Kitabının 114. sayfasındakı alıntıya dönelim:

Profesör Lawrence Cremin erkeklerde okur yazarlık oranının 70 ila 100 arasında değişmekte olduğunu tahmin etti. Diğer araştırmalar gösteriyor ki 1650’den 1795’e kadar, erkek okur yazarlığı yüzde 60’tan yüzde 90’a yükseldi ve kadın okur yazarlığı yüzde 30’tan yüzde 45’e yükseldi. 1800’den 1840’a kadar, Kuzeyde okuma yazma % 75’ten % 91-97 arasında yükseliş yaptı. Aynı zaman diliminde, Güney’de % 50-60’dan % 81’e çıktı. Yazar ve eğitimci, John Taylor Gatto, Amerika’da okur yazarlığa önem verilen yerlerde oranın % 93 ve % 100 arasında olduğunu belirtti. 1850’de, Massachusetts zorunlu eğitimi kurmadan önce, eyalette okur yazarlık oranı % 98 idi.

Yüksek okur yazar nufus, devletin eğitimde müdahalesi olmadan açıkca mümkün. Bu görüş radikal eğitimci John Holt’a ait olup özgür düşüncenin ahlâki ilkesine kanıttır. Bu görüş, genç insanların kendi eğitimlerini kontrolde ozgür olmalarını talep eder. İzin verilince, bir çocuk okuma öğrenmeye kendi alanlarında uyum sağlayabilir. Kendine yönelik buluş işlemi çocuğun öğrenim isteğini güçlendirir.

Okumanın sevinci agresif baskı olmazsa daha iyidir. Biz özgürlükçüler baskısız eğitimi teşvik eden nadir bir pozisyondayız. Devletin zorlayıcı eğitimine karşi yenilikci alternatifler var. Bunlar Sudbury okul sistemi, Montessori okul sistemi, ve okulsuzluk sistemi. Bunların arasında en sevdiğim okul olmadan yapılan eğitim. Bu, devletin eğitim modellerine en radikal alternatif sağlar. Kendine özgülüğe, seçime ve özgürlüğe saygı verdiğinden, özgürlük prensiplerine en uygunudur.

Kültürel değişim eğitimde paralel değişiklik gerektirir. Eğer daha özgür topluma erişmek istiyorsak, çocuklarımızı farklı yetiştirmeliyiz. Kendi ilgi ve hayallerini takip etmeleri için daha çok özgürlük vermeliyiz. Yukarıda bahsedilen eğitim alternatifleri bunun gerçek olmasına yardım eder. Başlayalım!

Batu Caliskan Bu çeviri sorumludur.

Kids are being locked in cages by the government all across the country. The consequences are devastating. According to a report from the Justice Policy Institute:

A recent literature review of youth corrections shows that detention has a profoundly negative impact on young people’s mental and physical well-being, their education, and their employment. One psychologist found that for one-third of incarcerated youth diagnosed with depression, the onset of the depression occurred after they began their incarceration, and another suggests that poor mental health, and the conditions of confinement together conspire to make it more likely that incarcerated teens will engage in suicide and self-harm. Economists have shown that the process of incarcerating youth will reduce their future earnings and their ability to remain in the workforce, and could change formerly detained youth into less stable employees. Educational researchers have found that upwards of 40 percent of incarcerated youth have a learning disability, and they will face significant challenges returning to school after they leave detention. Most importantly, for a variety of reasons to be explored, there is credible and significant research that suggests that the experience of detention may make it more likely that youth will continue to engage in delinquent behavior, and that the detention experience may increase the odds that youth will recidivate, further compromising public safety.

So the state is engaging in violence that scars young people physically and mentally, and hurts their economic prospects; and this practice may even increase rather than decrease the chance of future crime. Moreover, according to the same report, most of these youth are not even a threat to others, as “about 70 percent are detained for nonviolent offenses.”

Once incarcerated, youth are subjected to severe abuses. For example, many youth are isolated in solitary confinement, which is widely recognized as a form of psychological torture. According to the American Civil Liberties Union:

Solitary confinement can cause extreme psychological, physical, and developmental harm. For children, who are still developing and more vulnerable to irreparable harm, the risks are magnified – particularly for kids with disabilities or histories of trauma and abuse. While confined, children are regularly deprived of the services, programming, and other tools that they need for healthy growth, education, and development.

The impacts of solitary on adults are harmful enough. “It’s an awful thing, solitary,” wrote John McCain, “It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.” Subjecting youth to this kind of torture is monstrous.

Incarcerated youth are also all too often raped and sexually assaulted by guards. According to David Kaiser and Lovisa Stannow, “4.5 percent of juveniles in prison and 4.7 percent of those in jail reported such [sexual] victimization—rates that ought to be considered disastrously high.” Their risk was higher in youth detention centers, “minors held in juvenile detention suffered sexual abuse at twice the rate of their peers in adult facilities.” Most of this abuse is committed by guards employed and paid with tax dollars:

Some 2.5 percent of all boys and girls in juvenile detention reported having been the victims of inmate-on-inmate abuse. This is not dramatically higher than the corresponding combined male and female rates reported by adults or juveniles in either prison or jail. The reason why the overall rate of sexual abuse (9.5 percent) was so much higher in juvenile detention than in other facilities is the frequency of sexual misconduct by staff. About 7.7 percent of those in juvenile detention reported sexual contact with staff during the preceding year. Over 90 percent of these cases involved female staff and teenage boys in custody.

Government employees are committing child sexual abuse against caged victims. These guards are often repeat offenders. “In juvenile facilities, victims of sexual misconduct by staff members were more likely to report eleven or more instances of abuse than a single, isolated occurrence.” All of this data comes from research conducted by the government’s own Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The impacts of the state’s systematic caging and abuse of children are not equally distributed across the population. The Center for Children’s Law and Policy documents many studies showing the racially disparate impacts of youth incarceration and juvenile justice policies. LGBTQ youth also face disproportionate impacts from the juvenile justice system. According to an article in The Nation:

The road to incarceration begins in pretrial detention, before the youth even meets a judge. Laws and professional standards state that it’s appropriate to detain a child before trial only if she might run away or harm someone. Yet for queer youth, these standards are frequently ignored. According to UC Santa Cruz researcher Dr. Angela Irvine, LGBT youth are two times more likely than straight youth to land in a prison cell before adjudication for nonviolent offenses like truancy, running away and prostitution. According to Ilona Picou, executive director of Juvenile Regional Services, Inc., in Louisiana, 50 percent of the gay youth picked up for nonviolent offenses in Louisiana in 2009 were sent to jail to await trial, while less than 10 percent of straight kids were. “Once a child is detained, the judge assumes there’s a reason you can’t go home,” says Dr. Marty Beyer, a juvenile justice specialist. “A kid coming into court wearing handcuffs and shackles versus a kid coming in with his parents—it makes a very different impression.”

Queer and transgender youth are treated differently by the justice system before they are even tried and convicted. Once incarcerated, they face brutal violence. From beatings to victim blaming to bigoted slurs from guards, queer and transgender youth are regularly abused in juvenile corrections facilities.

Some of America’s youth incarceration problem begins in the schools. “Zero-tolerance” policies in public schools criminalize violating school rules, producing what is often called the school to prison pipeline. The racially disparate impacts of this school to prison pipeline are well documented, and they often criminalize minor infractions.

Outside of school, youth are often directly targeted by police thanks to ageist laws like curfews. Laws often restrict freedom of movement and bodily autonomy for youth, and justify this coercion through condescending and paternalistic platitudes. In a particularly appalling recent case of paternalism sending youth to prison, a transgender girl was sent to an adult prison without charges or trial, because the state had power over her as her “guardian.” The desire to protect youth provides ideological cover for the state to treat them even more abusively than it treats adults.

The American state is uniquely punitive in some respects. According to Amnesty International, “The United States is believed to stand alone in sentencing children to life without parole.” Amnesty identifies “at least 2,500 people in the US serving life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for crimes committed when they were under 18 years old.” Before turning 18, these youth were permanently separated from society, permanently sent to violent hellholes.

The essence of imprisonment as we know it is throwing away a human being, treating them as disposable. Prisoners are subjected to violence, abuse, and torture. They are held in austere and inhumane conditions. And they are kept out of the general public’s sight. They are punished rather than being made to make amends or provide restitution to victims. It’s bad enough to treat any human being this way. To treat children this way is unconscionable. Stop caging kids.

E se la cosa migliore che potessimo fare per i nostri figli fosse semplicemente lasciarli in pace? Jay Griffiths spiega perché le attenzioni dei genitori stanno rendendo infelici i nostri figli.

Mi sentivo un complice riluttante di una tortura. L’eco degli strilli della vittima risuonava tra le mura dipinte. La porta, sebbene completamente chiusa, non riusciva a fermare le urla di panico. Un bambino, solo e imprigionato in una culla.

Anche la madre del bambino era visibilmente scossa, pallida e in lacrime. Anche lei era una vittima, preda dei sostenitori del pianto controllato, o metodo Ferber; un metodo spietato, crudele per entrambi.

Pianto. Controllato. Queste parole denunciano l’obiettivo odioso: la prepotenza usata per controllare i sentimenti di un bambino. Alla madre avevano detto il contrario, che era il bambino a cercare di imporre il proprio volere sulla madre, ma tutto quello che potevo vedere era un bambino di un anno che impazziva per l’abbandono. Una madre americana ha scritto significativamente su internet: “Il metodo Ferber vale il mio mal di testa o è che sto veramente torturando mio figlio? Mi sembra una punizione crudele e fuori dall’ordinario.”

L’idea è che ai bambini si può “insegnare” a smettere di piangere lasciandoli piangere da soli. Di quando in quando un genitore va a controllarli, ma senza prenderli in braccio né stare con loro. Con il tempo, il bambino impara che piangere non porta consolazione e smetterà di provarci. I genitori sono incoraggiati a limitare a certi attimi il tempo trascorso a controllare il bambino. Il sistema funziona? Certo. Non è questo il problema. Il problema vero è: perché incoraggiare una cosa del genere? Perché c’è chi la accetta? Cosa rivela riguardo le priorità del mondo moderno? E come fa a fornire risposte al problema dei bambini infelici?

Abbracciati, stretti e serviti, la maggior parte degli infanti, nel corso della maggior parte della storia, hanno conosciuto il mondo lontano dalla solitudine. Tra le popolazioni Maia di lingua Tojolabal del Chiapas, in Messico, durante i primi due anni di vita i bambini stanno sempre vicino alle loro madri, che sono sempre pronte a calmarli con un giocattolo o il latte, perché non si sentano infelici. Tra le popolazioni Aché, nomadi della foresta del Paraguay, i bambini fino ad un anno passano la maggior parte della giornata a contatto fisico con la madre o il padre, e non toccano mai terra né vengono lasciati soli se non per pochi secondi. In India e in molte altre parti del mondo, i bambini possono stare nel letto della madre fino all’età di cinque anni.

Per molti genitori, le ragioni per adottare il pianto controllato possono essere riassunte in una parola: lavoro. I genitori che vogliono una vita di “routine” sono accaniti sostenitori del pianto controllato, dice Gina Ford, britannica, nota sostenitrice del metodo. I bambini che sono stati obbligati alla routine, commenta, si adattano facilmente anche alla routine della scuola e, si presume, saranno più malleabili come forza lavoro.

Eppure, in tutto il tempo che ho trascorso nelle comunità indigene non ho mai sentito gli strilli di paura e rabbia dei bambini sottoposti al pianto controllato. Se un bambino viene saziato spesso, commenta lo scrittore Jean Liedloff, quando sarà un bambino più grande vorrà tornare al contatto materno solo in caso di emergenza. Crescendo, questo bambino acquisirà più fiducia in se stesso, non per la scarsità di contatti durante l’infanzia (come dicono i sostenitori del pianto controllato) ma esattamente per l’opposto: per la loro abbondanza. All’età di circa otto anni, i bambini Aché, che da infanti non sono mai lasciati soli, sono già in grado di trovare la strada tra i sentieri della foresta e riescono ad essere molto indipendenti dai genitori. Nella Papua Occidentale ho visto bambini cresciuti a contatto con la famiglia diventare fieramente e orgogliosamente indipendenti.

Crescendo, il desiderio di libertà dei piccoli sembra diventare insaziabile. Di recente mi è capitato di dare lezioni di scrittura, a Kolkata, a bambini che per qualche tempo erano stati rinchiusi in una scuola in cui erano ben accuditi e generalmente felici. C’era una sola cosa che desideravano ardentemente: la libertà. “Vogliono la libertà che hanno conosciuto nella strada,” ha detto un insegnante, “andare ovunque in qualunque momento.” Nonostante i problemi della strada, come la povertà, i maltrattamenti, la fame e la violenza, i bambini “continuano a fuggire”.

Una volta lasciata l’infanzia, i bambini degli indiani d’America tradizionalmente sono liberi di vagabondare dove vogliono, tra i boschi come sull’acqua. “All’età di cinque anni sono già adulti, raggianti di salute e… affamati di libertà,” scrive Roger P. Buliard in Inuk, parlando della fanciullezza degli Inuit. Più o meno all’età di sette anni, il giovane comincia a maneggiare il coltello, vuole il fucile e la trappola, e da quel momento comincia ad “andare con gli adulti, condividendone il coraggio”.

Una volta trascorsi alcuni giorni a caccia di renne con i Sami, e vidi come i bambini erano liberi non solo quando si trovavano all’esterno, ma anche quando erano dentro la capanna estiva. Frugavano alla ricerca di qualcosa da mangiare, una fettina di renna cotta o un pesce appena pescato o una scatola di gallette, scegliendo cosa prendere; questo evitava quella grossa fonte di conflitti famigliari: l’ora del pasto.

Una delle caratteristiche della fanciullezza in molte società tradizionali sembra essere l’autonomia alimentare. I bambini Alacaluf della Patagonia imparano presto ad arrangiarsi; si servono di una lancia fatta con una conchiglia e a quattro anni sanno già cucinarsi il pasto. I giovanissimi Inuit usano la frusta per catturare le pernici bianche, mozzandone la testa con un guizzo del polso. Viaggiando tra le alture della Papua Occidentale, nel territorio degli Yali, mi capitò spesso di vedere piccoli dei villaggi che partivano in gruppo, carichi di archi e frecce, a caccia di uccelli e rane, che poi arrostivano sul fuoco fatto da loro stessi.

In Inghilterra un gioco ambientalista chiamato Wild About Play chiedeva a dei bambini quale era la cosa che più avrebbero voluto fare all’aperto, al che risposero raccogliere e mangiare frutti selvatici, e fare il fuoco per arrostire qualcosa. Questo è il segno dell’indipendenza che i bambini dimostrano dappertutto: badare al proprio cibo e alla propria persona. Apparentemente, i bambini europei e americani hanno un rapporto insolito con il cibo: primo, diventano autonomi tardi; secondo, hanno problemi con il mangiare.

Quanto alla libertà fisica, qualche anno fa trascorsi una giornata con dei piccoli degli Zingari di Mare, i Bajau, che vivono in palafitte costruite lontano dalla costa dello Sulawesi. I bambini sapevano tuffarsi e nuotare, maneggiare le barche e pagaiare; bagnati di acqua di mare giorno e notte sembravano una via di mezzo tra l’uomo e la lontra. Chiesi loro come vivevano l’infanzia. La risposta fu immediata: “I bambini sono felici perché sono molto liberi.” Se la felicità è il risultato della libertà, l’infelicità dei moderni bambini occidentali è sicuramente causata, almeno in parte, dal fatto che sono i meno liberi di tutta la storia.

Fui colpito dalla chiara felicità dei bambini Bajau: rimasi con un centinaio di loro per tutto il lungo pomeriggio e non ne vidi uno piangere, o imbronciato, infelice, frustrato. Non riesco ad immaginare un pomeriggio con cento bambini europei o americani e non sentirne neanche uno piangere.

In Europa, c’è un paese che sembra aver onorato la relazione tra libertà e felicità infantile in una maniera che gli Zingari di Mare avrebbero compreso: la Norvegia. Una terra di laghi e fiordi, un paese che ha codificato in legge l’antico diritto di andare liberamente in canoa, remare, veleggiare e nuotare, e di passeggiare dappertutto (tranne i giardini privati e le terre arate), una legge conosciuta come Allemannsretten, “il diritto di tutti”, il diritto di vagabondare.

Nel 1960, lo psichiatra americano Herbert Hendin stava studiando l’incidenza dei suicidi in Scandinavia. La Danimarca (assieme al Giappone) aveva l’incidenza più alta. La Svezia era un po’ più giù. E la Norvegia? In fondo alla lista. Hendin era incuriosito, soprattutto perché sapeva che Danimarca, Svezia e Norvegia avevano culture simili. Qual era la ragione di queste differenze drammatiche? Dopo anni di ricerche, arrivò alla conclusione che questa ragione era nell’infanzia. Se in Danimarca e Svezia i bambini crescevano irreggimentati, in Norvegia erano liberi di girovagare. In Danimarca e in Svezia si faceva pressione sui piccoli affinché intraprendessero una carriera con un obiettivo, e molti finivano per sentirsi dei falliti. In Norvegia questi avevano più libertà; non erano tanto guidati; più semplicemente erano lasciati liberi di guardare e partecipare e fare esperienza. Crescendo, i bambini norvegesi non acquisivano un senso di fallimento ma di indipendenza.

Lo studio dimostrava che i piccoli danesi erano iper-protetti e dipendenti dalle madri, e non erano liberi di andare dove volevano. L’esperienza comune dei piccoli svedesi era fatta di separazione e abbandono quando avrebbero avuto bisogno di vicinanza; crescendo, poi, finivano per essere iper-controllati quando avrebbero avuto bisogno di maggiore libertà. I bambini norvegesi giocavano all’aperto per ore sotto la supervisione degli adulti, ed era improbabile che la loro libertà subisse restrizioni. In tenera età ricevevano più vicinanza degli svedesi, ma crescendo le parti si invertivano ed erano più liberi delle controparti danesi e svedesi, e questo forse fa capire che il segreto di un bambino felice sta in questa vicinanza seguita dalla libertà.

Purtroppo nei decenni seguenti il lavoro di Hendin la Norvegia divenne più centralizzata e urbanizzata e l’esperienza infantile cambiò. Oggi i bambini norvegesi passano più tempo a casa in attività sedentarie, come guardare la televisione o un DVD o giocare con il computer, che all’aperto. L’incidenza dei suicidi oggi è molto più alta.

In Europa così come in America, molti giovani oggi sono a tutti gli effetti agli arresti domiciliari: nel Regno Unito l’80% si lamenta perché “non ha un posto dove andare”. Sono le quattro del pomeriggio, hai un paio di sterline in tasca e poco più. Ti sei fatto la tua giornata e vorresti stare con i tuoi amici. I cheap cafe chiudono tra un’ora, il ristorante non te lo puoi permettere e nel pub non ti lasciano entrare. A tutti quelli che ti ascoltano spieghi che non vuoi dare fastidio; solo ti basta un posto asciutto, ben illuminato e sicuro, dove passare un’ora a chiacchierare. Così te ne vai sotto la pensilina dell’autobus, in un parcheggio, davanti alle vetrine dei negozi. E ti mandano via come un appestato. Il Regno Unito è apparentemente all’avanguardia nell’insegnare come non si trattano i giovani.

Un progetto di mettere su un canestro da netball in un parco dell’Oxfordshire fu bloccato “perché i residenti non volevano attirare ragazzini”. Nel Somerset occidentale, una bambina di otto anni è stata fermata mentre andava in bicicletta per la sua strada perché un vicino si era lamentato delle ruote che cigolavano. Un sondaggio rivelò che due terzi dei bambini avrebbero voluto giocare fuori casa, il 50% era stato sgridato per averlo fatto, e il 25% di quelli tra gli undici e i sedici anni erano stati minacciati di percosse perché… perché? Perché giocavano fuori, facevano chiasso, davano fastidio.

La cosa più triste è che funziona. Un bambino su tre raccontò di aver smesso di giocare per strada dopo aver ricevuto l’ordine di smettere. Se c’è una parola che riassume il modo in cui sono trattati i bambini oggi, questa è recinto. I bambini di oggi stanno rinchiusi a scuola e a casa, rinchiusi in macchine che li portano avanti e indietro tra l’una e l’altra, prigionieri della paura, della sorveglianza e di orari inflessibili.

Nel 2011 l’Unicef chiese ad un gruppo di giovani cosa avrebbero voluto per essere felici, e le prime tre risposte furono: il tempo (soprattutto con la famiglia), le amicizie e, significativamente, “lo spazio aperto”. Gli studi dimostrano che quando i bambini vengono lasciati giocare liberamente tra la natura, il loro senso di libertà, indipendenza e forza interiore accresce. Quando sono circondati dalla natura i bambini non solo non sono stressati ma hanno una maggiore capacità di riprendersi da eventi stressanti.

Ma lo spazio aperto in cui i bambini possano giocare si riduce costantemente. In Gran Bretagna, i bambini hanno un nono dello spazio aperto che aveva la generazione precedente. Anche il tempo disponibile si è ridotto. Meno del 10% dei bambini passa qualche tempo nei boschi, in campagna o nelle brughiere, contro il 40% di una generazione prima. I bambini più piccoli spesso sono tenuti dentro perché gli adulti temono per loro, mentre quelli più grandi sono tenuti dentro perché gli adulti temono di loro.

In Amazzonia, ho sentito di bambini di cinque anni che maneggiavano il machete con destrezza e precisione. In Igloolik, nell’Artico, ho visto un bambino di otto anni prendere un coltello e macellare un caribù ghiacciato senza incidenti. Nella Papua Occidentale, ho visto ragazzini di dodici o tredici anni con una tale capacità fisica e una tale sicurezza che, quando gli chiesero di fare da messaggeri, percorsero tutto il sentiero tra le montagne in sei ore; roba che io avrei fatto un giorno e mezzo con le guide.

Non è solo una questione di capacità fisiche: la libertà a cui i piccoli Inuit erano tradizionalmente abituati li aveva resi “individui autonomi, generosi e dotati di autocontrollo”, per dirla con uno degli Inuit che mi è capitato di conoscere a Nunavut, in Canada. Questo dava loro coraggio e pazienza.

I piccoli hanno bisogno di tempo libero illimitato, ma questo tempo è scarso per molti, che vivono una vita parcellizzata tra quattro mura, la giornata suddivisa in orari prestabiliti che vanno dalla sveglia al sonno, ogni ora controllata da genitori preoccupati dal fatto che il loro figlio possa restare indietro in quella corsa al successo che è la vita fin dalla culla. I genitori amano i propri figli, non vogliono che siano dei perdenti nella vita, per questo li spingono ad impiegare efficientemente il proprio tempo. La società instilla un’ansia del futuro che può essere calmata solo sacrificando il gioco e la serenità nel presente, e i bambini ne sentono gli effetti sotto forma di affaticamento e depressione.

In molte culture tradizionali, invece, i bambini sono considerati i migliori giudici dei loro bisogni, compreso come passare il tempo. Nella Papua Occidentale un uomo mi raccontò che da bambino “Andavamo a caccia e pesca e tornavamo a casa solo quando sentivamo i grilli.” Nel tipi dei bambini dove James Hightower, un meticcio cherokee, passò grandissima parte della sua fanciullezza, si poteva giocare fino alla quattro del mattino. “I bambini indiani non erano come quelli civilizzati,” rammentò, “che hanno un’ora precisa per mangiare e una per dormire.” (Nella sua bocca, la parola “civilizzati” non è un complimento).

“Quando stiamo lavorando non abbiamo tempo per occuparci dei piccoli,” mi disse una volta Margrethe Vars, una donna Sami che pascola le renne. Si fermò per fare un tiro alla sigaretta, e le sue parole, ad imitazione dei suoi genitori europei, uscirono letteralmente fumanti: “Ti sei lavato le mani. Adesso vai a mangiare.” Fece la faccia triste: per come la vedeva lei, la libertà per un bambino non è solo un diritto ma una vera e propria liberazione. Quando l’estate si allungava fino a diventare una sola lunga giornata, i piccoli Sami prendevano a passare la “notte” svegli, e questo senza che nessuno si preoccupasse perché i genitori erano dell’opinione che fossero i piccoli a decidere come impiegare il tempo. Così nel primo mattino – brillante di sole estivo – vedevi questi piccoli che partivano a manetta con il quad, andavano a controllare le renne, scherzavano o dormivano.

“Qui noi dormiamo quando siamo stanchi e mangiamo quando abbiamo fame,” disse Vars. “In altre società, invece, i piccoli sono molto programmati. Hanno orari per tutto: mangiare, dormire, prendere un appuntamento e vedere un amico…” Rabbrividiva all’idea di una pianificazione dettagliata. Lo stile di vita dei Sami ha dato grandi risultati positivi; non solo ha ridotto i conflitti su questioni meschine, ma ha anche prodotto qualcosa di intangibile e vitale. I piccoli venivano su più autonomi, meno obbedienti alle pressioni dall’esterno.

Le popolazioni Wintu della California hanno un rispetto così profondo per la volontà autonoma che questa si riflette anche nel linguaggio. In inglese, la frase “portare un bambino” da qualche parte implica un senso di costrizione. In lingua Wintu non si dice così: si dice “sono andato assieme al bambino”. “Ho controllato il bambino” diventa “ho controllato con il bambino”. Gli Wintu non riuscirebbero a costringere nessuno neanche se lo volessero: il linguaggio che non glielo permette. Quando un piccolo Wintu chiede “Posso?” non sta chiedendo il permesso ad un genitore ma una delucidazione, vuole sapere se le regole generali permettono di fare una certa cosa, così che non si senta alla mercé di un adulto che impone regole che possono sembrare capricciose e arbitrarie.

Facciamo un passo indietro per un attimo. Cosa significa lasciare che i piccoli facciano a modo loro? E fare tutto quello che vogliono? Non sarebbe un disastro totale? Certo, ma solo se i genitori eseguono la prima metà del trucco. Nel lessico culturale del mondo moderno, l’ostinatezza, la volontà caparbia di fare qualcosa, è spesso interpretata banalmente come comportamento da marmocchio, egoista. Ma volontà non significa egoismo, e gestirsi autonomamente non significa ostilità verso gli altri; al contrario. I piccoli degli Ngarinyin, in Australia, tradizionalmente crescevano senza ordini o coercizioni, ma imparavano a socializzare fin dalla tenera età. Questa è la seconda metà del trucco. La socializzazione dei piccoli serve a stimolare la consapevolezza e il rispetto per la volontà e l’autonomia degli altri; in questo modo, quando con la crescita diventa necessario, imparano a tenere a bada i propri desideri al fine di mantenere buone relazioni. Perché una comunità funzioni, un individuo deve, all’occasione, sentire il bisogno di frenare la propria volontà, ma, è questo è di importanza cruciale, non deve essere qualcun altro ad obbligarlo a fare così.

Inuit e Sami hanno la necessità evidente di fare in modo che i piccoli sappiano regolarsi da soli. Gli adulti si tengono a distanza con tatto e riservatezza. Il bambino “sta imparando da sé” è un’espressione comune tra i Sami. Ai piccoli dei Sami viene insegnato a controllare l’ira, le emozioni, l’aggressività e la vergogna. Gli Inuit insistono, con cauta enfasi, a sostenere che i bambini devono imparare l’autocontrollo. Il piccolo non deve essere controllato da qualcun altro, nessuno deve sovrapporsi al suo volere, ma deve imparare a guidarsi da sé.

La volontà è la forza motrice di un bambino: lo sprona da dentro, al contrario dell’obbedienza che costringe dall’esterno. Per chi vuole dominare la volontà di un bambino “obbedienza” è la parola d’ordine, perché teme la disobbedienza e il disordine e crede che se un bambino non è controllato è il caos. Ma queste sono false contrapposizioni. In verità, contrapposta all’obbedienza non è la disobbedienza ma l’indipendenza. All’ordine non si contrappone il disordine ma la libertà. E l’autocontrollo, non il caos, si contrappone al controllo.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

I felt as if I were an unwilling accomplice to torture. Echoes of the victim’s screams rang off the varnished walls. The door, tight shut though it was, could not block the cries of panic. A baby, alone and imprisoned in a cot.

The baby’s mother was visibly disturbed, too, pale and tearful. She was a victim herself, preyed on by exponents of controlled crying, or Ferberisation – that pitiless system, cruel to them both.

Controlled. Crying. The words speak of the odious aim: a bullying system controlling the feelings of a baby. The mother had been told the situation was the reverse, that the baby was trying to force her will on the mother, but all I could see was a one-year-old demented by abandonment. One American mother wrote poignantly on the internet: “Is Ferberisation worth my heartache or am I truly torturing my child? It seems like cruel and unusual punishment.”

The idea is that babies can be “taught” to stop crying by being left to cry alone. A parent will occasionally check on them, but will neither pick up nor stay with the infant. In time, the baby will learn that crying doesn’t bring consolation and will cease the attempt. Parents are encouraged to schedule and limit the time they spend checking on the baby. Does the system work? Of course it does. That is hardly the question. The real issue is why would such a thing be promoted? Why would it ever be accepted? What does it reveal about modernity’s priorities? And how does it suggest answers to the riddle of unhappy children?

Cuddled, snuggled and tended, most infants, throughout most of history, have known the world unlonely. Among the Tojolabal-speaking Maya people of Chiapas in Mexico, children in the first two years of life are always close to their mothers, instantly appeased with toys or milk, to prevent them ever feeling unhappy. For infants under one year of age among the Aché people – forest nomads in Paraguay – most daylight time is spent in tactile contact with their mother or father, and they are never set down on the ground or left alone for more than a few seconds. In India and many other parts of the world, children may share a bed with their mother until they are five.

Many parents’ reasons for using controlled crying can be summed up in one word: work. Parents who want “routines” are keen on controlled crying, says Gina Ford, a famous British advocate of the system, and she comments that babies who have been forced into a routine will later adapt easily to a school routine and, one presumes, be more malleable to a workforce system.

Yet whenever I have spent time in indigenous communities, I have never heard anything like the shrieks of fear and rage of the controlled-crying child. If an infant is satiated with closeness, commented the writer Jean Liedloff, then as an older child he or she will need to return to that maternal contact only in emergencies. Such an infant will grow up to be more self-reliant, not because of the scarcity of early contact (as the controlled-crying advocates argue) but precisely the opposite: from its abundance. By the age of about eight, the Aché children, who as infants were never alone, have learned how to negotiate the trails in the forests and can be fairly independent of their parents. In West Papua, I have seen how infants are held close and grow into children who are fiercely, proudly independent.

When children are older, the desire for freedom seems unquenchable. I recently gave a writing workshop in Kolkata for street children who had been temporarily corralled into a school where they were clearly well looked after and, in the main, happy. They thirsted for the one thing that the school would not allow them: freedom. “They want the freedom they knew on the streets,” a teacher said, “to go anywhere, any time.” In spite of the troubles on the street – poverty, abuse, hunger and violence – the children “keep running away”.

Once out of infancy, Native American children were traditionally free to wander wherever they wanted, through woods or water. “By the time he is five, he is grown up, beaming with health… delirious with liberty,” writes Roger P Buliard in Inuk, describing an Inuit boyhood. By about the age of seven, the boy handles knives and wants a rifle and a trap line, and from then on he “travels with the men, as hardy a traveller as any of them”.

When I spent some days reindeer herding with Sami people, I saw how the children were free not only out on the land, but indoors in the summer huts. They rummaged around for food, finding a strip of cooked reindeer meat or a freshly caught fish or a tub of biscuits, deciding what and when they would eat: a situation that averted that major source of family conflict – meal times.

Autonomy over food from a very young age seems a feature of childhood in many traditional societies. The Alacaluf children of Patagonia fend for themselves early, using a shellfish spear and cooking their own food from the age of about four. Very young Inuit children may use a whip to hunt ptarmigans, lopping off their heads with a flick of the wrist. Travelling through the highlands of West Papua among the Yali people, I often saw village boys going off together, bristling with bows and arrows, to hunt birds, catch frogs and roast them in fires they would build themselves.

Meanwhile, in England, an environmental play project called Wild About Play asked children what they most wanted to do outdoors, and the answer was to collect and eat wild foods, to make fires and cook on them. This is the sign of independence demonstrated by children everywhere, controlling their own food and their own bodies. It seems that modern Euro-American children have two unusual food-related experiences: first, they don’t have early autonomy with respect to food; and second, they do experience eating problems.

As for physical freedom, a few years ago I spent a day with children of the sea Gypsies, the Bajau people who live off Sulawesi in stilt houses set far into the water. The children were swimmers and divers, boaters and paddlers, rinsed with seawater night and day until they seemed half-human, half-otter. I asked what their childhood was like. The answer was immediate: “Children have a happy childhood because there is a lot of freedom.” If happiness is a result of freedom, then surely the unhappiness of modern western children is caused in part by the fact that they are less free than any children in history.

I was struck by the obvious happiness of the Bajau children: spending the whole long afternoon with about 100 of them, not one was crying, cross, unhappy or frustrated. I can’t imagine spending an afternoon with 100 European or American children and not once hearing a child cry.

In Europe, one country seems to have honoured the relationship between freedom and childhood happiness in a way that the sea Gypsy children would have understood: Norway. A land of lakes and fjords, a country that has enshrined in law an ancient right to canoe, row, sail and swim, to walk across all land (except private gardens and tilled fields) in a freedom known as Allemannsretten, “every man’s right”, the right to roam.

In 1960, the American psychiatrist Herbert Hendin was studying suicide statistics in Scandinavia. Denmark (with Japan) had the world’s highest suicide rate. Sweden’s rate was almost as high, but what of Norway? Right at the bottom. Hendin was intrigued, particularly since the received wisdom was that Denmark, Sweden and Norway shared a similar culture. What could possibly account for such a dramatic difference? After years of research, he concluded that reasons were established in childhood. In Denmark and Sweden, children were brought up with regimentation, while in Norway they were free to roam. In Denmark and Sweden, children were pressured to achieve career goals until many felt they were failures, while in Norway they were left alone more, not so much instructed but rather simply allowed to watch and participate in their own time. Instead of a sense of failure, Norwegian children grew up with a sense of self-reliance.

Danish children, the study showed, were over-protected, kept dependent on their mothers and not free to roam. For Swedish children, a common experience was that, in infancy, just when they needed closeness, what they got was separation and a sense of abandonment while, in later childhood, just when they needed freedom, what they got was far too much control. Norwegian children played outdoors for hours unsupervised by adults, and a child’s freedom was “not likely to be restricted”. They had more closeness than Swedish children at an early age, but then more freedom than both Danish and Swedish children at a later age, suggesting that closeness followed by freedom is likely to produce the happiest children.

Unfortunately, in the decades since Hendin’s work, as Norway became more centralised and urbanised, childhood altered. Norwegian children now spend more time indoors in sedentary activities, such as watching television or DVDs and playing computer games, than they do outdoors. The suicide rate is now far higher.

In Europe and America alike, many kids today are effectively under house arrest, with 80% of them in the UK complaining that they have “nowhere to go”. It’s about four o’clock in the afternoon, you’ve got a couple of quid in your pocket but not a lot more. You’ve knocked off for the day and you’d like to be with your mates. The cheap cafes will be closed in an hour, you can’t afford restaurants and you are not allowed in “public” houses. You tell everyone who will listen that you don’t want to cause trouble – you’d just like somewhere that is dry, well lit and safe, where you can hang out and chat. So you go to bus shelters and car parks and the brightly lit areas outside corner shops. And then you are driven off as if you were vermin. The UK seems to be leading the way in how not to treat children.

A plan to erect a netball hoop on a village green in Oxfordshire was blocked “because residents didn’t want to attract children”. In west Somerset, an eight-year-old girl was stopped from cycling down her street because a neighbour complained that the wheels squeaked. In one survey, two-thirds of children said they liked playing outside every day, mainly to be with friends, but 80% of them have been told off for playing outdoors, 50% have been shouted at for playing outside and 25% of 11- to 16-year-olds have been threatened with violence by adults for… for what? For playing outdoors, making a noise, being a nuisance.

Saddest of all, it works. One in three of the children said that being told off for playing outside does stop them doing it. If there is one word that sums up the treatment of children today, it is enclosure. Today’s children are enclosed in school and home, enclosed in cars to shuttle between them, enclosed by fear, by surveillance and poverty and rigid schedules.

In 2011, Unicef asked children what they needed to be happy, and the top three things were time (particularly with families), friendships and, tellingly, “outdoors”. Studies show that when children are allowed unstructured play in nature, their sense of freedom, independence and inner strength all thrive, and children surrounded by nature are not only less stressed but also bounce back from stressful events more readily.

But there has been a steady reduction in open spaces for children to play. In Britain, children have one-ninth of the roaming room they had in earlier generations. There has also been a reduction in available time, with less than 10% of children spending time playing in woodlands, countryside or heaths, compared with 40% a generation ago. Younger children may be enclosed on the grounds that adults are frightened for them, and older children because adults are frightened of them.

In the Amazon, I’ve seen five-year-olds wielding machetes with deftness and precision. In Igloolik, in the Arctic, I’ve seen an eight-year-old take a knife and carve up a frozen caribou without accident. In West Papua, I’ve known youngsters of 12 or 13 with such physical capability and confidence that, when asked to be messengers, they completed a mountain run in six hours – a journey that had taken me and the guides a day and a half.

This is not only a matter of physical competence: the freedom that Inuit children traditionally experienced made them into “self-reliant, caring and self-controlled individuals”, in the words of one Inuit person I met in Nunavut in Canada. It gave them courage and patience.

Children need wild, unlimited hours, but this time is in short supply for many, who are diarised into wall-to-wall activities, scheduled from the moment they wake until the minute they sleep, every hour accounted for by parents whose actions are prompted by the fear their child may fall behind in the rat race that begins in the nursery. Loving their child, not wanting them to be lifelong losers, parents push them to achieve through effective time-use. Society instils a fear of the future that can be appeased only by sacrificing present play and idleness, and children feel the effects in stress and depression.

In many traditional cultures, however, children are held to be the best judges of their own needs, including how they spend their time. In West Papua, one man told me that as children, “We would go hunting and fishing and just come home when we heard the crickets.” In the children’s tipi where part-Cherokee man James Hightower spent so many hours of his childhood, games might be played until four in the morning. “The Indian is not like civilised children,” he recalls, “having a certain time to eat and sleep.” (In his mouth, the term “civilised” is not a compliment.)

“When we’re working, we just don’t have time to be bothering the kids,” Margrethe Vars, a Sami reindeer herder, told me. She broke off to drag on her cigarette, so her words, imitating European parents, literally came out smoking: “Have you washed your hands? Now you must eat.” She pulled a face: to her, children’s freedom was not only a right but a relief all round. As the summer stretched out in one long day, the Sami children would be up all “night”, and no one minded because every parent shared the view that children were in charge of their own time. So the early hours – bright with midsummer sun – would see the children revving up quad bikes, watching the reindeer, tickling each other or falling asleep.

“Here we sleep when we are tired, eat when we are hungry,” Vars said. “But for other societies, children are very organised. Timing is everything: when to eat and sleep, making appointments to visit friends…” She winced at the thought of the micromanagement. The Sami way produced powerfully positive results, not only in the reduction of petty conflict, but also in something intangible and vital. Their children would grow up more self-reliant, less obedient to outside pressure.

For the Wintu people of California, so deep is their traditional respect for the autonomy of the will that it suffuses the language itself. In English, if you “take a baby” somewhere, there is a sense of implicit coercion. The Wintu language cannot say that: it must phrase it as, “I went with the baby.” “I watched the child” would be, “I watched with the child”. The Wintu couldn’t coerce someone even if they wanted to: language won’t let them. When a Wintu child asks, “Can I…?” they are not asking for permission from an individual parent, but for clarification about whether wider laws allow it, so a child does not feel at the mercy of the will of a single adult with rules that can seem capricious and arbitrary.

Take a step back for a moment. Letting children have their own way? Doing just what they like? Wouldn’t that be a total disaster? Yes, if parents perform only the first half of the trick. In the cultural lexicon of modernity, self-will is often banally understood as brattish, selfish behaviour. Will does not mean selfishness, however, and autonomy over oneself is not a synonym for nastiness towards others – quite the reverse. Ngarinyin children in Australia traditionally grew up uncommanded and uncoerced, but from a young age they learned socialisation. That is the second half of the trick. Children are socialised into awareness and respect for the will and autonomy of others, so that, when necessary as they grow, they will learn to hold their own will in check in order to maintain good relations. For a community to function well, an individual may on occasion need to rein in his or her own will but, crucially, not be compelled to do so by someone else.

Among Inuit and Sami people, there is an explicit need for children to learn self-regulation. Adults keep a reticent and tactful distance. A child “is learning on his own” is a common Sami expression. Sami children are trained to control anger, sensitivity, aggression and shame. Inuit people stress that children must learn self-control – with careful emphasis. The child should not be controlled by another, with their will overruled, but needs to learn to steer herself or himself.

Will is a child’s motive force: it impels a child from within, whereas obedience compels a child from without. Those who would overrule a child’s will take “obedience” as their watchword, as they fear disobedience and disorder and believe that if a child is not controlled, there will be chaos. But these are false opposites. The true opposite of obedience is not disobedience but independence. The true opposite of order is not disorder but freedom. The true opposite of control is not chaos but self-control.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Por que os pais deveriam deixar seus filhos em paz.
• Italian, Perché i Genitori Dovrebbero Lasciare in Pace i Figli.

Let us turn to a select quotation from the book on page 114:

Professor Lawrence Cremin has estimated that male literacy ranged from 70 to 100 percent. Other research shows that from 1650 to 1795, male literacy rose from 60 percent to 90 percent, and female literacy rose from 30 percent to 45 percent. From 1800 to 1840, literacy in the North rose from 75 percent to somewhere between 91 and 97 percent. In the South during that same time period, it went from 50 to 60 percent to 81 percent. Writer and educator, John Taylor Gatto notes that “by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the United States was between 93 and 100 percent wherever such a thing mattered.” In 1850, just before Massachusetts imposed compulsory schooling, literacy in that state was at 98 percent.

A highly literate population is clearly possible without state intervention in education. This goes along well with the moral principle of freedom of thought for children idenitfied by the late radical educator, John Holt. This principle demands that young people be free to control their own learning. When allowed to do so, a child is able to fit learning how to read into his or her own desires/interests. A self-directed process of discovery that can strengthen a child’s drive to learn more.

The joy of reading is preferable when not tainted by the evil of aggressive coercion. We left-libertarians are uniquely positioned to encourage literacy without coercion. There are revolutionary alternatives to an statist regime of compelled learning. They include unschooling, Sudbury schools, and Montessori schools. Among these choices, unschooling is my favorite. It provides the most radical alternative to statist models of education. In its respect for individuality, choice, and freedom, it’s the most compatible with libertarian principle.

Cultural change requires a corresponding educational transformation. If we wish to move society towards greater freedom, we will have to raise our children differently. They are to be allowed a great deal of freedom to pursue their own dreams and interests. The educational alternatives mentioned above can help make this a reality. Let’s get started on it!

Translations for this article:

• Turkish, Zorunlu Öğretim, Okuryazarlık, Ve Eğitim Alternatifleri.

The Danvers High School student, prosecutors allege, followed 24-year-old math teacher Colleen Ritzer into a bathroom, punched her in the face and slit her throat with a box-cutter.

Philip Chism isn’t allowed to quit school until he’s 16 years old — not even if he’s offered a contract to play professional soccer for the New England Revolution, a contract which, not being 18 years of age, he would in any case be ineligible to sign on his own authority.

Philip Chism isn’t allowed to drive a car for two more years, either.

Massachusetts’s “age of consent” laws are kind of strange — it’s possible that he might be allowed to have sex at 16, unless he’s lived a “chaste life” from which he was “induced,” in which case the age becomes 18. Either way, the other party to the sexual act is considered a criminal and a predator.

Nor can he vote, enlist in the military, own real estate, register a limited liability company or charter a corporation for four more years.

He has to wait seven more years before he can even legally walk into a bar, sit down, order and drink a beer.

There are very few exceptions to these legal restrictions on what Philip Chism may do and what others may do with him. These restrictions are, their supporters claim, based on the notion that at 14, Chism is not mature or competent enough to do those things. He doesn’t understand the implications and consequences. He’s a child, not an adult. He needs to be, in a word, protected.

But the instant he’s accused of a crime, all that goes out the window. For the convenience of the state and the pacification of the mob, he is magically and retroactively transformed into an “adult.”

There’s a word for that kind of thing, but I can’t use that word in a family-friend publication (it has to do with what comes out the rear ends of male cattle).

If Philip Chism is a child when it comes to school attendance, contracts, sexual encounters, driving, voting, enlisting, drinking, etc., he’s a child when he’s thought to have killed someone.

If Philip Chism is not a child when he’s thought to have killed someone, he’s not a child with respect to any of those other matters, either.

Philip Chism is either a child, or he’s not.

I’m an anarchist, but even I acknowledge that children and adults are different and will always, in any society, be treated differently.

The problem with the political way of handling these differences is that it amounts to having politicians draw numbers out of hats, letting them impose protections/restrictions (on children and adults alike) based on those numbers, and allowing them to discard those protections/restrictions when they become politically inconvenient.

If those protections and restrictions are just, they remain just even when they become politically inconvenient, and should be rigorously and universally maintained. If they are unjust, they should be discarded completely, no matter how politically convenient they may be.

While I can’t guarantee that the coming stateless society will birth a more just and sound model for handling the differences between children and adults, I’m fairly confident — if for no other reason than that it would be hard to come up with a LESS just model than the arbitrary and capricious standards now being applied to Philip Chism.