Why I Teach The Way I Do (Rules)

This is the second post in a series I'm calling "Why I Teach The Way I Do." In yesterday's post, I began with a very brief description of the competing ideas of the two most influential 17th century philosophers, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, followed by a discussion of the role of obedience in a democratic society. Today I've written about our relationship to rules.

My motivation for writing this is that on a regular basis, some bit of my writing makes its way out into the wider world beyond our little progressive education bubble and I will in turn be challenged by well-intended folks who are genuinely concerned, and even shocked and angered, by what they perceive as a questionable, if not outright dangerous, approach to early childhood education. I can and have explained/defended our ideas over the past 3 years, publishing well over 1000 posts here, but it's been a rather scatter-gun approach, making it hard to simply suggest this link or that to my "critics," leaving me to either ignore them or exhaust myself re-creating the wheel in a comment or whole new post.

When I'm finished writing, which may be several days from now, I intend to eliminate all this introductory fluff from each post and edit everything together into what I hope will be one long, comprehensive piece to which I can point people looking for assurances that we are, in fact, working in the best interests not just of children, but society as a whole. In the meantime, this is part two and would probably make more sense if read on the heels of part one.

(As an aside, as I sat down this morning to write this latest installment in the tradition of Charles Dickens who wrote most of his novels in serial fashion, I'm struck by what a genius he really was. As a blogger, I have the luxury of going back to edit what I published yesterday, even to the point of entirely rewriting, as new thoughts or insights strike me. Should a reader, as many did yesterday, suggest ideas, ask questions, or point out omissions, I can simply go back with a "fix." Dickens had no such luxury; once the type was set it was out of his hands. I'm simply in awe of his ability to write enormous, cohesive, compelling, and undeniably great novels in serial form. His was a special kind of genius.)


Rules

"The Dude abides."   ~The Dude, The Big Lebowski

Our summer program typically includes many children who've never been enrolled in our school before. A few summers back, one of these children was eating his snack with Charlie, who had been with us for two years already. The new boy suggested that they do something when they were done eating, to which Charlie replied, "That's against the rules." The boy asked, "What happens if we break the rules?" Charlie thought for a moment, then replied, "We don't break the rules."

In a democracy, citizens are responsible for making our own rules about how we as equal and free individuals will live together: this is, at bottom, what democracy is all about.  Ours is not a direct democracy, but rather a democratically elected republic, which is why we elect representatives who, in turn, are expected to carry our best interests into the legislative process. In preschool, however, we practice a kind of direct democracy where we, as citizens do in a democracy, make all of our own rules. Most certainly, the purpose of a public education in a democracy, one paid for by all of us, is to educate citizens, and there is nothing more fundamentally democratic than taking part in the legislative process: perhaps more than voting, this is how we most effectively express ourselves publicly as individuals and as a community.  Our founders, most notably Thomas Jefferson, wrote extensively about the importance of an educated populace if democracy was going to thrive.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right.

By the time children leave our school, I want them to be equipped with vast experience in the legislative aspects of self-governance. I won't get into the details here of how we go about making our own rules (I've already done that here), but the reason Charlie didn't have an answer for his new friend was that the only "consequence" we've ever had to impose for breaking a rule is to simply remind the rule breaker that he's broken a rule: "You and your friends agreed . . ." Charlie was factually wrong when he said, "We don't break rules," but he was spot on in spirit.

Our rules, as are all rules, are statements of aspiration, not statements of fact: "No hitting," "No taking things," "No screaming in someone's face," all of which are broken more or less every day. That does not make the rules flawed. That does not make the children bad. And it certainly doesn't mean that they deserve punishment because they've failed in this instance to obey. I would no more punish a child for failing to abide by a rule than I would for failing to add 2 + 2 correctly or remember the words to "Itsy Bitsy Spider." Failure is simply evidence that children are practicing how to live in a world of rule-aspirations to which we have all agreed. Following rules, in fact, is lifelong learning. After all, how many adults can say we've mastered living according to the rules we've agreed upon through our democratic process? How many of us can say that we've not jaywalked or sped or failed to turn in money found on the sidewalk? I would say it is a percentage approaching 0. How can any one of us cast that first stone at a child?

Nevertheless, what of rules and obedience? Even if we do it imperfectly, certainly the ideal is that we strive to obey the rules, even in a democracy. I know this will strike some as an exercise in semantical hair-splitting, but I believe there is a real difference between obedience to rules imposed by an authority and "rules" that come about democratically.

In a Hobbesian world, where humans are presumed to be essentially "evil," the purpose of rules imposed by institutional authority is to prevent what would be an inevitable slide into a life that is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." As followers of Locke, however, we in a democracy assume the essential goodness of mankind. The purpose of rules, therefore, is to preserve "natural law" so that reason can prevail, allowing us to express our natural selves, and together strive toward a state of "perfect freedom, equality, and liberty." This, ideally, is the power of rules in a democracy.

As I say to the children when pointing at the list of democratically arrived at rules that hangs on our wall, "You and your friends agreed: no hitting." I do not simply say, "No hitting," because that is the language of force, of command, of authority. These are not my rules, but theirs, arrived at by universal consensus in our case, and agreement among equal and free citizens in a democracy is sacred. Those outside our progressive education bubble hear bits and pieces of this and are concerned that we advocate for complete laissez fair, creating a frightening, dangerous Lord of the Flies dystopia, but nothing could be further from the truth. It's true that we are not imposing rules and sanctions from on high; we are rather providing children the tools to practice making and sticking to agreements among themselves, the true skill of citizenship. In a democracy, rules can just as easily be called agreements.

Living according to our agreements is not something any preschooler has mastered by the time she's walked out into the world, but I certainly want her to expect it from the world, and to perhaps even assert it, even in places where it doesn't already exist. Is this subversive? Only if we don't really value democracy as we say we do.

As the great storyteller and poet Utah Phillips wrote, "I will not obey," but "I was always willing to agree." Or in words of The Dude, "The Dude abides." That is the stance of equal and free men. And it is this that the children in our school are practicing.

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