Note: It’s forty-eight minutes long. Forty-eight minutes of baller. Don’t hate.

Related posts:

1. Graduation Day
2. Treatment of Children
3. I Don’t Give A Figgity Figgity Figgity What?

Note: It’s a bit rambly, just so you know going in.

Related posts:

1. Usher and Ethan
2. I Don’t Give A Figgity Figgity Figgity What?
3. Treatment of Children

As always, leave your comments or email me.

Related posts:

1. Usher and Ethan
2. Graduation Day
3. I Don’t Give A Figgity Figgity Figgity What?

I was always perplexed by these responses. They were part straw-man — suggesting that anarchists naively believed in a conflict free world — and part invalid deduction — asserting that if there was conflict then it was necessary for an authority figure to resolve it.

The first part wasn’t hard to understand. Straw-man arguments are a dime a dozen. But the second part seemed so illogical; how could anyone reach such a conclusion?

Why would so many people automatically associate the resolution of conflict with the necessity of authority?

Now I know at least part of the answer.

Everyday in school I see my students being taught two lessons that lead directly to the acceptance of statism:

Lesson 1: Conflict Is Bad

This is the first and less obvious lesson that is being reinforced constantly.

Conflict is a bad thing. It’s bad when it happens. It should be avoided at all costs. Conflict is the worst possible outcome of any interaction.

That’s what kids learn.

Teachers and assistants hover over children during every activity. And at the first sign of a disagreement they swoop down to “break it up.” The result of their interference is often that somebody gets in trouble.

These situations occur dozens of times every day. Two kids will argue over who gets to play with a toy or who gets to be first in line for their snack. They get into conflicts over taking each others’ crayons or books or whatever. They fight over who holds the jump rope they’re using to tie up their teacher and tickle him (I always get them back).

Almost every time something like this happens a teacher or assistant is waiting to step in and stop the disagreement — and sometimes to punish the student “responsible.”

This sends one message: conflict is bad.

Conflict Is Natural

Conflict isn’t bad. And it isn’t good either. I wouldn’t use any moral labels when defining conflict. Conflict is neutral.

Conflict is the natural result of interacting with other human beings. Every person has their own values, desires, and needs and everyone has different ways of satisfying those needs. In any relationship or community or society it is absolutely NORMAL that these different and competing interests result in conflict. It’s not a bad thing. How could it be?

What I would apply terms like “good” and “bad” to are the ways of handling conflict. For instance, violence is a pretty bad way of handling conflict (I’m looking at you, statists). Peaceful negotiation, on the other hand, is generally a pretty good way of handling conflict.

When a conflict is handled poorly the consequences can be devastating, as surely all of us have experienced. But a when a conflict is handled well, it can be a great thing and actually improve the relationship.

It is the bad ways of handling conflicts that causes teachers and assistants to interfere. They want to prevent the children from hitting or fighting or name calling. It’s well-intentioned. But by constantly interfering they don’t teach children real conflict resolution skills, they just teach them that conflict is a bad thing.

It also teaches them the second lesson, that when there is a conflict, the best thing to do is appeal to authority.

Lesson 2: Authority Resolves Conflicts

This is the second lesson. It’s more overt but it is also more dangerous.

The consequence of training kids that conflict is bad and that an authority will always be there to intervene imprints this programming onto them: when there is a conflict, an authority figure will resolve it.

On my first day of class — no exaggeration, my very first day — a student I had never spoken to before came up to me and said, “Arthur took my pen, will you give him a frowny face?”

I can’t remember the rest of the conversation, but it went something like this:

“No sorry, Eric, I don’t think I’m going to give him a frowny face.”

“He took my pencil!”

“He didn’t take my pencil, though, why should I give him a frowny face?”

Cue the blank stare I’ve seen hundreds of times by now. “But…but…you’re the teacher!”

“Want me to go talk to Arthur with you?”

“No, I want you to go beat him up and get my pencil back.”

The point of that dialogue is to show you just how much children are trained that authority is the ultimate conflict resolver. Whenever there is a disagreement, if you handle it on your own, an authority will intervene anyway and you’ll get in trouble. But if you appeal immediately to authority you might just get your way.

Authority is there to resolve your conflicts, whether or not you want it.

Conclusion

The connections to statism should be blatantly obvious.

Instead of teaching children infinitely valuable conflict resolution skills so that they can learn to handle disagreements peacefully and efficiently, they are taught to fear and avoid conflict. And in the case conflict does arise, they are trained to run immediately to the nearest authority figure and plead their case, otherwise there will be punishment.

This is what most children are exposed to for 12 years of school — and probably longer in their homes.

Is it any surprise that they become adults and can’t imagine a world where conflict is resolved without authority?

Related posts:

1. From Childhood To Statism: Introduction
2. 3 Things Wrong With The Rewards System
3. Am I Making It Worse For My Students?

I want to show some of the ways that schools, teachers, and parents train children to become statists.

In this introductory post I want to set up and explain what this series will cover.

For starters, this is not a complete analysis of the origins of statism in childhood. I will use the examples that I have seen first-hand. It will be based on my experiences.

Secondly, it is not about the origin of statism as an intellectual theory. I don’t want to examine where the idea of statism came from, but rather where the psychological acceptance of that idea comes from.

In order to explain the difference, we should start with some definitions.

Statism

Statism is the ideology that proposes and supports the use of states — or governments — to organize human society.

A state, if we go by the standard political science definition provided by Max Weber, is an entity which claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. This is actually a pretty good definition, considering it’s widely accepted by academics.

Let’s break down a little bit more, just so we can be really clear on what we’re talking about when we say “statism.”

The word entity is of course meant very loosely in the definition. There is not a physical thing that exists called The State. There is a group of people. They may be fixed or they may be a rotating group of people but they are just people. They are the bureaucrats, politicians, policemen (and so on and so on) that fill offices and buildings and barracks. This aggregation of people is what we call the state.

And this group of people “claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.” What does that mean? It means they claim that in a given area, only the people making up the state are allowed to use violence and it is moral for them to do so but immoral for anyone else to do so.

This is starting to sound a little bit like “I’m allowed to hit you, but you’re not allowed to hit me.” And it should, because at its basic and truest form that’s the idea of statism. One group of people is allowed to use violence against the rest.

As Leo Tolstoy famously put it: “Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.”

Acceptance of Statism

Despite the endless justifications for statism (“voting this” and “social contract that”) the core premise is completely…retarded and insane.

The idea that you can solve complex social problems like education or health care or poverty by allowing one small group of people threaten and coerce everybody else is one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard. And one reasonable people would never accept. But almost everyone does…maybe even you.

I’m not here to convince you that statism is evil and supporting it is immoral — maybe I’ll do that in another post. So before you start writing me emails saying, “But Anderson, if one group of people didn’t have a monopoly on violence who would build the roads?” I want to remind you that my purpose in this series is to identify why people accept such a clearly retarded and wrong idea.

Because, although the idea may be wrong, it’s only dangerous when people buy into it.

If I had the idea that every human being should drink bleach, well, without widespread acceptance it’s just a stupid idea. But imagine if everyone starting believing in it and supporting it? That’s where the real danger lies.

The same analogy can be made with slavery. The idea that one person should be able to own another is an evil idea — and an idea not unrelated to statism — but it was only truly vile because people accepted it.

That is why I’m not interested in the origin of the theories that promote and support statism, but rather the origin of the acceptance of statism.

It is the acceptance of statism that has allowed it to become a plague on this planet. In the 20th century alone states have murdered over 260 million people — I’m talking about unarmed, innocent people, not soldiers in war. Faced with this pile of bodies, most people still never question whether or not statism is a good idea.

And as I said in the first section, I believe it is because we are trained to accept it as children.

So, over the next few posts I want to talk about some of the “lessons” I see that lead directly to this unquestioning acceptance.

Check back soon…

Related posts:

1. From Childhood To Statism: Conflict Resolution
2. Am I Making It Worse For My Students?
3. Treatment of Children

This process can be initiated by teachers at the beginning of the term to establish rules that the whole classroom finds fair and are willing to follow. Students are more likely to keep to their end of the bargain when using No-Lose Conflict Resolution and participative rule setting because of a simple bit of common sense called The Principle of Participation.

Simply stated, the principle holds that people who are invited to participate in making decisions or setting up rules that affect them somehow are more willing to abide by them or keep to their part of an agreement. We all like feeling that our views are being represented.

Sounds great. But it isn’t easy to do. Yesterday’s class didn’t go well. I’ll explain some of the reasons I think I failed.

I Don’t Speak Chinese

This is a pretty obvious one but I think it’s important to understand how hard it is to communicate with children that don’t speak the same language.

There are some native English speakers and a few kids who are semi-fluent. But for most our interactions involve very basic, merely functional English communication. It is simple stuff like hello, how are you, go outside, go to the bathroom, who wants to play and whatever phrases we’re learning that day.

Oh yeah, there is also upside down. (This is a frequent request from the girls who want me to pick them up and carry them around upside down. It’s like some kind of drug; they get high on having blood rush to their brain. Anyway, I love the game too so I’m not complaining.)

The rest of the communication is nonverbal. This shouldn’t be underestimated. I know 100% that the kids can tell from my body language, the way I smile or laugh, how I pick them up, and everything else that I’m different from the Chinese assistants.

But when it comes to communicating an idea it gets much harder. I said to the whole class “I know this classroom has a lot of rules and I know that you guys don’t like some of them. I was hoping that we could spend ten or fifteen minutes and talk about the rules and see if we can come up with some that everybody agrees on.” The English speaking kids understood this sentence (partially at least, more on that later) but the Chinese kids had no clue. And how could they? I tried to simplify what I wanted but it isn’t easy to do. And it just confused them more. This led to the second problem.

The Chinese Translators

In my classroom there are a couple Chinese teachers who are there to help. One of them is my assistant and part of her job is to translate for me.

Usually, this isn’t a problem. She’s the nicest of the Chinese assistants and treats the kids very well. Unfortunately, this whole Principle of Participation thing wasn’t something she was even remotely familiar with. So when I said “I know you guys hate the no-talking-during-lunch rule” she translated it to “no talking during lunch.”

She wasn’t doing it maliciously or anything. When I told her I wanted to talk about the rules, she probably just assumed that it meant we were going to recite the rules. What else could it mean?

Either way, her translations essentially came out the exact opposite of what I wanted. She turned it from a participative rule setting session into a reminder about all the rules currently imposed. Fail.

This Idea Is More Foreign Than A Second Language

This is the issue that even had the English speakers confused.

Children in schools are not used to getting a say in the rules. Even if they have great parents that practice these techniques (and there is probably a 1-in-2-billion chance of that being the case) there are even fewer schools that do. Kids are used to being ordered, prodded, pushed, commanded, controlled, subjected, restrained, adjusted, confined, directed, punished, silenced, and finally questioned. They’re like terror suspects minus the water-boarding (or not).

I’m some foreigner, that they’ve only known for a week, sitting them down and essentially saying “we’re going to do things the exact opposite of every thing you’ve previously experienced.” They had no idea what I was getting at. It was kind of like when I first told them we weren’t going to do rewards and punishments back on day one and they all just looked at me like confused puppies. Only then it was cute and funny. This time it was sad.

So What Do I Do?

I think I’ve laid out the biggest three issues. I can’t speak Chinese, my translators don’t know what the fuck is going on, and my kids aren’t used to this sort of thing at all.

So how can I make this work? I don’t know actually. I’m going to keep trying. But short of learning Chinese myself or hiring my own excellent translator I’m not sure what to do. I can’t go back in time and make their parents start them on this system. And I can’t change the way the entire school works.

This is why I’m writing this post. I want your ideas. I know there are some extremely intelligent people who visit this blog and I’m sure you are one of them. Help me.

Leave a comment or email me. Or, if you have no ideas, maybe you could pass this post on to a friend. Thank you!

Related posts:

1. 3 Things Wrong With The Rewards System
2. Letter From A High School Teacher
3. Am I Making It Worse For My Students?

Before I talk about some of things wrong with this system, let me first say that it is way better than a strict “do as the authority figure says or get punished” method. It actually tries to establish a consistent set of rules for what constitutes good behavior and leans much more on the rewards side as an incentive. Compared to a system that essentially treats kids like slaves to be yelled at and bullied into behaving, the rewards and incentives approach is a great leap forward (China pun, har har).

The rewards system is to strict authority what democracy is to dictatorship. Sure, democracy is better than dictatorship, but it’s still a piece of shit. Here are three things that are wrong with the rewards system:

1. It Only Teaches One Thing: Obedience

The reward system is supposed to incentivize good behavior but what it really does is teach children that being “good” means following the authority figures’ rules. Now it doesn’t really matter what the teacher defines as good behavior. It might be not talking during class or always raising your hand before asking a question. Sometimes it’s just a reward for the correct answer — which sends a terrible message to the kids that don’t know the correct answer: you’re not good.

This is especially bad when you have a big old heap of arbitrary classroom rules. For example, my Chinese assistants don’t want the kids to talk during their meals. They have a good reason for it: there is only limited time to eat and once the kids start talking they almost always ignore their food. Then lunch will end and won’t be finished and they’ll be hungry the rest of the day. But if you combine this with the rewards system you end rewarding the kids that sit quietly during their meal and punishing (with frowny faces or loss of playtime) the kids that chat while eating.

I don’t know about you guys, but punishing a kid for talking while he’s eating seems like a pretty asshole thing to do. And it certainly isn’t going to teach them anything about morality. The only lesson they will get is do what you’re told and you’ll be rewarded.

What if the rules are rational and fair? Well that certainly would be better, but I’ve just never seen it. Sure there are classroom rules about hitting and fighting — I would consider those “rational” — but there are plenty more that are about things like sitting quietly, listening to the assistants, sharing toys, not speaking out of turn, lining up before going outside, washing hands before food, etc. Again, rewarding a kid for lining up before going outside just teaches them to obey authority, nothing more.

Even if you could establish a set of rational rules, I think the message would be the same. The authority you were learning to obey would be less random and make more sense, but you’d still be learning to obey. Consistent and reasonable authority is absolutely better than random and arbitrary authority, for sure, but the lesson is unchanged.

2. It Punishes The Wrong Person

Wait, what? I’ll explain. If I’m teaching a lesson and my students aren’t listening, if they are talking amongst themselves, or staring bored out the window how is that their fault? I’m the one who is being paid to teach them. It’s my job to make my lessons and engaging and interesting. If the kids are finding my lessons boring or uninteresting I’m pretty sure that it’s my fault, not theirs.

Instead of giving them frowny faces for not listening or stars for paying attention maybe I should just focus on being a better teacher. My students don’t owe me anything, and rewarding them for paying attention to my boring ass flashcard game is just a lazy excuse for being a shitty teacher.

It applies for almost every classroom rule that you might enforce using the rewards system. You can’t settle disputes between children without the threat of a frowny face? Fail. You can’t get the students to wash their hands before eating unless you give them stickers? Fail.

I’m not saying that it’s easy to do. It’s hard as hell. I know. I’m struggling to do it. But I refuse to switch to a system that punishes or rewards the students because of my shortcomings.

3. It Establishes Artificial Consequences

When it comes to kids you hear a lot of talk about having to teach them the “consequences” of their actions. This is always done by making up some bullshit fake consequence and then imposing it on them. This is often the excuse you hear for spanking kids. Besides it being just plain wrong to hit a kid, the excuse of “it teachers them consequences” is so retarded I hate even having to address it.

Guess what everybody? In the “real world” as “mature adults” you don’t get spanked for not behaving. Excluding the one violent relationship we are all forced to participate in with our benevolent political masters, nobody is allowed to use force against you when you “don’t behave.”

What are the types of consequences we do have to face? Well, there are the outright cause and effect ones. For example, if you don’t eat, you die. These are pretty straight forward and no child needs to be taught cause and effect through punishments and rewards. Kids learn cause and effect just by interacting with the world.

There are other types of consequences too, like how your actions affect others emotionally. These aren’t learned as easily as the physical cause and effect consequences, but you don’t need a rewards system to teach them. In fact a rewards system can’t teach these types of consequences. The only way you grow to understand the emotional effects of your actions is through empathy. You have empathy for yourself and understand how others effect you and then you have empathy for others and understand how you effect them. How do you encourage this in kids? That’s probably a topic for another post, but I think you start by showing them empathy.

Related posts:

1. Why I’m Failing At Participative Rule Setting
2. From Childhood To Statism: Conflict Resolution
3. Letter From A High School Teacher