Education and Liberty

A lot is being said about torture recently—but not enough.

It is terrifying that so many are unconcerned about arrests without Habeas Corpus, military prisons, and torture. These activities don’t bring anyone more security.  In fact, they bring about a false sense of security while simultaneously making life more systematically dangerous for all.

Arrest without Habeas Corpus is arrest without charge, without reasonable evidence for being detained, without having a definite, reasonable time set for a trial, without being able to confront the witnesses and evidence held against you, and without the principle that we should be treated as innocent until we are proven guilty.  Without the principle of Habeas Corpus, innocent people can be detained indefinitely.  Anyone can be locked away forever, for any reason without anyone else ever knowing about it.  Should this give us comfort?

Men are not angels.  They are neither unconditionally kind nor omniscient.  When we are treated as guilty before we are proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, we are all at risk from the suspicion, paranoia, prejudice or even malice of those in control of the coercive apparatus of government.

The purpose of legal procedure is to protect the innocent from omnipotent government and to discover, at least beyond a reasonable doubt, what the truth of the matter is at hand.

In the modern world, military personnel are purposefully trained to have no sympathetic sentiments for the “enemy” and to follow the orders of authority uncritically. In military prisons, where there aren’t strict procedures to determine guilt or innocence, and where everyone is presumed guilty, what mercy is there for anyone?  Human beings are objectified.  People are no longer seen as individuals but as objects, part of a collective—“the enemy”.  You don’t have to treat objects like people.

It is not surprising what has happened at Abu Ghraib and Guantanimo Bay.

Torture is complete nonsense.  Torture is defended as a way of obtaining information to make us safe.  But the information gained from torture is worse than unreliable.  People will say what they need to say to stop the pain and fear of torture.  I say that information gained from torture is worse than unreliable because, not only is the information gained suspect, but leading questions of interrogators either through prejudice (pre-judgment), or malice will determine the content of the responses of the victims.  Torture does not tend to reveal truth, it tends to confirm the preconceptions of interrogators, interrogators who already think they know you’re guilty.

Imagine if police officers could compel testimony from suspects.  We call them suspects because they are not yet convicts!  Police suspect many more people than actually commit crimes.  Sometimes they probably have strong hunches about who is guilty.  But if they weren’t constrained by tough rules of gathering evidence and making a case against someone to an impartial judge, they would stop at their hunches.  They could compel those they suspected of crimes to plead guilty to avoid pain.

This reasoning is embodied in our constitution in the protection in the 5^th Amendment to the Constitution of the United which states: “[no person] shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…”  The law could not be clearer than that.

We need to understand the principles of liberty and the principles of respectful communication in order to have security and in order for truth and justice to be served.

This video of Jesse Ventura illustrates these ideas very well:

“No social problem is as universal as the oppression of the child.” ~Maria Montessori

I recently returned from my first North American Montessori Teachers Association Meeting, held in Seattle, WA. What I learned there absolutely reaffirmed that education is the best way, certainly the best voluntary way, to support liberty. I am not talking about college courses and white papers churned out by think tanks (I love you think tanks, you know I do!). We have to start earlier, we have to cultivate a culture that educates about the ideas of freedom from the beginning, not one that merely tries to change minds later.

I had the opportunity to spend time with the lovely Marsha Enright of the Reason Individualism and Freedom Institute, while at the conference. A long time Montessorian who also is a true lover of liberty and the founder of the new College of the United States, whose vision is: “To create the global leaders of tomorrow who will fulfill the vision of our Founding Fathers by becoming successful men and women of principle and action, capable of spreading the benefits of reason, individualism and the bounty of liberty worldwide through their work and their example. “

We spoke about how the Montessori Method supports the development of the child in a way that generates a love of liberty, a respect for others individuality and a recognition of the value of their own. It is such an amazingly thorough pedagogy, and absolutely goes against the cookie-cutter mentality of compulsory education.

“We must, therefore, quit our roles as jailers and instead take care to prepare an environment in which we do as little as possible to exhaust the child with our surveillance and instruction.” ~Maria Montessori

Each Montessori Guide is a gentle hand that helps to cultivate an environment (sort of like law is supposed to be) that allows each child to find their strengths, at their own pace, in a way that encourages a love of learning and therefore a love of thinking.

Isn’t that amazing? An education that in its very principles supports the thing I value the most: freedom, especially the freedom of children!

Below is a song by the elementary students of Countryside Montessori School in Northbrook, Illinois It is an excerpt of their opera, “On the Road to Freedom”

They are reciting the words on the Statue of Liberty:

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Maria Montessori writes the following in “To Educate the Human Potential”:

“How can the mind of a growing individual continue to be interested if all our teaching be around one particular subject of limited scope, and is confined to the transmission of such small details of knowledge as he is able to memorize? How can we force the child to be interested when interest can only arise from within? It is only duty and fatigue which can be induced from without, never interest! That point must be very clear” (6)

“knowledge can be best given where there is eagerness to learn” (3)

The end of the eductionist “is the child’s spontaneous interest and application” (16)

“The child should love everything that he learns, for his mental and emotional growths are linked. Whatever is presented to him must be beautiful and clear, striking the imagination. Once this love has been kindled, all problems confronting the educationist will disappear” (17)

Doesn’t the fact that interest, eagerness and knowledge cannot be forced in from the outside require us to understand the child? Not only the general needs and tendencies of any age group, but the interests, needs and tendencies of each particular child we seek to guide? If so, this would mean that a classroom cannot be centrally planned!