Sarah Fitz-Claridge is the founder of Taking Children Seriously (TCS), an educational philosophy rooted in fallibilism — the idea that all human beings, including parents, are fallible. TCS argues that children should never be coerced, because coercion embodies the false principle that “might makes right,” and instead advocates for raising children through consent, reason, and problem-solving. The philosophy draws a direct parallel between how society currently treats children and how it once treated women and enslaved people — as beings who are people, but not quite capable of governing their own lives.
Children are rational and creative from birth
Fitz-Claridge rejects the conventional view that children are irrational or less capable than adults. She argues that creativity and rationality are present from birth, evidenced by the fact that toddlers learn language — a feat no chimpanzee or other animal can accomplish.
A chimp may outperform a toddler on narrow cognitive tasks like working memory, but human creativity is unbounded in a way that animal cognition is not. A child forms inexplicit conjectures about language, objects, and social norms from infancy.
The relevant sense of “rational” is not the ability to engage in formal verbal debate, but the capacity to learn and create new knowledge — which even babies demonstrate.
She argues children are in fact more creative and rational than adults, noting how much young children learn compared to how difficult learning is for many adults.
Coercion defined and rejected
Coercion means causing someone to do or refrain from doing something against their will — roughly, imposing your will on someone who does not consent.
This includes not just physical force but the entire structure of mandatory schooling: being told what to learn, when to eat, when to use the bathroom, and being forced to comply with an authority figure’s agenda.
Fitz-Claridge argues that coercion doesn’t just fail to solve problems — it creates them, fostering resentment, damaging the parent-child relationship, and teaching children that problems are insoluble and that they cannot trust themselves.
The failure of mandatory schooling
The standard school system is described as an authoritarian institution designed in an earlier era to produce obedient factory workers, not creative problem-solvers.
Fitz-Claridge argues it is spectacularly inefficient at producing genuine knowledge. Most people emerge from 12 years of schooling with little understanding of math, science, government, or anything useful — a point echoed by Bryan Kaplan’s The Case Against Education.
The idea that children must be coerced to learn a “body of knowledge” before they can be creative is self-defeating: if everyone has the same body of knowledge, where do new ideas come from? Historically, breakthroughs came from people who learned things out of genuine interest, not compulsion.
Even if a foundational body of knowledge were necessary, the modern school system does not provide one in any meaningful sense — students memorize trivial facts (dates of battles, literary devices) while being denied basic autonomy.
The “discipline” objection
A common argument for schooling is that it teaches self-discipline, executive function, and how to navigate authority structures like bosses and hierarchies.
Fitz-Claridge calls this an equivocation on the word “discipline.” The self-discipline of a concert pianist or Olympic athlete comes from pursuing their own passion wholeheartedly — the opposite of being coerced. School discipline actually trains children not to follow their passions, but to comply with external demands.
If children will later encounter authority structures in the workplace, they can learn to navigate those when the time comes — just as they learn other complex skills through lived experience rather than institutional simulation.
Addressing the “but what about math?” objection
Bryan Kaplan, despite being sympathetic to unschooling, argues that parents should force children to learn math because unschooled children often struggle with basic arithmetic.
Fitz-Claridge disputes this empirically — she says TCS-raised children have no trouble learning what they need — and philosophically: every mathematical discovery in history was made by someone who pursued math out of joy and fascination, not coercion.
She argues most people don’t actually need advanced math, and those who do (programmers, engineers) will learn it naturally when they realize they need it. She cites Karl Popper, whose PhD was in educational psychology, not philosophy, yet who became one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century — as evidence that people can change direction and learn what they need later in life.
Her broader point: if you have a genuinely good reason a child needs to learn something, you should be able to persuade them by reason rather than force. If you can’t persuade them, that may be a sign the reason isn’t as good as you think.
Psychological harm and the twin studies objection
The host raises the twin studies literature — which shows that twins raised apart are often remarkably similar — as evidence that parenting style may not significantly affect outcomes, and therefore coercion may not be as harmful as Fitz-Claridge claims.
She responds that this misses the point: we didn’t end slavery or emancipate women because studies showed harm — we did it because the practices were morally wrong. The same applies to children. You wouldn’t argue that coercing an adult is acceptable just because studies fail to show lasting harm.
She also argues that the twin studies don’t actually support the host’s conclusion: the reason twins raised similarly may turn out similarly is that both households used similar coercive methods — not that coercion has no effect.
Dealing with toddlers and pre-verbal children
A key concern: how do you practice non-coercion with a pre-verbal toddler whose needs and desires are hard to discern?
Fitz-Claridge argues that most parents ignore babies’ early signals and only respond when the child is already screaming — then blame the child for being unreasonable. If parents paid attention and made conjectures about what the child wants, they could respond before the situation escalates.
The “terrible twos” and temper tantrums are, in her view, a myth produced by coercive parenting. Children whose needs are met and who are not thwarted don’t have these problems.
She strongly rejects the behaviorist approach of ignoring tantrums to avoid “rewarding” them — comparing it to dog training. From the child’s perspective, being shunned or ignored is terrifying because it amounts to withdrawal of love. Children are not animals to be conditioned through operant conditioning; they are rational beings who should be engaged through reason.
Are children naturally lazy or incurious?
A common objection: without coercion, children will spend all day watching TV or playing video games rather than learning.
Fitz-Claridge responds that children raised under coercion are already escaping into video games and other “mindless” activities to cope with the stress of coercive schooling and family life. This is not laziness — it’s a rational response to an oppressive environment.
She argues video games and television are in fact highly educational — an alien trying to learn about human culture would learn more from watching soap operas than from classroom lessons.
Children’s curiosity doesn’t disappear naturally — it is crushed by coercive schooling. The fact that young children are intensely curious and older children seem incurious is evidence of the system’s failure, not of children’s nature.
From an evolutionary perspective, it would be astonishing if millions of evolution produced a species that does nothing but lie around for the first 18 years of life. Childhood exists precisely because that is when we are designed to learn and explore.
Why does everyone get children wrong?
If we were all children once, why do most adults perpetuate the same authoritarian practices?
Fitz-Claridge draws on David Deutsch’s concept of anti-rational memes from The Beginning of Infinity: these are ideas that replicate by disabling their holders’ ability to criticize them. People raised with anti-rational memes about children develop the same hang-ups and pass them on.
She sees TCS as the next phase of the Enlightenment — applying Enlightenment thinking to the one area it hasn’t yet reached: the treatment of children. Just as people will look back with horror at past treatment of women and enslaved people, future generations will be horrified by how we treat children today.
She expects change to come gradually, as it did for women’s emancipation — through cultural shifts, individual awakening, and eventually legal changes. She is currently writing a book she hopes will contribute to this shift.
Child labor and age of consent laws
On child labor laws: Fitz-Claridge, identifying as a libertarian, acknowledges these laws can prevent young entrepreneurs from pursuing legitimate work. She notes that children in the past commonly worked (outside of school hours) and that a child choosing to work voluntarily is far preferable to being forced into an institution. She expects these laws will change as children are taken more seriously.
On age of consent laws: She acknowledges these laws currently serve to protect children, but speculates that in a future where children are taken seriously as rational agents, they may not be needed in their current form. She notes that any relationship with a power differential is inherently dangerous, regardless of age, and that the real issue is coercion and authority, not age per se.
