What Vision Do Young People Need?

The following article was originally published October 21, 2022 on the American Thinker website. View it here.

Before the devastating psychological effects of the COVID lockdowns, the U.S. faced a frightening rise in drug addiction, with youth suicide becoming the second-leading cause of death among people aged 15–20 in the U.S., and suicide in children quadrupling from 2007 to 2020.

What’s behind this alarming trend? Let’s consider what the young need to thrive.

Infants and young children constantly challenge themselves to learn the next hardest thing — how to walk on uneven surfaces, how to run down a hill, how to say “rain boot.” As they grow, the challenges become psychologically complex.

Significant purposes are critical to their motivation, including a vision of work as important to achieve independence. Vital are a hopeful view of the future, a vision that life can be an adventure worth the striving, and heroes that embody the highest reaches of human nature. Without these elements, the young are lost, adrift — only too susceptible to depression and even suicide.

Throughout life, humans need inspiration to get through the difficult and dreary parts. Where do the young find it today? Our culture is schizophrenic: on the one hand, Intel’s commercial “We believe there’s an innovator in everybody” captures the classic American excitement toward challenge with financial reward. On the other hand, running rampant are cynicism, resentment of achievement, intolerance toward differing ideas and values, and a bleak picture of the future based on the premise that human technology is destructive, expressed in the drumbeat of climate change disaster, artificial intelligence boogeymen, and the soul-crushing nature of capitalism.

How do you nurture resilience and grit, when the news, TV, friends, teachers, videos, tweets, and posts tell the young that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, humans are to blame, and there’s no hope?

Many young adults feel they mustn’t bring children into this world. Forty-four percent of U.S. non-parents between the ages of 18 and 49 years said they’re unlikely to have children, according to a Pew Research Center study, up from 37% in 2018.

Then there’s the dark, depressing anti-heroic outlook celebrated in the past 40 years.

For example, the 1995 film Leaving Las Vegas, about an alcoholic and a prostitute slowly killing themselves, received multiple Academy Award nominations. Contrary to real life, businessmen are relentlessly cast as murderous, greedy villains. Billions turned the self-made hedge fund CEO into a violent criminal. Silicon Valley portrayed tech entrepreneurs as lying, vain narcissists, not productive geniuses.

Worse is the elevation of evil to heroism. The Joker was the highest grossing film of 2019 and received 11 Academy Award nominations. It masterfully seduces the viewer into sympathizing with the murderous, nihilistic Joker and reviling heartless capitalist Bruce Wayne (Batman).

Such stories turn the young away from the creative, productive challenge of business, capitalism, and markets and encourage them to think that working as a hipster barista or green NGO supply manager is the moral course.

Instead, Top Gun: Maverick is a tornado of fresh air among dank Hollywood offerings. It portrays masculine men of great competence and bravery, unwilling to sacrifice any individual to the mission but, instead, dedicated to nothing less than total victory. Quite the contrast to young men who need to be told “make your bed” — or who cheat at West Point.

Its artistic power is a clue as to how we can arm the young against this onslaught of depressing messaging: by offering them intelligently curated movies, videos, TV shows, music, books, statues, games, and advertising images, showing them that life can be wonderful.

I noticed that all my grandchildren — who live far apart — love Paw Patrol, a cartoon show about capable children and child-like animal characters who rescue adults and children — using technology. Achievement, heroism, and the celebration of human invention — this is what 3- to 6-year-olds like!

The huge fandom for superheroes evidences the young’s tremendous desire for inspiration —because there are not enough stories about human heroes. The gulf between older stories and today’s can be a chasm.

Stories of young people with gumption, such as Treasure Island or Goonies,

Robert Heinlein’s Starman Jones, Space Cadet, and Have Space Suit — Will Travel dramatize independent, courageous problem-solving in formidable situations.

The last title echoes long-running Have Gun, Will Travel, a Western filled with strong moral conflict, terrific challenges, and creative solutions. Captains Courageous; The Big Country; The Sea Hawk; Robin Hood; and Westerns such as High Noon, Shane, and The Man From Snowy River all depict courage, valor, and an elevated sense of romance.

The astounding success of the Les Misérables musical rests on its great story of heroes, conflict, struggle, romance, and redemption. More recently, Bridge of Spies is a terrific tale of a real-life hero with integrity, resolute courage, and quiet conviction.

Reality TV shows such as Undercover Boss and Dirty Jobs heroize hard work and exceptional individuals in all walks of life. The Call of the Entrepreneur documentary, about a dairy farmer, an investment banker, and a media mogul, brilliantly depicts this.

Young people’s interest in videogames outstrips music and movies. Creative world-building games such as Minecraft fit the motivational bill. It is one of the most popular in this genre, but even those involving warcraft can be inspirational. See this discussion exploring the virtues of videogames. And let’s not forget music, especially with great melodies and romantic lyrics, which make one’s spirit soar.

Parents especially need to teach their children the value of their own work, letting them know how it adds to the world, no matter what it is. You are your children’s first hero — make sure they know why.

The Ordered Liberty of Montessori Education

Italian educator Maria Montessori is surrounded by children as she visits a Montessori school in London, England, sometime in the late 1940s. (AP Photo)

The following article was originally published in Law & Liberty. View it here.

At a tumultuous time in history, with too many parallels to our own, an astonishing drama unfolded. Amidst a raging civil war in 1939 Spain, Maria Montessori anxiously waited with her grandchildren on the second floor of their house in Barcelona as Communist anarchists ripped through the town, slaughtering priests, nuns, and ordinary lay Catholics like her.

Then, something strange occurred: a group of these rough men, with their bandoliers of bullets, stopped in front of her house and began painting on her doorway. Soon, they left. She and the children raced downstairs to see, in black paint “Respect this house. It harbors a friend of the children.”

What had Montessori done to elicit such a tribute and protection?

Maria Montessori was the first female doctor in Italy, a scientific genius. Starting out with slum children in 1907, she had discovered and implemented a brilliant and complex method of education. It treated each child as a unique individual and nurtured his or her development and powers to thrive. Children became hard-working, curious, creative, self-possessed, and high-achieving individuals who knew how to live peaceably and respectfully with others.

These are just the kind of people we need to live well in a free society, countering the worst trends in today’s educational landscape. How does her method accomplish this?

First, the Montessori classroom is complex and well-thought-out, physically, intellectually, and socially. Its fundamental principle is freedom in a structured environment. This parallels the structure of a free society, encouraging peaceful interactions while allowing members as much freedom as possible.

Second, each child is treated with gentle respect for his individuality, with coercion reserved for dire circumstances. Children are encouraged to learn through materials perfectly suited to the child’s developmental needs, exciting and interesting to the child. Also, the teacher conveys an attitude of curiosity and questioning that captures the child’s mind: “Let’s see how big an apatosaurus is compared to a tyrannosaurus rex! Let’s take some chalk, measure out each in the parking lot, and compare!”

Third, the child’s reasoning powers and independent judgment are strongly cultivated through the learning materials.

Fourth, children love going to well-run Montessori schools: over my 27 years running Council Oak Montessori, I received many letters in which parents told me their children loved school so much they lied that they were not sick so as not to miss school!

Thus, the three essential values needed for a free society are developed: reason, individualism, and freedom.

Game-like, the distinctive materials used in Montessori classrooms teach mathematics, history, language, science, and the arts—all the classic subjects—as well as many practical skills. They are arrayed on low shelves around the room in subject order and difficulty level, enabling children to obtain them and work on them by themselves, and to know how far along they are in the curriculum. The materials and their order are designed to develop independence. Here are some YouTube videos showing the vast array of these ingenious materials and explaining how they are used.

For example, three-year-olds work on a three-dimensional puzzle of blocks embodying a trinomial equation called the Trinomial Cube. Each part represents one term of a trinomial equation, such as a cube with sides A or a rectangular solid with sides B-squared/C. They learn to assemble this puzzle and as the children grow older, they discover different patterns about its pieces and learn how to write the symbols for each piece. When they finally learn algebra, the puzzle is a well-known, real object that embodies the equation. With this material and hundreds of others in the classroom, their mathematical concepts are strongly grounded in reality, essential for good mathematical thinking.

Montessori’s aim was to create a better future on the principle that the child is father to the man.

Six-year-olds learn American history using a timeline organized by the terms of the presidents. They add figures, notes, maps, and other items alongside each term to flesh out what events occurred. By working with concrete objects representing the people, dates, events, and relationships, the knowledge is burned into their minds because, Maria said, “The hand is the instrument of the mind.”

As much as possible, classroom physical order enables the children to do things for themselves: after a small-group lesson on material, children have the choice to work on it then or later, just as adults usually have a choice about the order in which to work. The children can do math first, then geography, snack and clean-up, and finally read a book. Or they can use a different order, depending on their interests that day.

By allowing the child to follow his interests and inner guide, he learns faster and retains the knowledge better, just as you do when you work on something of your choice.

The teacher regularly devotes time to carefully observing each child, learning their exact developmental level, interests, and individual personality characteristics. She becomes highly equipped to guide children to what each needs to learn.

Moreover, when students work on material, they can choose to make up their own problems: two boys in one of our classrooms would spend hours creating more and more math problems for themselves so they wouldn’t have to ask the teacher for more. This kind of freedom cultivates independence, self-reliance, and creativity. They’re both highly self-motivated engineers today. And they’re part of what the Wall Street Journal called “The Montessori Mafia” of highly creative and world-impacting people such as Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, John McWhorter, Julia Child, and Anne Frank.

Children want to develop self-mastery, which is needed to live in freedom.

Other features of the classroom which develop this are:

The classes mix children of different ages, with children from ages 3-6, 6-9, 9-12, and 12-15 grouped together. This is similar to typical mixed-age adult work environment, and this grouping provides a wide variety of work that inspires younger children to do the next hardest work and older children to solidify their understanding by helping the younger.
Students can work at a desk, a table, their own rug on the floor, or in a corner they like.
They can work with others if they choose, but they are not forced to associate. Consequently, they freely associate just as adults do in a free society.
They can work on the material as long as they need to, but then they must put the materials carefully back on the shelves for the next person the way each of us must take care of and replace commonly used objects at the park, or in a family, or on a team.
Each child is responsible for the classroom environment; if she spills water on the floor, she must clean it up.
Every week, each child is given a different job for maintaining the classroom, such as feeding the fish, sweeping the floor, or wiping the tables clean.
As children get older, their responsibilities grow so that in the 9-12 classroom, a child answers the phone or acts as host and guide to visitors. In the 12-15 classroom, students create field trips out of their learning interests, determine a budget and timing, and make all the reservations and transportation arrangements.
Children in the 9-12 and 12-15 classrooms create businesses to raise money for special trips, such as selling parents and visitors coffee and muffins they make every week, or learning calligraphy in order to have a business for inscribing wedding invitations.
The materials and the classroom are set up to be self-correcting. That is, they are designed so the child can figure out for himself if he has gotten the right answer, or is behaving correctly. For example, the furniture and shelves are carefully arranged so that if a child tries to run through, he could knock into shelves and cause objects to fall. He thereby learns not to run through class. If a student puts the wrong knobbed cylinders into the holes, not all of them will fit.
If they need to use the toilet, students check for and take the designated tag indicating the toilet is free, and go there themselves.
Even the smallest come to school and hang up their own coats and dress themselves when it’s time to leave.

What are the results of this method? It creates young human beings that are remarkably self-disciplined, purposeful, and self-confident. Moreover, they have an independent, hardworking, and entrepreneurial mindset, and are socially adept and able to productively collaborate with others. This is so important for the business of a free society. They are superbly self-regulated, something desperately needed today among our young.

Montessori’s aim was to create a better future on the principle that the child is father to the man. If you have never seen a Montessori classroom, find a highly rated one and ask to observe. You will be astonished at how the little humans act so purposefully. They are self-controlled, respectful, and yet joyful in their classrooms. They love their work. This is the way human beings should learn if they are to become self-supporting individuals in a free society.

I Run a Private School, and I’m Against School Vouchers

Many, many people across the political spectrum are concerned about the dire state of government schools today. Not only are too many students arriving at college illiterate, innumerate, and ignorant, but many have had to survive a dangerous and destructive time in government schools.

Free society advocates argue that a market solution—thriving competition—is the key to change. In his 1960 Constitution of Liberty, Friedrich Hayek proposed a plan to take the government out of the business of schooling by providing parents with publicly-funded vouchers with which to pay for any school of their choice.

“As has been shown by Professor Milton Friedman (M. Friedman, The role of government in education, 1955), it would now be entirely practicable to defray the costs of general education out of the public purse without maintaining government schools, by giving the parents vouchers covering the cost of education of each child which they could hand over to schools of their choice. It may still be desirable that government directly provide schools in a few isolated communities where the number of children is too small (and the average cost of education therefore too high) for privately run schools. But with respect to the great majority of the population, it would undoubtedly be possible to leave the organization and management of education entirely to private efforts, with the government providing merely the basic finance and ensuring a minimum standard for all schools where the vouchers could be spent.” (F. A. Hayek, 1960, section 24.3)

Many free society advocates have been campaigning for voucher systems the past 2-25years, and some locales (Milwaukee, New Orleans) and states (Florida) have instituted them.

The main opposition to school vouchers is that they threaten to put public education in direct competition with private education, reducing and reallocating public school funding to private schools. Of course, the teachers’ unions and National Education Association are against them.

But I have an entirely different reason to oppose vouchers, and it revolves around the phrase “ensuring a minimum standard for all schools where vouchers could be spent.” Contrary to the opponents who worry that vouchers will undermine the public schools, I’m sure they will undermine—level—the private ones.

That’s because whomever controls the money, controls the curriculum.

I founded and have been running Council Oak Montessori School for children 3 to 15 years old for 25 years. We are a classic Montessori school; we do almost nothing like a traditional school, yet we’ve been cited in Chicago Magazine as one of the best private elementary schools in the city. Our outcomes are remarkable, but not easily standardized. Our students generally do well on standardized tests, but that’s not why we’re good.

Instead, we produce students who maintain their delight in learning, work hard, and know how to behave well with others while remaining their own person. Many do exceptionally well academically, but that depends on the individual. They are good at finding what they love to do and being good at it—and that’s not always an academic path.

We have graduates who struggled mightily with the academic work – and are now designers at Google and illustrators for the movies, gemologists, and auto mechanics. We also have graduates who didn’t want to do much but math—and are engineers and research scientists mad for learning history and reading literature. They just needed to develop their interest in their own time.

Traditionalists just don’t get Montessori. They have objections up the wazoo, despite our 100 years of experience. It’s too different, too child-centered, too individualistic.

I’ve seen what happens to Montessori programs under the thumb of traditionalists—in Chicago public school Montessori magnet schools, and in private Montessori schools run by traditionalists—or caving to parent fear and pressure, and there’s plenty of that to go around.

So, I can imagine what would happen under a voucher program, and here’s what I fear for the private schools: only the richest private schools will be able to continue without taking vouchers. Inevitably, there will be corruption. This will lead to government oversight, and before you know it—boom! We’re back to the government controlling the curricula, teachers, and program. And the differences between private schools will be fundamentally wiped out. What bureaucrat is going to decide the standards? Once government bureaucrats begin regulating, you’re down the same slippery slope that got us into our current educational mess.

It’s happened elsewhere: Belgium is a good example. In 1917 they instituted a voucher program to enable students to go to private and religious schools. Over the years, the schools have come to be more and more regulated by the state, so that now, there’s not a significant difference in them.

But we don’t really need to refer to what’s happened in Europe; we need only see the dire consequences of Federal student loans at the college level today. The Feds have become an octopus, encircling and strangling our colleges and universities with regulations, mandates, and controls. Between them and the New Left manning the professoriat, the market in college education is hugely diminished. Diversity in ideas is down to a few places.

The only completely privately funded college I know of is Hillsdale College, in Michigan. They chose to stay privately funded because of affirmative action: they were started in the 19th century by abolitionists who did not believe in discriminating based on race. In the ‘70’s, they were required by the Feds to employ affirmative action if they wanted to use Pew grants. But they considered affirmative action a form of racial discrimination. Rather than continue with it, their trustees decided the college should become entire funded privately.

And now Hillsdale stands as one of the only ideologically unique higher education institutions in the nation. Too bad more places haven’t had the integrity to follow that path.

Returning to our fundamental problem: what about the kids! What about the millions that are getting a terrible education in public schools. Aren’t we concerned with all those individuals? Should we advocate that they languish just because of what might happen 50 years down the road? Maybe we should just bite the bullet and use vouchers and charter schools (don’t get me started on those crony capitalist institutions!)?

I think there’s a much better way to transition to a free market in education.
I would have to investigate the full legal ramifications, but tax credits seem a better road, although not without pitfalls. Tax credits are via individual tax returns, not controlled and handed out by some government bureaucracy.

A person could get a tax credit for any amount donated towards a student’s tuition and fees, whether related or not. I can envision that private charities like The Donors Trust, would arise to administer the scholarships. Of course, there’s still the specter of the government regulating the use of the tax credits, a serious concern. But the fact that they are more arms-length from government regulators is a big plus.

If you’d like an idea of what a real free market in education would be like, see Common Ground Against Common Core. I’ve penned the final chapter, “Liberating Education in which I outline the rich market in schools that would ensue if we had no government education program, but a completely private market – and how everyone could be educated in it, no matter their wealth or penchants or problems. The evidence is there.

M. Friedman, The role of government in education, 1955 Hayek, Friedrich. 1960. The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, section 24.3

Referenced:

http://www.tax4world.com/tax-return/2016-tax-return-with-education-credits 2/

http://paper.li/SmlPplBigIdeas/1415280440?edition_id=2437ca10-f0cf-11e4 82e4-0cc47a0d164b

https://www.thesavvystreet.com/i-run-a-private-school-and-im-against school-vouchers/

To Restore American Liberty, We Need Colleges that Actually Teach the Liberal Arts

The following article was originally published by The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. View it here.

Collectivists of many stripes—but one aim—have been eating away at our free society for over one hundred years.

If we want to reverse America’s current slide into authoritarianism and actively move towards a fully free society, we need to be as clear about our goals as the collectivists have been about theirs. And theirs have always been power and control—to that end, ingeniously using indoctrination masquerading as education.

To counter this, our educational goal should be to vigorously nurture that autonomous, active minority in every profession who are capable of being society’s change agents and who are entrepreneurial. It is this active minority who change societies everywhere—the Medici in Renaissance Florence, the U.S. Founders, and Cobden and Bright in the U.K.

In that effort, the greatest guardian of liberty is autonomy because autonomous people do not tolerate being ruled. Free human beings recognize each other’s sovereignty and seek to persuade others and trade with others as equals, rejecting the force that collectivists use when they can’t persuade.

We need a college (colleges!) specifically dedicated to nurturing autonomous individuals who are well-schooled in the values of reason, individualism, and freedom. We have to keep in laser focus: What kind of education helps young people learn how to live in freedom? To develop autonomy? To discover how to be entrepreneurs of their own lives?

In other words, what is a truly liberating education?

This is why I’m working to open Reliance College in 2024. We want Reliance students to enter the world as self-reliant individuals. We’ll endow them with a rich portfolio of knowledge and skills, and build a portfolio of work, so they can plan and succeed in the lives they imagine for themselves, able to overcome any obstacles and adversities that stand in their way.

Reliance will be a residential college offering a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts, with deep emphasis on reasoning well and objectively, complemented by a real-world problem-solving project in the student’s career interest.

The program will be a specially organized version of a classic Enlightenment liberal arts curriculum, dedicated to the free inquiry of free minds. The college will be entirely endowed by private funding to ensure utmost independence from governmental mandates. It incorporates:

1) Classic works from across the ideological spectrum, treating those of Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, Frederic Bastiat, and other free-society advocates in many fields as equal to other great and influential thinkers;

2) A special methodology which incorporates the study and practice of careful reasoning, concept formation, integration of knowledge across categories, and connecting ideas to their effects on life and the world;

3) Real-world problem projects (in the field of student professional interest) that will connect students to outstanding, accomplished professionals as mentors and create valuable experience and material for a professional portfolio. We’ll find extraordinary mentors, such as The American Optimist’s Joe Lonsdale, UCG Group’s Jim Kandrac, Explaining Post-Modernism’s Stephen Hicks, and Laitram’s Jay Lapeyre;

4) Special work on crucial skills such as writing, active listening and teamwork, personal finance and economics, and the role of art in a well-lived life.

Over many years, I have built my knowledge about human development, starting with my work at Council Oak Montessori School for students ages 3-15, which I founded and ran for 27 years. The Montessori educational philosophy has been ahead of its time for 100 years in understanding the importance of human development to optimal learning and growth. I have used the Montessori framework while honing my knowledge of what young adults need to grow into flourishing human beings. We have incorporated this knowledge into every aspect of our educational programs.

By developing their autonomy and self-reliant entrepreneurship, the program strongly influences students to grasp and accept the values and ideas of living as a free person in a free society. It does so by:

1) Helping them to develop an objective, reality-oriented way of thinking (and we know that a free society is, objectively, the best way for humans to thrive);

2) Providing a process by which students can deeply examine the meaning and consequences of ideas from all sides, collectivist to individualist, while treating the works of the freedom movement thinkers as equal to that of other great thinkers;

3) Offering a culture of inspiration, love of beauty and greatness, and deep community of shared ideas and values. Young people desperately need such a culture, especially when surrounded by as many postmodernist, nihilist intellectual and artistic influences as we find in contemporary America.

At Reliance, we will offer young people the vision of a life full of adventure and achievement.

We already have a successful track record with this program. For the past 13 years, we have implemented it in carefully crafted summer and weekend programs with remarkable results, and we’re running one this summer, July 23-30, in Chicago. (See The Great Connections for more information.)

Student after student has spontaneously reported to us that their approach to their lives has been transformed by these programs. To this day, we hear from them about their successes due to what they learned at The Great Connections. Students attending our full college program will have the opportunity to learn and develop far more.

Given the caliber of the students who have attended our summer program, Reliance will likely attract highly intelligent students who are dissatisfied with what’s available elsewhere. Reliance’s program will boost their functioning so they will be outstanding in their work performance. Their academic performance, combined with their real-world problem project work, will make us attractive to more and more employers, students, and parents. This will build the College’s reputation quickly.

The program will also achieve our end goal: to develop an active and self-confident minority who can defend their rights to their own lives and the free society. We’re aiming for a New American Revolution!

Our long-term plan is to:

1) Start with a small school in rented quarters where students get the individual attention and guidance they need;

2) Rapidly add a continuing education program for retired adults looking for their next path in life (and who will become great supporters and allies);

3) Build and facilitate a rich cultural community for free-society advocates, with events and discussions on movies, art, architecture, poetry, plays—you name it—emulating the vibrant salon community of the 19th century;

4) Expand our campus to hold multiple small colleges, similar to the Oxford University model.

We are growing a private scholarship fund and endowment for the program. Given the rigorous nature of the program, we don’t expect acquiring accreditation to be difficult.

There will be no faculty tenure. Teachers will be expected to uphold our values and follow our mission.

We seek teachers in love with our program and dedicated to our methods. Our teachers will attend a special training course in our methodology and approach. We also plan regular faculty sessions in which we’ll reflect on whether we’re following our mission and will strive for teaching improvement. Thus, we will avoid drifting into the “wokeness” that afflicts so many colleges.

We have created a comprehensive, well-funded, and expert marketing plan to get started. We have a business model that enables reasonable budgets with affordable tuition for the next seven years, created after years of research conducted on the administration and funding of colleges in the United States.

Reliance College will offer all this to people who expect to pay a reasonable price for a real education rather than a price inflated by no-longer-deserved prestige. We will look for students who want more than vocational training or ideological programming.

Given the current state of education, it’s an auspicious time to start a new, independent institution of higher learning.

Marsha Familaro Enright created the Reason, Individualism, Freedom Institute (RIFI), which runs The Great Connections Seminars. She is the co-founder of Council Oak Montessori Elementary School, one of the top private elementary schools in Chicago.

Why the U.S. Needs New Colleges

This article was originally published by The Chalkboard Review. View it here.

Collectivists of many stripes—but one aim—have been eating away at our free society for over 100 years. If we want to reverse America’s slide into authoritarianism and move towards a free society, we need to be as clear about our goals as the collectivists have been about theirs. And theirs have always been power and control, especially through the means of education.

This is why I’m working to open Reliance College, dedicated to developing autonomous and entrepreneurial young people. Our program focuses not only on crucial knowledge but on what learning experiences develop the habits and skills, as well as courage, autonomy, and entrepreneurship.

As we look around at what historian Brad Thompson calls the education apocalypse, I am reminded of its origins in the 1960’s student “rebellions.” I remember sitting in a biochemistry class at Northwestern University in 1971 when some students forced their way in to protest the Vietnam War — the keyword being ‘forced.’

As George Leef and others have written about, Herbert Marcuse’s Repressive Tolerance justifies the use of force. Leef writes:

“the spirit of his book Repressive Tolerance animates the speech code enthusiasts. Marcuse argued that free speech was actually repressive because it allegedly put status quo ideas in a position of dominance and suppressed the voices of dissent. His ‘solution’ was to suppress ideas critical of his radical Marxist notions to make things more fair.”

Bottom line: If others don’t accept your demands, force them into compliance. Sound familiar? We see that endgame played out all around us today: the violent occupation of city centers, condoning of looters, and heavy-handed controls throughout the epidemic.

The left advanced their goal but didn’t succeed in the 60’s and 70’s so they went into education. Violent 1960’s radicals became influential professors, such as bombing Communist Weatherman Underground leader Bill Ayers who was a Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He’s spread his social justice vision far and wide among teachers. And he’s but one, albeit very active, example. With all the teachers they have influenced, any wonder this ideology is being taught and enforced everywhere from pre-school to graduate school?

Department after department in school after school made it difficult for professors who disagreed with them—see the recent study by Langbert and Stevens of how ridiculously far Academia leans to one side, politically.

What’s worse, students have become gleeful enforcers of the authoritarians, using such tools as cell phone videos, Twitter, and the heckler’s veto. It allows students to enjoy the thrill of power over their superiors while believing that they are moral crusaders when outing ideological violators.

Thankfully, alumni are waking up and refusing to support these institutions; and some of the less financially stable schools have been folding. But, with all the government loan money and vast endowments at the elite institutions, defunding the universities is unlikely to happen any time soon.

Countering this trend is Hillsdale College, along with a few others. And free society advocates have been creating wonderful centers for study at schools around the country, such as the James Madison Center at Princeton, George Mason University Law School, and the Institute for the Study of Capitalism at Clemson. They’re doing terrific work for their students but they aren’t able to change their institutions.

At this juncture, we need a Parallel University System, as free as possible of government controls. Bari Weiss and Panos Kanelos have thrown their hats in the ring with the proposed University of Austin, which has the laudable aim of the “fearless pursuit of truth.” I look forward to the university’s success, but is one alternative enough to restore us to a free society?

Free societies emerged from the eminence of reason, the development of individualism and autonomy, and the recognition of individual rights during the Enlightenment. The greatest guardian of liberty is autonomy because autonomous people do not tolerate being ruled. We need a college specifically dedicated to nurturing autonomous individuals who are well-schooled in the values of reason, individualism, and freedom.

For the past 13 years, we have implemented such an education in carefully crafted summer and weekend programs with remarkable results. Now we’re ready to expand to Reliance College, opening 2024. Reliance will be a residential college that offers a Bachelor’s Degree in Liberal Arts, with deep emphasis on reasoning well and objectively, and complemented by a real-world-problem solving project in the student’s career interest.

We are looking for people who want more than vocational training or ideological programming. We seek people who want to think for themselves and pursue their own happiness. Contact me if you want to join us.

What University Education Might Be and Ought to Be

University Education As It Might Be and Ought to Be

Part I: What Is the Aim of a University Education?

By Marsha Familaro Enright

“Discipline must come through liberty. . . . We do not consider an individual disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined.” — Maria Montessori

Standard education not only fails to teach the philosophy, history, economics, and politics of a free society, but its methods oppress individuality and instead encourage conformity and obedience. It does the opposite of teaching young people how to live as free, autonomous persons. For a detailed look at the collectivist and authoritarian purpose and history of traditional education, especially government-run, see my chapter “Liberating Education” in the book Common Ground On Common Core.

In the main, traditional university education’ methodology has been unchanged for centuries. Most classrooms rely heavily on an authoritarian, top-down structure of a single arbiter of knowledge, often in the position of lecturer, discussion leader, and knowledge authority, who conveys information to the waiting student-receptacles.

Of course, many colleges and universities are using all the bells and whistles of the latest physical technology, which makes the world’s knowledge available to their students through Internet-connected classrooms, cool electronic writing technology, online discussion groups, or handheld quiz machines.

But the more crucial and fundamental psychological and social elements to learning are often still ignored, especially at the university level. Yet, a free future demands more than the dissemination of information; where do free individuals learn how to use it in their lives?

Given what we now know about human development, learning, and motivation, education is ripe for a revolution in its psychological technology. Students need an educational program that embodies the ideals of self-sufficient, self-responsible, goal seeking, and autonomous individuals.

Furthermore, when freedom and autonomy are directly experienced, students become more engaged, interested, and enthusiastic learners and more often adopt the ideas and values of liberty.

Where can we find the kind of education that suits the development of autonomy? What specific considerations, methodologies, and curricula support this development? Such a system for lower education has been around for more than 100 years.

A Few of the Ingenious Features of the Montessori Method.

“When you have solved the problem of controlling the attention of the child, you have solved the entire problem of education.” Maria Montessori

When it comes to attention and learning, Montessori could have been talking about anyone, not just the child. Without attention, there is no learning. Attention is crucial, yet attentional resources (focus) are limited. They must be used well to efficiently learn the most possible.

Further, the developed ability to concentrate on work and goals and to self-maintain interest and focus allow a person to succeed in long-term projects and purposes. In Montessori, Dewey, and Capitalism, Jerry Kirkpatrick calls this “Concentrated Attention.”

In his studies on intensely productive and creative people, University of Chicago research psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (pictured at left) found that certain conditions elevate the ability to pay attention, and pay attention deeply for long periods of time. He also recognized that specially designed practices in Montessori classrooms provide these conditions throughout the school day. His research group, including the work of Kevin Rathunde, found many exceptional outcomes from these Montessori practices. (A picture of an engaging Montessori material to teach geology is below.)

The use of the Three-Period Lesson is a case in point.

Much scientific research shows that humans learn best if:

They are highly motivated to learn the material for some personal end.
They are physically engaged.
They understand the application of the material to their lives.

The classic Montessori Three-Period Lesson ingeniously engages human attention. With small groups of students, teachers (or “Guides” as we prefer to call them in Montessori) demonstrate learning materials specially designed to focus attention on an important concept, such as whole number versus fractions. Objects and materials incorporating shapes, colors sounds, and textures concretely make the idea vivid. These Montessori materials engage the student’s whole intellect, sensory, motor, and conceptual, thereby powerfully imprinting memory.

The lesson’s three parts are Naming, Recognition and Association, and Recall. The Guide gathers one to four students ready for the particular lesson, seats them in front of the materials, and then demonstrates their use with only the essential words, naming the objects. For example, the Guide might use fraction circles to demonstrate the addition of fractions. (see picture below)

These are sets of metal, pie-shaped circles cut into different quantities of wedges with little knobs on each wedge. One circle consists of 4 wedges, another of 12, to demonstrate fourths and twelfths while all the circles in the material are the same size, to embody whole number. There are numerous kinds of problems possible with these circles, including all the operations of arithmetic. In the most basic, the child can literally see the relationship of different fractional proportions by taking the wedges out of the circles and putting them back in—in different combinations. Each lesson demonstrates one possible use of the materials.

During the lesson, the Guide speaks little, allowing the student to focus and observe the demonstrated examples carefully so they recognize the elements and form associations. The Guide encourages questions from the students; she also, models curiosity, and triggers discussion with questions of her own when students are not forthcoming. Truly successful teachers are exceptional at listening to students’ questions, surmising what students need to know, and modeling and encouraging thinking.

After the fraction demonstration, the Guide asks the student to explain what to do with the materials to solve the next problem and moves the materials has the student accordingly. Finally, the Guide asks the student to demonstrate the material, turning student into teacher and thereby recalling the elements of the lesson, requiring a more complete level of understanding for the student’s performance.

After the lesson, the student is free to pursue more problems with the materials right then or use them later to practice when the student feels interested in working on the material (on the principle that one learns best when one is intrinsically motivated). The Guide regularly takes notes while observing the children in her class and if she finds a child avoiding some material, she makes it her job to think of a way to interest the child in the work.

A key to the Montessori Method’s success is ensuring that the amount of material conveyed at one lesson is not overwhelming but sufficiently interesting, i.e. just the conditions necessary for Flow. More frequent, shorter lessons with follow-up exercises are preferable to one long demonstration. Of course, preparing shorter, pointed lessons is far more taxing to the teacher, but the Montessori Method has systems to make this aspect of teaching less time consuming.

The Three-Period Lesson can be fruitfully adapted to many college-level subjects. In fact, some college classes, such as chemistry, often use a version of the Three-Period Lesson, with the experiment as the final student demonstration. However, as with most excellent methods, the devil is in the details.

Lectures in Their Proper Place

Lessons with materials and concrete experiences are not the usual in university education; lectures are the most common format. If organized well, lectures can distill a vast amount of information down to a few principles and key examples. A lecture can be an economical introduction to a subject. The best lectures essentialize the subject matter conveyed by the lecture.

However, as a method, lectures are designed to be easy for the teacher, not the student. They allow the teacher to recount his or her knowledge without feedback or interrupting questions and side issues from the listener. Although sometimes necessary, lectures are usually a difficult way to learn because they frequently run counter to human learning tendencies.

For several reasons, students must exert an enormous amount of attentional effort to stay focused on what the speaker says during lectures. A lecture requires the learner to mostly listen and look a little. Unlike learning methods that make learning easy, the lecture usually does not engage the whole mind, including vivid perceptions and imagination, or the body of the student. Listening and looking during a lecture involves little sensory-motor work, which normally helps cement learning in memory.

One of the reasons visual aids such as Microsoft^® Office PowerPoint^® are preferred for lectures is because they offer sensory stimulation, providing at least some perceptual imagery to associate with the ideas being conveyed. Although, like books, lectures can have illustrations, the student cannot study the illustrations in a lecture as long as he or she wants.

Human interaction usually helps to increase interest as well as physically engage the student, but during a lecture, there is very little interaction between student and teacher. Often the lecture is aimed at a large or general audience and thus cannot address individual student goals, interests and comprehension difficulties.

A student cannot stop the lecture to ask a question or request a further, clarifying explanation or replay what the lecturer said. Once confused, the student may find the rest of the lecture very difficult if not impossible to follow. Consequently, students often miss the important points and substantial content of the lecture.

In a lecture format, the best teachers attempt to address human learning needs by weaving their information into a story. Stories incorporate drama, character, values, passion, meaning, purpose, a climax and resolution. Winston Churchill was a master at this. This method utilizes human tendencies to search for meaning and purpose, to connect knowledge acquired to personal circumstances, and to remember people, places and things more easily than abstract ideas.

Excellent lecturers use plenty of concretes to make the information vivid and connected to real experience and, at least in imagination, to stir perceptual memory and bodily feelings of the listener. Imaginative work and bodily feelings help the student feel much more engaged in the material. Exceptional lecturer MIT physics professor Walter Lewin spends 30 hours and three practice trials developing each of the lectures for his remarkable classes.

The best learners are active learners. They can gain from almost any lecture; they come to a lecture motivated to learn for their own reasons. They expend extra effort in imagining their own examples in order to concretize the ideas they’re hearing. As they listen, they maintain an internal dialogue of questions with the lecturer, noting what they don’t understand and with what they take issue. They also tend to seek answers to their questions after the lecture.

Many teachers recognize that this kind of student is rare and usually has high intelligence, strong intellectual ambition, and great self-motivation. For the most part, traditional education methods do not nurture internal motivation and inherent interest in acquiring knowledge—qualities essential in the new global economy, which demands the ability to lithely move from job to job, or change careers.

A long school career of lectures, drills, memorization, and teaching methods out of tune with learning needs usually turns most students away from enthusiastic learning at school. They are only too often motivated mainly by external rewards of grades, adult approval, superior social position and the acquisition of credentials.

Unfortunately, lectures are so difficult to pay attention to, and psychologically painful for most students, that students work hard to avoid them. During lectures, young students often goof around; consequently, they learn that they are “bad” and “undisciplined.” They are expected to know how to force their attention on boring material.

Older students attempting to pass their courses seek low-energy ways to fulfill requirements while maximizing grades, such as the use of tape recordings, buying others’ lecture notes, or passing multiple choice tests without attending lectures.

These students aren’t inherently bad, they are responding to the high psychological costs of traditional education in a psychologically economical way. They more profitably spend their limited attentional resources elsewhere.

Sadly, they often feel guilt, frustration and anger for failing to live up to the traditional classroom’s expectations, with a nagging disappointment for what they’ve missed—or should have gotten—from education. Many students desperately need help to become “active learners,” interested in the material and in charge of their own education.

Integration—But Not the Kind You May Think I Mean

What college graduates do with the information they learn will now, more than ever, determine their competitive edge. Consequently it is imperative that education teach how to think, create and integrate what students learn in one subject with what they know from another with what to do with it to further their lives. Broad knowledge and capability to learn combined with the ability to deftly integrate new material into one’s repertoire is essential to become an adaptable Versatilist, capable of switching careers as the economy demands.

However, teaching methods and curricula need to take into account key psychological features that aid integration. Before valuable information and ideas can be stored in the mind’s subconscious, they have to pass through the conscious mind, which usually can handle only about seven discreet items at any one time (see George A. Miller’s 1956 psychological classic “The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information“) If you’ve ever wondered why you need a list to remember what you have to do, here’s the reason, and it’s one of the reasons for the limited attentional resources of our conscious minds.

Ideas—abstractions—are the primordial human inventions that circumvent this limitation, because ideas incorporate myriad data into a single audio-visual concrete, a word or symbol. All instances of babies are integrated into the idea of “baby,” and you can apply what you know about babies to any individual baby you encounter. Voila! You’ve saved a lot of time and energy.

Ultimately, the integration of simple ideas, like those of colors or types of animals, into more abstract groupings like “mammal” make the human mind extremely powerful. Imagination and integration work together to produce the torrent that is human creativity. Integration of information into ideas and actions into skills is the psychologically economical way to use our limited conscious resources when thinking and solving problems.

The person who is a master at the careful, fact-based integration of knowledge is a highly effective thinker and actor.

This is the reason any good curriculum must emphasize work on subject matter across domains of knowledge, by studying works that integrate epistemology with poetry, science with history, philosophy with action, especially by asking students to relate what is learned in one class and course to with what is learned in another.

Part II: Creativity

Integration to Creativity

“What I cannot create, I do not understand.”—Richard Feynman

Integration of knowledge across broad ranges of subjects is a characteristic of creativity—and versatility. Research consistently finds that highly creative people tend to have very broad, as well as deep, interests and knowledge. They apply unconventional information and ideas to problems, integrating information in unusual ways across conventional subject areas.

Famed physicist Richard Feynman (at left) is a case in point.

Think of his brilliant demonstration of the space shuttle temperature problem, Challenger’s O-Ring: by dropping an O-ring in an ordinary glass of ice water, he simply and directly proved it could not stand up to low temperatures. His demonstration integrated an esoteric, bedeviling engineering problem with a mundane experience.

He was also famous for his wide-ranging interests, which included samba bands and experiments on ants. He put no limits on his curiosity about the world.

Feynman’s measured IQ was in the high range—124—but not what IQ test-makers consider genius (135+). Contrary to what many people think but consistent with research findings, most recognized geniuses do not have IQ’s in the 135+ range. Measured IQs of people considered to be geniuses are 116 or higher, apparently making an above average IQ a condition—but not a sufficient one—for high creativity. (Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity). (No one knows how individuals acclaimed as geniuses because of their work, such as DaVinci and Newton, would have scored on the test. Given the findings with current individuals, the results of an actual IQ test on Newton might surprise us!)

Unfortunately, IQ tests—and most tests—cannot measure working creativity and intelligence. In other words, they don’t adequately measure how intelligence is put into life’s service by creatively solving problems.

For example, the number of highly creative and successful business people who score average to low on SAT tests is indicative of the test’s inadequacy in measuring working intelligence.

Conditions other than IQ seem to be highly important to the development of creativity, conditions which we can create in educational settings, thereby enabling education to actively develop creativity, rather than stifle it.

For example, the tendency to amass information from close, first-hand observation is very important. Michael Faraday, (pictured here) exhibited this tendency par excellence as a young man: he had no formal education and knew only arithmetic, but discovered the laws of electromagnetism through fascinated observation of and experiments on nature.

A mind that is curious and constantly problem-solving is another characteristic of the creative. For example, the inventor of VELCRO, George Mestral noticed his dog became covered with burrs during a walk. Examining how the burrs use microscopic hooks to stick to the loops of his pant fabric, he realized he could make a new type of fastener. A little nature hike turned into a billion-dollar industry.

What’s needed in education to develop creativity?

“Our care of the [student] should be governed, not by the desire to make him learn things, but by the endeavor always to keep burning within him that light which is called intelligence.” — Maria Montessori

We cannot change what nature gives our students in terms of basic intelligence. However, we can offer a program that nurtures those abilities and habits of mind needed for creativity and productivity such as:

Objective reasoning skills, not just in science and math, but all domains of knowledge, including such areas as art, history, and literature.

Knowledge of a broad array of information, ancient and modern.

Habits of connecting information and ideas from one domain of knowledge to another (the way highly creative people do), by:
- Teaching through works that are cross-domain, like Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, a work of moral philosophy that founded the study of economics, or Plato’s Meno, which examines history, epistemology, and social interaction.
- Guiding them to draw cross-disciplinary connections by example such as how a city’s buildings and layout are related to its history; pointing out examples of the way in which original thinkers made crucial connections, such as Newton’s connection of the apple’s fall with the idea of gravity.

Curiosity through:
- Encouraging their questioning
- Modeling enthusiasm and inquiry about what is being studied

Careful observation of the world through:
- Demonstrating careful observation and the relation of any idea to the facts on which it rests
- Questioning the observational/factual basis of their ideas

Awareness and thinking about the meaning and purpose in life, by presenting a curriculum infused with deep questions which connect knowledge to living by:

- Always asking what any given fact or idea means to human life
- Asking of any knowledge: to whom is this information valuable and how will it be used?

Using the Great Books, what are often called the Classics, in the curriculum schools students in timeless ideas, of the best thinkers in civilization, useful in any era or place. These works are extremely influential today. They include works from philosophy to economics, mathematics to literature, history to science and more. Simultaneously, the Great Books’ authors and their ideas serve as examples of the highest in creative thinking skills.

Properly schooled to think deeply about these works, a student economically recognizes patterns, trends and influences everywhere in culture, from art to business, from job trends to medical discoveries.

One small example: Did you know that there was a time when people were confused about how something could be one thing now and another thing in the future? The ancient Greeks pondered this for some time. In the 400’s BCE, “What is, is,” said Parmenides, who believed existence is timeless and change impossible, a mere illusion. “I can’t step into the same river twice,” said Heraclitus, who argued that all was continuous change. The Greeks couldn’t reconcile how states and change could co-exist. How could something be an acorn now and yet the very same thing an oak tree later? They could not figure out how that worked.

It took the genius of ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle decades later to resolve this problem with the identification of the concepts of “actual” and “potential.” Try to imagine our world without these ideas—how could we think about science and technology, societies or evolution?

Students need to learn about such great ideas as Aristotle’s breakthrough, along with the important fact that so much we take for granted in our great civilization was invented by creative individuals all through the ages. And reflecting on concepts that we take for granted raises students’ analytic thinking skills. This is just one benefit of studying the Great Books.

Knowledge Across Categories

Carefully crafted assignments, classes can purposefully integrate knowledge from one domain to another and encourage students to find connections between seemingly disparate material, just like creative thinkers such as Feynman and Mestral. Teachers can urge students to constantly seek connections among these great ideas and between the ideas and our contemporary world. Unfortunately, most college curricula and faculties make no attempt to execute these crucial tasks.

Discussing the place that a fact, idea or theory has in human life should be a constant aim. Teachers should consistently require—and offer–—proof for statements and beliefs, and explicit logical arguments. Everyone should examine the premises from which they draw their conclusions. Facts and truth, however unpleasant, should be the standard. By modeling and emphasizing these practices, faculty can encourage students to have excellent observational skills.

How to deal with unpleasant facts without denying them should also be a highly encouraged skill. Teachers who model such thinking teach volumes. And teachers need training to insure these aims—something which the rare university professor gets.

Ultimately, by consistently applying these practices, students will learn the skills needed to think objectively.

Part III—Inspiration

“First We Must Inspire, Not Just Inform”

Maria Montessori, pictured at left, noted that the student is a “spiritual embryo,” with his or her own innate pattern of growth ready to unfold, delicately and amazingly, given the right psychological and physical environment. The teacher’s role in this unfolding cannot be underestimated.

Maria Montessori said: Teachers “have to conquer minds stirring up the great emotions of life,” to achieve real learning in students. In other words, teachers must tap into students’ deepest desires and values, such as love, joy, and pride, to motivate students. And, although Aristotle’s dicta “All men by nature desire to know” captures the human species’ trait of curiosity, curiosity can be squashed through ridicule or sapped through boredom by teachers—or coaxed into riotous flowering.

Great teachers are often transformative to the student, helping him or her learn to love knowledge and serious work, to acquire heightened reasoning skills, to look at many sides of a problem, to gather information from far-reaching domains in order to find solutions and to be self-reflective and reasonable – all important ingredients to future success.

Famed investor Warren Buffet, who did not want to go to college, said of his time achieving a master’s degree at Columbia University, “But I didn’t go there for a degree, I went for two teachers who were already my heroes.”

These principles necessitate teachers of the highest order: those with the utmost respect for their students, who can teach by example and guidance through difficult material. To encourage the development of particular values and virtues in students, faculty become essential as role models. For example, by embodying great thinking, respect for independent judgment, and deep appreciation of individual freedom, the faculty model the very values of a free society, reason, individualism, and freedom.

While it is possible to be competent in communicating information and in conveying some of these traits long distance, in-person interaction is the most compellingly effective method. It’s important to have a program that actively uses technology of all kinds to creatively facilitate learning and collaboration and make scholars and public intellectuals from around the world accessible to students. But in-person classes with skilled, specially trained role-model teachers are indispensible for a great education.

Let’s examine some ways teachers influence students.

Teachers and Activation Energy

Csikszentmihalyi notes that human beings have limited mental resources and energy when it comes to paying attention (focusing on material), and these should be used wisely. Hence, a good program keeps these factors in mind and seeks to facilitate attention. And interest is one of the key ingredients to minimizing the use of attentional energy.

A small group of people, like concert violinist Rachel Barton Pine, seem to find riveting interests when they are mere toddlers. This kind of person often barrels full speed ahead in what they want to do; but most people are not as definite or enthusiastic about any particular interest. Teachers can make a difference in the subjects in which students become interested and even their choice of profession.

Often, a passionate teacher triggers an individual’s interest in a new subject. A previously unknown, boring, or distasteful field becomes the person’s area of professional interest through their teacher. I’ve seen many a student with no previous interest in, or maybe even a repulsion to, cicadas or worms, become enthralled with them after an enthusiastic teacher shows them the fascinating parts of the worm, the weird way the cicada flies, or how to eat it. The teacher fuels what research psychologist Csikszentmihalyi calls “activation energy,” i.e. the energy invested in learning to do something new.

Many complex and deeply engaging areas of knowledge and skill require an enormous amount of unrewarding work before they become enjoyable. Ballet dancing, mastering physics, or successfully managing employees are a few examples. Initially, the learner must expend intense mental energy in order to focus on the learning and become interested in the subject or skill: this is the “activation energy.” Learning a musical instrument is a good example: the student spends hours practicing physical movements and enduring awful sonic productions before acquiring enough skill to make enjoyable music!

In the early 20th century, Montessori noted the same phenomena and realized its connection to teaching: “I believed that at the start the teaching material had to be associated with the voice of the teacher which called and roused the [students] and induced them to use the material and educate themselves,” Maria Montessori.

A great teacher like the character of Edward James Olmos in the movie “Stand and Deliver,” or Robin Williams in “Dead Poets Society,” helps students through difficult material with contagious excitement and the ability to make it dramatically interesting and well-related to students’ deepest needs and values. This goes back to the principle that human interest drives learning.

Long-time Montessori teacher, Pat Schaefer, summed it up, “First: we must inspire, not just inform. Second: It is in relationship that the secret of [human learning] power is released.”

Teachers and Great Questions

On the precipice of full adult life, the college student needs answers to the great questions: “Why am I here?” ”How should I live?” ”How should I deal with other people?” “What should I do with my life?” If the student is not already asking himself these questions, it is his teacher’s job to show him how to ask them and how to find good answers.

Knowing how to pose the right questions can lead to a great awakening with unforeseen, amazing consequences. Forestry Consultant Charles Tomlinson often regaled friends and family with stories of his experience at The University of the South (called “Sewanee”) with “Abbo.” Charles claimed himself a rather complacent product of a middleclass Southern family when he encountered “Abbo,” English Professor Abbott Cotton Martin. Abbo spent considerable hours poking holes in everything Charles took for granted, from football to religion, with some English literature thrown in for good measure. This was Abbo’s stock-in-trade.

Abbo taught Charles to thoroughly question and examine what he thought he knew, as well as his beliefs. But Abbo didn’t just throw students in the water of quandaries, he made himself available to talk all during the week, not just during Sunday office hours. Charles learned to “check his premises” through Abbo’s prodding as well as reading Ayn Rand. The other wonderful teachers at Sewanee helped too. They inspired him to demand more of himself, leading to a long, creatively productive, exciting life.

This included deeply influencing many, many people, including Jaroslav Romanchuk, a major figure in the opposition to Belarus’ authoritarian government.

Active Listening and Independent Judgment

“Be “careful not to ask [your] questions of the [students]. Only when [students] seek to answer questions which they themselves ask, do they commit themselves to the hard work of finding answers that are meaningful to them…give only as much guidance and encouragement as is necessary to elicit the [students’] interest.” — Maria Montessori

Inspiration is the fundamental mission of the teacher, because of motivations’ deep importance to learning. Active Listening is a powerful teaching tool which promotes an inspiring relationship between teacher and student. For one thing, Active Listening conveys deep respect for the individual’s independence in thought and value.

Active Listening is a key skill enabling teachers to nurture independent judgment. The Active Listener authentically tries to understand what the other person means, empathizing with the other’s point of view by working hard to grasp his or her full context. This means trying to understand the other person’s level of knowledge about a subject, their age, what emotional issues may be affecting their thinking, and the set of ideas they are using to grasp the subject.

Active listening promotes the spread of truth. Only by Active Listening do we end up having a full idea of what the other person means and thereby gain the opportunity to respond with appropriate facts and reasoning.

Used in teaching, this means the Active Listener asks clarifying questions about the student’s terms, respectfully allowing the student time to finish what he or she is saying before responding and, importantly, conveying an attitude of alert interest in what the student says.

The Active Listener must try to leave aside any personal feelings about the subject and squash the desire to assert and forcefully drive home the rightness of his or her own opinion. These actions only serve to distract a student from deep thinking and learning by bringing in issues of social hierarchy, personal power, and self-worth (i.e., do I know enough, what does the teacher think of me, he’s got more status than I, I should listen to him). These issues elicit powerful, distracting emotions.

Further, the Active Listener tries to sense any motives in the student’s statements beyond the informational. For example, if a student in a class on Freud asks “What if a son is extremely fond and affectionate toward his mother—does that mean he has an Oedipus complex?” The teacher needs to be aware that the student’s study of Freud may have caused him to feel anxiety about his love for his mother. The teacher needs to respond with gentleness, general reassurance, and kindness.

Independent judgment is the well-spring of real choice, and good discussions nurture true individuality and judgment.. Unfortunately these days, teachers sometimes find it difficult to conduct good discussions because students have been led to believe all opinions are equal in value and everyone should open their mouths to babble whatever they wish, no matter how inaccurate or trivial. Resulting from the reign of the Post Modernist attack on objectivity, this belief cripples students’ minds by encouraging them to think that any opinion is acceptable, regardless of foundation, as long as it is theirs.

While stoking their egos by making them feel whatever they think is important, this practice stops them from learning that true, valuable opinion must be grounded in facts and good reasoning.

Postmodernist ideology further deforms a student’s concept of self by equating diversity with group membership. In the Post Modernist schema, one’s diversity depends on race or ethnic background or sexual preference rather than considered, ideological judgment. It promotes a collectivist concept of tribal or social diversity rather than true ideological difference.

In contrast, Active Listening in the classroom conveys a deep respect for the independence of the other person’s mind: the Active Listener takes the student’s ideological point of view seriously and tries to respond to it carefully. The aim of Active Listening is full understanding of what the other is saying in the service of arriving at truth. Just imagine the kind of productive political discussions we all might have if we used these principles!

Some people have a rare, natural ability or tendency to listen like this, but since it can be learned, there’s hope for the rest of us. It is also typical of the Montessori teacher, because of his or her deep training in careful observation of students.

For university students, we can bring together all the elements I’ve discussed through a special way of crafting curriculum by a special methodology which the teachers can use.

Part IV. Socratic Practice: A Methodology That Serves Young Adult Needs

“It is a sign of crudity and indigestion to throw up what we have eaten in the same condition it was swallowed down; and the stomach has not performed its office, if it has not altered the figure and shape of what was committed to it for concoction…Let the tutor make his pupil thoroughly sift everything he reads, and lodge nothing in his fancy upon mere authority…To the fragments borrowed from others he will transform and bend together to make a work that shall be absolutely his own; that is to say, his judgment. His education, labor, and study aim only at forming that.” — Michael Montaigne

Socratic Practice is a formidable discussion methodology that, when used properly, incorporates Active Listening at its best and nurtures reasoning skills and independence powerfully. Classrooms using Socratic Practice are active learning environments, intellectually, socially, and physically engaging. By encouraging the learners to ask their own questions of what they are studying, the motivating power of individual interest is harnessed. Furthermore, because they are so engaging, Socratic Practice discussions don’t tax attentional resources, making learning much easier and enjoyable; students often get into a Flow state, forgetting how much time is passing because they are engaged.

I am referring to a very specific, carefully crafted methodology of teaching, which I will describe shortly. Some of you may have been to classes called Socratic Seminars which are quite different from what I mean. In these, a teacher might ask a question like “What is justice?” and then proceed to tell students they’re wrong when they give an answer the teacher doesn’t want. Well, that’s wrong; Socratic questioning is meant to develop the student’s ability to think about a subject, not to test them and catch them when they are wrong or call them on the carpet for the right answer.

Teachers looking for the right answer encourage students to focus on pleasing the teacher, not on thinking for himself or herself. But the truly excellent teacher aims at helping students learn how to find the right answer themselves.

Students often view school as the place to feed back the answer the teacher wants to hear, not learn new knowledge in order to figure out the truth with their own powers. Teachers skillfully using Socratic Practice often have to spend time rehabilitating students after a lifetime of being told what to learn, what is the “right” answer—or that any answer is right, with no standard of truth.

Consequently, in the beginning of a program using Socratic Practice, the teacher (often called “tutor,” i.e. guide to learning) must work especially hard to shape the learning environment. Just as in any Montessori school, the prepared environment is a key to success in developing the thriving, independent-minded learner.

For the college level, these are the conditions that foster good discussion and develop excellent reasoning and social skills, as well as a strong sense of autonomy:

Physically, the environment must be quiet. All participants are required to respect the appointed time of discussion, with no phone calls, text messages, etc. They sit in a circle facing each other. Attention must be on the discussion, and all participants are expected to have read the assigned text.

Psychologically, the tutor shapes the environment by many principles. He or she requires a formal politeness among discussants, to encourage rational, civil discourse. Sometimes participants must address each other by title and last name (e.g., Ms. Smith and Mr. Murphy).

The tutor picks a text or work that has rich meaning and is well-made. It is most often a text but can be other things such as a painting, sculpture, building, or experiment. The Great Books classics are often used because they embody “The best that has been thought and said” and because they powerfully combine ideas and knowledge from multiple domains, aiding the work of integration. The right piece elicits many interesting thoughts and questions in the participants’ minds. This becomes the meat to explore in the discussion. The goal of the discussion is to reason together about the material, in order for each person to arrive at his or her own, independent judgment about the piece and the ideas and values discussed. Participants think together to think independently. The tutor guides the discussion by evidence-based rules as follows:

Ask questions of the text and each other.
Cite the text to give evidence for your ideas and interpretations.
Try to make connections between the ideas in the text and what other participants say, and your life.
Each person takes responsibility for his or her own learning and for the quality of the conversation; if you would like to change the direction of a discussion, please feel free to ask the other participants if they are okay with that; then if they are, proceed.
Treat the other participants respectfully.
References to material outside of the text must be cogently linked to the text and discussion at hand, and explained in general principle, comprehensible to general reasoning. References dependent on knowledge not available to every participant are not considered cogent to the discussion.
Be concise.
In the discussion, reason is the only authority. This means no person is the authority on the text, but each must use logic and facts to support their opinions.

Unless a student starts the discussion, the tutor leads off with a thoughtful question about the reading—or often a factual question if the material is mathematical or scientific. The tutor always finds a question to which he or she genuinely wants to know the answer. This initiates a real inquiry. Students recognize leading questions requiring prescribed answers—which cuts off the student’s own thinking.

Learning to reason objectively about complex material requires the willingness to entertain possibly incorrect ideas in order to examine them fully, to measure them against the facts, and to analyze their rational foundation.

The tutor skillfully encourages questions and comments evincing an earnest search for truth, while discouraging or disallowing talk in which the student is proving his knowledge or disingenuous agreement with the tutor.

For example, during a seminar on Aristotle’s Politics, the tutor might deflect a student who says “Richard McKeon says that Aristotle’s politics…” from lecturing about these details by a question such as “What does Aristotle say that makes you think that is true?” The tutor aims to bring the discussion back to the facts of the text studied, plus the student’s own experience and reasoning. In order for the discussion to be excellent, all participants should be able to judge the facts discussed for themselves, firsthand. If a participant brings up a lot of facts and claims he alone knows, how can anyone else examine those claims firsthand? Instead, the tutor encourages observations of the facts, generalizations closely derived from the facts, and conclusions reasoned from the facts of the work the entire class is studying together. Any outside material must be explained in general terms, understandable to general reasoning.

The tutor must walk a fine line, skillfully encouraging excellent reasoning while being careful not to discourage students from talking because they might have errors in their arguments. If a student is too fearful of looking foolish or feeling humiliated when caught in an error, he or she won’t explore complex ideas thoroughly enough to find out if they are true.

To help students be more consciously aware of how to reason well, both inductively (e.g., how to make an accurate generalization) and deductively (e.g., how to derive a conclusion from already-given facts and ideas) the tutor gives students extra, explicit instruction in reasoning skills and logic. Sessions on logical fallacies especially valuable in sharpening students’ awareness of reasoning’s pitfalls.

When Socratic Practice is implemented well, the group engages in excellent objective reasoning, learning from each other because each person brings their understanding and thoughtful interpretation of what the text and its implications mean. The tutor doesn’t aim at a “right interpretation,” yet it is common to see well-functioning groups reasoning together arrive at solid conclusions, conclusions an expert would reach, about the meaning of very difficult texts, whether Plato’s Meno, Einstein’s Relativity, or Mises’ Human Action.

An excellent seminar leader asks intriguing, deep questions respectfully, keeps discussion on important topics but lets students diverge from the set topic if it means exploring something important and meaningful to them. Clearly, much art and judgment is involved, which is why extensive training is necessary.

To be a good listener, a teacher must be a careful observer. As a scientist, Maria Montessori, incorporated the scientific method into her teacher-training program. She urged her teachers to spend time every day sitting back and watching the students work, interact with each other and deal with problems. In this way, teachers learn a great deal about each student, their interests, abilities and difficulties, thus enabling the teacher to guide him or her well. Observe, empathize, respect—these are the basics of good teaching.

The only way teachers can learn these methods is by intensive questioning and self-reflective experience. Guidance by mentors with great knowledge and skill, plus plenty of experience, helps. Such training should be a key component of every teacher’s education—yet few university professors get any training in teaching at all. Good professors know their area of expertise, from philosophy to physics. But whether they know the subject of human learning and development is idiosyncratic.

The evidence that the methods of Socratic Practice, consistently applied, increases cognitive skills is strong. Our advisor, Michael Strong, extensively discusses these methods in The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice.

Strong established remarkable programs in four high schools around the country. He measured program outcomes with the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal, a cognitive skills test correlated with performance on intelligence tests and college entrance exams such as the SAT and ACT. Administering this instrument before, during and after a year at school, he found cognitive skill gains ranging, for example, from 30% to 84%. The mean score of one school’s 9th grade group moved from below the national 9th grade mean to above the 12th grade mean in one year, while one inner city student who scored at the 1st percentile on the initial test, scored at the 85^th percentile by the end of four months. While more work is needed to fully validate his results, they were consistent from school to school. Any teacher would be proud to so deeply help students learn to think well.

Professor John Tomasi implemented this method in his hugely successful special program, The Political Theory Project at Brown University. He says: “Kids are sick and tired of being told what to think. They want to make up their own minds. They want to be challenged.” The kind of work done through Socratic Practice discussions of the Great Books does exactly that.

Scott Buchanan, architect of the Great Books program at St. John’s College, voiced the ultimate goal: “Have you allowed adverse evidence to pile up and force you to conclude that you are not mathematical, not linguistic, not poetic, not scientific, not philosophical? If you have allowed this to happen, you have arbitrarily imposed limits on your intellectual freedom, and you have smothered the fires from which all other freedoms arise.”

The Delicacy of the Young Spirit

Achievement and success require the vision of the possible and the ability to weather the actual.

To navigate the stormy waters of life, the difficulties, the disappointments, the setbacks and the failures, students need cognitive skills and plenty of encouragement and emotional fuel. They need great examples of other human beings who have successfully dealt with many difficulties.

As the scientific findings of Positive Psychology have recently identified, knowledge and cognitive skills integrate with emotional habits and character traits. Healthy, successful, happy people tend to have cognitive habits that deeply influence their emotional tone in a positive direction.

Models are particularly important as they provide concrete experience and A higher education program should always include instruction about human achievement and what makes it possible, both existentially and psychologically. Further, the teachers should implement his or her best attributes:

commitment to clearly knowing what he or she knows and doesn’t know (the first step on the path of objectivity);
passion for learning new material and integrating it with other knowledge;
commitment to modeling the highest virtues of the free person, including honesty, responsibility and respect for the rights of others;
commitment to the restless pursuit of personal improvement and growth;
willingness to submit to careful investigation and evaluation in order to improve.

Through embodying these virtues, the teachers inspire students to the highest ends of the free man and woman.

To prepare a young person for life as a free, autonomous individual, capable of making his or her own choices and putting them into action, an excellent curriculum should endeavor to educate the student in the full range of ideas, history, and knowledge. This means using the works of the Classics as well as modern science, and significant modern works, which should include the usually neglected works of the liberty movement. The curriculum should include the study of philosophy as the basis of all knowledge and self-understanding, but also take into consideration findings in scientific psychology and neuroscience. And the teachers and other staff should be available to help students in many aspects of their lives.

This way, students come away from their education armed with inspiring and invigorating knowledge, skills, experiences, and habits that help them achieve their goals.

Published originally at TheSavvyStreet.com, Spring 2015

O livre mercado pode ser salvo sem Ayn Rand?

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A importância de Ayn Rand para o movimento Montessori

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Capitalismo: o protetor da menor minoria da Terra

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Principios de discusión para una conversación de seminario de The Great Connections

Una discusión colaborativa guiada

Empieza “con una pregunta, los participantes deben tener el texto asignado en sus mentes y en la mesa en frente de ellos, las alocuciones deben ser educadas y receptivas, todos deben participar y respaldar sus opiniones razonadamente. El resto se desarrolla como conversaciones vivas”. Paráfrasis de Michael Strong de la descripción de un seminario de Eva Brann, tutora famosa de St. John’s College.

El objetivo de la discusión es que razonemos juntos sobre el material, con el fin de que llegues a tus juicios independientes propios. Que pensemos juntos claramente para que pensemos independientemente. El instructor es un guía/moderador de la discusión, no el profesor con las respuestas. Tú determinarás tus propias respuestas por ti mismo y con los otros participantes.

Lee el texto antes del seminario y busca preguntas que tengas sobre su significado; trae esas preguntas contigo a la discusión.
Durante la discusión, haz tus preguntas sobre el texto, buscando involucrar el razonamiento de los otros participantes sobre tus preguntas, y hazles preguntas a los participantes.
Cita el texto para dar evidencia para tus ideas e interpretaciones.
Trata de hacer conexiones entre las ideas en el texto y lo que otros participantes dicen, y tu vida.
En nuestra discusión, la razón es la única autoridad. Esto significa que ninguna persona es la autoridad respecto al texto, sino cada uno debe usar la lógica y los hechos para respaldar su opinión.
Nadie necesita levantar las manos para hablar; en vez, presta atención a si otros quieren hablar, y anima a participantes callados para escuchar sus ideas; trata a los otros participantes respetuosamente.
Referencias a material fuera del texto deben estar lógicamente relacionadas al texto y a la discusión presente, y explicadas en principios generales, comprensibles a razonamiento general. Las referencias que dependen en conocimiento que no está disponible a todos los participantes son consideradas fuera del contexto de la discusión porque las demás personas no lo pueden verificar.
Se conciso; tenemos tiempo limitado y material difícil.
Cada persona debe asumir responsabilidad por su propio aprendizaje y por la calidad de la conversación; si quieres cambiar la dirección de una discusión, por favor siéntete en la libertad de preguntarle a otros participantes si están de acuerdo con eso; y si están de acuerdo, procede.
Al final de la conversación, tendremos una conversación de retroalimentación autorreflexiva, es decir, discutiremos sobre si seguimos los principios dados, cómo interactuamos entre cada uno, y cómo podemos mejorar nuestra discusión en la próxima sesión.

Lee el texto.

Plantea preguntas.

Cita el texto.

Conecta a la discusión.

La única autoridad es la razón.

Se respetuoso.

Busca ser conciso.

No demasiadas referencias externas.

Asume responsabilidad.

Retroalimentación autorreflexiva.

Sobre seminarios socráticos

Este tipo de discusión es a menudo llamado un “Seminario socrático”. Sin embargo, ese término es usado de muchas formas. La gente a menudo piensa que es una discusión en la que el profesor hace una pregunta difícil, y espera para arrinconar con interrogaciones a la primera persona que se atreve a responder. Tú puedes ver este tipo de comportamiento en la vieja serie de televisión “The Paper Chase” sobre estudios de derecho.

Espero que puedas ver, a partir de nuestros principios, que a lo que nos referimos es muy diferente a eso. Más bien, nuestro objetivo es crear un ambiente de conversación en el que todos se sienten cómodos participando, en el que fomentamos el razonamiento cuidadoso y solícito, y la soberanía de cada mente es respetada. El profesor, en un marco así, es el moderador de la discusión, y un estudiante experto que modela cómo entendemos el material e interactuamos con los demás participantes.

Diez preguntas esenciales para que te preguntes cuando estás leyendo un texto o evaluando una obra:

¿Cuáles son las cuestiones y las conclusiones?
¿Cuáles son las razones que el autor provee para sus cuestiones o conclusiones?
¿Qué preguntas o frases son ambiguas?
¿Qué asume el autor que conoces a partir de las descripciones que presenta?
¿Qué valores asume el autor que son buenos/verdaderos?
¿Hay falacias en el razonamiento presentado?
¿Cuál es la evidencia y cuán buena es?
¿Presenta el autor, o puedes pensar sobre otras causas que explican lo expuesto diferentes a las que se presentan?
¿Son las estadísticas confusas? ¿Cómo determinamos eso?
¿Qué información importante se omite?
¿Qué conclusiones razonables son posibles?

Adaptado de Asking the Right Questions de M. Neil Browne y Stuart M. Keeley

Sugerencias de Ayn Rand, “Detección filosófica”, Filosofía: ¿Quién la necesita?

“Debes darle a las palabras significados claros y específicos; o sea, debes ser capaz de identificar sus referentes en la realidad…. Todas las estafas filosóficas cuentan con que tú uses palabras como vagas aproximaciones”.

No debes tomar un aforismo – ni ninguna afirmación abstracta – como si fuese aproximada. Tómala literalmente…acéptalo; momentáneamente. Plantéate a ti mismo: “Si yo aceptase esto como siendo verdad, ¿qué seguiría después?”. Tomarse las ideas en serio significa que estás dispuesto a vivir por cualquier idea que aceptes como verdadera, que estás dispuesto a practicarla. Pregúntate a ti mismo: ¿estarías dispuesto y serías capaz de actuar diaria y consistentemente basado en esa idea?”

“Extrospección de la realidad: “¿Qué sé?” y “¿Cómo lo sé?”

“Introspección: “¿Qué siento?” y “¿Por qué lo siento?” (Nota: ¡Esta es la parte difícil!).

“Debes tener una devoción despiadadamente honesta a la introspección – a la identificación conceptual de tus estados internos”.

Nota: A veces toma tiempo y observación cuidadosa de uno mismo, de lo que hay en la mente de uno cuando uno tiene una emoción, identificar la emoción y sus causas. Y a veces, el subconsciente de uno ha integrado algunas identificaciones importantes que resultan en una sensación antes de que uno es capaza de explicar conscientemente las conclusiones; ¡esa es a menudo la historia del pensamiento creativo!

Autora del documento original: Marsha Familaro Enright (The Great Connections, Chicago, IL)

Traducción al español: Nixon Sucuc