Recently
by Chantal K. Saucier: What’s
Your ONE Thing?
Human beings
learn constantly and they do so from the time they are born until
the time they die. I have yet to meet anyone who did not believe
this to be true. Yet, the vast majority of people also seem to believe
that human beings between the ages of 5 and 18 will not learn what
they need to know in our society if we don’t “teach” them.
What would children learn if they weren’t required to absorb a pre-determined
curriculum is a question hardly anyone is asking.
People forget,
it seems, that this school business is a very recent invention in
terms of humanity. Truth is, if our ancestors could not have learned
without schools what they needed to know in order to survive and
prosper, none of us would be here. By not trusting children to learn
what they need to know on their own, we are essentially breaking
the shopkeeper’s window on purpose, over and over again, because
we do not trust that he will spend his money wisely if he doesn’t
have to use it to fix the window.
Many of you
are likely familiar with Frederic Bastiat’s broken
window fallacy. A young boy breaks a shopkeeper’s window that
now needs to be repaired. At first, everyone is upset at the broken
window but after a while, some start believing that the misfortune
has its bright side because the broken window will provide work
for the window glazier, who will then have money to spend with other
merchants, and so on.
Bastiat offered
another view. He said that this theory is confined to that which
is seen, without taking into account that which is not seen. Had
the window not been broken, we do not know what the shopkeeper would
have done with the money he gave the glazier. He might have bought
a pair of shoes and he would have then owned a pair of shoes and
a window. Now, he only has a window. Bastiat’s conclusion was that
“society loses the value of things which are uselessly destroyed.”
When we put
children in classrooms and we mandate what they learn, we do not
know what the child might have learned on his own had we not decided
for him. We also do not know what activities the child would have
engaged in, that might have lead to an extraordinary discovery,
if we had not decided for him what he was going to do.
In schools,
we can see that which is learned, but we will never see that which
is not learned or discovered. Therefore, couldn’t we also say that
because of schools, society loses the value of the knowledge that
is uselessly smothered?
The unfair
advantage of human nature
Let’s now look
at another famous narrative by Bastiat. In his “Candle
Makers’ Petition,” which is a satire against protectionism,
Bastiat suggests to the French government that they pass a law mandating
that everyone cover all sources of natural light in their homes
and businesses in order to help the domestic candle making industry.
As a free source of light, Bastiat wrote, the sun has an unfair
competitive advantage over candle makers. By mandating that residents
block all sources of natural light, the government would encourage
industry and thereby increase employment.
If human beings
possess a natural instinct to learn, and children can learn on their
own all they need to know to function in the culture in which they
are born, as Peter Gray defends in Free
to Learn, couldn’t we also argue that human nature has an
unfair competitive advantage over educators?
And if, as
Gray contends, “there is no need for forced lessons, lectures,
assignments, tests, grades, segregation by age into classrooms,
or any of the other trappings of our standard, compulsory system
of schooling,” aren’t schools merely in place to stimulate
an industry and create employment for a slew of educators, administrators
and bureaucrats?
The obvious
difference here is that educators and bureaucrats have won their
petition against human nature decades ago and they have our children.
As a society, we have come to believe that this is the way it has
to be because it’s the way it has been for generations. Our windows
have been closed shut for so long that most, it seems, have forgotten
what the sun looks like or that it’s even there.
All is not
lost, however, and your child need not be lost. As Peter Gray points
out, “The time for revolution is here. It will be a peaceful
one, conducted by people brave enough to walk away from our coercive
schools, smart enough to resist the propaganda saying that such
schooling is essential to success in our culture, and independent
enough to thumb their noses at the education-industrial complex
that pushes coercive schooling and makes it ever more burdensome.”
There is no
need to break the window just so we can fix it; there is nothing
wrong with our children. And we do not need to fight the candle
makers either. All we need to do is open the shutters, uncover our
windows, and simply trust that the sun is still there.
June
28, 2013
Chantal
K. Saucier, Ph.D., [send
her mail] is a founder of Lafayette Sudbury
School scheduled to open this fall in the Lafayette, LA, area. For
more information, visit their page, LafayetteSudbury, on Facebook.
She is also a Realtor with Keller Williams Realty Acadiana. See
her blog @ LafayetteRealEstateNews.com
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© 2013 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in
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Republished with permission from:: Lew Rockwell