The Last Socially Acceptable Prejudice

A few weeks back I came across this gem of an article by CNN contributor LZ Granderson. It was shared approvingly by a few facebook friends, and I couldn’t resist the headline, knowing that the article was probably going to annoy me considerably. “Permissive parents: Curb your brats”. Indeed. Unsurprisingly, it did annoy me. It annoyed me so much I considered dedicating an entire blog post to it, but others have eloquently rebuffed this guy’s nonsense. So I thought instead I will address the larger issue, since it’s a theme I see over and over again reading and speaking to the non-homeschooling/unschooling public at large- the extreme bias and prejudice that adults hold against children, from birth to young adulthood and in some cases even beyond.

In a more recent example, this idea really took hold and crystallized in my mind. The local network affiliate here, WMUR, posted a story with a poll on unschooling. The article was a fairly balanced take on the subject of unschooling and also the “Sudbury” model of private school, which share many philisophical points with each other. What really struck me was the comments I read on the facebook feed-

“Yaay let’s teach them to be lazy”

“Seems like a lack of structure. Children need some sort of structure. I used to work in an elementary school, so I know they all learn at different levels, paces and methods. Am skeptical on this one.”

“All we do is make excuses for kids, they are growing up to be lazy, with no motivation, and they want a reward for everything they do, stop making excuses for everything and start to be parents, kids need parents”

“the idea that you can let kids decide what they want to learn is ridiculous….how will they succeed in life if they can’t add, multiply, divide or perform a proper sentence or….speak English. You’re dooming them to failure”

Now, comments of this nature are absolutely typical on stories like this. In fact according to the accompanying poll, 77% of readers think unscholing is a BAD idea. But what struck me reading all this was not the comments themselves but the attitudes behind their formulation.

Now, some may agree with the commenters I quoted, others may disagree, but most won’t find them terribly offensive. But here’s an interesting thought experiment- substitute the words kids or children on those comments with “black people”, or “asians”, or “jews”. They look a lot different now, don’t they?

People ascribe many qualities to kids. Some of them might be characterized as fair, even if not ALWAYS true, they are true enough. You might say children lack maturity, or that children are more impulsive, or that they don’t have the same perspective that added years bring with adulthood. But most adults go much further and more negative in their attitudes toward kids, perhaps without ever being aware of it. The comments above illustrate this point. Children are lazy. Unmotivated. Unable to master basic elements communication. Indecisive. Foolish. Incurious. UNTRUSTWORTHY.

These are all pretty harsh things, and in polite society we would certainly avoid making these generalizations of any other (adult) minority group. LZ Granderson makes no effort to hid his disdain of children. He defends his bias by pointing out many other examples of business and society doing the same. But that’s the issue- he’s right. Most adults don’t think highly of kids, or trust them in any meaningful capacity. And as a result, it’s perfectly acceptable, prefferred even, to think of kids as little creatures just waiting to do the wrong thing at every opportunity, in need of wise adults to fence them in and make sure there’s plenty of “structure” to keep them in line.

I think unschoolers identify this prevailing attitude within society, and maybe within themselves, and they reject it. They stand up against these poisonous ideas, and ENTRUST their children to find a path to happiness and success. And in doing so partner with their children to help them navigate the world and find their place in it.

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4 Responses to The Last Socially Acceptable Prejudice

  1. Karin says:

    awesome – again!!! love u!

  2. Your Mom says:

    I think Unschooling is the wave of the future. It won’t happen overnight. Homeschooling took 30+ years to gain mainstream acceptance. But it’s coming. Because enlightened parents can see for themselves (through personal past experiences, or by observing the dismal state of organized education) that with patience, guidance and opportunity children *will* learn, and *will* learn how to learn even more! Said it before, and will say it again… I truly wish I had been able to homeschool my kids. 🙂
    ~yer mom

  3. Lorna says:

    Never heard of “unschooling”. Never had kids. Do know that most people forget how some adults viewed them when they were young. Do know that a lot of people are too busy doing too many things to pay enough attention to really understanding how their actions (or lack of) and attitudes impact their children.

  4. Bob Collier says:

    Quote: “the idea that you can let kids decide what they want to learn is ridiculous….how will they succeed in life if they can’t add, multiply, divide or perform a proper sentence or….speak English. You’re dooming them to failure”

    That comment in particular is amazingly ignorant, but not rare I know. Having recently come to the end of a nine year adventure with my now 16 year old son while he was “growing without school” in an age when an entire universe of information, knowledge and understanding way, way beyond the confines of a K-12 curriculum is available to us all and at our fingertips if we want it 24/7/365, it seems incredible to me that there are people who still honestly believe that absolutely nothing happens to a child’s education if he or she isn’t being taught in a school classroom. I’m tempted to suggest that these are the people who are more in need of an education than anybody.

    (Incidentally, in the matter of “performing a proper sentence”, one thing I am aware of is that most of the world’s top copywriters wouldn’t know how to “perform a proper sentence” if you paid them – which would have to be about $15,000 per ad at today’s rates. I wasn’t taught that at school.)

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