nature of autonomy

[Meredith]

Autonomy is one of the words that some unschoolers like to use but others aren't happy with. A lot of definitions of autonomy use it synonymously with independence, which I find problematic – unschooling isn’t about encouraging kids to be independent per se. I came across a definition of autonomy that I have found helpful, in terms of radical unschooling, on Wikipedia: the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision.

What I find useful about that particular definition is it opens up a can of worms! How rational are children? How is it possible for children to be informed? And to what extent can a child really act on any given decision?

[Meredith]

Probably somewhere there are people who use the word autonomy with regard to children to countenance neglect and detachment.

There are people who use the word respect to countenance neglect and detachment. I've met some. I've met four families irl over the years who use "respect" as their basis for "hands off" parenting. I tend to avoid the word respect for that reason.

[Schuyler]

You can't make someone autonomous, but you can support autonomy. Keep in mind that I'm not using autonomy in the sense of "self-regulation" but in the sense of the ability to make rational decisions. When I help my kids think things through, when I help them see a wider variety of options than what's immediately apparant, I support their autonomy. I help them have more tools for decision making both in the moment and in the longer term.

and

You can't make someone autonomous, but you can support autonomy. Keep in mind that I'm not using autonomy in the sense of "self-regulation" but in the sense of the ability to make rational decisions. When I help my kids think things through, when I help them see a wider variety of options than what's immediately apparant, I support their autonomy. I help them have more tools for decision making both in the moment and in the longer term.

So autonomy has a special meaning which is the freedom to make choices, right? That, at least, is how I'm interpreting "the ability to make rational decisions". Surely that's just muddying the waters if when the conversation turns to autonomy for you it is the freedom to make choices and for others it is more vague and seems more about going with your own feelings without being concerned about others.

I found one of the links that you had about autonomy fascinating in it's time spent defining autonomy. Pages. And of course they attacked my man Pinker and they attacked the my paradigm of evolutionary biology/anthropology by calling it biological reductionism. That was amusing in a slightly snobbish way.

I don't have pages and pages of understanding of autonomy. I only know that when I think of the word it means standing alone to me. Not dependant on others. It also means, as David pointed out, making choices independant of other people's influence. And I bristle at both of those, even though he feels that the latter is a good meaning, an uplifting meaning.

Must go, will try to write later. Movie calls.

[Sylvia Toyama]

you're right - there are any number of words and philosophies parents can, and do, use to countenance neglect and detachment.

Thinking about it, it seems lots of words get twisted and misused. Once a word becomes the catchword for a method or philosophy, it tends to be overused and tweaked for personal interpretation.

[Schuyler]

the and was supposed to lead to this:

Not in the least. Autonomy has plenty of room for degrees of relatedness - including dependency. One can make an informed choice to be dependent rather than falling into dependency as a default or being pushed there. One can choose to be gracious or kind or thoughtful, too. If one has been hemmed in by rules and limits to a larger degree (and therefore experienced less autonomy), its harder to do those things - its harder to see graciousness as an option rather than a social obligation, its harder to see dependence as a choice rather than a constriction.

[Sandra Dodd]

-=-Autonomy has plenty of room for degrees of relatedness - including dependency. -=-

Words can only be stretched so far. I can define a couch as anything anyone sits on and so say that a bench is an unupholstered, backless couch, but it's better to abandon a term that's being used oddly or incorrectly, rather than try to persuade others around that it CAN mean other things. New people come around every day, and they will know the word "autonomy" and any use that isn't what the word means and has for a long time would have to be explained. That's jargon, when words are given special meaning. Unschooling doesn't need jargon. It can be explained in plain, real English.

Schuyler wrote-=-To talk about autonomy is talking about the separation of one person from another.

A response was: -=-In the sense of "self-regulation" that's certainly true. In terms of the ability to make rational decisions, however, autonomy is inherently tied to the idea of connectedness-=-

To say autonomy is inherently tied to the idea of connectedness is to say one is not using the word autonomy in its simple English sense.

autonomy
1623, from Gk. autonomia, noun of quality from autonomos "independent, living by one's own laws," from auto- "self" (comb. form) + nomos "custom, law" (see numismatics). Autonomous is recorded from 1800.

It's not about connectedness, and if it is "inherently tied to connectedness," it would be in their being opposites. If one can say "black is inherently tied to white," it would be in terms of the contrast of opposites.

Sandra

[Sandra Dodd]

All those words should be taken off the table, in that moment, and the parents could be reminded that children need the connection with parents, and involvement. Parents should DO things, all day, every day, that involve their children, instead of winding up autonomatons and "respecting" them. That is all wandering away from the center of unschooling, which requires presence and relationships, wonder, joy, curiosity.

[Meredith]

I found one of the links that you had about autonomy fascinating in it's time spent defining autonomy. Pages.

This is a big part of what and why I find autonomy a useful concept for exploring unschooling - the very complexity, the vastness, is inspiring to me, and others have told me similar things. Its obviously not inspiring to everyone!

Ideas of choice and freedom and respect - and good grief, trust! didn't inspire me to persue unschooling, to try to wrap my mind around the concepts and grow as a person and a parent. Too much other baggage. But I had a big context for autonomy, so it was a way in, a way to expand my thinking about what parenting can be, what a family can be.

[Katherine]

There's something about emphasizing the idea of autonomy or personal power that actively bothers me. How autonomy plays out depends in whose hands it is, and it seems to me inherent in the term itself that not everybody seems to have it. A false sense of power frequently derives from some having it and others not using it. Power in this sense might too easily translate into power as desirable in and of itself yet barely involve the more valuable aspects of power-- personal power to benefit oneself and others immediately as well as in far reaching ways so that it benefits all those one cares about (as well as a few others who may chance to touch the fringes alongside one's life).

I think it's not usually simple to develop a sense of personal power that is generally beneficial to all.

What bugs me about emphasizing autonomy is that I don't think anyone actually has it in the absolute sense, and yet this red herring effect of emphasizing power in so special a way as perhaps more absolute than it is may loom very large or become the elephant in the room that nobody talks about or something like that.

In some relationships the emphasis of autonomy is just not a good idea. When people act as though they do have absolute power in some way important to them, it's potentially a very delusional and destructive thing.

Conversely it seems to me that most people have power to influence that they don't seriously see themselves having, and so that influence is unplanned for and is probably being used haphazardly. People who easily see that they have influence on others and act with clear purpose can get mighty annoyed with folks who don't.

Clear ability to lead versus unacknowledged influence can be a dynamic that appears as though someone is exerting influence as though they have all the power. But it's not always about someone wanting to take all the power. If a balance isn't in play, people who understand more about influence may take charge of situations better left to others, and it can look like hubris on the surface. They may end up doing too much while others don't know how important their input is or feel at a loss about where and when they can act.

In my experience, this dynamic is best remedied by communicating (verbally and nonverbally) about how everyone can get needs met as well as how they can become a valuable part in the process of meeting specifically the needs of those one lives with. Over time not all in one moment this is communication that's always taking place in some way. Otherwise, the intentions for acting (being) can get muddled, drowned out and unappreciated.

To me it seems that a false sense of autonomy (all too easy to conjur) can operate on a much lower level and drag interactions down to nasty very quickly, weaving throughout a whole network of relationships with ugly dynamics. Being in charge can work simply by knowing which buttons to push so that others around a person will move to benefit one without regard to others. That false sense of oneself can siphon from others what doesn't belong to one, and make for dynamics where trust can't develop which isn't beneficial to anyone in the long run (except maybe by accident). It's a use of personal power where authenticity, though still the best bet, might not lead to peace in those relationships. A possible result of an undue emphasis on autonomy.

I'm the first one to agree that having a false sense of autonomy isn't always the case (that it's possible there's an imbalance that has put a dynamic into play) yet I have seen people, whether secure in their autonomy or not, within many different families and sets of friends interacting in mutually clueless ways.

To me, autonomy can be a personal battleground (and it certainly has been for me) that doesn't touch the other key stuff at work in one's relationships.

When working personally on the development of autonomy, hopefully they will know that. (I'm pretty sure Meredith does know, but not everyone does.)
____

[Schuyler]

I found one of the links that you had about autonomy fascinating in it's time spent defining autonomy. Pages.

This is a big part of what and why I find autonomy a useful concept for exploring unschooling - the very complexity, the vastness, is inspiring to me, and others have told me similar things. Its obviously not inspiring to everyone!

Ideas of choice and freedom and respect - and good grief, trust! didn't inspire me to persue unschooling, to try to wrap my mind around the concepts and grow as a person and a parent. Too much other baggage. But I had a big context for autonomy, so it was a way in, a way to expand my thinking about what parenting can be, what a family can be.

I suppose I'm thinking in sound bites. I'm thinking about all those people nak-ing (nursing at the keyboard-ing--I had to look it up) who read autonomy and think standing alone. I just looked up sound bite to make sure it was two words and found this quote of Mark Twain's, "a minimum of sound to make a maximum of sense". Unschooling doesn't make a maximum of sense in a minimum of sound, in part because the only statement it may make is not schooling, or undoing schooling. But autonomy starts with baggage for me, for you it starts with something you were interested in following.

I think autonomy is a much more political term, or an economic term. I think that may have a bearing on how it is received. For those who think more in terms of the private being political, autonomy may be incredibly appealling. I am not one of those people. I like a word I can cuddle up with :0). However, I will call what I do autonomous education in the UK simply because that is what it is called. Here I've heard unschooling used as a synonym for home-education.

[Tammy Brooks]

I am not so sure about that. Individuality is a concept associated almost exclusively with western society and is about the idea of the individual taking precedence over the group or community, as opposed to interdependence and mutuality which are not at all at odds with autonomy. Once can exercise autonomy and still respect and honour the needs of others if they learn how to do this.

It sounds like you are having a concern about the idea of autonomy being used to disengage with a child's needs? For me, I would certainly be more comfortable with the idea of autonomy (I have the final say over what happens to me) than with the idea of individuality which to me means that we don't need to work together to create solutions or come to win-win compromises because "my needs" are the most important thing and others come second.

[Sandra Dodd]

-=-It sounds like you are having a concern about the idea of autonomy being used to disengage with a child's needs?-=-

It's not "a concern," it's having tracked back several families' problems to the idea of "autonomy" being the thing that's confused the mom (whoever was posting and asking for help) about whether and how much to guide and influence and help.

Knowing that each child is an individual is a good way for parents to realize and act on the fact that what the parent might want in a situation isn't what the child would want. It's not about needs conflicting, it's about the parents acting in partnership with each child where he is, and what he needs.

An individual needs the responses he himself needs. An autonomous person doesn't sound like he needs much beyond himself. An autonomous person, it seems, should be able to take care of his own needs. Some new unschoolers have interpreted it that way and left their children too much alone, and not helped them, and then called it "honoring their autonomy" or some such. Then they've had problems and come for help.

If it hadn't been a real problem, I don't think any conversations would've come up about it at all.

[Joanna Murphy]

Tammy wrote: Individuality is a concept associated almost exclusively with western society and is about the idea of the individual taking precedence over the group or community, as opposed to interdependence and mutuality which are not at all at odds with autonomy.

Individuality doesn't contain the idea of a hierarchy with the individual being more important than or taking precedence over the community--merely distinction from others.

in⋅di⋅vid⋅u⋅al⋅i⋅ty   [in-duh-vij-oo-al-i-tee] Show IPA
–noun, plural -ties.
1. the particular character, or aggregate of qualities, that distinguishes one person or thing from others; sole and personal nature: a person of marked individuality.
2. individualities, individual characteristics.
3. a person or thing of individual or distinctive character.
4. state or quality of being individual; existence as a distinct individual.
5. the interests of the individual as distinguished from the interests of the community.

Once can exercise autonomy and still respect and honour the needs of others if they learn how to do this.

Individuality could be used, as well, in this sentence: One can exercise individuality and still respect and honor the needs of others. The idea of individuality doesn't preclude collaboration.