Free parenting lives on the following ideas:
Children are born free beings, and the main task of adults is to educate him without coercion, to help the child preserve his freedom. Supporters of free education believe that a good, positive and creative beginning lives in every child, which needs only to be supported. In their opinion, children themselves are always drawn to the best, if they create favorable conditions↑.
More specifically, free parenting is not objecting to coercion itself, but to the feeling of coercion. The child should not feel coercion and coercion, care must be taken to ensure that the child lives in an atmosphere of freedom, feels himself the master of his life, so that he does not feel coercion in relation to himself↑.
From this naturally follows the requirement: «Free the child from what he does not need.»
Free education is always a little at odds with the traditional, which makes it necessary for the child to teach many traditionally accepted things. No, this is not necessary at all, say the supporters of free education, in many respects it is unnecessary, and even harmful to the child, rubbish↑.
Supporters of free education believe that the choice of one’s life path is the natural right of the pupil himself. Whom he should become: a locksmith or a businessman — he decides for himself. At the same time, the options “to become a bandit” are not considered in the free version, since such a choice of a child is considered a pedagogical marriage. It is believed that a normal child with a normal free upbringing cannot have such choices, since, according to the views of the humanistic approach, the nature of the child is initially positive.
For supporters of free education, the freedom of the child is a given. An alternative view is that freedom for a child is not a given, but a task. From the point of view of science, a baby is not born free, but a dependent being, dependent primarily on its inner nature. And in this situation, any upbringing, even if aimed at gaining freedom, always begins with some kind of forced coercion. The path to freedom lies through coercion. See →