On Productive Communication

In Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule, Zedd, a wizard and a mentor, asks his young friend Richard who is more dangerous, a 200 lb. thief who knows he’s not entitled to your money but wants it anyway, or a 100 lb. mother who erroneously believes you’ve stolen and hidden her baby. Richard’s answer was, correctly, the latter. Likewise, those who believe that statism and schooling are good and necessary, will probably become angry at someone telling them they aren’t, and even more so if they are told that statism and schooling are evil or immoral. I have a weakness in this regard. I’m quite passionately of the opinion about both of those things being two of the greatest evils that mankind has to offer, and have upset people close to me for expressing that opinion. Learning to either bite my tongue or use more productive language has been a real challenge. Now that I’ve started a podcast, I have one more outlet to practice better communication of what I consider to be very important ideas. I welcome constructive criticism of either my style or my content. Receiving such is one of the best ways to improve myself. And that’s today’s two cents.

Skyler.

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Founder and editor of Everything-Voluntary.com and UnschoolingDads.com, Skyler is a husband and unschooling father of three beautiful children. His writings include the column series “One Voluntaryist’s Perspective” and “One Improved Unit,” and blog series “Two Cents“. Skyler also wrote the books No Hitting! and Toward a Free Society, and edited the books Everything Voluntary and Unschooling Dads. You can hear Skyler chatting away on his podcasts, Everything Voluntary and Thinking & Doing.