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Comment by andrei_says_ | Hacker News Reader

> as guiding them down a path that has been generally beneficial for the majority, like going to school.

Possibly unpopular opinion: school is not negotiable for children and so there's no guiding. It's pure coercion.

Also, there's no popular alternative to school so that we can compare enough data and prove that school is beneficial. Unschooling exists and seems to healthier, efficient and beneficial compared to school but there's just not enough data.

School was a great alternative at a time when it was the only place to get information. This is no longer true.

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I tentatively agree with you. Although I am a parent and my child will be going to school - I do feel that the rail road that takes you from childhood to productive adult under the tutelage of the state is fundamentally a coercive one. It indoctrinates children to accept authority unconditionally and sets them up to be good little employees when they grow older - accepting the authority of their superiors without question. But this is the reality of the world we live in, change will be slow and at the end of the day we are all beholden to something, our existence as physical entities makes us subject to the laws of the universe. We all must eat, until we have a choice about this, we are merely choosing our master.

It is far easier for someone who has been free and living life with eyes wide open to understand and play the game if they choose than it is for someone who has lived a life under authority to suddenly have tremendous freedom. This is why many young adults flounder in their 20s. They have never been free and suddenly they are. With no direction and no restraint learned, this can be very dangerous.

If you happen to live near a Sudbury school, I recommend checking it out for your child.

Exactly. The institution of school destroys the healthy relationship with intrinsic motivation, curiosity, self-discipline and relationships with others by creating an unhealthy environment and modeling highly pathological versions of the above as the norm.

While, ironically, labeling some children's inability to accept and tolerate such conditions as ("treatable!!") pathology.

A human child who grows knowing herself, knowing how to determine what's important to her, knowing how to meet her own goals, knowing her own value, and knowing how to gain support and resources to achieve what's important, is very difficult to control or "guide."

There are very few institutions which support gaining such knowledge, like democratic schools. Public schools do not.

"Possibly unpopular opinion: school is not negotiable for children and so there's no guiding. It's pure coercion."

There are lot's of things which are non-negotiable for children. Things like brushing teeth, going to bed and washing hands after toilet. All of which have some intrinsic value beyond tradition.

Coercion is the action or practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats.. There are other means of guiding children to do something. These include gentle reminders, routines and and just agreement.

And, yes, coercion as well, when all other things fail. Hopefully not that much.

If a child goes routinely to school I would not call this an action under coercion, unless the child has learned e.g. that he needs to go to school so he does not turn into a destitute when he grows up.

"School was a great alternative at a time when it was the only place to get information. This is no longer true."

I don't think there ever was time when "school was the only place to get information". I would claim this is location based (if true even then). I.e. rural villages with low rate of literacy vs. a literate society with access to books.

Or, in pre-literate societies, just having access to a sufficient number of people would probably provide a venue for some information access.

Besides, providing information is not the only function a school has. My kid internalizes all math he is taught immediately and combines all new facts he learns into a logically cohesive model of the world which he has structured in his head.

However, he does need to learn how to live in a society and how to work with other people and school provides a good place for that.

> If a child goes routinely to school I would not call this an action under coercion

I'm actually young enough to remember what school looked like and I'm sure as hell many of the kids wouldn't attend if they didn't know that they are going to be forced by their parents or the nanny state anyway.

Sorry, I'm a bit of a pedantic in discussions here.

To simplify the situation let's claim that children do not go to school unless prompted by their parents. This is then an influence attempt by the parent to make the child follow with their directives.

Such an attempt has usually three possible outcomes: commitment, compliance or conflict.

Just because coercion can be used as an influence tactic does not mean it's always necessary to do so. Also, it seldom leads to the most preferred outcome (commitment).

The point was - not all influence tactics can be categorized as coercion - not that the hypothetical child would not need external influence to attend school.

For school, it is illegal not to attend. This means in America that people with guns can forcibly detain children not in school during the school day. Police proudly do so in an attempt to defeat crime since, in their opinion, all children not under the watch of an adult are criminals. How can being threatened with gun violence by the authorities not be coercion?

They also have the power to rip a child from their parents. This is biologically a very serious threat.

I would generally call that a very poor situational awareness by the persons holding executive power.

If the higher level goal for a state is to make people follow the law, then starting with violent coercion is a stupid influence tactic. There are other influence tactics as well.

But, if the culture is such that coercive tactics take precedence then I suppose you can have a point. I would not start to unravel this by deregulating schooling but by fixing the habits and culture of the executive personnel, though.

Efficient?

Absolutely. I have a comp sci degree, I was able to obtain first class results by learning intensively for an average of two months before each set of exams (having not attended any lectures at all). I also went from a D grade in maths GCSE to an A* with a months work.

I am not that smart - it's just that standard schooling is terribly inefficient. And if you ask me, it's inefficient in this respect because it's not really about learning. It's about keeping kids somewhere while their parents go to work - so that more value can be extracted from the working population. Oh and also about teaching the children to be good little employees.

Your experience is typical for "unschooled" kids who face college -- they learn what's needed in a short period of time and quickly become experts on the subject. Very similar to working in a quickly changing industry like the internet -- a new tech comes around, you learn it, use it, become expert and move on with your life.

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