To Encourage And Empower Free People

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson famously wrote, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

We do not educate children so that they might one day hold a particular job, although that might be a result. If that were the only goal, however, then maybe we would be better served by giving up on the idea of public education and let the corporations train their own damn workers.  

We do not educate them so that they are better able to worship their Creator, although, for many that may be integral to their pursuit of happiness. But if that were the only goal then maybe we would be better off letting the churches train their own damn adherents. 

And we certainly don't do it so that they are better able to obey and serve the elites: that defies the whole purpose of self-governance. But if that were the only goal then maybe we should return to a feudal system and let the elites train their own damn serfs.

The experiment of our nation is, at bottom, self-governance, and that requires nothing less than a unwavering focus on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

When Jefferson penned his foundational sentence, of course, the word "men" literally meant "white men," but today most of us understand this to mean all adult humans. The only broad category excluded from this are children. Legally, they are citizens, of course, but without most of the rights or responsibilities of citizenship. Personally, I find this troublesome, but I'll leave that for another day.

Still, we at least grant them the right to life. As educators and parents I think that most would agree that keeping the kids alive, protecting them, is our foremost objective. More broadly, caring for the young is the primary project of every civilization that has ever existed. They are born with the right to life in the form of food, clothing, shelter, and to the degree we are able to provide it, safety. Indeed, most of us would lay down our lives to save the children in our care.

Liberty, however, is barely on the radar for anyone under 18, at least not under law. Of course, most of us provide our children, especially as they get older, some degree of extralegal freedom, but since it can always be infringed or taken away, it's hard to call it liberty, at least in the Jeffersonian sense. And as for the pursuit of happiness, we actively prevent that from happening, "for their own good," except perhaps in very small doses, usually as a reward for obedience, which is to say, the opposite of the pursuit of happiness. When I consider what most children spend their days doing in school, being told where to be, what to do, and even what to think about, it's clear that we do not consider the pursuit of happiness to be a right of childhood.

That said, the reason that those of us who advocate for play-based or self-directed learning are considered "radical," is that we strive to place the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness at the heart of our work with young children. In the United States, and frankly, in anyplace where self-governance is the goal, these three unalienable rights should, in my mind, rightly stand at the heart of what we do as educators. I have no illusion that children will be granted full citizenship in my lifetime, but I've done what I can to provide the children in my care with an education in self-governance. I have a responsibility to keep them safe, which is to say, to protect their right to life. Beyond that, I avoid commanding them when anything other than safety is at stake, and to empower them with the freedom to choose the what's, how's and why's of their day-to-day life, which is to say, their rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The Ancient Greeks recognized that freedom is the secret to happiness, something that Jefferson undoubtedly knew. That is, after all, the basic principle behind democratic self-governance: freedom leads to happiness. And as the Declaration makes clear, the pursuit of happiness stands as the highest goal of our grand experiment. 

Thucydides, the Greek historian and general, was among those who recognized freedom as the secret to happiness, but in an acknowledgement of the fallibility of any system, even self-governance, he added, "The secret to freedom is courage."

Without courage, the rest is just pretty words on paper. It's not enough, therefore, to set the children free, to allow them to play. We must teach them to be courageous with their freedom. In her book Recollections of My Nonexistence, Rebecca Solnit writes, "What I'd wanted to offer was encouragement, a word that, though it carries the stigma of niceness, literally means to instill courage. Encouragement not to make people feel good, but too make them feel powerful." 

And that, I think is the nub of the matter: our role as educators is to encourage and empower free people so that they will grow up knowing that their highest responsibility as a citizen is not obedience, or it's glamorous cousin loyalty, but rather to pursue happiness.

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"I recommend these books to everyone concerned with children and the future of humanity." ~Peter Gray, Ph.D. If you want to see what Dr. Gray is talking about you can find Teacher Tom's First Book and Teacher Tom's Second Book right here. 

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