Friday, March 30, 2012

The Dangerous Child Curricula: Part VIII

What makes a child dangerous? A dangerous child is disruptive, in the same sense that a breakthrough or innovative technology is disruptive. Disruptive technologies and dangerous children both affect and change the world in which they exist.

But disruptive technologies are developed by inventors and engineers, whereas dangerous children are created by themselves. If a child cannot teach himself to be dangerous, there is no way that anyone else can do so. You can get an inkling of this idea from Art Robinson, PhD, who homeschooled his six children on his own, after the tragic death of his wife.
Learning is not a team sport. Learning is an activity that involves solely the student and the knowledge. Everything or everyone else that may become involved in this process is essentially superfluous—and is potentially harmful as a distraction from the fundamental process.

In the adult world this is, of course, self-evident. Adults ordinarily do not have special teaching aids and dedicated teachers available to hold their hands when they need to acquire new knowledge. Usually, they have only books. When the knowledge comes directly from other repositories such as computers, people, or other sources, that knowledge is seldom tailored for spoon-feeding to an unprepared mind.

...Consider, for example, the teaching of math and science. Many homeschools use Saxon Math. Although produced with teachers and classrooms in mind, this series of math books is so well-written that it can be mastered by most students entirely on their own without any teacher intervention whatever. This self-mastery usually does not happen automatically, but it can be learned by almost any student with correct study rules and a good study environment.

While the subject matter, can be mastered with or without a teacher, the student who masters it without a teacher learns something more. He learns to teach himself. Then, when he continues into physics, chemistry, and biology— which are studied in their own special language, the language of mathematics—he is able to teach these subjects to himself regardless of whether or not a teacher with the necessary specialized knowledge is present. Also, he is able to make use of much higher-quality texts – texts written for adults.

Besides the great advantage of developing good study habits and thinking ability, self-teaching also has immediate practical advantages. Many children should be able, through Advanced Placement examinations, to skip over one or more years of college. The great saving in time and expense from this is self-evident. These and other comparable accomplishments await most children who learn to self-teach and then apply this skill to their home education.

Even children of lesser ability can, by means of self-teaching and good study habits, achieve far more than they otherwise would have accomplished by the more ordinary techniques. _Teach Them to Teach Themselves, Art Robinson
Much more at the link.

It is clear that the world will not adapt itself to the child, and children should not be given the impression that it would or should do. Instead, children should be given the tools for self-teaching from the earliest age, along with a number of basic options and directions of self study -- including an important core of learning which makes most other learning possible.

When a child is liberated to teach himself in this manner -- which includes making sure the child has good study habits from an early age and sticks to them -- it is obvious that the child is indeed creating himself, and making himself dangerously self-reliant.

There is much more to childhood development than book learning of course. The six Robinson children were raised by a widowed father on his ranch, and each had definite responsibilities.
...each one of them, spontaneously and without suggestion or demand from me, took over an essential aspect of our farm and personal lives. They did all work with the cattle and sheep, they did all laundry, cooking, and housework, and they were working beside me as Laurelee used to do in the scientific research and civil defense work that is our ministry and our professional life.One by one, my tasks just disappeared as the children assumed them.

In general, they preferred to work independently. They tended not to share tasks and did not divided them as one might expect. For example, at 11 years old Joshua was the cook – and already a better cook then than I. Zachary did all work with the cattle (about 30) and the chickens; Arynne cared for the sheep (about 100); Noah was in charge of all farm and laboratory repairs; and Bethany did the washing and taught Matthew to read. Some tasks were shared such as house cleaning, sheep shearing, and watching over Matthew.

This sort of extracurricular work is especially valuable as reinforcement for the home school.

While self confidence can be built somewhat in sports or other “activities”, the self confidence that comes to a child from the knowledge that he is independently carrying on an activity that is essential to the survival of the family is valuable indeed. _How the Robinson Children Fare
Some parents might abuse the budding competence of children and adolescents, using them as unpaid servants. Robinson warns against doing this, explaining that the years of childhood are gone too quickly, and too often the excitement, energy, and trust of youth are fleeting as well.

But children must learn to competently work, produce, and improvise, as well as learn concepts and facts. If learning is not put to use, it tends to be forgotten.

Children first learn to walk in order to walk. They learn to talk so as to get their intent across to the controlling outer world. They learn to ride a bicycle in order to ride, and so on. Children are quite motivated to learn in such circumstances, and the same can be true for a wide range of other situations -- if the opportunity is presented.

Neither Art Robinson nor John David Garcia devised their curricula as a way of making children dangerous. But if the children approach the curricula with the same dedicated abandon with which they learned to walk, talk, or ride a bicycle, they are almost certain to make themselves into very dangerous children indeed.

If they learn to teach themselves such broad and powerful methods of thinking and learning, they will naturally acquire an intellectual self-reliance that makes them an immediate threat to any persons or institutions that seek to control them or use them against their own interests.

That is why the approaches to the dangerous child curricula are so different from the way "education" is administered in government schools. Public education is meant to tame the wild child so as to make him more manipulable by society. That is not necessarily how things turn out, particularly in inner city schools, but certain proportions of delinquent dropouts are certainly a predictable outcome of the government system. As to those who graduate and go to college, the exploding growth of remedial education for new university students speaks for itself.

But don't think that homeschooling is the same thing as the raising of a dangerous child. It is possible to adapt the dangerous child approach to learning even to a child who attends government schools. But it involves a great deal of work, as well as a huge amount of "unlearning" of dysfunctional ideology with which the child is burdened by the public system.

If the child is to make himself truly dangerous, he will choose his own path which is likely to eventually diverge widely from any traditional institutional path of development. Eventually, once the child has developed the momentum to chart his own course and make it stick. Examples: College dropout billionaires

It is not necessary for a dangerous child to become a billionaire in order to shape the environment around him for the better. But it is necessary for him to be self-reliant, and be willing and able to teach himself what he needs to know, in order to move ahead.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Why Should We Raise a Generation of Dangerous Children?

Several correspondents are under the misapprehension that the Dangerous Child movement is intended to somehow save our modern dysfunctional societies from themselves. Perhaps we have given the impression that dangerous children are meant to find their way into leadership positions, and to somehow steer society into more productive directions.

Such a thing might have been possible had it been undertaken a number of decades ago. Unfortunately, the die has been cast -- at least for most of Europe and for the US. Skyrocketing debt and a declining demographic are combining with a widespread popular sentiment of entitlement and a loss of vital skills and skilled occupations.

In other words, even if truly wise and truly dangerous children were to find their way into important leadership positions of societies, they could do very little to correct the downward trajectories or to avert disaster.

The Dangerous Child movement is more about providing foci for building new societies out of societies-in-decline that inevitably find themselves suffering hard times. Construction, not destruction, is the intent of the movement. But construction that occurs in the context of a surrounding society that has caused its own inexorable decline.

Being a dangerous child is partially a state of mind -- sceptical of authority without being cynical or nihilistic. But it is also a state of preparation and a particular ordering of assets and skills. It is the most important quiet trend that we can conceive of at this time, for western societies that are in decline.

Some US cable networks are beginning to focus on "prepper" groups, families, and individuals. It is an interesting sociological trend, which has been around at least since the Jimmy Carter presidency. But the prepper movement doesn't hold a candle to the dangerous child movement, in terms of importance to the future.

US political movements which are intended to push back government bloat, excessive spending, and excessive regulatory and tax burden on US business and freedom, are very important. Groups such as the Tea Party movement, the libertarian movement, and other groups who attempt to hold back government tyranny, should do their utmost to achieve their goals. Optimism is clearly better than pessimism, in terms of a successful outcome.

Still, at least a few must make provision against a catastrophic outcome. In such a case, we will need as many dangerous children as we can get.

Friday, March 09, 2012

The Dangerous Child Curricula: Part VII

The early childhood curriculum which has been excerpted over the past several postings was not developed in a vacuum. It was developed as an important part of an overall approach to the transformation of modern western society into a more ethical and creative society. Here are some excerpts from chapter 6, "An Educational Alternative" to provide a larger perspective into the project:
The curriculum is one that can be started by young children and continued into old age without being exhausted. A person wishing to maximize creativity in the shortest possible time would follow the curriculum approximately in the order given; but anyone should be able to take many different paths within this curriculum, including specializing at any time. All students would be counseled on the consequences of their actions, but encouraged to follow their instincts by doing what feels right for them without fear of making a wrong choice.

The objective is to make the totality of human knowledge readily and easily available to as many persons as possible in such a way that, if they wish it, they are constantly maximizing their rate of growth in creativity relative to their present intellectual and ethical potential. In order to do this we plot an optimal course through the curriculum for all octets or other groupings of students and let them modify the courses according to their own personal inclinations. We also make the feedback on their progress and that of other students readily available to them whenever they wish it, but on a private basis so that any particular student's progress is known only to the student and his/her counselors. All other data is in statistical summaries and protects the anonymity of each student.

The expectation is that, under this system, learning and creativity will be seen as among the most joyful of human experiences. Students will learn to play the Game of Life for the joy it brings--without fear of punishment or expectation of extrinsic rewards. If their studies are disassociated from external reward and punishment and all students are respected for whatever choices they make, the students will optimize the curriculum for themselves. The essential requirements are to have the totality of human knowledge available and accessible at all times without extrinsic rewards or punishments associated with it. This may be done as follows:

We divide the totality of human knowledge into three primary areas, or dimensions, because human beings normally perceive the integrated whole of the cosmos as three distinct types of phenomena. These are the physical, the biological, and the psychosocial. There are many levels of knowledge within each of these dimensions that are normally associated within our archaeological and cultural history. Indeed, what integrates the three dimensions into a whole is the evolutionary perspective (as in the first four chapters) by which we see human history as a continuation of our biological evolution and biological evolution as a continuation of material evolution. Therefore, at each level the student is presented with the three distinct areas of study--plus a fourth discipline, which is an ethical evolutionary-historical-artistic integration of the first three.

Art integrates knowledge at the unconscious level. The entire program integrates knowledge by having ontogeny recapitulate phylogeny at the psychosocial level. Students learn in an order, context, and manner similar to that in which the human race learned the same material and are given an opportunity to rediscover this knowledge. Everything they learn is always related to everything they know in a meaningful, practical way. _Educational Alternative _ Chapter 6 of Creative Transformation
More from John David Garcia's early childhood curriculum:
Physical Biological
Avg.
Level
Avg.
Age
Physical Theory Physical Practice Biological Theory Biological Practice
9.00 11.00 Begin advanced calculus
and partial differential
equations; detailed study
of the work of Lagrange
and Euler, the calculus of
variations from Newton to
Lagrange, elementary
probability theory from
Pascal to Cauchy and
LaPlace; applications in
optics, astronomy, theory
of heat
Begin construction of
simple steam engine,
making from scratch, doing
all machining of parts by
treddle-driven lathes and
water and windmill power;
check the detailed
mathematical models
against astronomical
observations
Conclusion of the study of
human anatomy and
embryology
Conclusion of dissections
and microscopic
observations; the general
functioning of the human
body has been observed
9.25 11.25 Continue work of previous
quarter; detailed theory of
steam engine, the work of
Lavoisier, Priestley, and
Dalton
Continue above project,
switching to electrical
machinery; do early
experiments in electricity
by Gauss, Coulomb,
Amp^ere, and Volta; the
atomic model of chemistry
and experiments
Begin study of animal
physiology and describe
biochemistry through mid
19th century; repeat
experiments of Helmholtz
in biophysics
Experiments in basic
physiology showing how
human body consumes
oxygen and produces
carbon dioxide; human
body as a heat engine
9.50 11.50 Continue work in
chemistry; the work of
LaPlace and Carnot, the
laws of thermodynamics,
the experiments of
Faraday; advanced studies
in partial differential
equations; wave mechanics
in optics; begin study of
the works of Gauss
Continue chemistry
experiments; finish work
on steam engine; test
efficiency using Carnot's
concepts; begin repeating
the experiments of Faraday
and empirically derive the
basic laws of electricity
and magnetism, including
Ohm's law
Animal physiology and
biochemistry continued;
the work and life of
Pasteur
Experiments in animal
physiology and
biochemistry continued
9.75 11.75 Maxwell's work on the
wave theory of light and
the derivation of Maxwell's
equations and their
applications; continue
study of Gauss'
mathematics and physics
Electromagnetic motors
and generators,
construction of batteries,
transmission of
electromagnetic waves,
early work of Tesla, the
telegraph and the wireless
constructed
A course in botany and
plant physiology; begin
experiments in plant
genetics after Gregor
Mendel
Study and dissection of
major plant species; field
studies, microscopic
dissection, plant breeding
per Gregor Mendel

Psychosocial Integration
Avg.
Level
Avg.
Age
Psychosocial Theory Pyschosocial Practice Integrative Theory Integrative Practice
9.00 11.00 Detailed analysis of the
American and French
Revolutions; detailed
analysis of the writings of
Jefferson and his
correspondence;
comparisons between
Jefferson, Washington, and
Napoleon; how Napoleon
betrayed the French
Revolution in the pursuit
of personal power; how the
U.S. government betrayed
the Libertarian ethic
Write essays comparing
the ethical course of the
American and French
Revolution; relate the
ethics of Spinoza to these
revolutions; relate to
evolutionary ethics and
show where they went
wrong
Artistic synthesis in the
early work of Goethe and
the music of Beethoven;
ethical synthesis in the
philosophy of Lessing,
Goethe, and Moses
Mendelssohn and their
interpretations of Spinoza
Reorchestrate and perform
Beethoven's Grosse Fugue
for octet; read Goethe's
prophetic poetry; write a
sequel to the Sorcerer's
Apprentice
9.25 11.25 The philosophy of Kant,
biography, The Critique of
Pure Reason and The
Critique of Practical
Reason; compare to
Spinoza; Kant's cosmology
compared to LaPlace;
explain Catholic hostility
Write essays on the
scientific and ethical
implications of Kant's
philosophy; analyze in
terms of the evolutionary
ethic
Artistic synthesis
continued in the work of
Goethe and Beethoven;
Goethe's Sorcerer's
Apprentice and pessimism,
the romantic hope and self-delusion
Produce as a group project
Goethe's Faust and
performance of
Beethoven's Ninth
Symphony for several
octets
9.50 11.50 The philosophy of Hegel--how he could be so wrong
and so influential; Hegel
and the misinterpretation
of Spinoza; Hegel's theory
of history and ethics; Hegel
as the father of Marxism
and Naziism; de
Tocqueville as a visionary
and prophetic historian
Essay explaining Hegel's
influence through present
times; a comparison of
Spinoza and Hegel--how
could Hegel so
misunderstand Spinoza
and deceive himself and
others? Why was de
Tocqueville so accurate in
his predictions?
The romantic poets, Byron,
Shelley, and Wordsworth;
the art of Watteau,
Houdon, David, and
Degas; the music of
Berlioz and Liszt; Wagner
as the musical equivalent
of Hegel
Write epic poetry on a
hopeful future from a
romantic perspective; do a
musical satire on a Wagner
opera; paint a heroic
romantic painting
9.75 11.75 A history of the world
from 1775 to 1910;
development of major
ideas and philosophies,
with particular attention to
USA, Britain, France,
Germany, Japan, and
Russia; basic economics
from Adam Smith to Marx
and Engels
An essay explaining the
Newtonian model and its
influence on the intellectual
history of the world; why
Islam, India, and China
were so far behind, why
Japan was able to catch up
An ethical analysis of
European and American
imperialism; libertarian
and socialistic ethics; the
ethical turmoil of the age
of liberty and social
obligation; read War and
Peace by Tolstoy; the
paintings of Turner and the
Impressionists
Read and analyze Pushkin,
Melville, Dickens, Hugo,
Balzac, Dostoyevski,
Tolstoy, George Eliot;
study the music of Mahler
and perform Das Lied von
der Erde

It is fascinating how well Garcia's "Creative Transformation" approach parallels a number of other transformative ideas and projects being discussed by people who see many current trends in government and society as providing nothing better than a dead end. Example:
  • Become self-sufficient in education, economics, health, defense, and everything else, in this order of priority. Only a fairly large network can become more self-sufficient than a current nation-state.

  • Help other [groups], in your own network first and then in other networks, to achieve the same degree of self-sufficiency through education, trade, and mutual defense agreements.

  • Extend the protection of the self-sufficiency networks in the form of a libertarian society to any person who wishes to join it on equitable terms. Doing this will provide security for all human beings who need it and eventually leave the central government without power, wealth, or a creative population to govern. Remember that both security and insecurity are illusions. Only the Game of Life is real. The central government and its willing subjects, if they are not nurtured by creative persons, will consist entirely of parasites and will eventually collapse--to be replaced by a libertarian society. It is unethical to nurture parasites.

  • Extend the process to other countries through education, trade, and mutual defense until the entire world is a creatively transformed libertarian society on the way to becoming a Moral Society. Never impose your way of life on others by force, but allow them space to be different in their own territory. Human intelligence without human ethics leads inevitably to self-destruction [280]. Similarly, you fight to the death to defend your liberty and that of affiliated octets. It is unethical to tolerate destructive behavior, however strong the culprit. Creativity can only grow through liberty, never through force. Every tyranny is worse than anarchy.
_Creative Transformation Chapter 5
These are clearly dangerous ideas, at least as seen from the viewpoint of the central established order. And yet Garcia's ideas were developed according to a far higher level of ethics than virtually anything one will see in the modern public sphere.

Creativity is dangerous. Transformation is dangerous. But stasis is death. And that is what modern humans are facing in the contemporary synthesis of power structures and societal trends.

Growing dangerous children is not just about chronological age and early childhood development. Remember: It is never too late to have a [dangerous] childhood. (Apologies to Tom Robbins)

Friday, March 02, 2012

The Dangerous Child Curricula: Part VI

In The Underground History of American Education, former teacher John Taylor Gatto exposed the destructive effects of the government school system.
Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents.

...Socrates foresaw if teaching became a formal profession, something like this would happen. Professional interest is served by making what is easy to do seem hard; by subordinating the laity to the priesthood. School is too vital a jobs-project, contract giver and protector of the social order to allow itself to be "re-formed." It has political allies to guard its marches, that’s why reforms come and go without changing much. _Underground History Prologue
In the early days of the USA, children were not subjected to monolithic, factory style government education. They had to learn for themselves, learning by doing.
Young people in America were expected to make something of themselves, not to prepare themselves to fit into a pre-established hierarchy. Every foreign commentator notes the early training in independence, the remarkable precocity of American youth, their assumption of adult responsibility. _JTG Underground History
Things changed, once "civilised education" was enforced upon the unprepared American population. No longer precocious, American youth are infantilised, psychologically neotenised, and made into lifelong incompetent adolescents -- thanks to government schooling and the concomitant withering away of parental oversight.

More from John David Garcia's Early Childhood Curriculum:
Physical Biological
Avg.
Level
Avg.
Age
Physical Theory Physical Practice Biological Theory Biological Practice
8.00 10.00 Continue with study of
analytical geometry; begin
solid analytical geometry
using Cartesian notation;
study the design of clocks,
thermometers, and
astronomical instruments;
a study of Kepler and his
ideas about nature and the
music of the spheres
Continue with mini-cathedral building project;
build full-fledged
observatory with
telescopes, but in spirit of
Tycho Brahe make
observations to deduce
Kepler's laws; take two-week ocean voyage on
sailing ship; discuss how
Europe extended itself
throughout the world in the
16th century
Continue vertebrate
comparative anatomy
through higher mammals
and relate to human
anatomy; show how
embryology of all
vertebrates overlaps at
stages; relate to Greek
evolutionary theories
Dissect and study
vertebrate anatomy,
tissues, and organs; go
through modern
systematics for all major
mammalian orders; study
embryology of related
groups with microscope;
the fetal pig and its full
dissection
8.25 10.25 The early basis of the
scientific revolution,
Francis Bacon's Novum
Organum, Boyle's studies,
Galileo, the inventions of
Leonardo da Vinci, the
notion of experimental
"proof"; finish analytical
geometry and learn
elementary calculus of
variations, the concept of
limit, and early concepts of
calculus to explain
Kepler's laws
Continue observation
project, build improved
clocks, finish sextant,
finish mini-cathedral, study
map making and various
forms of map projections;
set up experiments to test
Boyle's laws, simple gas
laws, experiments to test
circulation of the blood
Human anatomy in detail;
all organs, tissues and
bones, gross structure of
the brain; embryology
using the fetal pig; use
anatomical drawings of da
Vinci and Vesalius, plus
Gray's Anatomy; these
integrated studies will last
a year
Dissect human cadavers,
male and female; observe
tissues, and relate to other
mammals; show similarity
of all organs for all
mammals; note how
different human brain is
8.50 10.50 The Newtonian synthesis;
full study using modern
notation of Principia
Mathematica and the
Opticks; derive Newton's
laws from Kepler's
observations; derive
calculus from the need to
mathematically describe
the laws of motion and
gravity
Begin making windmill
and waterwheel; predict the
orbits of the planets using
Newton's laws and a few
astronomical observations;
predict the eclipses of the
sun by the moon at
different spots of interest
on the earth; repeat
Newton's experiments
showing that light is a
system of particles, and
that white light contains
the spectrum
Continue studies of human
anatomy and embryology
Continue anatomical
dissection and microscopic
studies; learn micro-techniques and make your
own slides
8.75 10.75 Derive the calculus up to
the use of simple
differential equations;
derive the formulas for
optics and the creation of
compound lenses; compare
Newton's and Leibnitz'
approach
Continue work on windmill
and waterwheel; build a
Newtonian reflecting
telescope; built a
chromatically-corrected set
of compound lenses for the
telescope already
constructed; make an
improved microscope
Continue studies of human
anatomy
Continue work of previous
quarter

Psychosocial Integration
Avg.
Level
Avg.
Age
Psychosocial Theory Pyschosocial Practice Integrative Theory Integrative Practice
8.00 10.00 The rise of humanism
leading to the Renaissance
and the Reformation; the
writings of Erasmus,
Luther, and Calvin; the
Council of Trent and the
rise of the Jesuit order;
Giordano Bruno, the
philosophy of Descartes,
and a review of his
contemporaries
Essay on the ethical
implications of the
Reformation; were the
Protestants any less
bureaucratic? mutual
discussion of essays
among the octets; essay on
the ethical implications of
the scientific method and
the new philosophy
The literary synthesis,
Dante's Divina Comedia,
Cervantes' Don Quixote,
Marlowe's Dr. Faustus; the
music of Monteverde and
Palestrina; the art of
Bosch, Leonardo da Vinci,
and Michelangelo
Write an epic poem about
the Christian view of Hell;
write a play about a
modern Don Quixote;
continue study of organ
and harpsichord; compose
and perform music in the
style of Monteverde and
Palestrina
8.25 10.25 Hobbes, Montaigne, and
Spinoza; read Spinoza's
Ethics without analyzing
proofs and note how this is
a huge leap over the
philosophy of Descartes
and is the first totally
rational treatment of ethics
in history
Apply Spinoza's ethics to
solving problems in
practical ethics, politics,
and religion; relate
Spinoza's ethics to
Christianity, Islam, and
Judaism; apply Spinoza's
model to formulating a
model of the universe and
evolution; write an essay
on the meaning of Spinoza
The literary synthesis
continues; read critically
Shakespeare's Romeo and
Juliet, Othello, and
Hamlet; study the music of
Handel; study advanced
musical theory and
composition
Continue study of organ
and harpsichord; build a
harpsichord as a group
project; write a last act to
Hamlet in which Hamlet
lives; play the music of
Handel
8.50 10.50 The philosophical
contemporaries of Spinoza,
Leibnitz, Locke, and Hume
on improving the
understanding; world
history from 1000 AD to
1775
Essay on the hostility to
Spinoza; an ethical
analysis of the lives of
Spinoza and Leibnitz;
essay on why Europe
embraced the scientific
method and modern
philosophy while the rest
of the world did not
Spinoza's ethics,
Christianity, Judaism, and
respect for human rights;
the rise of democratic
ideology; Islam becomes
totally entropic;
conservative belief systems
in the rest of the world;
European predation
Group project to perform
St. Matthew or St. John
Passion of Bach; all learn
to play the Musical
Offering, the Art of the
Fugue, in an octet; each
octet does its own
orchestration for the Art of
the Fugue
8.75 10.75 Human rights and 18th
century philosophy;
Voltaire, Rousseau,
Diderot, and the
Encyclopedists; the
American Revolution; the
philosophy and writings of
Thomas Jefferson, the
social contract, and the
Federalist Papers
Essay on Rousseau and
irrationalism; essay on the
libertarian ideal and the
democratic compromise;
essay on the U.S. founding
fathers allowing slavery to
continue--was losing the
revolution and hanging a
better alternative? Write
scenario on what would
have happened if there had
not been tolerance of
slavery
The artistic synthesis
continues; further study of
the Art of the Fugue and
the music of Mozart; the
pessimistic writings of
Jonathan Swift, a tragic
interpretation of the
democratic experiment
Compose and perform a
conclusion to the Art of the
Fugue; perform as a group
project one Mozart opera
of students' choice

Parents need to allow the child space, but at the same time need to carefully monitor the child's progress. The child should be allowed to take risks, to take on responsibilities, and to pursue rewards.

These are dangerous concepts, and should the powers-that-be ever suspect that significant numbers of children would be raised to be truly dangerous to the status quo, the reaction would be furious, and likely violent.