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I have long been interested in the fate of children in our societies and their enmeshment in cultures of fear--that is, being scared to death, being made to feel so fragile, and being unable to find a resiliency to meet the demanding (often oppressive) challenges of the day and their future. The 21st century is not going to likely be a pretty one, not for a long time that is. How can the path of Fearlessness help? How can we on the FM ning help? Let's have more discussion about children here and the nature and role of fear and fearlessness in their lives. 

One cultural critic has a good short summary of some of the issues Gen Z especially is facing... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvrMNDv6iYU

Not that I agree with everything Johnathan Haidt says about society, but he has some good points to consider. 

This 1960 classic free-school alternative book is about child-rearing and education. The organization begun by A. S. Neill and others in the UK was a "school" by definition and that was to serve a parent community who wanted their children to have an entirely different experience of learning in and as part of a living residential community. They remained a "school" in order to get some funding from the government, and to follow the curriculum requirements to some degree re: the State, because they still wanted to hire teachers and be able to mentor the students/learners to achieve what they wanted to achieve if they wanted to go on to access the channels of higher education, which some children chose, while many did not. There was no requirement ever that the child would be forced to attend lessons. It was their choice how they wanted to spend the day as long as they did not hurt themselves or others or damage the community's property. In that sense, Neill believed the only radical way to fully commit to building a new society not based on fear, was to build a community not based on fear.

Some of you may know that I have long studied the alternative education movements since my late 20s. I also was a public school teacher for two years. All these experiences have led me to now working in a burgeoning new school, Nanaimo Innovation Academy (NIA), which started as a daycare (for 4 years) and is now a kindergarten, with a proposed grade 1-2 class starting this next fall in 2022 if all permits are granted and the parents show up to support our non-profit private school operation. My role thus far is "policy consultant", albeit, I have also just completed a five months artist residency at NIA where I worked from an artist's point of view, which included working with all members of the community in some way--I was interested in the whole organization and larger community and "everything was my medium" for artistic expression and exchange with all involved. I'm doing upcoming artist talks and websites on this project which I shall let you know about later. I had some lovely and interesting and not so pleasant interactions at times with my "medium" as one would expect in any community. But one of the things in the back of my mind during the residency was "How do we all deal with fear?" 

NIA founder and Director, Keely Freeman has been gracious in allowing me to slowly integrate and find my way into this new school community. She is someone very practical and in that sense not overly radical in her approach to a daycare/school culture, yet, at a recent staff meeting she held up this book by A. S. Neill, and said, with pride that this means a lot to her to be part of a legacy of trying to bring 'alternative education' to children and families in this world. I was touched. So, I'm starting to look at what might we at NIA glean from the "Summerhill" experiment in child-raising and education today. Note, several Summerhill-type schools have grown from the original movement started in the UK. A. S. Neill is no longer with us but has left a powerful message of possibilities and this book he wrote about his experiment in 1920s- onward is worth reading. I'm just allowing myself to dip into it and see what I think about it. As my first reading about Summerhill was back in the early 1980s and then late 1990s a bit but I didn't go further. I was aware of several educators as critics publishing about Summerhill and giving it a bad name in those years. I have not made up my own mind about that aspect of how good it was or bad it was empirically. That's really hard to assess.

As I turn to begin a brief fearanalysis of Neill's philosophy, I realize neither Neill and the faculty and parents may not have written and published or talked much about a "fearless school" that was their ideal for themselves, and as a model for the rest of society. I do sense they wanted to show society that it was possible and their school was an experimental case study. So, it was not perfect and they worked out a lot of the kinks in their system and culture by learning as they went. That is admirable. IF I was starting a school today, I would want to do the same. However, it is near impossible to find enough parents in the world where I live to be truly interested in entering into such a community and school experiment. People are way more freaked out these days, and thus more conformist, than the 1960s-70s, and maybe also compared to the 1920s when A. S. Neill began the Summerhill experiment. 

I find parents and teachers and just about all leaders very much caught in the "culture of fear" overall. This is a global cultural phenomenon I have written about extensively for over 3 decades. Education if it is to remain in its integrity (and much in line with a free-schooling conception as A. S. Neill argued for), is going to have to confront its relationship (i.e., its collusion with) the growing insidious culture of fear. 

Fearanalysis has many possible directions of starting to assess anyone or anything. For simplicity, I scanned the back chapters of the classic book by Neill (above), and saw on page after page of how he responds to many of the questions that came to him as founder of Summerhill, he often was talking in his answers to the issue of fear. In fact, I believe he was doing that because most of the questions he received, often had fear at their base of motivation for being asked. For example, the questions about the freedom of children and youth in the Summerhill community to have access to sex. Neill, answers, they are as an organization and school not telling kids not to have sex, not to masturbate. All humans have a right to enjoy the sexuality of their bodies alone or with others, and Neill is not at all interested in creating taboos and rules about that. He wanted to raise children who were not afraid of adults and/or the laws and authority of adultworld in general. What was truly educative for him, and I agree, is when educative experience transcends the dependency socialization of young people based on fear-induction-learning (or "shock learning" via punishment regimines). "Control" is such a tricky concept and Neill wanted as least amount of it as possible in regard to what children feel, think and do. Adults/parents/caregivers can be children's worst enemy, he would likely have argued, and I hear that as I scan the pages of his book and the answers to his questions. I and some others have called this adult-child relationship one that is riddled with adultism, oppression in one of its base forms, from the start--it is part of a culture of fear dynamic. I won't go into more details in this blogpost but if you are interested in more quotes and details from the book and want more discussion, I'll do so. Just post comments below, or sign-up or sign-in on the FM ning and write your own blogposts. 

Bertrand Russell, the great UK philosopher, wrote a 1926 book "On Education" with implications for especially early childhood rearing, socialization and education (e.g., schooling). Interestingly, I am just reading this for the first time, and I see some really good signs that this will be a useful book in the history of Fear Studies, and especially the history of fear in educational philosophy. 

Russell has evoked me several times to quote him (from this book), especially his line around wisdom and fear, and around fearless mothers and fearless children as well. For purposes of this blog, I want to focus on why he thought love and fear were so crucial to child rearing and society's health in general. He ends his book with "A thousand ancient fears obstruct the road to happiness and freedom." (p. 206) During the book he makes a distinction that irrational fears are the biggest problem, rational fears are important--albeit, a big problem can come when a child, for example, has not the adequate rational fears online and operative and that puts the child at risk to dangers it normally would rationally be afraid of. He talks about his wife and him trying out many of these things about fear management with their own two children in the earliest years 1-4 yr olds. 

Again, on the final paragraph of the book he wrote, "But love can conquer fear, and if we love our children nothing can make us withold the great gift which is is in our power to bestow." (p. 206). One has to realize that Russell was a secularist-humanist philosopher, yet, here he is articulating what all the great spiritual/religious teachings also argue as a basic premise/theory about love and fear. That's a whole topic for study itself. Is this true, that love can conquer fear? What does conquer mean? On p. 71 he describes how an irrational fear in children (or anyone) ought to not be left alone to just disappear or skirt around too much. Russell says it "should be gradually overcome" as an important aspect of healthy developmental growth and learning. "Overcome" as a behavioral and emotional aspect, seems to be what Russell means by "conquer" in other parts of his text. 

In helping his own children to overcome fear(s), Russell tells us at one point, controversial I am sure it will be: "A grown-up [e.g., parent, teacher] person in charge of a child should never feel fear" --meaning, express it it in front of a child and when trying to teach a child to have mild rational fear of a potential danger the child needs to learn about (e.g., like a sharp knife edge, or cliff edge). Now, if an adult around a child is to be fully responsible for the best interests and growth and learning for a child, and to make them feel loved and not afraid of the world around them too much, then Russell argues it is best to "never feel" or express fear in your teaching children lessons or warnings. I tend to agree with this because of the unpredictable (if not traumatic) ways a child may take in the concrete message from the adult but also the affect-tracing lingerings of the adult into their emotional (if not soul level) aspects of their being. Adults have that kind of powerful impact potential on children's psyche/soul, is my claim, and many others but here we see Russell the philosopher (and father) saying the same thing. His cautionary goes on to say: " That is one reason why courage should be cultivated in women just as much as in men." (p. 72). There's a few arguments he makes later in the book about the sexes and the dynamics of fear and timidity, etc. He wants both sexes to be hardy and courageous --and even fearless. Again, he focuses at times on women's major role here in child development of fearlessness: 

"One generation of fearless women could transform the world...by bringing into it a generation of fearless children".... and "Education is the key" to this accomplishment. On my part, that is true and is exactly why I offer an upgraded theory and praxis called critical Fear Management/Education or simply Fear Education for the 21st century. Russell's philosophy of education, it turns out, is very supportive of my initiative. 

Anyone have some thoughts about all this?

Reference

Russell, B. (1926/2003). On education. Routledge.