Eloquent video on how kids must be free

This unschooling video is professionally done, with eloquent and committed parents speaking to the necessity of liberty in childhood.

Principles first -- Unschooling second

The headline on this blog post isn't meant to diminish the importance of unschooling. It's meant to establish the fact that I have to have principles in place first before I can determine if unschooling is the proper method for raising my child, Livy. I determined before her birth that unschooling was, indeed, the proper way to raise her.

In working out my principles in the early 1990s, I determined the propriety of Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand that states four primary things: 1) reality is real and understandable to humans; 2) humans have free will and rational brains that can figure out reality by forming facts; 3) because humans can make mistakes while working with reality, they need a code of ethics (honesty, independence, integrity, etc.) to help guide their minds; 4) because humans are rational and work by a code of ethics, they are the only ones who know how to make themselves happy and are, therefore, entitled to be left alone by other humans and by governments.

Because of the above four true generalizations about humans and reality, I determined that the best way to raise my child was to honor her right to her own life, to not get in the way of her extraordinary fact-finding mission and personal trail to happiness.

I also expect her to respect my rights and others' rights as I respect hers. This means that there are rules such as "you've got to clean up after yourself," "noise levels are limited in a room where some don't want noise," "fix your own food, if I don't want to fix it," "always be honest with me," "do not take others' stuff or violate their right to be left alone," "don't expect others to share or do something for you simply because you wish it," etc. We have been talking with each other about these rules for years now, with me giving explanations many times on why I think they are objective rules of conduct for not only kids, but also for adults.

I don't see unschooling as "unparenting." An objective parent has much to teach and much help to give about the facts of reality and what is right. I see that as my role, with my longterm plans of helping create an individual who will be not only my bloodline writ large in her own way, but be among my best and dearest of friends for life.

That is what she has turned out to be so far, an amazingly independent, thoughtful, caring, insightful individual who knows that in order to be free to run her own life, she must recognize the same for others and their lives.

Livy is a joy.

Unschooling, bombs, and taking charge of women

Uhuh, that subject line hooked ya, didn't it? ;)

I've been an Objectivist now for 18 years and have had thousands of conversations with other Objectivists, from your average Joes to the very top guys and gals. They are the easiest people to talk with because we share a common philosophy, and we agree on the applications of Ayn Rand's seminal philosophy on most every point. (It goes without saying that we all agree fully on the philosophy itself -- and, yeah, I just said it anyway, right?)

But there are three points in which there is wide disagreement: If children must be schooled, whether we should bomb the hell out of all rogue countries right now, and whether men should largely take charge of the sexual experience in the bedroom with women.

The disagreement on these three issues re-emphasizes how difficult it can be to maintain objectivity always and to not bring undigested presumptions into arguments -- presumptions that are themselves complex and often almost invisibly lurking in one's subconscious. Those who are in the wrong on the above subjects often have a more fundamental problem, which precipitates the blindness to false presumptions.

The problem is that some people have not fully digested Objectivism and integrated it fully into their lives, thereby not creating full self-esteem, full cognitive visibility of thoughts, full connection to emotions, and a complete integration of virtue and values.

Here's how I think it plays out in life for those who haven't fully integrated. I'll start with my own error in the 1990s concerning men, women and the bedroom.

I had very long, and sometimes vociferous, conversations with several longtime Objectivists. They said that men naturally "dominate" women in the bedroom, and that was how it should be; men are dominate physically and more naturally aggressive, so that when it came time to get down to it, the man naturally took over, with the woman, of course, letting the man know what she wants and the man occasionally letting the woman do as she pleases with him. But the man rough-houses on occasion, as he is want to do -- and must do. He handles the woman.

These longtime Objectivists explained man's nature, but I looked at myself and didn't see that nature. I had not fully integrated Objectivism yet and was still soft -- ahem. I argued for the intellectual equality of men and women, and I supposed that that must translate to the bedroom. I discounted the physical. I heard other men talk of dominating women in the bedroom, but I was generally disgusted by this and held contempt for both parties who engaged in this rough-housing. At the time, I took some control, admittedly, but I felt guilty for doing so afterward. My psychology wasn't clean or right.

It wasn't until I got my own intellectual house in order that I -- for lack of a better way of putting it -- became a man. A full man. Filled with self-esteem. Comfortable with my more aggressive nature. Comfortable with handling a woman and enjoying watching her enjoy being handled. When I had integrated my virtues and values, pursued the right career, cleaned up my subconscious, and re-formed myself, the handling of women in the bedroom became natural. I couldn't imagine it any other way. I later told the longtime Objectivists that they were right.

The same unclean psychology comes into play with other issues, such as the schooling of children and the bombing of other countries.

With the schooling, many Objectivists (especially longtime ones, ironically) place a very high value on knowledge (as we all do) without considering it in the context of values -- in this case, the values of children. Many Objectivists think that children absolutely must obtain four things from adults early in life: 1) motivation 2) how to think 3) rigid structure 4) particular information.

They are wrong on all counts. Children free of coercion are self-motivated and huge value-pursuers. They are rational beings whose brains automatically put two and two together. They construct their own structures according to their value pursuits. And they decided what particular information they need relating to their value pursuits.

As with my errors in the sex issue, the facts in this issue are there, so why don't many Objectivists I respect see them? I can't accurately psychologize on it, but I can extrapolate that they have issues themselves that make them contemptuous of children's hegemony over their lives. Their self-esteem is somehow getting in the way. Perhaps they wish to have trophy children for display, which would indicate a second-handedness, which would indicate some lack of integrity. Perhaps it's a need to lord over a nearly helpless kid. Who knows? All we can say is that if the facts are out there for one to see, and one has looked long at the issue and still is committing severe errors, then some philosophical and psychological problems still lie unexamined.

As far as bombing outlaw countries (such as Iran, Russia, China, Syria, North Korea, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, etc.), many Objectivists have shown a tendency to pull back from the brink, stating that America "can't just go around bombing the hell out of other countries."

Why not? These countries are openly terroristic, export their terrorism, put Americans in danger by their very existence. Even some top Objectivists don't think we should just go around "blasting people to hell."

I think this shows a lack of justice, which should be a hallmark of the full Objectivist mind. Harsh justice for the bad. Effusive complimentary justice for the good. The mind that shies away from full justice is the mind that won't do justice to itself, won't search itself fully, won't completely fix itself and blinks when it knows something is wrong.

And lack of justice on any part indicates a lack of self-esteem.

So, if all us Objectivists were perfectly integrated (completely virtuous and in full pursuit of values), would we disagree properly? Yes. Sometimes the facts of a situation are momentarily too complex (What is the proper marketing strategy in a different culture?) or determining something is a bit intangible (How many years do you put a rapist in prison for?). These conclusions are based on highly complex formulas and information. We can agree to disagree or to keep our minds open for more facts.

But in some cases, we just got to get our minds right -- as the prison warden says in "Cool Hand Luke."

Whoopin' their ass!

As I've said before, I've got some friends on Facebook that are old high-school buddies and acquaintances from times past, and every once in a while I get invited to some seriously crazy shit.

So today it was an invitation by a high-school woman friend to a popular Facebook site called "My parents didn't put me in time-out -- they whooped my ass!" The site has more than 600,000 members -- no doubt, most of them Christians, who salivate over "spare the rod, spoil the child" -- no doubt as recompense for having already sold their souls to mysticism and getting beat up psychologically for it.

Anyway, as y'all know I'm an unschooler and I'd rather cut off my toes than once strike my child. It has never even entered my head to strike her -- or anyone else, for that matter, except for Keith Olbermann and the soccer mom going 45 in a 55-mph zone while chatting away on her cell phone.

So, when I become president of these here United States and institute a rational constitution with rational laws, I'll grab my popcorn and watch a night of public beatings of parents who "whoop the ass" of their children. It'll bring out the redneck in me, as I'm sure I'll be screaming with delight, "That's right, keep on whoopin' their ass!"

Schooling and the death of childhood learning

HERE is a terrific piece by Daniel Quinn on the history of "public education" and the motives behind it, as well as an affirmation of the natural curiosity of children -- who do NOT need motivation to learn. It is a testament to unschooling.

Here's a quote from the speech:

"What sells most people on the idea of school is the fact that the unschooled child learns what it wants to learn when it wants to learn it. This is intolerable to them, because they're convinced that children don't want to learn anything at all - and they point to school children to prove it. What they fail to recognize is that the learning curve of preschool children swoops upward like a mountain - but quickly levels off when they enter school.

"By the third or fourth grade it's completely flat for most kids. Learning, such as it is, has become a boring, painful experience they'd love to be able to avoid if they could. But there's another reason why people abhor the idea of children learning what they want to learn when they want to learn it. They won't all learn the same things! Some of them will never learn to analyze a poem! Some of them will never learn to parse a sentence or write a theme! Some of them will never read Julius Caesar! Some will never learn geometry! Some will never dissect a frog! Some will never learn how a bill passes Congress!

"Well, of course, this is too horrible to imagine. It doesn't matter that 90% of these students will never read another poem or another play by Shakespeare in their lives. It doesn't matter that 90% of them will never have occasion to parse another sentence or write another theme in their lives. It doesn't matter that 90% retain no functional knowledge of the geometry or algebra they studied. It doesn't matter that 90% never have any use for whatever knowledge they were supposed to gain from dissecting a frog. It doesn't matter that 90% graduate without having the vaguest idea how a bill passes Congress. All that matters is that they've gone through it!"