*Originally written 06/19/2016*
Many of my views on education and child-rearing stem from my adherence to the philosophy of voluntaryism, which is the belief that all human associations should be voluntary. The guiding principle of libertarianism, the Non-Aggression Principle (don’t initiate violence against peaceful people), is derived from voluntaryism but is not quite as pure. A discussion of these two moral codes and the differences between them is not the purpose of this essay. Still, it must be pointed out that those ignorant of libertarian theory often accuse (anarcho-)libertarians of being anti-law, disciples of chaos, when, in fact, we wholeheartedly support exactly one law, and its derivatives: that, so much as possible, all human interactions must be voluntary. We therefore support laws against murder, rape, and theft, but we also oppose laws that force employers to pay certain wages or prevent individuals from using their property as they wish. Libertarians recognize that the majority of current laws and government actions violate voluntaryism (or the non-aggression principle), and, therefore, oppose government as it currently exists. But it would be a mistake to then conclude that we are against any and all laws and law-enforcement agencies.
Anyway, the things about moral principles is that they should be universal. It would be the height of hypocrisy to demand for the principles of voluntaryism to apply to ourselves without applying them to everyone else as well. This includes children. In fact, I would say that if it is wrong to coerce and oppress other adults, it is doubly wrong to coerce and oppress children, for they have not the power to resist our use of force.
As a voluntaryist, then, it is my belief that we should not force children to do things that they don’t want to do. A brief moment of reflection will reveal how drastic the implications of such a policy would be, as, currently, most of a child’s life is dominated by things that they don’t want to do. The most blatant example, of course, is school itself. The institution of public schooling, with its compulsory attendance laws, is, in fact, a vast system of incarceration. Under this current system countless millions of children are forced into its unpromising halls and classrooms. Such an environment fosters widespread unhappiness, discontent, and rebellion from our nation’s youth. Despite its claims, school does not enlighten children with useful knowledge so much as drown them in untold misery. If we care about our children, this draconian practice must end.
How can we accomplish this? Quite obviously, we can simply decide to stop forcing children to do anything that they don’t want to do. For example, when I’m teaching Sunday School and a child isn’t cooperating, I sometimes ask him to leave. There’s nothing mean about it; he’s distracting everyone else from learning, so I can’t let him stay, but I make sure that he knows that I’m not angry and that he’s welcome back whenever he decides that he wants to cooperate and do what everyone else is doing. I try to make it clear that he’s not being punished because he’s not doing what I want him to do; he’s being released because he doesn’t want to do what we’re doing. Eventually, he’ll come back, apologize, and rejoin the activities. Unfortunately, schools can’t do this because of compulsory attendance laws, so teachers resort to coercion and oppression to keep control of their too-large classes. Saddled with more kids than they can handle, teachers create an environment where children must always obey what the teacher orders and ask permission to do anything else.
[Similarly, the development of EMC2 has, since my tenure, focused on adapting the program to the individual student and on fostering a radical level of respect for each student. My own kids get to go one step further with me: they have no grades, and they’re not required to do any assignments on the class syllabus. Noah doesn’t write journals, Jonah doesn’t even have a website, and that’s okay. What’s most important to me is that the students be in charge, for I believe that will lead to the most growth. But, also, because I cannot, as a voluntaryist, justify any other type of relationship.]
The key, then, is to abolish compulsory attendance laws, and, more generally, the compulsory nature of school itself and make school truly voluntary. Not only is this a moral imperative, but such a practice would reduce many of the behavioral issues that seem to necessitate the use of coercion in schools. I think that most small children know how to behave and be nice; their bad behavior comes from being trapped in an oppressive environment. I think that most bad behavior comes from children who want to end the social interaction that they’re engaged in but don’t know how or, more likely, aren’t allowed to. It’s their instinctual, unrefined resistance to involuntary association. Moreover, if schools were voluntary, children would only come to class when they wanted to learn, and then the oppressive environment wouldn’t be necessary to control them. They wouldn’t need to be controlled because they would be the ones who wanted to do the class activity. They would be customers, not prisoners.
Ultimately, however, we must remove the government from the education system. The fact that government controls the schools means that there can be no substantive experimentation or competition or flexibility in serving the children most effectively. As long as the State, that institution with a monopoly on force, runs the schools, the ultimate decision-making with regards to the child’s education will be made by someone other than the child, thereby oppressing the child. Like everything else it does, the State educates through the use of force, and if anyone believes that violence is the best method for improving our children, they are profoundly misguided. Thankfully, there are peaceful alternatives, and it is time, for the sake of our children and for the sake of our conscience, for us to embrace voluntaryism and pursue these peaceful methods of education.
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