Teaching Freedom
Free Enterprise educators are urged to examine their educational principles and align their classroom practice with their advocacy of liberty by providing a classroom environment that develops the virtues as well as the ideas needed to live in liberty. Such pedagogy has a direct benefit to the educator. When freedom and autonomy are directly experienced, students become more engaged, interested, and enthusiastic learners and more often adopt the ideas and values of liberty. Combining empirical evidence from Socratic practice and Montessori education with research on development and optimal learning, the authors suggest ways to create such a classroom culture."To consider the school as the place where instruction is given is one point of view. But to consider the school as a preparation for life, is another. In the latter case, the school must satisfy all the needs of life." - Maria Montessori (1994, 5)