We're trying something new this month! Today's episode is about youth liberation, and Elysha, Nate, and Tom discuss Emma Goldman's The Child and Its Enemies. Check out our website: https://www.worksintheorypodcast.com Come by and say hello! Twitter: @workstheorypod Instagram: works.in.theory Produced & edited by Allyson https://www.forestfreeter.com Theme song by http://woulg.com/ Transcript: Works in Theory - Theory Bites - The Child And Its Enemies [00:00:00] ELYSHA: Hello, and welcome back to Works In Theory Podcast, we've got a new section that we're trying out on the show this week. We're calling Theory Bites because it bites, but they're also small. We're going to be doing shorter essays and articles rather than entire books to try and give you a little bit more variety and us a little bit more variety in the show that we're putting on. So, we're hoping that these theory bites can be enjoyed on their own or as part of a well-rounded meal with some of the longer Works In Theory episodes. As usual, I'm Elysha and I'm here with Nate and with Tom. TOM: Hello! ELYSHA: And today our first Theory Bite is on an essay by Emma Goldman called The Child And Its Enemies. TOM: Yeah, this is written in 1906. And I thought it was really good. It had a lot of really just well-written like the language that Goldman uses. You can tell that Goldman writes, [00:01:00] right? It's not It's not a strictly, in service of getting a point across, but it's done really well. NATE: Yeah, definitely. I don't know if it's just people wrote better back in like the 19th century or something, or if she's in particular a good writer, but yeah, it was really a joy to read. It makes me look forward to reading more Emma Goldman stuff. ELYSHA: I think there are plenty of writers who wouldn't be looked at with such praise by at least me from the early 1900s. So I think Emma Goldman is a great writer. NATE: So the piece again is called The Child And Its Enemies. This is going to be the first of a couple of pieces we're going to read on the general topic of youth liberation and very early on, she's got a quote that sort of like sums up her thesis in this she says: "Is the child to be considered as an individuality or as an object to be molded, according to the whims and fancies of those around This seems to me to be the most important question to be answered by parents and educators." And so that's sort of, where she's going to be going with [00:02:00] this. The idea is she's obviously going to come down on the side that like children are human beings. They have, you know, their own intrinsic drives. They have their own personhood and autonomy and a lot of the institutions of our society, especially the school try to. Turn the child into an object don't they don't treat the child as a person, but as a commodity or again, an object. ELYSHA: And not just any object, but one who needs to fit within the restraints and respectability of that social era and society. NATE: That's right. She says, "Every institution of our day, the family, the state, or moral codes sees in every strong, beautiful, uncompromising personality, a deadly enemy." ELYSHA: Yeah, that's a powerful line for sure. Bringing back the idea that education isn't benign. It's not just about teaching basic skills like reading or math or whatever else you [00:03:00] learn in school. It's a very critical piece of our like formation as young people and our experiences in school. The way that these skills are presented, the way that like our aptitudes or whatever are measured or like the way that we're treated in school makes a big difference. Probably in how the rest of our life goes. TOM: Yeah, there's a lot of you know, talk from people about children and their future. And like, this is when people are molded and when they're most like when people get their most I guess are instilled with ideas. Right? But we don't really talk about that we structure things in a way that really puts people in a certain direction of, obeying and not questioning which again, every time I say these kinds of things, I feel like I become the conspiracy theorist, but it's, I mean, it seems very obvious like that you know, [00:04:00] school is, is largely not about trying to figure things out. It's about trying to memorize and regurgitate what other people have figured out. Whether or not that's true for all of those things is why now there's a big debate about critical race theory because the right is, is very upset. I'm going way, way, tangent. This is nothing to do with 1906. ELYSHA: It doesn't have to, we don't live in 1906. We're looking at this through 2021. In fact. To just give ourselves away. Cause I have no idea when this is actually going to be released. It is July 11th, 2021. Kind of tying on into that, because the idea that school is where we go as young people and young people on the whole are very, very curious and excited about the world and like interested in making their mark on the world or with the world. And the quote here is: "...when with [00:05:00] large wondering innocent eyes, the child wishes to behold the wonders of the world about it in the schools and in the family life and whatever quickly lock the windows and doors and keep the delicate human plant in a hot house atmosphere where it can neither breathe nor grow freely." NATE: This is just turning into a string of quotes, but at the risk of that, here's one more: "...every effort is being made to cramp human emotion and originality of thought in the individual into a straight-jacket from its earliest infancy; or to shape every human being according to one pattern; not into a well-rounded individuality, but into a patient work slave, professional automaton, tax-paying citizen, or righteous moralist." And so sort of what all of this is getting at is this idea that the school was being used to take, like, what is, this sort of innate like Elysha, you were talking about the innate curiosity, like originality like self-directed learning of a child and [00:06:00] squelch it and put it into a certain mold. Create, you know, citizens of a capitalist state, basically. ELYSHA: Yeah. And it's kind of like Tom was saying, it makes me feel like a weirdo conspiracy theorist sometimes too, because it is just like, school is just so foundational to the way that we're brought into the world. You are a very young age and you go there for many hours a day and reading pieces like this, that really speak to the idea that the state and those who write the curricula, they're looking to. Give folks the skills that will allow them to participate in society in the way that is like clean and easy and simple and to their whims. They want you to be able to do basic math or be literate and then go on to, I mean, in our recent sort of generation, we go onto more education and more education [00:07:00] because that's all of a sudden, a very big deal, but more in the era that our piece is written in education wasn't a K-12 sort of thing that everyone did for up until you're 18 or whatever it is, but you would get the education that is mandated and then go off and get a job or have more kids and just live within this like tightly curated and restrained... NATE: Yea, absolutely. TOM: This piece sort of goes in all directions. It kind of hits every place. Especially I thought the railing against leftist, like railing against radical parents. Like here it says: "Radical parents though emancipated from the belief of ownership and the human soul still cling tenaciously to the notion that they own the child, that they have the right to exercise their authority over it. So they set out to mold and form the child, according to their own conception of what is right and wrong, forcing their ideas upon it with the same [00:08:00] vehemence that the average Catholic parent uses." There's a whole kind of area at the end where Goldman talks about you know, you're basically doing the same thing that everyone's doing, but you know, the problems that you see in other people you're exhibiting them yourself. Your child can regurgitate and they know the names of radical leftists or whatever. That doesn't mean that they agree with it. And it doesn't mean that they're not going to just, you know, become reactionary basically later because you have basically forced them to believe a thing. And I, I thought that was a really good call out. NATE: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And so like taking a step back for a second, she is like, you know, the piece is called The Child And Its Enemies. It's not called the child in school. And so part of what she's talking about is that it's not just the school, but even like the family, the family itself is, is acting in this sort of way to not allow the child to develop of its own accord, but to, to mold it in a certain [00:09:00] direction, again, like as if it's an object to be molded, not like living, breathing one of my favorite lines in the whole book she says: "Scriptures tell us that God created Man in his own image, which by no means has proven a success. Parents follow the bad example of their heavenly master. They use every effort to shape and mold the child, according to their image. They tenaciously cling to the idea that the child is merely part of themselves, an idea, as false as it is injurious." We hear that and we're like, oh Yeah. you know, I, I know for my part, at least my parents were Catholic and obviously they tried to raise me to believe in Catholicism and things like that. But you know, she wants to make sure that we're not just thinking, this is an aspect of like conservative or religious parents, but that, you know, just parents of any stripe, including radicals, who, by trying to force their child to be a radical, they're doing the exact same thing. Even if we might believe it's in a better direction or something. ELYSHA: I feel like I can throw back to our Dewey episode because that
