Totalitarian TCS?

Posted on the TCS List by Alan Forrester on Wed, 5 December, 2001, at 20:56:27 +0000

A poster wrote:

The empowerment of choice assists in the instruction of responsibility and communication in children. Parents can only better understand the needs of their children with communication. This relieves some of the turmoil associated with the decision making process and teaches the responsibility of consequence. Parents can only benefit their children and society by presenting more options in the lives of their children. But I am concerned about the cognitive understanding of children related to the long-term affects of their choices. An adult can not always comprehend the consequences that may surround specific actions. An adult, however, is more capable than a child to understand and research an issue more intensely. The experience of life, age and education allow the availability of these opportunities.

The process of the creation of knowledge is that same regardless of age. If there are sources of knowledge to which a child does not have acess then the parent should provide access if the child wants it, they should not coerce the child into doing it.

The choice of a child to withdrawal from the education system is a choice of neglect in an area of a culture.

So is a child not going to the opera, this is not a reason to force them to go.

The affects would be of a detrimental proportion to all. A community is only maintained and achieved by its participants. The interaction of child with its culture and culture with its children increases knowledge and growth generationally. The established educational system is more apt to change from within. I am concerned that the choice of withdrawal from society in the established education system is to teach retreat and disregard for the culture. A culture that so desperately needs insight from people like those involved in TCS.

Coercing a child into going to school would be contrary to TCS, imo. How is abandoning every moral principle in TCS going to persuade anyone to adopt it? Why should they adopt a philosophy so barren that even its own advocates don't practise it?

Citizens within an established culture have a better understanding of that culture's guidelines. They are more accessible to that culture. Therefore, there is more respect for their point of view. Home schooling and allowing children to quit school is an excuse the TCS parent's avoidance of the issues within the established education system and will not accomplish change.

No. How exactly is cooperating with schools regardless of the child's wishes supposed to encourage change. Is the best way to discourage oppression to join in with it and hit people with a big stick?

The survival of society and its children depends on the education system. They need to stay together; they may or may not want to but overall the need overrides the want. An argument from the outside is considered an attack from the individuals inside. The parent needs to take an active role in the pursuance of education: school board meetings, PTAs, etc. Parents and non-parents involved in the culture assume parenting role in educational decisions. The fact that parents choose to abandon the education system is the main cause of its deteriorating state.

The main cause of the deteriorating state of the education system is the fact that it is basically a totalitarian institution that has little or no respect for individual rights and therefore does not encourage the growth of knowledge and the solution of problems.

The development of society depends on the development of our children. The educational system is a vital part to the child's and societies existence.

This is precisely why it is important to choosea good educational theory rather than a bad one, i.e., that's why it is important to adopt TCS and not to coerce children into going to school.

The choice to attend or the choice of the parents to participate has caused generations of inconsistencies. TCS has a point that there are flaws in the educational systems and that some children may not choose to participate. But, are you not afraid that the retreating attitude of TCS will produce a society in which are children and grandchildren will not grow? Do we produce a society of quitters or do we assist our children in learning to follow though? Do we teach them to achieve the long-term benefits of self-worth and developing or helping to develop a community? They to may choose to raise families. Our are own personal wants and needs to override generations of humanity? We would become so self-involved that unified benefit to society would not matter. With TCS methods do our children understand that the choices of today effect many generations?

So let me get this straight. You are proposing that everyone should suffer horribly for the sake of the community so that future genrations can likewise be brought up to suffer horribly ad infinitum until human history becomes one long saga of self destruction and suffering. And you believe this is a good thing?

That without knowledge of math, science, and arts the slow crumbling of the education system will dissolve and there would be no foundation left to build on.

Without all these things life would be terrible, but school is a brutal instution that destroys every value the arts, the sciences and human knowledge in general stands for and lays waste people's respect for them by saying that education requires suffering. It doesn't.

We need to keep our children in school. We need to become more involved in education whether we are parents or not. Placing stricter guidelines, not becoming more lenient. We need to remove many of the excuses, which are now called labels. Define education. Help children to reach their potential not retreat from it. Changes need to be made in parenting attitudes as well as education. But they can not be made without insight and cooperation of both parties.

You need to force people to show initiative! Yes, yes of course! You need to make people innovate and think while holding a gun to their head! I can see it all now a glorious future stretching out in front of us like beautiful dream! A future where everyone watches everyone else and destroys anyone who dares to deviate from the wishes of the all powerful state! Untrammeled power! Crush all those who oppose the glorious state! Unlimited rice pudding!!!! Etcetera, etcetera! Excuse me while I wipe the foam from my mouth, now where did I put that Swastika?

The permissive parent avoidance and negative complaints are not effective in the cultural change of the educational system. Each one of us must participate, learn, understand and devise clear-cut positive arguments to initiated change. For a moment compare the cognitive level of parents vs. cognitive level of the child. Honestly, between you and your child who makes the better long-term decisions. Inexperienced children can not understand the long-term realities of no education. These uneducated children will continue to misunderstand and retreat from life. If you don't stop it, it will continue generation to generation. The parent has at the very least more life experience than the child does. Their duty is to protect and assist the child in obtaining knowledge. Self-rule, self-governing children and autonomy in children has its limitations and parents must establish guidelines for their children. Including those relating to education. By avoiding decisions for the education of their children TCS (permissive) parents are avoiding the rights and responsibilities of those children. Does avoidance alleviate the blame? Will the fault lie in the children who make these decisions? Whose fault is it, nobody's? Is it natures? Do we just leave the excuses up to our children? Without the education of our children society will crumble.

How is forcing people to continually look to someone else to make all their decisions supposed to promote responsibility for their own actions?

It reminds me of the old excuse used by Nazis who used to run death camps and were responsible for the deaths of millions of people. What was their excuse? “I was only following orders.” Is this the kind of responsibility you wish to encourage?

Allowing children to design there own future with out guidelines or education will create more under educated people that will avoid or have negative impacts on society. The decreased control and abandoning the school system has affected the violence and poverty rates in the U.S. The less educated seem to be the most apt to participate in crimes. You pick any state correctional facility and compare the education levels. Why do you think that obtaining a high school diploma is often an inmate's incentive? Intelligence decreases the likely hood of behavioral stupidity.

Your conclusion that the decline of the school system in the US has led to rising violence and so we should force children to go to school is rubbish. How is treating people like slaves supposed to make them have respect for other people's rights?

The parents are not the only ones who need to become more involved. The education system itself has to become aware of its decaying state and more responsible. Parents and non-parents need to vote in school decisions, join school boards and participate. We need to promote incentives for more teachers. We don't need to limit children by age groups. We do need to prorate education to each particular advance. The level may be too difficult in some areas and not challenging enough in others. Let the child advance as he/she progresses individually. This is a TCS idea that can benefit the community. Vote to change the summer vacation system. Give children breaks spread out throughout the year based on need, avoiding overwork and the instillation of laziness.

How will you be able to tell when the child needs a break — telepathy? Or will your supreme Godlike wisdom enable you to make the decision?

The classes could be year around, by changing the structure or length of the day or week. This would make more time available for parents to become more involved in their child's education.

Parents would become more involved in their child's education by handing the responsibility over to the state?

TCS has some good points, but I feel that taking parts of TCS's permissive attitudes and incorporating a more authoritative presence will not only benefit the individual but society as a whole. The progressive and home schooling attitudes do not provide the foundation of cultural norms found in the established educational systems. Russell Kirk is his essay, “From the Academy” quotes Richard LaPiere's book: The Freudian Ethic, an Analysis of the Subversion of American Character. Richard LaPiere's wrote:

Nonetheless, the modern progressive educator accepts a philosophy of education that, if fully realized and actually effective, would produce high-school graduates totally incapable of living in society and prepared only to spend the rest of their lives on the analyst's couch. They would be passive, uncompetitative, unambiguous, irresponsible, egocentric and of course wondrously adjusted to doing nothing at all.

This is wrong. By helping a child to find out what is important to them and actively engage in it a TCS parent does more to help their child to interact, engage and care about the world than your fascist dribblings ever will.

The civil rights movement took the laws and guideline and utilized them legally against the establishment. The interest group used the arguments established by the establishment against itself. This brought about social change and benefited social interests. This group within the culture came to understand the laws and rights established by the government and realized they also have these rights. They are participants in the culture. By utilizing the established text they put forth the energies to obtain these rights. They should not of had to been put in these particular positions but the basic established rights are what also gave the pathway for the needed steps to be initiated. The laws of basics rights were not over-ridden they were amended to include members overlooked.

What you're proposing on the other hand is slapping irons on everyone and taking society back to the Stone Age where coercion and violence are the means used to obtain what you want and anyone different is to be feared as dangerous.

This particular government in its maturity and sensing growth established that all have the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It made allowances for amendments. This was to insure that these rights are made available to all (participants) citizens. The pursuit of change is constant and inevitable. If it were not for these established rights, other changes would not be possible. If it were not for the established education system you would not be able to utilize it for the benefit of the child or the culture.

The current educational system abuses children's rights; it does not promote them. Locking people up and forcing them to spew forth written material on demand is oppression, not freedom.

The behavior of a child will occur without parental intervention or guidance. The parent does chose what the child is privy to. The parent's behavior does effect the child. The choice to avoid the education issues will teach your child to do the same. How many generations will it takes before the priority of education and culture becomes one of self?

Too many.

Do we leave the community to fend for itself? If we do not take care of the community and remain with in it, we will be neglectful to our society. A culture is only as good as its people. By not raising children within it and by allowing them to avoid the education system is being neglectful citizens. We must nourish our children within the culture though education. This will invest in the culture and the extension of generations. The education systems are far from perfect and much reform is needed but you can't change it and avoid it at the same time. By avoiding you pass the problems to your children. Any attempts to change, making steps in its growth, is an effort to which the children may build on. Do we help them build or show them how to run away? Is it selfishness or society? Is it your choice, or not?

You seem to be assuming selfishness is bad. It's not. Being able to make a choice about something is a prerequisite for taking responsiblity for the consequences of actions. A society where everyone buries their own ideas and wishes so they won't be clubbed to the ground by “the community” is not a good society. I say “the community” with quotation marks because of course we're not talking about the whole community, only those who have been granted immunity to trample all over everyone else's rights and to disregard morality and civilised values in the name of the greater good.

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