This conversation came to mind recently when I read about how right-wing political activists have created “a constellation of well-funded groups aimed at disrupting school boards. A key feature of their “trolling of real local politics” is organized outrage at the way teachers allegedly “teach” students liberal ideas.

If I understand this correctly, it is “political” to say that black lives matter, but not political to act as if they don’t. Teaching the ugly historical realities of conquest and slavery in this country is “teaching” – or, in the words of one Republican voter, “hammering political thought into these little kids” – while avoiding teaching it is not. (More remarkably, the people who use the words “freedom” and “liberty” as weapons to undermine public health measures are not afraid to rely on coercion – to ban books and prohibit the teaching of certain topics.) Apparently, it is not racism that is unacceptable, but having bad manners to use the word “racism,” which Texas lawmakers were warned to avoid when debating voter suppression legislation. Around the same time, one school district in that state ordered its teachers to offer opposing views of the Holocaust, apparently to avoid indoctrinating students into thinking that mass murder is bad.

There will always be disagreements about what to teach, and different views about the content of teaching. But people who think that a certain event being taught in history class didn’t really happen, or wasn’t that horrible, or isn’t something children should learn about should just say so. It is dishonest to pretend that the curriculum they prefer is apolitical or free of values. What has been taught for decades can actually amount to indoctrination through omission or misdirection.

This applies not only to the teaching of history. What sociologist Alvin Gouldner once called “the useless ritual of moral neutrality” should be exposed as dishonest in every activity – and certainly in every aspect of education. Asking whether values should be allowed to be taught in school is as reasonable as asking whether our bodies should be allowed to contain bacteria. Just as people are teeming with microorganisms, so schools are teeming with values. We cannot see the former because they are too small; we overlook the latter because they are too similar to the values of the culture as a whole.

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Let’s back up for a moment. My premise is that it makes sense to adopt what might be called a “working with” – as opposed to “doing to” – approach to children. This means relying on love and reason, seeing children as more than sets of behaviors to be managed and manipulated, and treating unpleasant behaviors as problems to be solved (or, if you prefer, moments to be taught) rather than infractions to be punished.

Traditionalists, however, raise the following objection: since young children are not yet capable of reasoning or understanding long-term consequences, we should tell them what to do and use rewards or punishments to make sure they are properly socialized. In essence, the developmental limitations of children are invoked to justify the prescription of “doing”. But the irony is that many developmental psychologists and educators who have a good understanding of how children’s abilities change as they grow tend to reject this prescription.

The argument of developmentalists (like mine) is that no child is too young to be treated with respect. The child’s point of view should be taken seriously and their choices respected whenever possible. Of course, the immaturity of young children may require more patience from us. Yes, they may need more protection and monitoring, more structure and guidance. But none of this justifies relying on control and an overwhelming focus on eliciting mindless obedience. The job of raising and teaching very young children can be challenging, but it is not unrealistic. (I have offered practical advice on how this can be done, and so have many others, including infant and toddler experts such as Magda Gerber and Alicia Lieberman.)

In fact, we can go further: our attitude towards young children affects their development. Imposing our will on them (on the grounds of their immaturity) reduces the likelihood that they will acquire the very social and moral attitudes whose absence we used to justify such treatment. If we want them to consider the needs and points of view of others, we must gently guide them in doing so. If we want them to rely on cooperation rather than force, we must set that example in the way we treat them. In contrast, offering rewards for compliance or punishment for non-compliance makes it more difficult to promote other-centered reasoning and compassion. Just because it takes time to achieve these goals does not mean we should move in the wrong direction.

The attempt to justify the “doing” approach on the grounds that children are too young to “work” with is ironic for another reason. Parents and teachers who punish children are likely to overestimate the capacities of young children, i.e. they do not notice their developmental limitations. They either don’t understand or simply deny the fact that children under a certain age cannot be expected to eat neatly, keep quiet in public places, or always tell the truth. Young children do not yet possess the skills that would allow us to hold them accountable for their behavior as we would an adult or even an older child.

A pair of studies conducted by researchers from the University of Texas and New York University confirmed that parents who “attribute greater competence and responsibility to misbehaving children” are more likely to get upset with them, judge them and punish them. Such parents become frustrated by what they perceive as inappropriate behaviour and react, in effect, with violent reprisals against young children for being young children – looking at what can be heartbreaking. In contrast, parents who understand the limitations of children’s development tend to prefer “calm explanations and reasoning” in response to the same actions.

So what is it? Do parents tend to overestimate or underestimate their children by “doing”? Are they somehow able to rationalize their old-school discipline? Or are they somehow guilty of doing both at the same time?

A similar over/under dilemma manifests itself in classrooms. It makes its presence felt, first, through standardized testing. Most teachers can easily name a few students who they know are impressive thinkers but who just don’t score well on these tests. Press further, and then teachers can think of others in their classrooms who do well on tests but whose critical and creative thinking skills are nothing to write home about. Test results thus overestimate the real abilities of some children and underestimate those of others – probably because tests tend to measure the least important kinds of thinking. Indeed, several studies have found that higher scores on various tests are significantly correlated with more superficial approaches to learning.

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More specifically, to describe students as “engaged” is to focus on both how they act (enthusiastic, engaged, making an effort) and how they feel (enthusiasm, satisfaction, pride). In contrast, those who are not engaged may simply go through the motions, appearing passive and withdrawn, while feeling bored or anxious.

Like many others, I have often used “engagement” as a kind of shorthand for a good lesson and “engaged” to indicate the desired response from students. But with the help of some clear observations from other thinkers, I took a closer look and concluded that there are two distinct problems with this concept.

First, as I’ve discussed elsewhere, engagement, like a number of other terms, has been co-opted by traditionalists and rendered almost meaningless. Adults talk earnestly about maximizing student engagement, even in classrooms and schools characterized by a “bunch of facts” curriculum or teacher-centered pedagogy where kids have to fill out worksheets, listen to lectures, flip through textbooks, and make up test information. I finally realized that this word just meant that children are really compliant.

But engagement can be a problematic goal even for those of us who remember its original meaning, who value deep thinking, respect student experience, and reject a control-based model in which standardized lessons are reinforced by high-stakes tests. Yes, genuine, joyful engagement is a joy to see, and it can be a prerequisite for learning, or at least contribute to it. But perhaps it is not enough.

Consider this provocative observation by Susan Engel, a developmental psychologist at Williams College: “A teacher may talk about things that fascinate students, and students may be deeply interested in the topic – fully engaged in the discussion or activity. But that alone does not mean that children are asking questions or that their questions reflect curiosity.”

Or consider this comment from Susan Lynn, who helped found the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood: “‘Engaging’ in an experience does not necessarily mean that it is useful or meaningful.” Young children, for example, may be fascinated by images on screens, but they are in “a world mediated by decisions made by someone else about what they look at”, devoid of “acts of will – the expression and satisfaction of innate curiosity”.

Engel and Lynn say we shouldn’t be satisfied just that children are engrossed in what they are doing. An activity can be engaging without being intellectually valuable if it does not support their autonomy and is not connected to what they want to know.

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