I sent my children to a small private school that followed the âdemocratic educationâ philosophy â known in my distant childhood as âfree-schoolingâ. Learning is entirely self-directed: children decide what they want to learn and when; teachers help them find the resources they need to do the learning they want to do.
Over and over I heard âyeah, thatâs great, as long as you donât want them to get into universityâ or âright â so you just throw the state graduation requirements out the windowâ or (most relevant in this case) âso why would they do any work, if no-one is going to make them work. Kids are naturally lazy!â
The thing is, kids are NOT naturally lazy. Anyone who thinks they are should take a toddler to the playground and try to keep the active little beast âsafeâ by following them around. Those little creatures can run, and they have no stamina limitations! Those kids in traditional classrooms who arenât finishing their arithmetic homework arenât whining âthis is too much work!â â theyâre whining âIâm BORED!â which is quite the opposite problem. There ARE kids who might be dismissed as being âlazyâ â who want to curl up in a corner or stare out the window. Usually those are kids who are ill or damaged or recovering. They NEED the down-time, and they need their mentors to accept and affirm their needs! Kids came to the school with a history of bullying, or anxiety, or special needs. When they had had enough down-time and acceptance, they started to engage and plot their own educational course. And â because kids are not stupid and they know that matriculation and university acceptance create opportunities for them â their own educational course usually involved meeting provincial graduation and university admission requirements. And when they got to university, they felt in control of their university experience, because they were used to self-directed learning. I know this because both my offspring spent their entire school career at the free-school, got accepted into scientific specialties, graduated cum laude, and went on into limited-admission postgraduate education.
Adults arenât a fundamentally different species from children. Like children, they hate being bored. Like children, they find repetetive meaningless tasks boring. Like children, theyâre perfectly happy to âworkâ at things that are interesting, creative, relevant, and remunerative, unless they are ill or damaged or recovering. BUT the typical corporate office enviroment is itself harrowing or damaging to workers. Although employeesâ maximum productive work timeframe is about six hours per day, offices require them to stay onsite for eight hours or longer despite the overall reduction in productivity. Displays of rank hierarchy are orchestrated to aggrandize managers over non-managers despite the inflicted harm to employeesâ self-image and self worth. âPay-for-performanceâ schemes undermine the sense of community between coworkers and create disfunctional relationships. And people are expected to work in such a dysfunctional environment and feel fulfilled by what they achieve.
Itâs no secret that atypical workplaces that are democratic and compassionate are also the most productive. But managers prefer the sense of power they get from their mind-games, over actual profits for their shareholders. And as a result, employees who have not been successfully gaslighted by office culture are saying âI dont want a career and I hate working.â Good on âem!
