Children Are More Trustworthy and Capable than People Think

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As I shared on Facebook a couple of weeks ago, I am continually surprised by just how little faith people have in children, in their ability to learn, to make choices, to do just about anything really. And since I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it, I wanted to take the time to explore the topic a bit further, and to address some of the things people erroneously believe about kids…

Me and my sister were always welcome in the kitchen.

Children have to be taught how to learn

This one even crops up in self-directed learning spaces every now and then, and seems to show such a strange view of how humans function. It’s as if some people think that we’re born as blank slates, so devoid of any desires or drives that we must be taught to do even that most basic of all things: to learn. In reality, we come with that particular drive fully intact. It seems like a truly profound lack of respect to think children are incapable of this, when in fact it’s one of the things they’re absolutely best at.

Children will always make awful choices

There seems to be an assumption that children want to make dangerous choices, and if given half a chance will waste no time in doing so. Yet while it’s certainly true that children lack the experience, maturity, or impulse control of adults, that doesn’t mean they lack all caution, all sense, or all desire to do good. Further, the way children learn is by doing. As my friend Nola said, “Use it or lose it. If you make your own decisions, over time, you figure out how to make better choices. It works for adults, and for kids too.” With a little guidance and reasonable expectations, children can be perfectly capable of making their own choices.

Children can’t pick what they like

Content, be it books, games, or otherwise should be educationally enriching, so the thought goes, and if that’s the case then surely children can’t be trusted to pick out their own things. It must then be left up to responsible adults to choose what’s best for their children to engage with. I’m saddened by this theft of discovery, taking away the joy of picking out your own books at the library, your own shows on (kids) Netflix, getting to develop your own unique tastes and style that’s separate and distinct from the adults in your life. It’s such a simple thing, to allow children to make their own choices about their media (as long as it’s within age appropriate bounds), but it means so much. Children deserve to express their own likes and dislikes, to have their own interests, and adults shouldn’t be getting in the way of that.

Children aren’t allowed to participate in real work

So often the smallest dangers are blown out of proportion when it comes to children: a vegetable peeler in the kitchen turns into fears of ER visits, and children are barred from any work with any possibility of danger. While I’m certainly not suggesting getting a 3-year-old to help you chop wood, often fears of danger seem overblown, now even more so than when I was a child (and they were frequently overblown then). Children are capable of being careful. Children usually want to help. And the way that they learn how to be safe is by practicing, using tools, gaining skills and proficiency, and building on that base as they grow. As Laura Grace Weldon said in a piece on bringing children into the kitchen, “We spend much time and money on enriching activities and products for our children, but if they don’t get the chance to take on real responsibilities, we’re depriving them of key components of adult competency.”

There are myriad ways that children’s abilities are frequently undervalued and many avenues to gaining greater competency that are often denied to them. But in taking a life learning path, there are a lot more opportunities to respect children, to trust them, to allow them greater freedom, and to engage with them in meaningful activities. I hope that the more examples there are of living respectfully with children, the more others will see just how capable they can be.

Youth Rights, Community, and Why Everyone Should Care About Children

This past weekend while sitting anxiously behind a table at the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair, watching people walk by, and only very occasionally stop by, I pulled out my new flower-patterned notebook to scribble some budding thoughts.

Sitting at the table, I keep watching people's eyes catch and then skim over the offerings laid out before me. Some of it could definitely be to do with how our table looks. Compared to the DVDs on one side and the rows of books on the other, all new and colourful and shiny, the slightly messy stacks of zines (and a single stack of a free issue of a three-year-old-journal), it might not seem so exciting.

But I can't help but wonder if some of the reason is that our stuff is all about educating children. Our culture doesn't value children very much [or values them only in certain very narrow ways], and I haven't seen much proof that the radical community [or various radical communities I've had any experience with] values them any more so.

Perhaps this observation was born more out of insecurity at all the disinterest being shown in my zines than as a reflection on people's actual feelings on or interest in children and education. Looking around, there was certainly much eye-skimming to be seen, as I think there kind of has to be at any large event with such a wide variety of tables to peruse. What you find personally most interesting is the only thing likely to catch your eye and make you pause for more than a moment when you're faced with such an overwhelming array of things to see.

However, if there's that little interest, not even enough for a brief flip through a book or zine, it seems to show that the majority of people there don't find the educating of children of particular interest. Or, maybe even more than a lack of interest, perhaps many people simply don't believe it to be of particular relevance. One young person said they didn't have kids, so didn't know if there was any point in signing up for more information.

People love to talk about children, child-raising, and education. Everyone's an armchair critic expert on those subjects when it comes to talk of kids-these-days-and-their-disrespect, or how badly parents are at parenting, or the failure of teachers to teach properly. But there seems to be a profound disconnect when it comes to talk of the actual nuts and bolts of parenting or education. Once it moves beyond vague criticism, there seems to be the idea that the only ones who have any interest or stake in the matter is parents. If you're not a parent, why should you care?

This type of attitude seems to me to be all part and parcel with the general disregard for children in this culture. Everyone can agree that children are important ("they're our future!"), yet somehow no one wants to see them in public (unless they're perfectly behaved, never crying or fussing or yelling or inconveniencing anyone in the slightest), or see them on Facebook ("why do parents post so many annoying photos of their snotty kids?"), or have to interact with them in any way ("I just don't like kids!"). And people certainly don't seem to want children to be treated with respect and kindness, or as autonomous young people deserving of more agency than they're currently being given ("More freedom? More pampering?? They already get too much of that!").

I needed a picture of children, so I figured why not use one of me and
my sister? This is us being cute, circa '96 or '97.

To change the way children are treated, it seems to me that people should come to a few realizations.

1. Children are people. Obvious, I know, but it seems like it still needs to be said. All people deserve to be treated with a basic level of dignity, kindness, and respect for their personal autonomy and well-being. Children are a group with different needs than adults, for sure, but that doesn't change their worth, or their right to be treated well. All it means is that more environments should make an effort to be accommodating to the needs of children, not just the needs (or perceived needs) of adults.
2. If you claim to be against any oppression, and then say how much you hate children, then you're not really against that form of oppression. Why? Because children also suffer from all other different forms of oppression. Anti-racism, you say? A feminist? A queer ally? Against ableism? There are children of colour; children who are girls; disabled children; queer children; trans children... Childhood is intimately affected by the identities a child holds (and the identities and experiences of their families), and a child marginalized by some other aspect of their identity is doubly marginalized.
3. The well-being of children is in all of our hands. Whether you have children or want children or want never to have children, whether you're young or old, whether you spend much of your time in the company of children or almost none, it's up to all of us to look critically at the way children are treated and viewed in our culture (and the way we personally treat and look at children), and to work in whatever ways are open to us to make our environments safer and more hospitable to children. 
4. This means caring about children, caring about parents and care-givers, and caring about education. This might mean more intimate personal involvement, it might mean educating yourself about the state of schooling and educational alternatives, or it might mean simply being nicer to hassled parents out in public with unhappy kids.

I don't think everyone should have the same interests as I do (unschooling and radical education), or that a childless person should care as deeply as a parent does about the harm standardized testing is causing (they're just not going to), but I do think that we should all be concerned with how other people are treated. We should all desire and strive for a world that treats everyone with dignity and respect, and where the important needs of everyone are met.

I just think that, when we talk about revolution at the anarchist bookfair, or ways to improve local services at the community center, or about our ideal world with our friends, we should always remember to make children both a subject of and a part of those important conversations.

Emotional Health and the Power of Choice, or Why Kids Should be Able to Avoid Things

I've mentioned previously in passing that I think one of the benefits of unschooling is in the space it gives people to learn to handle things at their own pace. But I don't think I've ever said more on the subject than that.

So here's me saying more.

I think unschooling helps people to grow up as more emotionally healthy people, in part by giving them the opportunity to not deal with shit when they can't handle it.

I think it's important for people to have the option to avoid things when that feels like the healthy thing to do. What I mean by this is, for example, what I often did growing up struggling with anxiety. When a place or an activity or a person just made me too anxious, I could choose not to go back to that place or activity for as long as it took me to no longer feel anxious about it (whether that was a week or two or forever).

For others, it could mean not having to continuously deal with places or social groups where they're bullied, or things that feel too overwhelming.

Non-schoolers of various stripes are often accused of sheltering their kids, and while the type of sheltering that includes no sex ed and only teaching creationism might be problematic, the type of "sheltering" I favour is that of children learning to protect themselves by not dealing with more than they're capable of handling. Being able to make that call, instead of having no choice but to go to a place every single day where you might feel extremely overwhelmed and anxious, depressed, or be bullied and abused, is powerful. I'm so grateful for that.

I'd like to think I'm happily avoiding things that made me anxious
by practicing keyboard here.

Then of course you get a whole bunch of people saying "then how will they ever learn to deal with difficult situations?!" My response is that, firstly, why should anyone be subjected to harm, whether that's physical or emotional, if it can in any way be avoided? And secondly, that difficult situations and people are simply impossible to avoid no matter how "sheltered" a person is. What you can do is:

1. Not deal with actual abuse. No one, no matter their age, should ever be forced to deal with abusive people and situations. Ever. 
2. Wait until you feel ready to deal with something. Maybe it's impossible to avoid, but you need a bit of time to think things through, and prepare yourself. Everyone deserves that breathing space, if they need it.
3. Avoid the things that just aren't necessary. Maybe a certain activity is full of people who just love drama. Maybe you don't feel it's worth it to go to that activity, because it provides more negatives then positives in your life. So you can just, you know, stop going.

Because ultimately, difficult things are impossible to entirely (or sometimes even mostly) avoid. Your friend groups will have fights and issues, you'll have to support your friend who's going through something really rough, relationships will end, you'll run into abusive people, and sometimes you'll feel that you have to deal with an environment that feels really toxic.

But what unschooling can do is let you avoid some of the worst situations and some of the unnecessary ones. It gives children and teens a lot of the same freedom adults have, to quit a job with an abusive boss or stop going to that quilting class where people keep talking behind other peoples' backs. 

I think that children and teens, when given that freedom, can't help but be at least a bit healthier, happier, and better equipped to deal with difficulties in more intentional ways. 

And really, isn't that what we should all be striving for?