
On the Wildness of Children - cardamomo
http://carolblack.org/on-the-wildness-of-children/
======
appagrad
The parts on an open-mind always learning remind me of my childhood as a
"homeschooler" and recent college experiences. While we spent plenty of time
with the books, my mother emphasized the joy of learning when I was a child.
Despite few tests and no grades, my brother and I scored above average on our
year-end state tests. Such scores aren't a testament to our intelligence but
instead the result of allowing a child's mind to absorb its environment as a
process of life. When I entered college, I was astonished at how students
viewed learning. It was a chore, a separate part of life they were obligated
to endure. The vast majority of my peers and later students I taught simply
couldn't learn on their own. They couldn't read the book and learn. To me,
learning is enjoyable, a life-long process I will continue to old age.

~~~
biomcgary
I had a similar experience, but many homeschooling parents just re-invent the
drudgery and blinkers of the stereotypical school. You and I are fortunate
that our mothers emphasized the joy of learning.

~~~
gregd
I'd be curious to know what leads you to believe that, "many homeschooling
parents just re-invent the drudgery and blinkers of the stereotypical school"?

Most homeschooling parents I know, homeschool for precisely the opposite
reasons.

~~~
biomcgary
My wife's mother used very traditional textbooks and schedules. Even with that
constraint, my wife probably spent far more time outdoors than most kids.

------
jstewartmobile
Public school kid here. From my experience, the writer is clearly coming from
a place of elite Hollywood unreality:
[http://carolblack.org/about/](http://carolblack.org/about/)

Most of the "wildness," or more to the point, "hatefulness" clearly came from
the parents. The racism, the homophobia, the Disneyesque self-absorption, the
intolerance for anything outside of the present iteration of pop culture and
regional sport -- all seeded, fostered, and fed by the family. The kids were
barely old enough to even understand any of this stuff, let alone hate someone
for it, yet they did!

I doubt that the Thoreau experience is going to have much effect on damage
inflicted outside of the classroom, and this is a big thing. It's why we have
"good" school districts and "bad" school districts within the same county --
expenditure per pupil is the same, buildings are the same, teachers are mostly
the same, but the upbringing is not.

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "I doubt that the Thoreau experience is going to have much effect on damage
> inflicted outside of the classroom, and this is a big thing. It's why we
> have "good" school districts and "bad" school districts within the same
> county -- expenditure per pupil is the same, buildings are the same,
> teachers are mostly the same, but the upbringing is not."

The author addresses this...

"But the truth is we don’t know how to teach our children about nature because
we ourselves were raised in the cinderblock world. We are, in the parlance of
wildlife rehabilitators, unreleasable."

We can't teach what we don't already know, the best we can do is give the kind
of support that is conducive to self-education. If that support is not being
provided at home, then it's worthwhile providing it elsewhere. So in other
words, the concept of schools aren't necessarily bad, but the way in which
learning takes place at those schools could be improved by greater emphasis on
self-discovery.

~~~
jstewartmobile
"Addresses" is probably putting it too strongly. She phrases it as a "how to"
problem. It would probably be better phased as a "what not to do" problem.

If you have an active indoctrination of mental bile in the home environment --
especially among society's "losers" who see everything as some other group's
fault (blame it on the Mexicans, hipsters, blacks, yuppies, Jews, etc...), and
the only thing countering it is some kind of vague free-range schooling, the
results will more closely resemble the barbarism of previous centuries.

For every Abraham Lincoln the nineteenth century produced, it produced
brigands of no account by the dozens.

Of course if you come from an enlightened family of academics, Hollywood
producers, or some other group of high-minded winners with a magnanimous bent,
then everything she writes sounds just fine.

~~~
ZenoArrow
The point you're missing is that the "vague free-range schooling" promotes
self-reliance, which is exactly what you need to escape a toxic background.
Furthermore, it's not completely without structure. Consider the difference in
approach between a teacher and a guide, the guide still helps the student find
their way but let's them see the answers for themselves, instead of telling
them the answers and asking the student to memorise them.

I understand the lack of standardised testing is scary to those who want to
measure everything, but in my opinion measurement breeds mediocrity, I don't
think we get the best out of ourselves by chasing exam scores.

~~~
jstewartmobile
> The point you're missing is that the "vague free-range schooling" promotes
> self-reliance, which is exactly what you need to escape a toxic background.

Self-reliance does not make a person civilized. Self-reliance does not make a
person fit to coexist peacefully and productively with persons outside of
their own familial or tribal group.

> I understand the lack of standardised testing is scary to those who want to
> measure everything...

I have no beef with the academic angle. From a cost-benefit perspective, it
would be hard to do any worse than we already do. My beef is that we have a
lot of people who need to be civilized, and that walks in the forest are not
up to the task.

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "Self-reliance does not make a person civilized."

Sure it does, because self-directed learning means you are less divorced from
the consequences of your mistakes. You become better at interacting with
others by doing so, rather than being told what to do without fully
appreciating why.

> "My beef is that we have a lot of people who need to be civilized, and that
> walks in the forest are not up to the task."

That really depends on your definition of civilised. Some behaviour of
'civilised' people is abhorrent compared to the 'noble savages' that the
article occasionally alludes to. If our only goal is emotionally-stunted
automatons then perhaps you'd have a point, but I'd rather take a walk through
a forest with someone who can appreciate the wildness of nature than someone
who sees it as unruly chaos that should be straightened out.

As an aside, our notion of what's socially acceptable has shifted over time,
it's not a single ideal we have to live up to. I enjoy the contrast Nietzsche
made between Apollo and Dionysus in Greek society, I do think there's still
room for what they both represented.

[http://youtu.be/ldj0RX3CqXA](http://youtu.be/ldj0RX3CqXA)

~~~
jstewartmobile
My definition would be people working together constructively (like
townspeople) instead of people working together destructively (like brigands,
battalions, thugs, cannibalistic tribesmen, or packs of wild dogs).

~~~
ZenoArrow
Interesting that you use the term 'cannibalistic tribesmen'. Generally
'uncivilised' tribes have a much more cohesive, collaborative society than the
townspeople you hold up as your ideal. Perhaps that suggests there are lessons
we can learn from them about how to live with others.

~~~
cicero
I read "cannibalistic" as a qualifier. Destructive tribesmen are those that
are cannibalistic. A collaborative tribal society like you describe is not
cannibalistic or destructive and would not be included in his list.

------
sanoli
There are literally dozens of alternative school models throughout the world,
and I've done research on a lot of them when I had my kids. What I found was
broad and varied. Different results, different opinions from parents and
former students, different conclusions from researchers. Both on the positive
and negative sides. I never got to make up my mind, and I ended up putting my
kids in a public school in a small town where there was only one school per
age segment. It's a pretty good public school, probably like a good private
school, but there's a difference in that the student body is truly varied. My
kids study with the son of the garbage collector and the daughter of the
supermarket owner. There is a Waldorf school not too far from here, in a
neighboring town, but it's as diverse as a very expensive school with everyone
arriving in imported cars can be. So I chose not to put my kids there.

edit: Plus, I'm not too fond of Waldorf's philosophy, and even less of the
Anthroposophy's.

~~~
hooch
Despite how kooky some of his ideas might seem, there is one aspect of
Steiner's view that I found particularly insightful (and helpful): that the
first period of life, up to when kids really start losing their milk teeth,
they are discovering their body, motor skills, their voice, and so on, and in
doing so, they are mostly copying the people around them. It's completely
experiential, not intellectual.

Both my kids suddenly took flight and became much more interested by
themselves in things like reading and arithmetic once their teeth started to
really change - not due to pressure from adults. And it's only anecdotal, but
this has been borne out many times as I've spent time with other families.

(Also anecdotal!) but when I spend time with adults who grew up in societies
where math and literacy is already emphasised at age 3, for example, I find
they are completely unable to stop talking :-)

------
wallacoloo
Very insightful, and much less alienating than most articles I've read of a
similar nature.

Come to think of it, this was very well written - it had a nice flow to it,
building up to some profound observation, and then starting over with some
different viewpoint. My only complaint is over those weird "repeat myself in
giant text surrounded by quotation marks" things scattered throughout the
article, but that seems to have become an acceptable/ _recommended_
practice?... (Really, when _did_ this become a thing? I'm really curious on
the history of it, but I don't know which term to search for).

I will say that I used to read only nonfiction texts because I enjoy learning
about history and the sciences, and these subjects seemed more important than
what can be found in fictional stories. But then I began reading more stories,
especially slice-of-life type things, and I realized that I was wrong. Reading
these stories lends me insight into my own social life - how to be a better
friend, etc - and really makes me contemplate which values I want to live by
and how I can uphold those in my day to day life.

I liken this to the distinction between classroom schooling and life learning.
There's a decent-sized class of subjects that are more effectively taught
through experience and self-discovery than via instruction. Interestingly,
this class of subjects seems to be the most foundational, as they tend to lend
insights into things like _what_ makes an individual feel fulfilled, whereas
the subjects taught in school are usually more along the lines of _tools_
(that could potentially be applied to the former). But what use is it to learn
a tool if you have no sense of what to apply it to? Engagement increases when
a student is seeking knowledge of their own accord, usually to satisfy some
goal, curiosity or creative drive - none of which are likely to be conceived
within a classroom. Certainly some balance is needed.

~~~
Normal_gaussian
It is called a pull quote, and they have been a thing for longer than the
internet (from experience). A quick search hasn't yet turned up anything
interesting.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pull_quote](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pull_quote)

~~~
wallacoloo
Hmmm. It makes sense for magazines, where people tend to flip the pages until
something catches their eye. But in online content like this, it seems that
once somebody's on your webpage and past the fold, a pull quote might not have
a significant impact on whether they read the article or not. And for
skimming/previewing, I suspect section headings are comparatively effective.
Of course, I have no data to back that up.

For me, they just create _stress_ when I'm reading. I see one of these pull
quotes coming and I think "I should just skip this - I know they'll repeat
themselves further down, or that this quote will be a repeat of something said
earlier, so I should save myself the time and skip it." But then when I try to
do that, the thought becomes, "but what if this quote _is_ unique and not just
some text copy-pasted from elsewhere? I need to read it, otherwise I might not
understand the rest of this section." And of course, I see these pull quotes
edging up from the bottom of the screen a few sentences in advance, and so all
this thought distracts me and I invariably have to reread the surrounding text
because of that.

Hopefully this is something particular to me and pull quotes don't cause
others this kind of irrational stress. In any case, thanks for answering my
question.

~~~
cmrx64
I do the same thing with pull quotes in any medium, not just the internet. I
don't like them.

~~~
DasIch
It makes sense when you don't read everything, when you're reading a newspaper
or a magazine for example and only read the articles that catch your
attention.

I really don't see how it makes sense in the context of a single article
though. If I'm already clearly reading an article, a pull quote is only going
to distract me.

------
pappyo
TLDR; The modern school was built in accordance with an industrial age
mindset; children are raw materials and a school produces a functioning member
of/worker for society. However, this institution stifles the child's
"wildness" or open-minded learning that allows her/him to connect with the
world, and become an eternally curious, more balanced human beings.

I agree with the author's premise that the current (US public) school model is
not conducive for a child's future. The school's churns out students so they
can be ready for JOBS (or get into a college that will help you get JOBS).
It's been easy to fall into that trap with capitalism as the driving force
behind everything. Capitalism has been evolving over the centuries, forcing
workers into more specific disciplines then ever before (seriously, how many
of us have 3 or 4 word job titles?).

However, that isn't to say structure doesn't have it's place. The author
didn't to a good job of drawing some sort of line where structure is needed. A
line is helpful here. That line should look like what we want our schools to
ultimately achieve for our children and society. Are we a society of workers?
Or do we want to be something else?

~~~
dominotw
Living in any society automatically means you have to curtail your 'wildness'.
Its 'society-tax'.

The way you define yourself(eg: family man, software engineer ect) is
definition of your relationship with the society. And anything that is defined
is not 'wild'.

~~~
jeremiahwv
This is precisely the myth of our culture that the article is trying to
debunk.

Instead of considering "wildness" as the observable actions of an individual
(in our culture generally equated with "out of line"), consider "wildness" as
the state-of-mind -- or the embodied, subjective experience of an individual
-- in which that individual experiences themselves as a completely sovereign
individual enmeshed in a web of relationships with other completely sovereign
individuals.

There are many such wild humans living in our society even now. If you're
looking for the guy running through the city in loincloth beating his chest
and grunting gutturally, you won't find them.

You will find them if you look for people walking through the world almost
like everyone else, except their eyes sparkle like the stars.

\--------

And regarding your second point about having a role meaning that something is
not wild: In the actual "wild", out there in the natural ecosystems of the
world, roles and wildness existing very much hand in hand. Through a certain
lens, biological diversity is exactly the separation of life into distinct and
complementary roles.

Wildness is not a rejection of role. Wildness is the the complete and
unreserved embodiment of who-you-are (your unique and undeniable role/roles)
and the expression of that in relationship to everyone else.

~~~
dominotw
>This is precisely the myth of our culture that the article is trying to
debunk.

So I can go murder someone I don't like because I am a 'wild human'. Personal
freedom is different from social rules. You are not "wild" if you live in a
society in any capacity.

~~~
jeremiahwv
I'm not sure how you got there from where I was.

~~~
dominotw
eh sorry. That was a thoughtless comment on my part.

------
teddyh
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School)

(Previously linked and discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8486440](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8486440))

~~~
callmeed
Just reading the wikipedia article makes it sound like the setting for some
kind of Lord of the Flies-esque thriller movie.

------
eliben
What bothers me about this piece is that the seven generations she almost
describes as "lost" were the most productive generations in humanity's
history. Think how the developed world looked in 1850 and how it looks now.
This is the work of there generations of "dogs locked in a cage". Something
doesn't compute.

~~~
guard-of-terra
What if those generations are not "lost" but are _spent_?

We took humans, we extracted every bit of work from them, we got a lot of work
done and a lot of empty shells for people.

What if with each generation it's an downward spiral? Because it certainly
looks so.

~~~
vatotemking
Interesting view. And to that, what have we spent them for?

------
bikamonki
Profound and to the point! I don't want my kids to go to the factory but I
don't have the time/skills to school them myself. What should I do?

~~~
barry-cotter
You may not have the time but believe me when I say you have the skills. If
you can watch them to make sure they don't injure themselves and answer their
questions you can do it. Try reading "A Natural History of Childhood" or "The
World Until Yesterday"

~~~
Hinrik
Google gives exactly 1 result for "A Natural History of Childhood", and it's
not for a published work. Is the title correct?

~~~
barry-cotter
Sorry, I meant "Anthropology of Childhood" by David F. Lancy

------
noelwelsh
This article reads to me like pastoral romance, with little other than middle
class guilt motivating its conclusions. Schools _may_ have been founded to
prepare children for the factory (that wasn't the motivation in the UK,
AFAIK), but that doesn't mean they cannot change in the intervening century,
and they certainly have. Etc.

Can education be improved? Certainly! However, mass home schooling is not the
answer if you want to keep any semblance to current society. Most people have
to work to make enough $s, for instance.

~~~
ZenoArrow
If formal education only impacted our ability to earn a living wage, then it
wouldn't be a problem. The article points out in various ways that the impact
of our formal education far exceeds that narrow remit. If I was to summarise,
I'd say the way we teach breeds disconnectedness and resentment in a way that
alters our personal lives far beyond the time at which our time at school
comes to an end. Moving forward, I think we should stop the pursuit of
education for the sake of creating compliant workers, and let our education
reflect that humans can learn more from self-discovery than authoritarian
decree.

That being said, it'll probably take decades before we can ween our society
off the formal education models that are prevalent, the least we can do in the
meantime is to make it less authoritarian. This clip from Michael Moore's
documentary 'Where To Invade Next' shows what that can look like by looking at
the Finnish school system:

[http://youtu.be/1ZbGlDMF7HQ](http://youtu.be/1ZbGlDMF7HQ)

~~~
Joof
As an anecdote, I loved reading as a kid. Won awards for reading which is a
bit silly in retrospect (we don't give awards to kids who enjoy other media).
To this day I fucking hate writing. I used to love writing, but if you want me
to write something in 5 paragraph form you can gtfo. Every time I tried new
writing techniques I was punished, so I stopped doing it all together.

------
lingben
for those interested in more info:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_school_%28learning_styl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_school_%28learning_style%29)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptkID2k091I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptkID2k091I)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkiij9dJfcw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkiij9dJfcw)

------
YeGoblynQueenne
So, I see this as a rich white gal bragging about how smart her kids are, or
how smart her ways made her kids be.

Because I can't escape the fact that the "bad" education that "cinderblock
schools" dispense is the only one that everybody can afford. For most kids in
the world today, going to a cinderblock school is their only chance at an
education and their only way to slightly improve their life situation and that
of their families.

To be allowed to "run wild" you have to come from a family with a certain
privilege, if I may use the word. Great if you can afford that. But to then
turn around and say that everyone else is made dumb by going to school is a
little on the nose (and completely missing the point).

It's a bit like saying that a Ferrari is so much better as a car than what
most people drive- so why doesn't everyone let go of their silly little
bucket-like cars and hop into a sexy red hot Italian supercar?

Because everyone can't afford one, that's why.

~~~
jeffdavis
There's plenty of undeveloped land in this world. You don't need to be rich to
find a remote area where nobody cares enough to look for you.

You do need to be rich to have convenient access to nature in exactly the
doses you prefer.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
>> You do need to be rich to have convenient access to nature in exactly the
doses you prefer.

Yes, rather.

------
TYPE_FASTER
Going to public school and experiencing nature don't have to be mutually
exclusive. I also don't think it's fair to paint all teachers and public
schools as an institution with the same broad brush.

Look, if you want your kids to have these experiences, then take them to the
park/woods/beach/river/somewhere. Independent thought exists outside of
school.

"They don’t know if the moon is waxing or waning, if that berry is edible or
poisonous, if that song is for mating or warning."

My daughter knows waxing vs. waning. She learned it at school.

------
jeffdavis
I didn't read the whole article, but it seems about 10% truth, 90% natural
fallacy.

~~~
cardamomo
Could you please explain what you mean?

~~~
eutropia
Not the GP, but I believe jeffdavis is referring to the naturalistic fallacy:
wherein an appeal to nature is made as a way of arguing a point (e.g. vanilla
extract is better than synthetic vanillin, even though it's the same
molecule). Logically there's nothing intrinsically more correct about things
from nature that makes your point valid.

However, I think GP should read the entire article, because the aims of the
modern education system are well documented in their intent to create
compliant workers. The authors analogy of humans to Zoo animals makes a lot of
sense, given that we are only Mammals, after all.

