The concept of freedom is quite simple in some ways. We are free. Period. What else is there to say? I do what I want. You do what you want. Simple. But we all know it's not that simple of a concept. Are we free to kill someone else? That's not quite so simple either. People do kill other people so they had the freedom to kill and they did. It happens every day. Someone will be killed by the freedom of someone else. We are inherently free to do good or evil. That certainly does not mean the rest of us can't do anything about someone who uses their freedom to hold us hostage, torture us, or kill us. So the whole story goes that we are free but we need to live with others and allow others to be free or we could end up fighting to the death. So we have to compromise with societal laws and norms that might discourage individual freedoms when it comes to infringing upon others' rights. But where does it stop with laws? When do they take away freedoms you should have just because others don't like what you're doing? And so we try to compromise in our society and that's not so simple either.
But I want to talk about the freedom of children and the concept of freedom in school. I started talking about freedom for adults because children are going to be adults in our society in the next few years and the freedom of children should align with the freedom we give to adults. Freedom for children becomes more complex than freedom for adults. Adults can use their freedom and cheat, steal, and harm others. Adults can do all kinds of evil and destructive things and the rest of us can try to control the harm they do. These are adults who should know better. These are adults who should have learned to control their selfish impulses and to live with others. Children are also free and they need to learn how to use their freedom in life to survive and to be happy with others. Freedom is a given but it is not easy to be free. It is one of the hardest things in life - to be free. Some people don't want to be free. They would rather that someone makes decisions for them or for someone else to do things for them. But then others can't stand for anyone to tell them what to do. And this is all true with children. Some children are so independent and stubborn that they want listen to a word you say. They don't like it when the teacher makes them sit and listen. They want to do it themselves and they can usually figure it out on their own. Then there are children who won't do anything unless you tell them exactly what to do and give them complete orders throughout the day so they do not need to make any decisions. They want the teacher to explain and go over and over content and they follow instructions about completing instructional tasks.
When I talk about freedom in school, I mean teaching children how to be free. They are free. But are they capable to handle their freedom? To be a free adult, you need to take care of yourself completely. You have to earn your own money. You have to take care of all your personal life responsibilities. You have to be self responsible in every aspect of your life. You will also need to have personal skills to live with others and to respect their rights and freedoms. Therefore, as a child you will need to learn a lot of life skills and other skills that will enable you to be an adult who is capable of living independently and peacefully in a society with others.
So I don't mean that you just turn children loose and let them be free to learn. That's not freedom to learn. For some children that would be a way for failure. Every child, just like every adult, is different from every other child in many, many ways. We should not create a curriculum for all children, but that is what we have done. We also dictate the instruction children receive and we dictate when they learn, when they do each task throughout the day, and when they can even talk. Schools presently are stripping freedom from our children. Some adults would be OK with this, but not many. Why should we treat our children in a way that we would not tolerate? Why can't we recognize that we want adults to act responsibly but we have not taught them how to be free in school? Children need to be in a constructivist school system that provides children a learning environment in which they are given as much freedom as possible with adult assistance and supervision. Children need to learn skills in which they can take care of their personal well-being and they need to learn many other skills they will need to become self-directed and self-responsible. But children need a lot of help in learning these skills. They have a lot of needs they do not understand so they need direction from adults in developing their own, personalized educational goals.
So children need to learn skills to be a free, responsible, and peaceful member of society. Our adult population reflects the educational system in which they grew up. Our present educational system prohibits freedom and our society is a reflection of the lose of freedom. We need to turn things around and re-create schools with a primary goal of education to be that all children learn how to be free in a responsible way. So a goal for children is freedom or how to be free. We need a lot of discussion about the meaning of freedom in our lives and the meaning of freedom in schools. There is a compromise in which we can give children guidance and supervision but we can also give them experiences in making choices and in learning to be independent. We not only need to give students some freedom to learn topics of their own choosing, but we need to provide them with experiences in which they learn to be self responsible and to cooperate with others. Freedom is not just freedom to do what you want, but it means that you are capable to live in joy with others in a peaceful society and let others be free as well.
