind of maths is characterised by its complete inability to ask a straight question. Every little bit of logic has to be twisted round to make it look as confusing as possible. So instead of asking:
56+43= what?
like they used to in the Olden Dayes, now they ask something like this:
98=(box)+(2_) "How do you make this true?"
One might argue that such questions are encouraging the children to think more and be lateral in their logic. I wouldn't. I think they are irritating, showy, silly, impractical and completely unfair on the kids. I think kids like straightforwardness, and straightforwardness is what life is, or should be, about. I think difficulty can and should be as straightforward as possible, unless one is solving a real problem from real life: by applying one's straightforward knowledge.
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I do not have the patience or inclination to try to explain this in the kinds of ways that would have any perceptible impact on the people implementing it. However, here's my prize for Most Stupid Type Of Question on the KS1 syllabus: measuring wobbly lines with straight rulers plus guesswork. For heaven's sake. Anybody knows the answer is to take a piece of string and measure that, not to guess. So do they ban pieces of string from the exam room, or refuse to let you unravel a bit of your jumper and then happen to place it on your page, or what?
(Maths teachers reading this: have a gold star, I'm impressed that you got here, and am I wrong about this string business? If so, please let me know).
P.S. I've just worked out what this complicatedness is all about: the maths syllabus is apeing real life. It's trying to make itself relevant, by being applied-maths instead of just simple maths-maths. This is nuts. The whole reason maths matters at all is that you can and do apply it; the real-life situations are the applying part. Sigh.
Some good ideas in response to the problems of the week below. Gold stars all round! (Of course, that's a joke. Gold stars are nothing but coercive manipulation. Unless you happen to like gold stars, of course. Me, I love them, so feel free...)
Anyway, here are some more ideas to add to the great comments you wrote:
Socialising: Try out groups/activities (clubs, sports, music, whatever) with an eye to the social atmosphere as well as the fun-level of the activity.
Hang out in places where there are accompanied kids, and (parents!) be friendly to their adults.
Offer to have other people's kids in your home- parents are often grateful for this- maybe collecting schoolchildren whose parents get home from work later (this could even make you money, but maybe check out the rules and regulations first, especially in the UK they are bound to be legion).
Languages Apparently the BBC (chokes on her breakfast cereal) does a good video course called "Muzzy", which is expensive but presumably once one parent in the town has forked out, others could borrow it later.
Foreign-language radio/TV ought to be accessible somehow, but I don't know the details.
Making and keeping in touch with friends abroad is always a good idea, even though it's annoying not to have the resources to see them more often.
I knew someone who learned quite a lot of German from Linguaphone tapes borrowed from the local library. Parent and child could do this together, or older kids might enjoy doing it on their own.
I'm going to post these first, see if there are any comments and ask around the net, and then collate any ideas into some responses later this evening. Help appreciated!
Playmates Wanted How can a parent help a child who wants more friends to play with? Say the child is under ten, and maybe not very confident about approaching and bonding with completely unknown kids in the local Brownies or whatever, but loves having close friends for fantasy games. Any ideas for finding good friends welcome, the more unexpected the better.
Learning Languages A child, let's say aged under ten again, expresses an interest in learning French or Spanish. Nobody in the family has any languages, or knows any French or Spanish people. The child either doesn't go to school, or can only learn at a very slow boring rate in school language lessons; or he wants to speak French rather than writing down lists of French numbers, say. How can parents help a child learn to speak a new language?
A child discusses the importance of (genuinely, thoroughly) consentual dentistry:
Although most children hate going to the dentist, I happen to love going to the dentist. Because if you get the right dentist, then they try not to be horrible to you, they try to be nice to you, and my dentist is very nice. I like the dentist talking about me, how good she thinks I'm being, she doesn't think that my teeth are very bad.
I think actually, it's hard to believe this, but I like having feelings, I like the feel of it; when I have things poked around in my mouth, it actually makes me feel kind of responsible in a way. I can't really explain why, though. I like the thunder as well, I like the thunder the drills make when I'm having a filling.
She calls my teeth some names of the alphabet, like teeth D and teeth A and stuff like that. At first you feel a little bit nervous, but then you feel really confident. It's good to feel confident, because when you're confident, you don't keep saying stop stop! like that. I like feeling confident, it's good.
I go to the dentist because some of my teeth are a little bit bad, because if people look in your mouth then they think "that's quite a nice mouth!" I like the idea of braces and I like the idea of fillings, I like the way they look.
I like it the way that if she's talking to somebody else, she says things to me first. She doesn't make me do things I don't want to do, she doesn't say, "Open wide!" or "Say ah!" she says, "Could you open your mouth?" It's like she's asking me, even though she wants me to do it it's nice the way she says, "Can you?". She tells me what she's going to do before she does it. If I wanted to stop, I'd put my hand up, and then she'd just stop for a minute.
What's the best thing about going to the dentist?
I like the dentist's chair, the way it makes a noise, and then you move up, and then the dentist likes you to lean down and the chair just helps you so you don't have to bend your neck back too much.
It occurred to me hiking across London with paraphenalia and little folks several times this week that from some conventional perspectives, my life would probably appear pretty crazy. Although I rate conversing with political intellectuals about self-defence and morality, repeatedly exploring big museums when they are mostly empty, having lunch with working adult friends and dancing round waterfalls as far more educational than sitting in the average classroom day after day after day, there are evidently many who do not, or who disagree that the loss of availability to earn a conventional income is worth the guaranteed improvement.
Being quizzed yet again about "socialisation" (pshaw), and reciting once more all about how extremely many new home-edders there are about these days and, besides, whoever learned anything much from (sitting in silence with) 39 other same-aged people anyway, the inescapable fact nonetheless pops up: most other people Are Not Like This. To function on the basis of what explicitly seems most right, rather than on the basis of what has apparently worked in the past for reasons which we don't quite know is always to take risks. Sometimes these risks are rather significant. Being in a small bunch of radicals who question the status quo is not easy or safe or reliable: it's about creating new institutions, and those at the vanguard are still in the process of creation and may never know the outcome of their great experiments.
Traditions protect us from ourselves: they mitigate our personal faults and entrenchments and replace them with conventional badnesses which we can then develop generalised shared knowledge about dealing with. Whereas on the frontiers, our every small failing becomes a potential disaster, and sometimes, our every small step forward an act of courage. When the established ways don't make sense anymore, that's what we have to do; there is no moral alternative, especially when our own children's development is at stake.
Home educators and consentual/TCS parents aren't just doing their best for their kids: they are building new traditions for the future. And I can't think of many things more worth doing than that.
