At Crossroads Academy, the virtue of the month for January is courage. We focus on courage during the month of January to coincide with Martin Luther King Day, but as I prepare to teach the sixth grade about the Enlightenment, I’ve been looking at courage through an 18th century lens. The great German philosopher Immanuel Kant identified the courage to use your own intelligence as the motto of the Enlightenment, and described people who lack this courage in terms of a “self-caused immaturity”:
Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity…. Sapere Aude! Have the courage to use your own intelligence! is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.
–Kant, “What is Enlightenment?” (1784)
Kant calls this immaturity “self-caused” when a person’s need to be guided by another is not based on a lack of ability, but on a lack of the courage needed to think for oneself. However, Kant lays much of the blame for this perpetual immaturity on “guardians,” the parents and teachers who are most responsible for guiding and preparing children to become mature adults. Putting his point bluntly, Kant compares the typical process of education to that of training domestic livestock:
After the guardians have first made their domestic cattle dumb and have made sure that these placid creatures will not dare take a single step without the harness of the cart to which they are tethered, the guardians then show them the danger which threatens if they try to go alone. Actually, however, this danger is not so great, for by falling a few times they would finally learn to walk alone. But an example of this failure makes them timid and ordinarily frightens them away from all further trials.
–Kant, “What is Enlightenment?” (1784)
Of course, we can’t all be chiefs, at least not all the time; a society needs followers as well as leaders in order to function. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, if society creates educational institutions to prepare many people to become effective followers. However, our society also needs people with the courage to think for themselves, people like Martin Luther King Jr, who knew when to stop following the rules and playing the role he had been handed, when to take a stand, even against fierce enemies and overwhelming odds. A vital, healthy democratic republic needs citizens to be much more than so many beasts of burden following the well-worn paths set for them.
How are we doing at promoting this kind of courage at Crossroads? There is no question that as Crossroads teachers and parents, we devote much time and energy to telling children how to act and what to think, and sometimes, just as Kant describes, we warn of the dire consequences that might follow any departure from the track we have carefully laid out. Yet ultimately, we all hope that we are helping our children and students to grow into greater autonomy rather than encouraging an immature state of perpetual dependence or blind obedience. Are these hopes well founded? How and when should children begin to exercise this autonomy, and what can we do as parents and teachers to promote the “determination and courage to use one’s intelligence without being guided by another?”
The development of intellectual courage in our children is too important to leave to chance, but the solution is not, to use Kant’s metaphor, to break the yoke and set the cattle free. Children need our guidance, and much of education will always require imitation, the faithful following of directions, and submission to the authority of others. To withhold this instruction and guidance is not to set children free, but to turn them over to be governed by forces less benevolent and less enlightened than ourselves. Nevertheless, intellectual courage, like all virtues, is a habit that is developed through long practice, and it is never too soon but sometimes too late for this practice to begin. The cultivation of intellectual independence and self-reliance needs to begin with the first steps of education and continue without interruption.
There is no neat formula or recipe for building this training in autonomy into parenting or academic education, but I’ve definitely seen this empowering kind of training at Crossroads, and I think that our school is becoming increasingly effective at promoting intellectual courage in our students. Children learn a great deal by example, so it makes a difference when teachers dare to step off the well- worn track themselves. When children see us stepping out of our own comfort zone, taking risks, and facing new challenges, they are more likely to do the same. The best teachers are still students themselves, modeling what it is to reflect and to question. We can always learn more about what we are teaching, explore new avenues, and try new methods, even though some of these new approaches might fail. At the same time, we can set the bar high enough for our
students to provide them with real opportunities for failure, and we can avoid responding with horror and dismay when failure comes. In discussing literature, we can move beyond the familiar game of “Guess what answer is in the teacher’s head” to raise questions that are real for us, questions we don’t even know the answers to. In history we can move beyond the mere recall of information to encourage open-ended inquiry into the significance of the past and the complex causes of historical change. In math and science, along with all the good and
necessary memorization of facts and practice of procedures, we can reserve time to reflect on why things work the way they do, even if this kind of inquiry strains the minds of teachers and students alike. In the science lab, along with neatly circumscribed experiments contrived to illustrate particular concepts, we can provide opportunities to engage in genuine, ongoing research. We can provide many and various opportunities for creative expression in the arts. And we can genuinely celebrate the uniqueness and individuality of our students while we set shared standards for behavior and achievement. In all of these ways, even as we serve as guides for our students, we also help them to cultivate what Immanuel Kant identifies as the essence of enlightenment, “the determination and courage to use one’s intelligence without being guided by another.”

Bruce Freeberg
Fifth Grade Head Teacher
Sixth grade History Teacher
Core Knowledge Coordinator
