Conversation

So many of the arguments for why children should be treated the way they are, should have their autonomy further restricted, should be forced to do this or that thing, rely on claims about what supposedly "works."

The metrics for what "working" means are almost always ones I oppose (greater compliance with institutions, obeying adults, spending their time and using their minds in the way that's demanded of them regardless of their own needs and wishes), and often those claims are false even BY those flawed metrics.

But what I'm realizing is that I sometimes let myself get caught up in arguments using the framing of efficacy, when I really shouldn't.

Because I don't care and have never cared about efficacy, I don't care what "works" to force children to pay attention to teachers in schools, what improves grades, what makes children follow the rules set by their parents. I DON'T CARE

What everyone should actually be concerned with is ETHICS. That children are treated with respect, that they have as much autonomy as they reasonably can for their age, that they experience care instead of control.

And funnily enough when children feel safe, when they're respected and allowed to make their own choices, my personal experience is that they generally make more considered, safer, choices (though certainly not always the choices adults want). Because all people do better outside of authoritarian institutions of control, and that very much includes children (and the institutions of the family and of school).