Happiness, Productivity, and the Fall of Capitalism (or We All Deserve to Live Joyfully)

Do parents care about their children's happiness? I think it's an easy answer to say overwhelming they do, very much so. And yet, they don't necessarily prioritize it in the daily lives of their children.

I feel like a lot of parents erroneously believe that academic success will lead to happiness, and that if they can just keep their kids on the "right" path they will eventually be happier for it. This belief in future gains lets them absolve themselves of the need to make sure that their kids are happy NOW.

While there are plenty of people out there who will inform you with great indignation that kids these days want everything now, I think it’s actually the reverse: our society has a delayed gratification problem. We’ve come to believe that happiness is something best deferred to a later, more convenient time and date. After school hours. After you’ve finished your homework. On the weekend. During summer vacation. In your one week of vacation from work. After retirement…

Capitalism has forced this situation onto people in a material way, but too many have also internalized it, and come to take a strange sort of pride in stealing joy from themselves, in working hard not only out of necessity or for a worthy goal, but treating constant busyness, productivity, and even stress as some type of merit badge: proof they’ve earned their place in this world through labour.

This attitude is then extended to children. They, too, are treated as if they have to earn their joy, their free time, their play, their right to make their own choices. Happiness is something you only get to experience once you’ve done everything “essential,” a situation made even worse by the fact that judgement of just what IS essential is always made by the adults in a child’s life, not the child themselves. 

This could be the place to point out that, as Jean Piaget said, play is the work of childhood. I could point to research that free play improves children’s social skills and grades. But to do so seems to be using the logic of a toxic culture in order to justify healthy, essential human behaviour that doesn’t--or certainly shouldn’t--need any justification. When we make those types of arguments, it allows us to stay safely inside the framework of our current system, which is why I think we have to go deeper than that, and question why it is we’ve been taught to value productivity (sometimes masquerading as “good grades,” “good jobs,” “hard work,” and “success”) above all else. 

We are not placed on this Earth to serve the interests of billionaires, we do not need to prove ourselves worthy of simply existing, and children should never have to meet adult demands in order to earn what they should be able to enjoy freely. 

I don’t pretend to know the steps necessary in dismantling capitalism, but I do think part of it has to be examining the ways we’ve internalized and enacted ideas which are actively harmful to ourselves, our communities, and the environment. We need to start sorting out what values should truly be at the heart of our lives, and what we communicate to children about how they should live their lives.  

Doesn’t happiness seem like a better goal than being good at capitalism? And I don’t mean “happiness” in a shallow or individualistic way, I mean it expansively, generously, a communal effort to re-organize society in such a way that everyone can live well--can, hopefully, be happy.

It’s a mistake for parents to prioritize productivity. And if they prized their children’s happiness instead, perhaps that could even be a little bit revolutionary.

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Fun is More Important Than "Education"

I read a new post on how “fun for the fun of it” is good enough by Wendy Priesnitz, and it got me thinking.

I like to talk about how we’re constantly learning--how we can’t help but do so--and how unschooling is really just embracing that fact.

But just as important is realizing that we don’t always have be learning.

Bear with me for a second.

As adults, you probably enjoy doing a whole range of activities for pleasure: watching movies, listening to music, reading novels. Adults aren’t expected to justify these activities, it’s just accepted that they’re enjoyable, and that’s considered enough of a reason to do them.

Yet somehow when it comes to children, all that changes. “Education” must somehow be crammed into everything, from games to children’s TV shows. Even something as fundamental to childhood as play has to be defended by experts attempting to prove that it increases concentration, test scores, or the ability to work well in a group. Apparently if there was nothing pointing towards a correlation between play and success in school, play would be deemed useless altogether.

It seems that, in some ways at least, adults are actually given more leeway to have fun. Children are kept so busy by parents and teachers, determined to mold them into productive members of society, that some of the truly important things in life get pushed aside. Because when it really comes down to it, what are we trying to cultivate in our lives and that of our children? Is it perfectionism, competition, and academic achievement, or is it joy, creativity, and meaningful relationships? I know which goals sound better to me.

Me, my sister, and my mother.

Yes, talking about TV shows--about the plots and character motivation and how it compares to real life--might be “educational,” but at least as important is that watching a favourite show is fun. Reading novels might improve vocabulary, but the real reason we do so, no matter our ages, it because of the delight fiction brings us.

Play for play’s sake, fun for the sake of nothing more than fun, is valuable. Really valuable. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of playing with my sister, and some of my best adult memories are of laughing uproariously with those I love. Doing both fun and meaningful things is what makes us feel satisfied with our lives.

Unlike some homeschoolers have suggested, unschooling isn’t about sneakily teaching children what the parents want them to know: it’s about centering life, not education. It’s evaluating your priorities and realizing that learning runs parallel to a richly lived life, and doesn’t need to be artificially engineered in children’s lives.

When you realize that, you can let go and enjoy life, and allow your children to enjoy theirs. Play games, splash in the mud, watch TV, read comic books, do whatever it is that brings you and your children joy.

Have fun, and the learning will take care of itself.