To say “schools existed for millennia” is monumentally misleading as it brushes away the problem of coercion of compulsory schooling. Instead of using the all-encompassing term “school”, you can then be more accurate by speaking of the Prussian education system, i.e. the cancer of modern education: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system
“Chores” can indeed be totalitarian unless they come from natural necessity or contract. There is a world of difference between “I must clean up my room because it is hard to move around”, and “Mom says I must clean the floor because aunt Betty is coming” (implying “I do not care about the floor, and even less about Aunt Betty witch”). A contract might say: “You will get your $3 allowance if you make sure garbage is never piling up”.
An arbitrary ban or limit on XBox is also totalitarian. Limits could come from contract, e.g. “I will buy you XBox as long as you promise never to play after 7 pm”.
I don’t think freedom is the main factor here, because kids aren’t fully developed. They start out with many desires that are bad for themselves and others: to eat lots of sweets, to watch lots of youtube, to torment each other. At some point growing up, kids learn self-control and start making decisions that actually make them better off. But until that point, parents are responsible for what’s good for the kid, and giving kids freedom to make themselves worse off is a bad idea.
What you say is exactly the mythology created by the system of schooling and adult controlled education. It is based on ignorance of brain science, and results in serious health and mental damage to millions of children. “Kids are not fully developed” stands at the core of the problem. Young brains are perfectly structured to adapt to the modern world using the same or better learning algorithms than those employed by the adult brain. We destroy those algorithms at school and generate an impression of ineptitude that deepens the problem. When communism was failing, communist tightened controls to get closer to perfection. So do schools. “Kids start out with many desires” fails to appreciate the power of biological instincts that protect the young organism from harm and external interference. We ruin that at school and with harmful “self-control”. “Start making decisions” implies that a toddler who takes things it its mouth is incapable of decision making. The opposite is true. Those decisions lead to learning and adaptation. We steal it by authoritarian parenting. “Make them better off” is an illusion. Decisions made after years of being deprived of decision-making are inferior and lead to addictions, depression, suicide, and the like. “Freedom to make themselves worse” is not much different to saying: “let’s put birds in cages to make sure they do not hurt themselves”. Evolution created a fantastic computing device: the brain. What we do is that we tinker with that device and produce unhappy societies. “The true face of the enemy” is a perfect parallel between what we do to children, what communists did to societies and what Orwell feared in 1984. All we need is a bit of understanding and appreciation of human biology and brain science.
I think culture, which includes teaching of kids by adults, is also a pretty fantastic computing device, and works better than letting every generation relearn everything in the school of hard knocks.
The ultimate solution to good education is rich culture to which a young brain adapts. As for the computing device, there is only one in the equation: the brain. Culture is just data. Teaching is programming. Exploration and adaptation are based on computing. If you want a smart kid, let her compute the reality on her own!
Schools have existed for millennia, at first for children of rich parents, then expanded to everyone in the last few centuries.
Children also feel that having to do chores is totalitarian, and getting only 1 hour of xbox per day is super totalitarian.
To say “schools existed for millennia” is monumentally misleading as it brushes away the problem of coercion of compulsory schooling. Instead of using the all-encompassing term “school”, you can then be more accurate by speaking of the Prussian education system, i.e. the cancer of modern education:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system
“Chores” can indeed be totalitarian unless they come from natural necessity or contract. There is a world of difference between “I must clean up my room because it is hard to move around”, and “Mom says I must clean the floor because aunt Betty is coming” (implying “I do not care about the floor, and even less about Aunt Betty witch”). A contract might say: “You will get your $3 allowance if you make sure garbage is never piling up”.
An arbitrary ban or limit on XBox is also totalitarian. Limits could come from contract, e.g. “I will buy you XBox as long as you promise never to play after 7 pm”.
I don’t think freedom is the main factor here, because kids aren’t fully developed. They start out with many desires that are bad for themselves and others: to eat lots of sweets, to watch lots of youtube, to torment each other. At some point growing up, kids learn self-control and start making decisions that actually make them better off. But until that point, parents are responsible for what’s good for the kid, and giving kids freedom to make themselves worse off is a bad idea.
What you say is exactly the mythology created by the system of schooling and adult controlled education. It is based on ignorance of brain science, and results in serious health and mental damage to millions of children. “Kids are not fully developed” stands at the core of the problem. Young brains are perfectly structured to adapt to the modern world using the same or better learning algorithms than those employed by the adult brain. We destroy those algorithms at school and generate an impression of ineptitude that deepens the problem. When communism was failing, communist tightened controls to get closer to perfection. So do schools. “Kids start out with many desires” fails to appreciate the power of biological instincts that protect the young organism from harm and external interference. We ruin that at school and with harmful “self-control”. “Start making decisions” implies that a toddler who takes things it its mouth is incapable of decision making. The opposite is true. Those decisions lead to learning and adaptation. We steal it by authoritarian parenting. “Make them better off” is an illusion. Decisions made after years of being deprived of decision-making are inferior and lead to addictions, depression, suicide, and the like. “Freedom to make themselves worse” is not much different to saying: “let’s put birds in cages to make sure they do not hurt themselves”. Evolution created a fantastic computing device: the brain. What we do is that we tinker with that device and produce unhappy societies. “The true face of the enemy” is a perfect parallel between what we do to children, what communists did to societies and what Orwell feared in 1984. All we need is a bit of understanding and appreciation of human biology and brain science.
I think culture, which includes teaching of kids by adults, is also a pretty fantastic computing device, and works better than letting every generation relearn everything in the school of hard knocks.
The ultimate solution to good education is rich culture to which a young brain adapts. As for the computing device, there is only one in the equation: the brain. Culture is just data. Teaching is programming. Exploration and adaptation are based on computing. If you want a smart kid, let her compute the reality on her own!