Last Saturday (May 28) I delivered the speech “Correcting some Common Libertarian Misconceptions” at the 2011 Annual Meeting, Property and Freedom Society (May 27-29, 2011). The video is here, and streamed below; here is the powerpoint presentation.
pfs-2011 Stephan Kinsella, Correcting Some Common Libertarian Misconceptions from Sean Gabb on Vimeo.
[Mises]
From today’s Mises Daily:
Mises Daily: Monday, May 23, 2011 by Stephan Kinsella
Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe burst onto the Austrolibertarian scene in the late 1980s, when he moved to the United States to study under and work with his mentor Murray Rothbard. Since his arrival, Professor Hoppe has produced a steady stream of pioneering contributions to economic and libertarian theory. A key contribution of Professor Hoppe is his provocative “argumentation-ethics” defense of libertarian rights.Update: For additional material, see:
…wordy critiques….
I have for years edited or co-edited three legal treatises, first for Oceana Publications, then for Oxford University Press, and now, for West/Thomson Reuters. These are:
I look forward to working with the new publisher.
From the Mises blog:
May 18, 2011 by Danny Sanchez
Explore the social theory of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, the foremost present-day libertarian theorist, with Stephan Kinsella, the foremost present-day Hoppean. You may even get the chance to pose questions to Hoppe himself!
As readers of Libertarian Papers know, all LP articles are published free and in PDF and in the original Word source file. We use the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License so people are free to do what they want with our articles–reprint them, incorporate them into new works, include them as chapters in books–just grab the Word file and you’re good to go, with our blessing. (I discuss the origins of the journal in “Fifteen Minutes that Changed Libertarian Publishing” (2) )
Still, we often get requests for print and kindle/ebook versions. When we started LP in early 2009, we published the first few articles in Kindle format–I simply uploaded the Word files as individual “books,” and priced them at the lowest price Amazon would allow, $0.99. They sold, even though Kindle owners can easily put the Word version of the article on their Kindle for free. People like convenience, it turns out. But I stopped putting up Kindle versions after a while due to lack of manpower and resources. Gil Guillory helped with some early podcast mixing and with two LuLu print-on-demand versions of Vol. 1, but this was a volunteer effort and could not be sustained. I intended to figure it out myself–I bought a book on Kindle formatting–but I just could not find time to do it. It was time to outsource. (The Mises Institute hosts and publishes the journal and generously provided website design and technical resources. I could have asked them to do the print and ebook publishing, but I knew they are swamped with so many publishing and other projects and their resources, plus I wanted to try this on my own to learn more about this type of publishing.) [continue reading…]
My latest publication is Montessori, Peace, and Libertarianism, published today on LewRockwell.com. In it I discuss Montessori’s educational method and her philosophy of peace, and quote extensively from a great article by John Bremer, “Education as Peace.” Copy pasted below.
Update: see also my LRC post Battle Hymn of the Libertarian-Montessori Father.
Some things I had to cut:
Reading and Writing. One of my favorite things about Montessori is its approach to learning reading and writing. Following a blend of these ideas (see Montessori Read and Write) and Glenn Doman’s How To Teach Your Baby to Read, I, as a first-time parent, taught my own child to read at a very young age (I recall him reading his first word, “red,” off of a flash card at our kitchen table when he was perhaps 14 months old). He was soon reading fluently, amazing adults, and is now, at 7, reading books at 7th grade level (he is on book 7 of the Harry Potter books). I’ve instilled a love of reading in him which is extremely important foundationally (his spelling is excellent too, like his dad’s). I don’t think he was able to do this because he’s some genius; I think this is possible with most kids. (You can also teach them to swim very early, which I also did. This is important as a survival skill in places where lots of people have pools!)
As noted, I used a blend of the Montessori approach and the Doman approach. There are several aspects to the Montessori approach:
Now, I did not actually follow all these rules. My son read early, before he was dexterous enough to write. But again, I appreciate the thought put into the approach, the focus on the child. In my case, following the first point above – do not teach the kid letter names – I taught him the letter sounds very early, probably before he was 12 months. We almost never used a stroller; I used the Baby Bjorn baby carrier (one of my favorite products of all time) for almost his entire infancy. We would go on walks outside, to the mall, walk the dogs, the whole time me pointing out objects in the world and asking my baby boy to sound out the first letter. For example I would point to a big rock and say “that’s a ‘rock’. Say the first part.” He would say, “ruh, ruh, rock.” Later we moved to the last part (the “kuh”) and the middle part (the “ahh” for o). This is, I believe, from Doman’s approach. My son knew that the symbol “R” sounded like “ruh” because I never confused him by telling him “this R is an ‘arr’ and it sounds like ‘ruh.’” How confusing that would be! The name of letters is a distracting step that slows down young learners (that is the Montessori insight).
I used to draw letters in chalk on our sidewalk and driveway, and so he quickly learned that the “A” symbol represents the “aah” sound, “R” means “ruh,” and so on. I also drew every shape I could think of – at an early age he knew not only triangle and circle, but spiral, rhombus, trapezoid, and so on. The point is that if a baby knows what sounds the letters make, and you practice with him in identifying the parts of words to objects like “rock,” “dog,” “cat,” and so on (use only phonetic words at first to minimize confusion—e.g. don’t use the word “ought” etc.), then if you show him the symbols R-E-D on a flashcard he can say RUH EHH DUH and then put it together so it sounds like “red.”
Another Montessori rule I broke is the idea that when kids are learning, and they misspell or mispronounce a word, don’t correct them, because it can break the flow and discourage them. But when I write I like to stop and get each word right one at a time. It bugs me to wait and fix it later with a spell checker. Or if I come across a new word I need to figure out what it means and its pronunciation before proceeding. And my son is a bit like me, so when he is reading or spelling and makes a mistake I usually interrupt and correct him immediately; he pauses, redoes it the right way, and goes on. And he likes it. But I am sure to do it in a way that is encouraging, and helpful, not condescending or criticizing. So I appreciate the Montessori caution about excessive correction, though in this case I disregarded it, though mindful of the potential drawbacks. Again: the Montessori approach is focused on the child and how he learns and develops.
For parents of babies I highly recommend you get the two books noted above, make a set of homemade flash cards (following Doman’s suggestions), and go to town. Your kid will be reading very early.
(Incidentally, the Suzuki method of learning music – typically violin or piano – is similar in some ways to the Montessori approach to language – children learn to play by learning what keys make what sounds, without at first bothering to learn the names of notes; my son is now in his 4th year of Suzuki piano and is just now learning the names of the notes or how to read music, though he is already playing with two hands. Unsurprisingly, Montessorians often recommend the Suzuki method.)
Initial Impressions. My first significant impression of what Montessori is about was during my wife’s and my initial tour and parent interview at Post Oak. The Admission Director, Kay Burkhalter, upon hearing of our homemade babyfood plans and other parenting ideas, said “you guys are natural Montessori parents!” We soon saw that she was right. We loved the school immediately: the setting was tranquil and simple, the classes well organized. The children we observed seemed respectful, confident, and absorbed.
I remember that as we sat in Kay’s office, an older student, perhaps 5th or 6th grade, wandered by in the hall, carrying a tray of food on his shoulder with one hand like a waiter. He ducked into the office we were in, even though there were two adult guests there, and though he was polite, he showed no trepidation about approaching Kay and us strange adults, and said, “Excuse me – I made sushi for my ‘work’ this afternoon; would you like to try some?” (“Work” is the somewhat idiosyncratic Montessori word for projects the children are engaged in.)
My wife and I were bowled over by this. This kid was obviously not cowed by adults. He was proud of his work. He had no compunction about offering it to a key administrator and two adult strangers. He was not brash or disrespectful, but he was not too shy to approach us; he obviously did not think of himself as having some junior “place” compared to the adults; he had been led to view himself as a full human and individual having a right to exist and interact with others, not as some second-class citizen.
We were also impressed by the beautiful and elegant organization of the classrooms, the intricate materials, often constructed of wood or metal, and the serene calmness and sense of purpose displayed even by younger kids, absorbed in their “work.”
The other top-notch elementary schools in inner-loop Houston seemed to be difficult to get into, political, and/or too religious (probably all three). Refreshingly, Post Oak was secular, though not hostile to religion at all – as Post Oak’s website indicates, it is not a religious school, but “Montessori education does include a significant emphasis on personal conduct along with care and responsibility for others, which dovetails well with many religious faiths.”
It was also not “political” in the sense that it was more merit-based in the application process than other elite private schools tend to be: they gave preference to children whose parents showed a sincere commitment to the Montessori approach, rather than people with “pull” or “names” or big donations. (It’s also not political in another sense – my kid doesn’t say the Pledge of Allegiance, like even many private and parochial students still unfortunately do.)
And so, by demonstrating sufficient sincere interest in the Montessori approach, our child was accepted. The last six years there have been wonderful.
Update: In addition to the classic works on positive discipline mentioned in the original article (updated versions listed below), I have in the intervening years come across some others:
Update: In an excellent recent episode of Michael Liebowitz’s The Rational Egoist, his guest “Catherine Dickerson, an Objectivist with 35 years of experience in education and psychotherapy, joins Michael to discuss the intersections between Objectivism, the Montessori Method, and Parent Effectiveness Training.” In it, she discusses and praises the work of Thomas Gordon, which I had been unaware of, such as his book P.E.T. Parent Effectiveness Training: The Tested New Way.
***
Previously by Stephan Kinsella: What Libertarianism Is
Among libertarians and Austrians, there is intense interest in the topic of how to educate children. Of course we are all averse to the idea of government schooling. This has led many libertarians to abandon government schools in favor of private schools or home-schooling, or even the seemingly odd approach of “unschooling.”
One of the less conventional approaches to education is that spearheaded by Maria Montessori (1870-1952), the so-called Montessori Method. Many libertarians may have heard of this approach because Ayn Rand had positive things to say about it.
My son has been in The Post Oak School since he was 18 months old and is now in second grade (Lower Elementary).
Given the uniqueness of Montessori, I’m often asked about it, by libertarians and others. I can’t claim to be an expert, but below I’ll share some of my thoughts about Montessori and related aspects of parenting.
Accreditation. There is apparently no Montessori trademark, meaning any school can hold itself out as being “Montessori.” Some are officially accredited by the original Association Montessori Internationale. These are the so-called AMI schools; Post Oak, for example, is one of only three or so AMI schools in the greater Houston area. Some Montessori schools in the US are also accredited by the American Montessori Society (AMS).
The history of the split between AMI and AMS is a bit convoluted. Apparently, after Montessori was established in Rome in 1907, by 1917 there was intense interest in this educational approach in America. However, the publication of the 1914 booklet The Montessori System Examined by democratic socialist and John Dewey follower William Heard Kilpatrick helped dampen interest in Montessori in America for decades. Many of his arguments have since been debunked, but only decades after it served its purpose. Montessori remained popular in other parts of the world, but in America it went into decline, with little AMI presence. In the meantime, American Nancy McCormick Rambusch learned about the Montessori approach in Europe and ended up founding the AMS. This led to AMS dominance in the US, but there has also been an AMI resurgence in recent decades.
There are plenty of unaccredited Montessori schools out there. Any parent considering Montessori should make sure the school is either AMI or AMS accredited.
I know many libertarians nowadays prefer homeschooling, but unlike certain left-libertarian “localists” I do believe in the division and specialization of labor, so think that an actual school can be superior to homeschooling. The failure of government schools and even many (government-influenced) private schools today has made home-schooling a better option for some, which is a sad commentary on the state of modern conventional and government schooling. If untrained moms can do a better job than most government and conventional schools – and it seems they can – then something is wrong with mainstream education. In the current scheme of things, my view is that the best solution is a good private AMI or AMS Montessori school; followed by private and/or homeschooling (and for those who prefer homeschooling, the Montessori approach can still be employed). They are all, generally speaking, superior to government schools. There is another philosophy called “unschooling” but I find it to be unsystematic and somewhat reactionary, but even this is probably superior in many cases to government schooling.
Focus on the Child. Maria Montessori got her start working in the early 1900s with children with intellectual disabilities. She found that she could “normalize” them by providing them with the appropriate environment. (“Normalization” is another idiosyncratic Montessori term referring to the idea that if given the right environment, it is “normal” for all children to be able to shift from the “ordinary condition of disorder, inattention, and attachment to fantasy to a state of perfect normal being, showing such external behavior as spontaneous self-discipline, independence, love of order, and complete harmony and peace with others in the social situation.”) Imagine what could be done with non-disabled kids, she thought! From extensive observation and thought she developed theories about how children develop, and what kind of environment they need to permit them to prosper and reach their full potential, at various stages of development. As Montessori wrote,
The child cannot develop if he does not have objects around him permitting him to act. Until the present, it was believed that the most effective learning took place when knowledge was passed on directly to the child by his teachers. But it is really the environment that is the best teacher. The child needs objects to act; they are like nourishment for his spirit. [Education and Peace, 57]
Ultimately, this resulted in a wide array of carefully-crafted tactile material based on the view that developing humans are heavily tactile based. This is one reason it’s hard to recreate this method in a homeschooling environment – most parents cannot afford to provide at home the resources and environmental provided at a Montessori school (but, as noted above, it can still be employed in homeschooling). This is the division of labor. But this is not to say that the home environment is not important: from the beginning the Montessori technique emphasizes the complementary role of both parents and school in developing the child’s full potential.
In addition, Montessori views kids as individuals with full human rights and status. Yes, they are at a different developmental stage, but we treat them with dignity and respect. Witness the sushi example above. And it is mirrored in the “positive discipline” techniques Montessori schools promote. It is manifest in how even toddlers are treated: they are given roles in the school, in the family – helping set the table, clear the table, and so on within their capacities. I was raised to think of spanking as normal; if you understand that children develop naturally then usually if they do something that “calls for a spanking” this is a sign the parent has gone astray in the rearing or environment prepared for the child, or inattention to his needs at this stage of his development (good resources include Redirecting Children’s Behavior and Parenting With Love and Logic). [Update: we never spanked; or even used “time out” punitively; instead, following the advice of one of his Montessori teachers (Jessica Wagner), we used the “calm-down spot.”]
I will not say I agree with every particular part of the Montessori philosophy, as it is still a young, developing science. But what I appreciate about it is its focus on the perspective of the child—the developing human. The question teachers ask—and that parents are encouraged to ask—is: what is appropriate for the child? So the schools use child-size furniture for his environment. They provide implements he can grasp and manipulate. The toilets are little kid sized. Book shelves are low to the ground so kids can access material independently (and put it back). When parents come to the classroom for a teacher meeting, they are all sitting on half-sized furniture, like giants. Because the room is designed for kids.
Planes of Development. Montessori’s empirical research led her to believe that humans develop in four six-year “planes of development,” each with its own particular learning characteristics; the environment for each is designed accordingly. According to this view, humans reach full maturity at around 24 years old. Each plane of development has its own developmental stages, with the first three years of a stage (a sub-stage) primarily geared to attainment of knowledge, and the second three-year sub-stage focused on refinement of knowledge appropriate to that plane.
Source: Montessori 101 Presentation, Whitby School
Source: The Montessori Way, by Tim Seldin & Paul Epstein
Recent research has found some scientific support for this view of human development and for the efficacy of the Montessori educational approach. As for anecdotal evidence, as the WSJ blog reports, the Montessori approach produces many members of the “creative elite,” including “Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, videogame pioneer Will Wright, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, not to mention Julia Child and rapper Sean “P. Diddy” Combs. As noted on Post Oak’s site, “A disproportionately large number of these graduates are innovators, explorers, iconoclasts. The list includes Nobel laureates, world leaders, successful entrepreneurs and ordinary people – all living life with the gifts of self-awareness and intrinsic motivation that are the legacy of every Montessori student.” And don’t forget this great home-made video, I’m in Love with Friedrich Hayek, by Dorian Electra, a recent graduate of School of the Woods, an AMS Montessori K-12 school here in Houston. [unavailable]
Teachers as Guides. Teachers are viewed as “guides,” and children do “work” so that they learn to love the learning process and to teach themselves. Because of this focus they are not concerned, as conventional schools are, with the “student to teacher ratio.” After all, if a lower student to teacher ratio is better, then ideally it’s one to one. This is obviously unrealistic. But in conventional schools you have one teacher pumping out knowledge to students sitting in desks arrayed in a grid. The students are passive and move in lock step. In Montessori, there are no desks; students are free to roam about, physically unrestricted, so that they can select the work they are interested in or need to concentrate on. The teachers guide the students to work on their own. As explained on the AMI site:
The Montessori teacher’s role is quite different from the role played by teachers in many schools. They are generally not the center of attention, and they spend little time giving large group lessons. Their role centers around the preparation and organization of appropriate learning materials to meet the needs and interests of each child in the class. Montessori teachers will normally be found working with one or two children at a time, advising, presenting a new lesson, or quietly observing the class at work. The focus is on children learning, not teachers teaching. Children are considered as distinct individuals in terms of their interests, progress and growth, and preferred learning style. The Montessori teacher is a guide, mentor and friend.
Students will typically be found scattered around the classroom, working alone or with one or two others. They tend to become so involved in their work that visitors tend to be amazed at the peaceful atmosphere.
Because of the role of teachers as guides, there is not the same obsession with student-to-teacher ratio as in conventional schools.
Three-year class groupings. Based in part on the idea of the 3-year sub-planes of the 6-year planes of development, in Primary (years 3-6), Lower Elementary (1st-3rd grade), and Upper Elementary (4th-6th grade), kids are grouped into classes spanning three years. For example, my son is now in second grade in Lower Elementary – grades 1 through 3 are all together. One reason for this is the idea that children in this age grouping are all in the same sub-plane of development, so that they can share the same environment and materials developed and appropriate for children in that sub-plane.
Another advantage of this approach is that the child has the same teacher for three years. This allows the teacher (the “guide”) to get to know the children extremely well. Her reports to the parents about the child’s progress are verbal and qualitative, as opposed to quantitative. Unlike many government schools, Montessori schools do not “teach to the test” except as necessary to comply with mainstream standards. They do not even give letter grades so as to induce students to excel on their own instead of competing with classmates and judging their success by how they compare to others. (In this recognition of the difficulty of quantitatively describing human actors and their character and capacities, I see a parallel to the Austrian notion of value as being subjective, ordinal, and not interpersonally comparable.)
Another advantage of this 3-year grouping is that the kids return to 2/3 of the same class body every year. This makes for more continuity.
This approach also gives the child a full spectrum of development over the three years in that class: first, as a younger member of the class, they are cared for and mentored by older children; as they mature, they become responsible for being role models for and mentors to the younger children. This is itself a powerful teaching model and an incentive for the child to mature. My son and three other boys, now in second grade, had for a while been being a bit disruptive in class. The teacher explained to them that next year they need to be role models for the younger kids; this prospect helped motivate them to self-improve.
The Approach to “Part-time.” The earliest stage of AMI Montessori is “infant community” (“Casa Dei Bambini“). It starts as soon as the child is sufficiently potty trained and ambulatory – 14 to 18 months, say, and goes to about 3 years old, until the child is ready for “Primary” (ages 3-6). At our child’s school, at this stage you can select full-day or half-day infant community. Unlike other schools, where “part-time” may be 3 days a week, M-W-F, Montessori views part-time as half-day, morning to 11:30, all five days; and full time extends to 3pm or so. The point is that the focus is on the child: half-time is still five days a week, for consistency from the point of view of the child. Imagine a child going to school M-W-F: they have one day on; one off; one on; one off; two off; one on. It’s discombobulating to the child. The idea of going every morning, M-F, is more of an established routine for the child. My point is not that I agree with this particular practice. It is that it is developed with careful attention to the needs of the child, based on the child’s perspective.
Fantasy and Realism. The use of fantasy is downplayed in the early ages. The idea is that developing young minds have insufficient context to understand fantastical concepts; instead, initially, root them in reality: real things, spoons, cups, objects. As explained here:
In Montessori fantasy and imagination are very much a part of the creative process. However, since the real world is seen as a wonderful creation as it is, children are introduced to the real world in all its variations in the first six years, and then use these experiences to create for the rest of their lives. The word “work” is used to describe the child’s activities instead of “play” because they as respected as adult activities.
Again: whether they are right or wrong on this particular issue is not my point (the Waldorf method takes the opposite approach to fantasy); it is that it is developed with a careful attention on the child’s natural needs. I actually did introduce fantasy to my child very early, but I was conscious of the notion that he might not yet have the context to understand all of it, and made sure he had exposure to the “realistic” things too.
Reading and Writing. One of my favorite things about Montessori is its approach to learning reading and writing. Following a blend of these ideas (see Montessori Read and Write) and Glenn Doman’s How To Teach Your Baby to Read, I taught my own child to read at a very young age.
There are several aspects to the Montessori approach:
(Incidentally, the Suzuki method of learning music – typically violin or piano – is similar in some ways to the Montessori approach to language – children learn to play by learning what keys make what sounds, without at first bothering to learn the names of notes. Unsurprisingly, Montessorians often recommend the Suzuki method.)
The Crib. I didn’t start learning a lot about Montessori until my son was about 9 months old. If I had learned earlier I would never have bothered to use a crib at all. As it was, we took him out of the crib at 11 months and got rid of it – we put the crib mattress on the floor in the corner, and he slept on that. Why lock a kid up in a crib, as if he’s in jail? Why restrict his freedom of movement, his ability to explore? (And cribs are dangerous, too – many babies fall out or get caught in the slats.) As Maria Montessori wrote:
When the child is given freedom to move about in a world of objects, he is naturally inclined to perform the task necessary for his development entirely on his own. Let us say it straight out – the child wants to do everything all by himself. But the adult does not understand this, and a blind struggle begins. The child likes neither to play idly, nor to waste time doing useless things, nor to flit about aimlessly, as most people believe. He seeks some very precise goal, and he seeks it with an instinctive directness of purpose. This instinct that impels him to do things by himself makes it incumbent upon us to prepare an environment that truly allows him to develop. When he has freed himself of the oppressive adults who act for him, the child also achieves his second goal, working positively toward his own independence. [Education and Peace, 55]
And if he rolls off the mattress in the middle of the night, he can crawl back on – giving him self-responsibility, independence, and self-reliance.
As noted in the Michael Olaf The Joyful Child catalog:
Every child follows a unique timetable of learning to crawl to those things he has been looking at, so that he may finally handle them. This visual, followed by tactile, exploration is very important for many aspects of human development. If we provide a floor bed or mattress on the floor in a completely safe room – rather than a crib or playpen with bars – the child has a clear view of the surroundings and freedom to explore.
A bed should be one which the baby can get in and out of on his own as soon as he is ready to crawl. The first choice is an adult twin bed mattress on the floor. Besides being an aid to development, this arrangement does a lot to prevent the common problem of crying because of boredom or exhaustion.
It helps to think of this as a whole-room playpen with a baby gate at the doorway and to examine every nook and cranny for interest and safety. If the newborn is going to share a room with parents or siblings we can still provide a large, safe, and interesting environment.
Eventually he will explore the whole room with a gate at the door and then gradually move out into the baby-proofed and baby-interesting remainder of the house.
See also Designing a Montessori Infant Environment at Home.
New parents: save your money. Don’t buy a crib. All you need is a mattress, in a safe room. For a newborn, I believe a bassinet is placed on the mattress, until the baby is ready to be on the mattress itself.
Lunch and Homework. For a few miscellaneous observations – in conventional schools I’ve heard of, the teacher might assign homework on Monday that is due Tuesday, and on Tuesday, homework that is due the next day, and so on. In my kid’s school, homework for lower elementary students is assigned on Monday, and due Thursday. It’s up to the kid to decide how to manage his time during the week and get it done. This helps teach responsibility and time management.
Also, although The Post Oak School is not inexpensive, there is no lunchroom and no meals provided. The child is expected to prepare his own lunch (with parental supervision or assistance) every morning. This teaches awareness of nutrition and self-reliance and responsibility.
Peace. One of the most fascinating features of the Montessori philosophy, for libertarians, was Maria Montessori’s passionate devotion to peace. This can be seen in the schools, where kids are taught that they are all members of the human family, that we are children of the world, and that we should respect each others’ individual rights. They are taught cooperation and responsibility, and to respect others. Some Montessori schools go out of their way to encourage mediation- or arbitration-like dispute resolution (see my LRC post Out of the Mouths of Babes). See the video Education for Peace: The Essence of Montessori (embedded below).
But the Montessori approach to peace is much more than this. The idea of peace is deeply embedded into its entire educational approach. Maria Montessori believed there were several reasons the human race had not yet achieved peace. One was a false idea of peace as merely the cessation of war. She discusses this in detail in her amazing book Education and Peace. As she notes there,
Human history teaches us that peace means the forcible submission of the conquered to domination once the invader has consolidated his victory, the loss of everything the vanquished hold dear, and the end of their enjoyment of the fruits of their labour and their conquests. The vanquished are forced to make sacrifices, as if they are the only ones who are guilty and merit punishment, simply because they have been defeated. Meanwhile the victors flaunt the rights they feel they have won over the defeated populace, who remain the victims of the disaster. Such conditions may mark the end of actual combat, but they certainly cannot be called peace. [pp. 6-7]
This was presciently written in 1932, as the false “peace” of WWI was sowing the seeds for WWII.
Montessori also lamented the lack of a science of peace: “it is quite strange, in fact, that as yet there is no such thing as a science of peace, since the science of war appears to be highly advanced, at least regarding such concrete armaments and strategy ….” (p 5). This is echoed in a moving and insightful 1985 article by John Bremer, who writes: “From my little knowledge of eastern thought, it appears quite possible for a discipline of peace to exist already, and I mean a discipline for a way of life and not an academic discipline.” (“Education as Peace” N.A.M.T.A. Quarterly 11, no. 1 (Fall 1985), p. 26.)
If it is true that libertarians can profit from Montessori’s educational insights, it is also true that Montessorians searching for a science of peace can stop looking: this is what libertarianism is. Libertarianism recognizes the world of scarcity that we inhabit gives rise to conflict and war, and the solution is the adoption of civilized rules of cooperation and allocation of property rights – a libertarian private law society. If Montessori had been apprised of the insights of Austrian, free market economics and of anti-state, pro-peace liberalism, who knows – maybe she would have become a key advocate of libertarian views.
Skepticism of statism, individualism, and love of freedom permeates the Montessori perspective. It is worth quoting at length from Bremer’s piece:
Maria Montessori … knew that education, properly understood, is a disturbance of the universe as it is conventionally conceived and experienced. It places the power structure at risk since there is the strong possibility that it will be exposed for what it is – an imposition upon the sacred order of things, a distortion of what is natural, for the supposed benefit of those not willing or not able to learn. She also understood more clearly than any of her contemporaries that if the perversion of the natural order of things is to be maintained by the power establishment, then the soul must also be perverted because it is the one power, the one course of energy in the universe that is able to see and to show the corruption and perversion of the whole and to correct it. This perversion of the soul arrogated to itself, for obvious rhetorical advantage, the name of education. In reality, it is what was characterized earlier as a form of indoctrination, and it rests upon an imbalance, an inequality of power.
The key to Montessori is contained in the two sayings which are more often repeated than argued about and understood – “Follow the child” and “Look to the child.”
… The fundamental fallacy of conventional apologetics in education is [that] if the teacher establishes control, the students can learn. … This fundamental educational fallacy has, of course, its political counterpart. How could it be otherwise when in conventional opinion “education” is a sub-branch of “politics”? The basic political fallacy is that if people are controlled “by proper authority” then they will improve. I suppose they might improve as sheep but scarcely as human beings, as citizens.
… [I]n our international relations we will have to learn whatever the counterpart is of “Follow the Child” and of “Look to the Child.” It is possible that we will come to see, eventually, the nation state for what it is – an extensive defence mechanism against learning, and we may find some new pattern of human organization which will simultaneously offer security and the opportunity to learn. Just as Montessori diplomas are different from ordinary credentials, I suspect that Montessori diplomacy may be of a different order from that played by the brinksmanship of Kissinger and the like.
… I rest my confidence in the knowledge that if power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, then learning liberates and universal learning liberates universally. And universal learning is peace in action. [pp. 33-34]
Note the keen recognition of the state’s lies and corruption and use of education for propaganda. It is thus no surprise to learn that Maria Montessori, as the Inspector of schools in Italy, refused to use the education system to produce soldiers for Mussolini. As noted here: “In 1922 she was appointed Inspector of Schools in Italy. She lost that position when she refused to have her young charges take the fascist oath as the dictator Mussolini required.” More detail is provided here:
in 1929 Montessori opened the Association Montessori International in the Netherlands, with another center following in 1947 in London. The political world had its own affairs in the works however, most notably the rise of fascism in Italy and the spread of Germany’s Nazi regime. Montessori found herself under dire pressure to turn her schools into training centers, to mass-produce soldiers for the war. Naturally she refused, and for a brief time she and son Mario were interred. Freed and then exiled by Mussolini, they fled from Italy, taking refuge initially in Spain and India, and finally the Netherlands.
Montessori believed the reason we have war, and not peace, is not only because of false conceptions of peace, but because the nature of the child was neglected during education, leading to moral paralysis and morally stunted individuals who have no defenses to resist the state’s propaganda and demands for war. And the reason for this was a misconception regarding the nature of the child and his relation to the adult, and about the proper method of education.
As she wrote:
The child and the adult are two distinct parts of humanity which must work together and interpenetrate with reciprocal aid.
Therefore it is not only the adult who must help the child, but also the child who must help the adult. Nay more! In the critical moment of history through which we are passing the assistance of the child has become a paramount necessity for all men. Hitherto the evolution of human society has come about solely around the wish of the adult. Never with the wish of the child. Thus the figure of the child has remained outside our mind as we have built up the material form of society. And because of this the progress of humanity may be compared to that of a man trying to advance on one leg instead of two. [Quoted in E.M. Standing, Maria Montessori: Her Life and Work (1998 [1957]), p. 81.]
A key insight by Montessori here is the realization that children create the adult.
Each of us has not always been a grown-up person; it was the child who constructed our personality. Before we became the important adult personage we are now, the respected member of society, we were another personality – very different, very mysterious – but not considered by the world, at all; not respected; of no importance whatever; with no say in the running of things. Yet all that time we were really a personality capable of doing something that we cannot do now. He who is the constructor of man can never be a person of no importance. He is capable of doing something great, like a seed. It is only when we realize the wonderful way in which the child creates the man that we realize, at the same time, that we hold in our hands a secret by which we can help in the formulation of a better humanity. (Just the opposite of a secret weapon to destroy it.” (Quoted in Standing, Maria Montessori: Her Life and Work, pp. 157-58.)
In sum, Maria Montessori argues that the only way to reach world peace is to educate the young according to their nature, to produce naturally peaceful “citizens of the world.” Her vision is grandiose and her language grandiloquent, metaphorical, and flowery. But she is right. This is exactly why I think economic education, in particular, is so important. Maria Montessori’s vision, I think, was of a Montessori-type educational system sweeping the world and transforming the next generation, so that when they matured, the world would reach a state of peace and cooperation (though I have not found any formulation so explicit; she was probably too modest). A grand, ambitious vision, to be sure, but one to be admired. In fact Maria Montessori was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Whether her particular educational methods are “the way” to unlock the civilized potential of budding humans, I do not know. But, as always, hope is with the young – something recognized by Montessorians and libertarians alike. And on that note, I’ll close with the closing words of E.M. Standing’s biography of Montessori:
It is along this path that the nations of the world will progress most surely towards that harmony foretold by the prophet, when “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together – and a little child shall lead them.” [p. 370]
Further Reading
April 28, 2011
Stephan Kinsella [send him mail] is an attorney in Houston, director of the Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom, and editor of Libertarian Papers. His website is www.StephanKinsella.com.
My friend Gil Guillory told me this:
The best advice I ever got was from my father: people judge your intelligence by your ability to follow instructions.
I love that!
Love this.
A Strong Smell of Turpentine Prevails Throughout
Category: Humour • Psychedelic
Posted on: March 31, 2010 8:20 AM, by Martin RWhen I was in school I read a great story about a man who took opium, felt that he had a great philosophical insight, wrote it down, and then found, after sobering up, that what he had written was “I perceive a distinct smell of kerosene”, Jag känner en distinkt doft av fotogen.
Mucking around on the blessed web, I now find that the man was Oliver Wendell Holmes, an American 19th century physician and author. But it was ether, not opium, and turpentine, not kerosene. Here’s what OWH writes in his essay “Mechanism in thought and morals : an address delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University, June 29, 1870”.
I once inhaled a pretty full dose of ether, with the determination to put on record, at the earliest moment of regaining consciousness, the thought I should find uppermost in my mind. The mighty music of the triumphal march into nothingness reverberated through my brain, and filled me with a sense of infinite possibilities, which made me an archangel for the moment. The veil of eternity was lifted. The one great truth which underlies all human experience, and is the key to all the mysteries that philosophy has sought in vain to solve, flashed upon me in a sudden revelation. Henceforth all was clear: a few words had lifted my intelligence to the level of the knowledge of the cherubim. As my natural condition returned, I remembered my resolution; and, staggering to my desk, I wrote, in ill-shaped straggling letters, the all-embracing truth still glimmering in my consciousness. The words were these (children may smile; the wise will ponder): “A strong smell of turpentine prevails throughout.”
This reminds me of a time at a party when one of my buddies was drunkenly talking about how great other drugs than the beer bottle in his hand are, and described some deeply meaningful and intense insights he had attained while tripping on acid. Sadly, as I was sober as always, I failed to see their import. Like my friend the philosopher once said, “When you have that eureka feeling of really having made an intellectual breakthough, you’re generally wrong”.
As I noted last post, due to some career changes and other things, I’ve been unable to keep up with Slate podcasts as much as in the past (mainly because my commute has largely disappeared). So I’m listening to fewer podcasts but Slate’s Culture Gabfest is still just about my favorite one so I still listen almost every week. I’ve just fallen behind in blogging their, as Metcalf calls them, “SAT words” (BTW one thing that annoys me is–usually yankees–who call that test “the SATs”, plural, instead of “the SAT”).
In the most recent episode, which I listened to today, I noted two words that I was thinking about blogging about–not because they were SAT words but because, it seemed to me, the hosts mispronounced them. The first was “presages,” used by Dana, and pronounced “pree-sayj”, I think. I always thought it was “pres-ij,” and this is the favored pronunciation in the dictionary, though “pri-seyj,” which is close to Dana’s, seems to be an alternate.
Then later in the show, Metcalf mispronounced “desuetude” as “de-SOO-eh-tude” (it should be “deh-SWAY-eh-tude,” as Julia rightly notes). I think I already knew desuetude from its legal usages, and vaguely recall it has an international law usage as well; and I am pretty sure I remember my law professor in London, Rosalyn Higgins (later judge at the International Court of Justice), pronouncing it the proper way.
Anyway, right after Julia corrected Steve, Dana said “here comes the Gray Croissant.” So now I feel self-conscious, but I promise I was gonna blog it before they said that! I thought it was funny Dana joined in the chorus about this response to Steve’s mangling of desuetude, when I had already noted her “presages” use. Heh.
(Here I keep a running collection of the terms from this series of posts.) [continue reading…]
Great observation by Rothbard in Living in a State-Run World:
… it is vital to distinguish between two kinds of State activities: (a) those actions that would be perfectly legitimate if performed by private firms on the market; and (b) those actions that are per se immoral and criminal, and that would be illicit in a libertarian society. The latter must not be performed by libertarians in any circumstances. Thus, a libertarian must not be: a concentration camp director or guard; an official of the IRS; an official of the Selective Service System; or a controller or regulator of society or the economy.
This insight also applies not only to questions of employment but also to issues such as privatization and questions of whether state programs are “too inefficient” or not (Rothbard may have addressed this too, elsewhere, more directly, but I have not located it yet. But the idea is that for things in class (1) above, such as roads and dispute resolution, yes these activities should be privatized, and yes, it’s bad that the state performs them very inefficiently. For things in class (2), including also institutions and policies such as jailing drug criminals or tax evaders, these things should not be done at all, they should “privatized,” and we should not want the state to be more efficient at these things–to the contrary, we want the state to be as inefficient as possible at such things.
UPDATE: SEE KOL079 | “Federalist Society IP Debate (Ohio State)” (2011)
Last week I participated in a debate on IP at the The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law Student Chapter of The Federalist Society (Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University, Columbus OH, March 3, 2011). This was part of the “John Templeton Foundation’s Big Questions Debate series on Intellectual Property and Wealth Creation”; I debated patent attorney and adjunct IP law professor Steve Grant, who represented the pro-IP side. I recorded it on my iPhone; audio file is here (32MB; the version from the camera’s recording is here), though a video version with possibly better audio should be available soon. Professor Grant did his best, but didn’t have a solid argument for IP other than the standard “I think we should reform IP but not get rid of it.” My opening speech is about 15 minutes and has decent audio quality, and is a summary of a hard-hitting version of the basic libertarian case against IP law (here is the powerpoint presentation I used; embedded version below). Grant’s speech is audible but I was not very close to him; but his conventional and unsystematic, more empiricist and positivist than libertarian and principled remarks will be of only mild interest to libertarians. For my 10 or so minute rebuttal to him, I left my iPhone at the table but it’s still audible; for the Q&A period, it was in front of me so it’s decent again for that part. My host was Aman Sharma, a very staunch libertarian law student and head of the student chapter of the Federalist Society. When I was involved with the Federalist Society (lawyers chapters) in Philadelphia and Houston they were populated with mainly Newt Gingrich loving neocons; good to see some Austro-libertarians infiltrating their ranks. Sharma told me “I had a lot of fellow students approach me after the event with questions showing a new-found interest in the Mises/Austrian worldview.” That is cool and gratifying.
While in Ohio, I met my friend Jacob Huebert and other local libertarians/Federalist Society people–including Katelyn Horn and Maurice Thompson, of the 1851 Center, for dinner at Barrio Tapas. A fun trip, and great people.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:05:59 — 30.2MB)
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As I noted in H.C. Andersen Sculpture, the image at left accompanied my 2006 Mises Daily article “How We Come To Own Ourselves.” I just loved it. Someone at Mises chose it but when I inquired, no one could remember who had done it or where the picture came from.
I started trying to find out more about it. The image file name was something like “andersen father and son”, so some googling finally revealed this to be the work of sculptor H.C. (Hendrik) Andersen. I have a libertarian book in the works—now entitled Legal Foundations of a Free Society—and thought a better picture of this statue might make good cover art for the book. I think it nicely evokes liberty, humanity, freedom, cooperation, love, the natural order, the whole bit. I see it as man becoming man, becoming a self-owner, a homesteader, a rights-bearer. And it’s classical yet modern, and beautiful.
I could not find any better pictures of this statue, but eventually found a few others (see below).
Turns out Anderson’s sculptures are in a special Andersen museum (2, 3) in Rome. I had my friend Roberta Modugno, an Italian scholar, contact the museum for me. She got me the basic info. I then had a Canadian lawyer friend, Daniel Roncari, who speaks Italian, translating for me as I communicated with the museum. Initially I tried to find out if I could purchase a photograph of the sculpture, but they had none. They provided me with a list of approved photographers, and with Roncari’s help I finally hired one. I first paid the museum a fee, then paid the photographer for his services. A few of the photos are below.
Update: I could not find an appropriate place in our new home for the painting so gave it, with Wax’s blessing, to my fellow libertarian friend Mark Maresca, 1 who now has it proudly hung in his foyer:
New home of John Wax painting of Anderson sculpture in Mark Maresca’s home
Anyway, it turns out the child is a girl, not a boy, and the official name of the sculpture is Nudo maschile con bambina sulle spalle (Male nude with girl on shoulders).
I then 
decided that instead of using the photograph itself for the cover, to get a stylized painting done based on it—similar in some respects to the style of the art on the cover of Rose Wilder Lane’s The Discovery of Freedom, which I had always liked. So I asked my good friend John Wax to do a painting for me. A few months later—it arrived in the mail. Now I’ve had it scanned—see below—and plan to use it for my book cover next year or maybe 2013.
John Wax’s Painting
Initial draft cover, by Susi Clark
Update (Oct. 2023): Legal Foundations of a Free Society has now been published. After consultation with my book designer (Susi Clark), I decided to go with a simpler cover, and move a faded version of the painting to the back cover. Final covers below.
Update: In May 2017, I visited Rome and my son and I were able to locate the Andersen museum. Some pix below.
Stephan Kinsella is a libertarian writer and retired patent attorney in Houston, Texas. He has published widely on various areas of libertarian legal theory and on legal topics such as intellectual property law and international law. His publications include Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Papinian Press, 2023), Against Intellectual Property (Mises Institute, 2008), International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide (Oxford, 2020), and The Universal Principles of Liberty (2025).
My Failed Libertarian Speaking Hiatus; Memories of Mises Institute and Other Events, 1988–20192025
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