In response to an article suggesting that in school, children should be made to obey, conform and behave “good”.
Any person who judges children, and can then sort "good children" from "bad children" should be ashamed of themselves.
Instead of training children as if they were dogs meant to obey, or worse, machines meant to store information only long enough to spill it onto a test or exam, we should allow children access to, and guidance regarding information.
Teaching should be nothing more than keeping children safe as they explore the real world around them, and the conceptual world found within books, the internet, encyclopedias, and each other.
Because children and people are naturally curious and have a desire to learn, and due to the instinct of empathy and kindness within nearly all of us, I think that beneficial behavior will be naturally learned as a person learns more about philosophy and the many topics within, as well as physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, programming, mathematics, history and the general purposes of society.
All of these are important, and cannot be forgotten, even if it ends up being a long, boring list. Because these things surround all of us at all times, to ignore them would almost have to be taught.
And it is taught. Children are often taught to not question things.
They are taught to censor themselves.
They are taught to fear things.
They are taught to care about superficial details regarding concepts, and not actually bother to understand the entirety of a concept. Or worse, to trust bias, to have faith in assumptions and belief in prejudices.
They are taught to obey, conform and look like good people only as long as they're being watched.
They are tamed.
But children are not animals to be tamed.
They are people who will go out into the world and attempt to make it better, or pessimistically, fix the damage we've already done.
They can only do this upon their own volition.
Right now, people are not raised in an environment of learning, understanding, and sometimes love and friendship within their community.
We are all severely biased and handicapped because we are missing out on what could be. Because any natural curiosity was stunted by the demand that we stop talking and listen to a teacher dictate to us what they were told to teach by a government curriculum, this generation of people will be stunted for their entire lives.
We need to demand education reform and an abolishment to the current "learning as labor" school system. Our capitalistic lifestyle cannot last as the population grows larger and machines do more and more for us.
We need children who are excited to wake up and live every day, because those children will grow into adults who are happy and excited about every day. Those adults will have the energy, drive, and most vitally, the knowledge, to build a better world and shape society into a direction that benefits all people, and more importantly, our robot overlords.
