Children and Change

Shulamith Firestone, the great feminist visionary, wrote in 1970 that the fully liberated world would be safe for children to be in, pretty much everywhere. Segregation would end and all ages would once again be together, even as they were long ago, when humans lived in small tribes. Children would be free to roam around and choose whatever they wanted to do. They would be fully integrated into every sector of society, not secluded into special zones.

This would require, of course, making the whole world kid friendly. It is an interesting notion I have often pondered, but rarely have I seen such a test case as the current mass quarantine, in which families are cooped up together for the first time, in little mini tribes.

Important meetings, of important grownups, on video, saying important things to one another are being randomly interrupted all day now, by cats, dogs, and kids. I smile when I hear them on live radio broadcasts, thinking, ah ha, it is just a tiny sample of the  ouR-evolution.

While the grown ups chafe under the pressure of confinement and limitation, the kids are enjoying lots of extra attention from their significant others. Very young ones do not miss the wider world, and pets everywhere are very happy their people are always around. And many fathers are getting to know their offspring better, and even doing more chores around the house. 

It is more natural to learn in mixed age groups. We have been wired to do this for thousands of years. When allowed to run free, kids tend to form kid led play groups with kids learning from slightly older kids, who are practicing and imitating the skills they see other tribe members doing. They naturally and effortlessly teach each other.

School is also disrupted at this moment, due to the quarantine. So it is a good time to question the school model itself. Are kids really being deprived of their place on the track of grades and steps they “should” be achieving at each level? Or are they learning to cook, navigate the internet, even entertain themselves, perhaps? Are they becoming more truly their individual selves, finding out what they like to do, what interests them?

Even as the grown ups figure out how to do more of their regular jobs from home, children have not stopped learning, they are just doing it differently.

Of course there is a negative side. Firestone observed “childhood is hell”.  My friend Saturn remembers growing up in the 1960s, feeling more fortunate than her friends because her father had died, while many of her friends were forced to live with fathers who were violent and abusive, and mothers who felt trapped in their marriages because they felt they could not support their families alone.

Undoubtedly, at this very moment, many children miss school right now, because their home environment is hellish. Some may only be able to eat full meals every day at school, or are trapped in abusive or materially deprived home situations.

But it is scary, and it does hurt, to rip the bandaid off. Especially when the fundamental wound is not healed. But that is no reason not try to begin to heal. Just as the mass media of our past few decades is giving way to individually tailored information, so children are benefiting from individually tailored education.

I don’t know if we will make it through this transition. All this choice could easily lead to worse stratification and the shattering of our shared common values, leading to more inequalities and isolating many children into pockets of intolerance, ignorance, and prejudice. And more hell.

But the assembly line factory model of education is obsolete. Can we make this transition into ever greater freedom and self actualization, or will we slump back into strife and repression? Can we expand the concept of guaranteed education for all children, to guaranteed conditions for all to thrive, as we are technically capable of now?

This would be a good moment to consider it.

“Children's liberation is the next item on our civil rights shopping list” - Letty Cottin Pogrebin