All work remains the copyright of the respective authorsAll enquiries to: benettfreeman@gmail.com

Welcome 2 Benett Freeman

“A Survivor's Story” 3Leszek Michalak

“The Source” 9Stefan Molyneux

“Taking Children Seriously” 15 Liberty Fitz-Claridge

Our Vision for Kontext 19 Benett Freeman

“Role Models” 21Entito Sovrano

“Autonomy Contra Coercion: Mediocrity and Error” 23Rowan B. Fortune

“Learning to Hate” 29Michael Thomas

“They Start Early, Don't They?” 33David Bluck

Free Learning – an Alternative 40 John Taylor Gatto & Rowan B. Fortune

Contents

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I must firstly thank all of our incredible contributors for sharing with us your unique perspectives. You have set an excellent standard of writing which I hope will be matched in future issues of Kontext.

This issue, we are lucky to have a piece from Stefan Molyneux which gets right to the heart of the matter and goes well with his recent video work on the effects of abandoning children to the custodianship of strangers. Rowan Fortune-Wood gives us a fascinating look into his own experience of free learning, and former teacher John Gatto the benefit of his great wisdom. The importance of role models is de-constructed in typical prosaic fashion by the always-compelling Entito Sovrano; and we have many other excellent contributions from as far-flung places as Poland, Bulgaria, and England. Please check out 'Our Vision For Kontext', and be sure to give us your feedback on this first issue.

Before you enjoy the rich array of perspectives on offer in the writing that follows, look once more at the cover image. Look at the uniform rows of tiny white interrogation tables and the red chair so obviously too uncomfortable to sit in. Think of how the whole scene has a sense of the temporary and the obligatory about it. I don't know for sure, but I would imagine that a test of whether you were schooled or unschooled must surely be how strongly and instantly you can imagine that picture, but with the missing details sketched in: the obedient and dumbfounded herd destroying their backs and their brains, and the proud neuro-linguistic manipulator, standing before them, posing as an 'authority'.

Like many, I have lasting memories of the horrors of school, and my only hope is that such images disappear from our societies like polaroids left out in the sun.

Welcome

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Hello everyone and welcome to the first issue of Kontext: a magazine for the unique individual that promises to be an exciting exploration of the most important issues of the age, through the unique experiences of people from all over the world.

I am happy that this first issue covers one of the most important subjects imaginable: learning v education. It is a sad indictment of the world we live in that most people have no awareness of the difference between these two polar-opposite paradigms.

Ben Freeman

“A Survival Story” Leszek Michalak

My name is Leszek Michalak, and I am a survivor. I have risen victorious from the siege I was under. I have finished the chapter of my life entitled ''state education''. This is the story of my time in the system built to make me a cohesive part of the civilization I live in.

When I was only three years old, I was sent to kindergarten, where the days were filled with the joys of hide and seek and the trauma of separation from my Mum. One of the few memories I have of that time is seeing my Mum through the wire fence that divided the kindergarten playground from that of the school where she worked. It remains for me a disturbing metaphor of the next 12 years. I was very unfortunate to be quite a bright kid. At the age of 6, I could read fluently, calculate and write. This meant I was sent to a terrifying old building filled with strange people to undergo a series of tests. I was told I had an I.Q. of 135 and was sent to school one year ahead of the usual schedule. The nightmare had begun.

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My primary education was a surreal experience, mostly because it hardly educated me at all. Class consisted of listening to what was being said, and writing it down in the exact same way when questions appeared on a test. It was also about this time when I realised that - contrary to what the teachers said - us pupils were very far from equal. I once tried to help the boy sitting next to me when a teacher asked him a question. I held a book open and pointed straight at the answer. Unfortunately he couldn't take advantage of my hint, since he couldn't read.

I also remember when I was in the sixth grade and I got a microscope for Christmas. I was in a frenzy! Anything I could get my hands on - yeast from the kitchen, nail clippings, snot, you name it - went straight under the microscope! I was 12 at the time, I was eager to learn, inquisitive, and astonished by the beauty of things I was learning about, and excited about all the stuff I still had to learn. Unfortunately, no one bothered to teach me, or even just steer me in the right direction.

Ultimately, I was not judged by the progress I had made, but only for knowing what I knew anyway, without the effort of the 'teachers'. The six years I spent at primary school were a waste of time, all thanks to the total lack of interest in individual pupils' personal developments - this 'assembly line' approach to teaching.

Leszek Michalak

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“A Survival Story”

Here's something that may be of interest to those of you coming from more 'civilized' countries. That compulsory education in Catholicism was part of my class schedule may seem (as it should) completely absurd to you. What seems absurd to me, though, is that despite these ''meetings with God'' (as I was taught to call them) we never actually read The Bible! I was taught about its contents, but only through the nun's or priest's interpretation – a very smart trick indeed! In this class, the fact I could read and understand stood in the way of the teaching. Even when I was 9 or 10, if I was told to read, say, Chapter 31 of the book of Numbers, I would surely understand that Mr. Moses was not so much a nice guy talking with burning bushes, but a greedy homicidal psychopath and a slave trader.

It was about that time when the inevitable happened and the little devil on my shoulder whispered: “And why exactly are you doing all this?”

I actually asked that question at least a hundred times, and in most cases the answer was something like this: “You HAVE TO learn! If you don't, you will never be SOMEBODY! You'll see, if you get the best grades, the world is your oyster! You'll be admitted to the best universities, get a great job and have a great life! You'll see all those idiots who failed their tests again of course, as they will be washing your Mercedes and digging the hole for the swimming pool outside your beautiful house!” Having heard this, I would usually just sigh, shrug my shoulders and get back to my homework. I had no idea about driving, but I wanted that Mercedes!

Leszek Michalak

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“A Survival Story”

It's only now that I realise the evil that this answer hides, the secret purpose of my entire time in my education. Throughout my struggle for survival, amidst the lying and the confusion, it was so obvious I couldn't see it! The true meaning and purpose of compulsory education is not to teach, it's to make people mildly 'useful', greedy, and employable. It wasn't meant to make me learn anything, apart from the very basics I needed to be 'useful'. The fact that I was bright and eager was simply a pain in the arse, not a reason to teach me. But I was at the time stupid enough to believe 'the myth of the Mercedes' and 'follow the leader' for another six years.

Come junior high school though I had exchanged getting straight As and being the star pupil for the role of an arrogant and annoying - albeit well spoken - jester. I had also learned the joys of ethanol consumption and cannabis inhalation, as well as my first experiences with alienation, detachment and depression. No surprises here.

It was at that time, when, following the path to be Somebody, I chose to become a scientist and devote my time to biological research. My next step was to attend a high school, the first non-compulsory establishment I had attended. I can't believe I actually thought I would be treated as a person while learning, I was after all an inquisitive young mind looking to quench my thirst for knowledge! But it is at this time that indoctrination - the process of hammering our minds into the shapes of the tools we were supposed to become - was enforced at its finest and most brutal.

Leszek Michalak

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“A Survival Story”

Here, essays were not marked by teachers, but merely compared to an answer key, which gave an exact number of marks for the resemblance of my work to the expected answer. No one cared what I thought, no one took my personal opinions or reflections into consideration, no one even cared how I wrote about it, since writing as a series of bullet points and completely disregarding spelling would still enable me to pass! It is (and still is) not about what you can write but whether you do what you are expected to!

The answer key was only intended to show well-shaped my identity was: it is a test of conformity, not of learning. Three years of Polish language and literature lessons are specifically designed to teach people to think in the exact expected way, rid them of all signs of individuality, creative thinking and personal opinion.

The vile intention is so obvious that even the teachers and government officials are alarmed. In 2008, ''Dziennik'', a Polish newspaper asked two Polish writers, Antoni Libera (literary critic, translator, director, Ph.D.) and Marcin Krol (philosopher, historian, Professor Extraordinaire of Warsaw University) to sit a mock test in Polish language. Krol failed. Libera barely passed.

Poetry, literature, drama, all those beautiful things were served to me along with a complete set of ideas and reflections a ''good student'' was expected to have after reading it. Exams in history and civic studies were exactly the same, even some parts of my biology exam expected me to pick the ''most correct'' answer from a set of correct ones. If you can find a way to discourage somebody from reading classical literature more effectively than having someone take a mock exam like this every other day, then please contact the Central Committee of Education in Warsaw, Poland, I believe they would be very much interested in hearing your suggestion.

Leszek Michalak

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“A Survival Story”

The 12 years I spent in public education were a waste of both mine and the teachers' time. I still read my Ayn Rand, and Nietzsche and Lem, and am just as eager to learn as I ever was. Despite their greatest efforts to make me an educated citizen, I am still a learning individual.

Leszek is a geneticist and an avid reader of Stanislav Lem. He lives with his girlfriend and guitar in rural Wales, and is currently learning Norwegian.

John Taylor Gatto on

'education'

"School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned."

~

“Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents.”

For John Gatto's views on free learning, turn to p40

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“A Survival Story” Leszek Michalak

If you live by

a

polluted river,and you want to clean it up, you really need to go upstream until you find the source of the pollution, and deal with that. You could try to clean up the water where you live, but that would be endless, exhausting and ultimately futile.

Imagine that you take your boat upstream, for miles and miles, and eventually find an abattoir pumping cattle blood into the river, right at its source. You’d have to deal with that, right? With the source of the pollution, not just the effects.

“The Source” by Stefan Molyneux

Muskegon Chronicle, Ken Stevens

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Right at the center of society, right down at the core of how we try to organize ourselves, is the state – a small group of individuals with the 'legal right' to initiate violence against everyone else, in the form of theft through taxation, kidnapping and imprisonment, and counterfeiting through a violent control over imaginary money. They can use violence, you can’t. They can counterfeit, you can't. They can kidnap and imprison, you can't.

It is so easy to get drawn into trying to deal with the effects of violence, rather than the violence itself – to vote and debate and donate and argue that the violence should be used in some different way. This will never work – to solve problems, we always need to go to the source.

Let's take one example of going up the stream of the state. What happens when you first tell your little boy that he has to go to a government school? Well, first he asks – why? What do you say? Do you tell him the truth?

Do you say:

“The Source” Stefan Molyneux

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“Daddy has to send you to the government school because men with guns will come and lock Daddy away for years and years if he doesn't pay them $5,000 a year. This money has been stolen from Daddy for years before you were born, and so he doesn't have enough money to send you to a different school.”

After your child stops crying, perhaps he will ask you if you or Mommy can stay home and teach him during the day, like when he was little. Do you say:

“Sorry, love-bug - Daddy has to work to pay for the house and the food and toys, and mommy has to go to work to pay off the men with guns, otherwise they will come and lock her away for years and years, because they sold her off for money when she was a girl. Oh, and by the way son, sorry, but these men with guns already own you even more than they own Mommy or Daddy, because they sold you off for money before you were even born.”

“The Source” Stefan Molyneux

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Can you imagine that? Can you imagine telling your son the truth about the world he lives in, that owns him, that sold him off for national debt – the truth about how adults think the good things in society should be achieved?

When he comes to you, bored and frustrated out of his mind with the emptiness of his government mis-education, do you tell him that he is kept in a little box for the profits of the violent and the incompetent? Do you tell him that his reaction is an entirely healthy response to entirely sick environment?

Why can't you tell him any of this?

We all know the answer: if you tell him the truth, then he will go to school knowing that his society truly believes that violence is the best way to solve problems. How will that affect the way he deals with other children? With his teacher?

What will happen to him if he decides to act on the same values all the adults praise? What if he decides to use his fists to redistribute the lunch money of a less-poor kid? He will be scolded, disciplined, punished, perhaps expelled, probably drugged – it will be an endless disaster for him, for over 10 years…

“The Source” Stefan Molyneux

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So we swallow the truth and lie to our children, and tell them that we want them to get a good education, that government teachers are there to help them, that this is the system we all want and like, and we have to pretend that there is no gun behind the classroom, no violence, no kidnapping and imprisonment, no debt slavery, and that we pay taxes for necessary services, rather than servicing the bribed debts of our grandparents…

We have to keep the truth from our children, we are forced to smile and pretend and obscure, because we are in fact deeply ashamed of our society, our society that could never survive the truth. We are terrified that our children will act like politicians, lobbyists, policemen, soldiers, tax collectors, prison guards - because if people who live under the state act like the state, their lives become very unpleasant indeed.

And so our children grow up with a “Stockholm Syndrome” bond with the state, and cannot see the violence at the root of their society, because it has been forever hidden and lied about by everyone around them, and so the cycle of violence continues and escalates, with no end except eventual collapse.

“The Source” Stefan Molyneux

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There is only one way to break this cycle.

When your children are old enough, tell them the truth. And then tell them why you had to lie. This truth, as it always does, will then set us free.

“The Source” Stefan Molyneux

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Stefan is the host of Freedomainradio.com, the biggest philosophy show on the Internet

“Taking Children Seriously”Why “because I said so” should never be said

Liberty Fitz-Claridge

Freedom lovers have an interest in the question of how large groups of people who are largely unknown to each other can get along. Parents share (or should share) an interest in the same question for small groups of people who do know and care about each other. For both questions, the answer is rooted in philosophy — in political philosophy and what we might call parenting philosophy respectively. And both branches share a common foundation in epistemology: the theory of knowledge and how it grows . With this in mind, a group of philosophically-minded libertarian parents collaborated in 1992 to produce a home educators’ newsletter, Taking Children Seriously (TCS). It became an Internet mailing list, and eventually an organisation and a way of life.

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TCS parents hold that it is possible and desirable to raise children without doing anything to them against their will, or making them do anything against their will. The philosopher William Godwin seems to have been the earliest to hold this position, in the late 18th century. He argued that coercion, being the antithesis of reason, does not happen because the victim is incapable of understanding an argument, but rather because neither party has persuaded the other for some reason. And Godwin says this about the usual reason:

[Coercion] cannot begin with convincing; it is no argument… It includes in it a tacit confession of imbecility. If he who employs coercion against me could mould me to his purposes by argument, no doubt he would. He pretends to punish me because his argument is strong; but he really punishes me because his argument is weak.

This analysis is especially pertinent to education. Argument, not force, is how rational people, aware of their own fallibility, try to discover the truth of the matter. So TCS parents regard reaching consent with their children as an integral part of rationality. The reason this is practical as well as desirable is that when a solution to a problem is imposed on a child, his mind is directed toward the added task of resistance, and the parent has the recurring burden of making the child comply. If it’s possible to persuade a child of the argument for brushing his teeth, this one-off undertaking is easier than a daily coercive ritual. In academic education too, to impart lists of brute facts one has to act against the recipient’s wishes and therefore reason. But when one makes convincing arguments the recipient’s reason is one’s ally. Taking argument seriously entails accepting that one might be mistaken.

“Taking Children Seriously” Liberty Fitz-Claridge

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Viewing parent-child interactions in this light promotes certain attitudes, such as enthusiasm for problem-solving, openness to criticism, and fewer hang-ups about studying. The idea that all children should be made to learn to read at the same age is particularly repugnant to TCS parents. Both they and many ‘unschooling’ parents have found that letting children learn to read when they are ready — whether that is earlier or later than traditional education requires — is more fruitful than forcing them into a predetermined schedule. For unschoolers this is explained in terms of the ‘individual learning style’ of every child: Children are prepared to learn at different ages, and the best results are obtained when parents recognise this.

But this is merely to judge by ‘outcomes’—measurable skills — which for TCS parents is not the whole story. For them, it’s more straightforward: voluntary interaction is preferable to coercion. Neither parents nor children have any infallible source of knowledge about whether the child should learn to read at a particular time; but the child is generally in a better position to make the decision, as he has better access to his own knowledge and mental state. If parents do resort to coercion, they fail to take seriously the child’s objection. It means they have either not understood why the child objects, or they have understood but have opted not to refute the child’s theory (merely overruling it).

“Taking Children Seriously” Liberty Fitz-Claridge

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In my own life, TCS meant not going to school, and making a wider range of choices in my life than is conventional, from choosing my own bedtime, to watching South Park. So I know that it’s not true that children cannot learn to maintain normal sleeping patterns without enforced bedtimes. The same applies to essentially everything that is pre-emptively forced on children. I did not acquire vitamin deficiencies from not being forced to eat things, nor did I spend the day doing nothing for lack of hoops to jump through. The attitude we took to education was one of pursuing actual interests, academic or otherwise.

More important than any specific thing my parents did was the way we communicated. Growing up I was often struck by how little respect other children’s parents appeared to have for them. The flagrant abdication from rationality in phrases like “you’re grounded” and “go to your room” were alien to me. To hear parents saying them made me baffled and downcast, and then relieved to know that I would never be faced with the rejection of reasonable discussion embodied in “because I said so.”

“Taking Children Seriously” Liberty Fitz-Claridge

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FallibleIdeas.com

Liberty writes philosophy and funny verse and blogs at: http://l1berty.livejournal.com

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“Our Vision for Kontext” We want to see Kontext grow and grow with every issue. We want to see more features: people profiles, poetry, satirical cartoons, humour pieces, and more...

For this first issue, we received a pleasing and promising range of contributions from an excellent range of writers, including both previously-published authors and first-timers.

“We need your help if Kontext is to move forward and grow”

What we need now is MORE. We need more submissions, of course, but we also need more helping hands to assist with design, layout and research. We need your help if Kontext is to move forward and grow.

The mission of the magazine is to provide, every 2 months, the most exciting and challenging perspectives on the most pressing issues; to offer unique individuals the chance to share their unique experiences, and to break through the usual theoretical debates and give everyone – reader and contributor alike – the chance to expand their horizons.

Issue themes will always be advertised well in advance, so if you have something you want to say, please send it in to us.

Issue #2 will be on 'People and Movements' and will explore why people join movements, what experiences they have inside of them, and why they leave them (or stay). Of course, there are souls who have never been moved to join anything, and we will hear from those people as well. Out April 2011

Issue #3 will be on 'States, nations, and other spooks', offering writers and artists the chance to express their unique experiences of - and their awakenings from – societal fictions and other delusions. Your chance to show the world why the collectivist world-view is false. Out June 2011

Issue #4 will be on 'Health' – that most precious of values, and one of the areas in which statism most directly and severely damages peoples' lives. Send us your experiences of malpractice, your ideas for free-market healthcare solutions, or any other perspectives you feel should be heard.Out Aug 2011

“Our Vision for Kontext”

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Submissions enquiries contact: benettfreeman@gmail.com

TheThe cry ofcry of

the ubiquito-heteron,the ubiquito-heteron,

Role models Entita Sovrano

from the vocal chords of the media -the slap of ink hitting paper and digital transmissions squealing tired discontent, concerns itself with the future of itself. Those submerged with thoughts of the future of their 'society' look always to the next generation of brain jars to continue their 'progression' for the sake of the 'society'. Generic, ideal generalities of human action must therefore be found for the next generation of bodies who enter the world of the ubiquito-heteron to emulate and grow delirious over. People must be modelled, and those models must be found amongst people, for who would model theirselves upon a thing which does not resemble their own selves in form? In the bible fable, the Yahweh chose a human form for 'his people' to emulate and base their actions upon. If they did not model their lives upon it, an eternity of suffering would await them. The Rand chose owners of great amounts of capital and creative imaginations, even going further than the Yahweh, by not only claiming that those who did not emulate and act like her fictional ideals were 'evil', but that they were not even 'men' for their apparent failures.

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Thus great, heaving debates exist between dialectical enemies on what best constitutes ideal generalities for the future generation. The next generation is always largely unaware of the plans of the ubiquito-heteron, which claims arbitration and sovereignty over their lives even from before they are born. More sickening yet is the apparent bemusement and confusion of those that are deigned to be role models. Most of those deigned as role models never requested such a status - it is one which is placed upon them by the chattering society for largely frivolous reasons. The individual deemed to be such a thing is in many ways an even greater victim of such judgements. Whilst the child can act against the concerns of the ubiquito-heteron - after all he is still learning - the role model must behave at all times in a way which supports his role, the duty which has been ascribed to him by the ubiquito-heteron. Thus his actions are to be scrutinised greatly - for holding a status that has been ascribed to him - by people alien to him - that he never requested.

What of the role model's friends and relations? Do they ascribe such a status to him? Most likely not, and if they are not ascribing such a status then it can only be those that have no relation to the person that stamp this status upon him. They understand him only as a model, an ideal, a type. His self is an unknown to them, but they do not care or give a farthing for his self, provided he is of a position which is considered suitable for the ascription of role model status.

What is then the goal for the next generation, if not for the 'best' self-moulders to become models themselves? Thus we see the pattern of action, the chain-gang line of progression, the process of moulding and destroying egos for the sake of the ubiquito-heteron.

“Role Models” Entita Sovrano

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Entito is a writer and critic based in Central Europe

be content to seem foolish and void of understanding with respect to outward things. Care not to be thought to know anything. If any should make account of thee, distrust thyself.' ~Epictetus

Ifthouwouldstmake progress,

We engender mediocrity; we worship it; venerate it every day. We poison ourselves with insipidity; we cower before the omnipresence of banality. Welcome to the kitsch parade; it is sponsored by whatever boring thing you did yesterday.

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Rowan B. FortuneAutonomy Contra CoercionMediocrity and Error

Worst of all, we teach mediocrity to every generation. Passing it down; it's our great legacy. How do we do this? Not consciously; our love affair with triteness is ugly, suppressed and unsolicited. We do it accidentally; in the pursuit of grandeur, brilliance and marvels we smash the mechanism by which we thrive, and rob ourselves of possible triumphs. It is one of the many unfortunate contradictions embedded in the human condition, one we rarely acknowledge.

Here is how it works. A child writes an essay; her first. It is ungrammatical, logically incoherent, employs nonstandard spelling (there is no such thing as misspelling) and puts forward a false idea. The child is punished: she is assigned a grade that explicitly deems her a failure; she is unfavourably compared to her siblings, who could write much better than her at her age; she is banned from playing with her friends for a significant length of time. She is punished for not undertaking an essay with the ability to write one; she is instructed to only attempt what she can already achieve―in a word, conceit. Epictetus knew the danger of this, 'If a man would pursue Philosophy, his first task is to throw away conceit. For it is impossible for a man to begin to learn what he has a conceit that he already knows.' So this child is demeaned, humiliated; from which she learns a lesson, that error is not tolerable, that conceit is good, that success is either always or never within her grasp. And she grows to personify this lesson.

When she is asked which piece of music she wants to play for her first piano exam she chooses the least challenging and gets a bare pass―better than risking an unacceptable failure. Still, she regularly boasts of her great piano skills. When she chooses her degree subject she opts for something that fails to inspire her, but that she has been told is easy; she is ignorant of the idea that, as Leonardo da Vinci said: 'Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in'. Despite retaining nothing, she gets a 2.2 and proudly points to this credential at any opportunity. When she chooses a career she opts for something anyone can do, and, tautologically, no one could fail to do―her identity becomes inseparable from this work. Her life is reduced to 'what ifs'―a shadow existence. She is mediocre and when she has children she teaches them to be the same. E. M. Cioran said, 'A man who fears ridicule will never go far, for good or ill: he remains on this side of this talents, and even if he has genius, he is doomed to mediocrity'.

“Autonomy Contra Coercion” Rowan B. Fortune

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What is the mechanism that allows us to thrive? Karl Popper puts it well when he contended that, '…we can learn through criticism of our mistakes and errors, especially through criticism by others, and eventually also through self-criticism.' And Nietzsche, the greatest of the philosopher-psychologists, also understood how to think well, 'It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts the more subtle minds.' Error and success are inseparable; one cannot have success without error and one cannot encourage success without encouraging error. Critique is important, but disparaging failure is poisonous. It breeds neuroticism; the tremble we feel when we try something taxing, posit a new idea, invent a novel style…

Let us go back to the child writing her first essay. Instead of being humiliated, what if she had been calmly critiqued? What if she had been praised for the first attempt and supported in the next? What if she had learnt that error is necessary instead of intolerable. I suggest that she would have developed Stoicism; an awareness of her limitations and the psychological capacity to try regardless; the ability to discern between what is not in her power, to always succeed, and what is, to always attempt. Or, as Epictetus put it, that, 'Some things are in our control and others not.' Why is this not how it happens?

Because many people (her parents, teachers, political rulers, etc.) are afraid and want her to share their fear. They are afraid of failure because that is what they have been taught to fear; failing is humiliation. And because human beings love success; we worship it, venerate it every day. We are so blinded by our cult of success that we fail to see that its pursuit must be tempered to be real; that we cannot succeed if we cannot, also, potentially, fail. Because we lack Stoicism; we refuse to admit what is beyond our power and, when frustrated, find solace by pretending that nothing was within our power after all; that we were just predestined for mediocrity.

“Autonomy Contra Coercion” Rowan B. Fortune

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The alternative to this neurosis is often deemed utopian, unrealistic, insane...it offends the cult of success with its temperance, its acknowledgment of error. It offends the despair of mediocrity with its endurance, its Stoic refusal to give in to failure. The alternative is non-coercive learning.

It is often hard to see what brings together different non-coercive pedagogies; one could simply say that their commitment to the autonomy of the child is the through-line, however the problem is that concepts like 'autonomy' and 'coercion' always operate in complex and diverse normative frameworks. When one examines different philosophies in detail one is left to conclude that they are linked more by a Wittgensteinian family resemblance than a Platonic form. I posit that this resemblance centres on their shared relation to error, which is at odds with the current educational paradigms in mainstream schooling.

Taking Children Seriously, a philosophy developed by minarchist libertarians Sarah Fitz-Claridge and David Deutsch, relies on Popper's trial and error fallibilist epistemology; as does the more politically amorphous, and predominantly British, Autonomous Parenting, inspired by TCS philosophy. Alternatively, Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia's 'La Escuela Moderna' (The Modern School) was an anarcho-pacifist project that saw grades as incompatible with autonomy; so that, in a chapter in his book about the school entitled 'No Rewards or Punishment', Francesc Ferrer says that he eschews exams partly because the resulting humiliation poses, 'grave obstacles to sound growth.'

This concept of growth is wedded to an antipathy towards coercion, as Francesc Ferrer puts it in the same chapter, '…the faculties of the children shall develop freely without subjection to any dogmatic patron, not even to what it may consider the body of convictions of the founder and teachers; every pupil shall go forth from it into social life with the ability to be his own master and guide his own life in all things.'

“Autonomy Contra Coercion” Rowan B. Fortune

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A. S. Neill's democratic Summerhill has a similar ethic; as Neill opines, 'The function of a child is to live his own life―not the life that his anxious parents think he should live, not a life according to the purpose of an educator who thinks he knows best.' It is not surprising, therefore, that Summerhill pupils pick their lessons, progress at their own pace and are therefore never inoculated with a fear of error. Recently the prominent unschooling advocate Dayna Martin wrote on her Facebook page, 'Have the courage to be Imperfect.' I call this the perfect summation of the Stoic ethic. It is also the unifying motto of the free person. In pedagogical writings perhaps the most poetic and persuasive articulation of non-coercive learning can be discovered in Max Stirner's article 'The False Principle of Our Education - or Humanism and Realism'. It is a Hegelian Egoistic critique and substitute (dubbed Personalism) for two modes of traditional schooling. Stirner concludes the piece by saying, 'Knowledge must die and rise again as will and create itself anew each day as a free person.' Is it any surprise that he also wrote, '…he is very weak who must call to authority for help and he does wrong if he thinks to improve the impudent as soon as he makes him fearful. To promote fear and respect; those are things that belong with the period of the dead rococo.'

Stirner's words were written in 1842; at least sixty years before (as well as completely separated from) all the other learning philosophies I have mentioned. Again and again those inspired by liberty, irrespective of their other political differences, come to the same conclusion about teaching. They all decide that the young deserve freedom and, therefore, must be allowed, even encouraged, to err; that to risk a false step in the acquisition of knowledge should be celebrated rather than punished. This insight is not utopian, unrealistic or insane; at least not to a Stoic, a healthy human being.

“Autonomy Contra Coercion” Rowan B. Fortune

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Stirner's words were written in 1842; at least sixty years before (as well as completely separated from) all the other learning philosophies I have mentioned. Again and again those inspired by liberty, irrespective of their other political differences, come to the same conclusion about teaching. They all decide that the young deserve freedom and, therefore, must be allowed, even encouraged, to err; that to risk a false step in the acquisition of knowledge should be celebrated rather than punished. This insight is not utopian, unrealistic or insane; at least not to a Stoic, a healthy human being.

And if, as a society, we want to engender greatness, I propose that we adopt these philosophies. Let us stop teaching mediocrity; let us know the difference between what is in our power and what is not. Strive to succeed, but know that we will often fail; that even our successes contain failures. Let us encourage learning based on an appreciation of the human condition rather than false expectations or the resulting, mediocre, despair. On the other hand we could remain in the kitsch parade; keep doing what we did yesterday.

“Autonomy Contra Coercion” Rowan B. Fortune

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Rowan B. Fortune is a writer and publisher who runs the independent Cinnamon Press.

Further reading:

Max Stirner - "The Principle of Our Education"Francisco Ferrer - “The Origins and Ideals of the Modern School”Alexander Neil - “Summerhill School”Jan Fortune-Wood - “Winning Parent, Winning Child”Ivan Illich - “Deschooling Society”D Bray - “A Critique of Freeschooling”

For more of Rowan's views on free learning, turn to p42

Learning to hate Michael Thomas

By law, By law,

every person spends every person spends more than a decade in more than a decade in

'The Education System'.'The Education System'.Whether one attends a 'state school' or a 'public school', one is expected to 'learn the curriculum' in order to 'pass examinations' - by which your intellect will be graded.

One often hears people quip that the years we spent in school are the best years of our lives, and in a way this is correct: we don’t yet have to worry about paying a mortgage or energy bills, or worry about tax hikes and foreclosure - because the adult world is alien to us at this point in our lives. But for many young people, school is a very traumatic place and time, where they are subjected to psychological and physical abuse. Most people have witnessed some forms of abuse during their time in schooling system.

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From my experiences in the schooling system, I found the whole experience very restrictive. Freedom of expression is something which is opposed. Ideas are dictated to pupils and any form of attack on state ideology is met with repugnance, and the pupil is expected to view the mainstream values presented to them as absolute truths.

I believe that it's this restriction on the pupils freedom of self-expression which causes feelings of frustration, anger and self-defeat. If the pupil isn’t going to be able to freely express their opinions on the “values” that are being taught in schools then they may begin to seek another 'outlet' for these suppressed feelings. They are sometimes let out on teachers, but this sort of behaviour is met with harsh punishment. Most of the time it is aimed at their fellow pupils, and these abuses are largely unreported.

These feelings - caused by the opposition to freedom of expression - are often exacerbated in the home environment, where in most cases parents are simply over-worked and don’t have enough time to interact meaningfully with their children.

“Learning to hate” Michael Thomas

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The situation is made worse in the way that the classroom environment creates a divide amongst the pupils. I myself noticed that “intellectually gifted” pupils receive “special treatment”, knuckle down and get on with the work that they are expected to do, while the pupils who struggle academically are often cast aside, and are expected to put in the minimal effort that is required to complete any given task. I can remember during one maths lesson when I was in year 9, so I would have been 13-14. My English teacher used to spend most of her time with the pupils whom she had a preference towards, mainly due to the fact that these pupils were metaphorically speaking, hanging out of her arsehole. She would direct the lesson towards these pupils, I confronted her once about this and she admitted to me that the reason why she gave these pupils special attention was because she expected them to do better in their exams than the other pupils. I then proposed to her that if that was the case, that those pupil are on track to perform well in their exams and she should focus her attention on the remaining contingent of pupils, so that they could have a chance to achieve a better grade than her predictions. I was ejected from the classroom and sent to my head of year where I was told that if I spent time on my school work rather than criticising my teachers methods I would achieve a better grade in my exam.

“Learning to hate” Michael Thomas

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Personally, I couldn’t give a shit what grade I was going to get - I didn’t want to be there and I couldn’t wait to leave. But not everybody could manage the indifference and apathy that I did. Some pupils, who struggle with their work, and yet want to do well, will feel develop a feeling of inferiority towards the pupils that are given the teachers extra attention. In some cases, pupils who feel academically inferior towards other pupils may use physical violence or mental abuse towards them.

I never physically abused anyone in school, I have always hated any form of physical violence but I did emotionally abuse other pupils. At the time I didn't think that my actions were causing any harm, but looking back with a wiser mind, I think it would be ignorant of me to say that my actions were harmless.

The classroom is a very traumatising environment for a developing mind. We are taught at a young age about the dangers of talking to "strangers", yet we are expected to trust a person we know nothing about, to teach us. Also, just as in any situation where you have a congregation of people meeting almost on a daily basis, ideas, personality types, and beliefs are going to conflict at one time or another. The best way to avoid conflict is to walk away, but since that is not an option (see the above legal restriction), school is, in effect a prison.

Incarceration teaches children to hate.

“Learning to hate” Michael Thomas

Michael is a tradesman and writer from South Wales

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That I didn’t like being told what to do was obvious...It was more than this though, it was the sheer irrationality of the institution that stood out to me, and that would in time become imprinted on my memory...

They Start Early Don't They?They Start Early Don't They?David Bluck

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Take compulsory attendance of chapel as an example, and the special privilege afforded the Christian church, despite my Religious Studies classes attempting to confuse and beguile us with in-depth explanations of other religions and a 'healthy dose' of temperance and tolerance for others' faiths. What it boiled down to was – LOOK at these other peoples' faiths and now.......this is yours.

Handed down from year to year, from teacher to student, from housemaster to boy; attached to the neck ties and jackets; brought in with the plaques and shiny awards; came the word of God.

Now...I may be getting ahead of myself. The above implies that Christianity dominated the whole place and was inescapably imposed. I must admit that this was not the case at Berkhamsted Collegiate School, and I think that Christianity will continue to be marginalised as the years go on and people in Britain move further away from such notions. However as a 14 year-old boy, that was how it felt like when I was told I had to go to chapel.

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“They Start Early, Don't They?” David Bluck

Allegedly, they were trying to raise an independent man who would analyse and interpret ideas and concepts, solve problems, create new and more efficient ways of doing things; would be a 'leader of tomorrow' (I have not the time here to voice the problems I have with this term, but it seems to be a prevalent theme at all private schools!). Amongst this was the more important and hypocritical watchword: 'OBEY!' Obey now and when you mature you will no longer have to. At 23 I am still waiting for my time to stop Obeying.

In this particular circumstance, sitting across from my house master Dr. Hundal, being told that I had to go to chapel even if I did not want to, I realised the significance of what OBEYING meant. It did not matter how passionate I was about not being a Christian, or how well I reasoned that this was an attempt to indoctrinate me into a faith which I had rejected at age 6 through Sunday school - I was told that I had to go to chapel twice a week and sing their songs and listen to their sermons. So I kept protesting, and they kept pushing, calling my parents, getting other teachers to 'have words with me' after class until I just got sick of it and dropped it. I should have kept up my micro-revolt against irrationality but I was only thirteen, and being told by multiple adults that I was in the wrong.

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“They Start Early, Don't They?” David Bluck

RUGBY seems to have an incredibly important place in private schools as well. Unfortunately, for the school my year of boys did not share this affinity for the sport! We used to have this pantomime every Friday morning where everyone would make up excuses as to why they would not attend Saturday practise that week.

“I’ve got a wedding”- “I’ve got a funeral” - “I’ve got a wedding and a funeral”

The usual!

So one week, after hating rugby for a long time, I put my hand up with the others and when called on for an answer I said, “I don’t want to play”. SILENCE! The master stared at me like I’d just defecated on a rugby ball in front of the beloved posts of his beloved Saracens fields while wearing a sandwich board with the headline “Rugby is for arses”.

Anyway, for the next 15 minutes I was treated to Mr. Thompson taking me on a walk round the pitches, where he extolled the virtues of sport and of rugby, explaining to me the long historical tradition of the school playing rugby. My favourite line was “Why did you come here if you didn’t want to play rugby?”. As if I had much of a choice about such things when I started at the school in year three.

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“They Start Early, Don't They?” David Bluck

Can you picture a moment like this yourself at school? You probably have dozens. Reach out with your mind into the past and remember when you first came across The Bullshit, stared it in the face and felt those emotions of anger, confusion, fear... The first time you’re treated unfairly by an adult, I think you lose a large chunk of your innocence. That may well be the first time you are a grown up, long before the pubic hair and the whinny protests of a breaking voice. Congratulations...welcome to the club!

These days, I don’t have to go to chapel anymore and with a dab of irony I actually choose to play rugby, but I still have adults telling me what substances I can put into my body, what taxes I have to pay, what knot to use to tie my monopoly-supplied rubbish-bags, etc. etc.

Reflecting back, it seems to me that...they start early don’t they? The bullshitters, the controllers, the people who follow what has been done before - because it is tradition, because its always been done this way - people who pronounce reason, logic and compassion as qualities in education above all others - then reject them so easily.

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“They Start Early, Don't They?” David Bluck

In both the situations I’ve described it wasn’t about what was best for the child (me), it was about what was best for the school. Like 'nation-states', private schools as institutions develop their own personality, with their own likes and dislikes. After long enough, and with enough unquestioning devotion poured in by the teachers, headmasters, parents, governors and ex-students it becomes far removed from the very idea of learning. It becomes about the reputation of the school, and not the child and their future. So it did not matter that I was not a Christian, because the school was a Christian school. Neither did it matter that my year of students were much happier and better at football than rugby, because the school was a 'rugby school'.

Now I know what you might think reading this: poor little middle-class boy had to go to chapel twice a week and play rugby every other day until the Cricket season started – who cares? Well, fair enough if you think this - I’m not having sleepless nights over this stuff. I don’t awake covered in sweat, haunted by nightmarish visions of a humongous Jesus of Nazareth carrying a rugby ball trapped under one arm about to smash into me. But I do believe that these formative years in school are so important, and often so wasteful. The idea that these are some of my strongest and vibrant memories from school has to show you the impact they had on me, as I am sure similar situations have had an effect on you.

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“They Start Early, Don't They?” David Bluck

Let children run their own way if its not completely unreasonable. Listen to them. If their argument is better than your own then throw yours out and adopt theirs.

This is how you earn respect from kids. The child comes first, they are the focal point of the whole idea of learning. The school is just bricks and mortar, no matter how well groomed the grass quad is and how well aligned the cloisters are, it does not have a life, or a purpose in and of itself. The students who pass through these corridors and run around these quads are REAL. They are the priority, help them run their own way. Adapt the school around the child. Not the child round the school.

David Bluck is a Masters Degree student from Hertfordshire

You've now read a number of pieces discussing schooling and its deleterious effects. Now for the alternative...

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“They Start Early, Don't They?” David Bluck

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Free learning – the alternative

Contd. overleaf

John Taylor Gatto on free learning

“Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges, it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die.”

“On the other hand, individuality, family, and community are, by definition, expressions of singular organization, never of “one-right-way” thinking on the grand scale. Private time is absolutely essential if a private identity is going to develop, and private time is equally essential to the development of a code of private values, without which we aren’t really individuals at all. Children and families need some relief from governmental surveillance and intimidation if original expressions belonging to them are to develop. Without these, freedom has no meaning.”

“An education person writes his own script through life, he is not a character in a government or corporation play, nor does he mouth the words of any intellectual’s Utopian fantasy. Education and intelligence aren’t the same things. The educated person is self-determined to a large degree.”

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Free learning – the alternative

John Taylor Gatto is a former teacher and a prominent advocate of free learning. Visit his

website at: www.johntaylorgatto.com

“Education is built around ten cores: They metaphysical reality, the historical reality, the personal reality, the physical world within reach, the physical world outside personal awareness, the possibilities of association, an understanding of vocation, homemaking, the challenges of adulthood, the challenges of loss, ageing and death.”

“Education for me is a matter of approximations; I personally haven’t ever arrived totally at any of these destinations even though I’ve lived two-thirds of a century. But knowing these are values I cherish helps me to find my way in the wilderness, provides me with maps that keep my feet on the path.”

“The older I get the more it seems to me that all of the principles in my own private formulation you’ve just seen are related to one another, when you resolutely attend to any one of them you are actually working on all. It took me about a half century of living to distil out these principles, so my advice is not to be daunted when you begin to climb your own mountain.”

“As long as you accept that it’s your journey under your direction, and that it involves an obligation of real and continuous struggle on your part – that nobody else can do the struggling for you – you will prevail. Good luck.”

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Free learning – the alternative

Rowan B. Fortune on free learning

“I have heard it said that unschooling sounds good, but who could risk their children on an experiment? I went to school until six. Whenever I compare my schooling and unschooling experiences, I know I stopped being experimented on when I stopped being schooled, coerced and tested.“

“Being unschooled eliminates unhealthy dichotomies: learning is not divided between formal and informal; time between home and learning. Life regains continuity; I discovered that there is no learning divorced from play or vice-versa.”

“Without unschooling I would not have had siblings, just cohabitants of after-school accommodation. I am confident that I would never have really known some of the most interesting people I have met.”

“Often, when someone discovers that I was home-taught, they opine, 'But then you must not have been socialised.' There is something sinister in the way that verb is used; as though socialising is something done to you, a Kafkaesque process. That is why I respond, 'Yes?' ”

Contd. overleaf

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Free learning – the alternative“Being treated like a human being rather than a project, a means to an end, is a rarity for young people; having that advantage has given me a certain awed respect for anybody who was not similarly lucky and yet retained their humanity, refused to become other peoples' projects.”

“For me, true formative experiences were not planned: they were conversations at breakfast; an insight gleamed from a social observation; a book recommended by a friend; an online exchange of opinions with someone radically ideologically different. For me the set class has always been anathema to learning.”

“I do not trust interesting educational philosophies. There is not much to say about being unschooled because it is not a coercive system into which a theorist can pour their utopian dreams; its prescriptions and limits are ethical, encouraging autonomy, not fantastical.”

“It is surprising how many home-educators, at least in the UK, seem to end up unschooling by default. None of my childhood home-educated friends were officially unschooled, but in practise serious coercion simply fell away with institutionalisation. You need warped structures in place to sustain unjust force.”

Be sure to check outThe School Sucks Project -a fabulous source of infoon free learning