The Price of Unfreedom: How Managerialism Shapes Work, Childhood, and Life

As I went through my notes from talking with Dennis Nørmark for the podcast SelfDirected, I was surprised by how much the problems and solutions he is pointing at look like our critique of how we do childhood in most western cultures.

Dennis co-wrote the book “Pseudo Work” pointing clearly at the many problems with how we work, understand work, organise work - problems and understandings affecting all parts of life, as it rubs off on how we see playfulness, happiness, equality, self esteem, relations.

One problem is the confusion. Value is misunderstood as monetary value, and work itself is confused with “something compensated by money, or something that makes money”. 

This is plainly wrong, and has devastating side effects, devaluing a lot of important things that are done under different structures, and with different agendas.

The simplest definition of work is putting in an effort that makes a change, increasing the value of something to someone.

The misunderstandings and mix up of concepts means we collectively neglect the value of work that is not compensated by money. So, we create a hierarchy of the value of work by how much it usually pays off moneywise. As compensation often is negotiated based on hourly rate, “hard work” and “sufficient work” have become equal to the workweek of at least 37 hours, and the whole management has created all of the pseudowork Nørmark describes in his book of the same name.

At the same time, we have no trust in the worker, we organise the work via organisations and manuals and admin, telling people how to do their job, how to document that they do it - and then we check them anyway. 

The problem of managerialism

Dennis Nørmark calls it managerialism: “The idea that you can sort of manage everything, that you could square things in and tell people exactly what to do. It's the old Frederick Winslow Taylor-idea of the conveyor belt. You know, instruct people in how to do their work and let them do it and check if they've done it.”

There is no trust or freedom to solve the problem, and a huge part of any organisation is the admin section controlling things and making new manuals and procedures, while a lot of work hours go down the drain of documenting the work.

The default is to plan, manage and evaluate, structure based on time and numbers. 

If any critique arises or any adjustments need to be done, this is the method applied even if the problem stems from managerialism itself.

Nørmark argues, “Freedom is a smart way of solving problems. If people self-organise they will find much better ways to do things, if they are trusted to be invested in what they are doing, they will be”. 

I am reminded of an architectural/city planning experiment I once read about, where a big university structure with living facilities and educational buildings was placed with patches of grass between them. Instead of paving paths for pedestrians to follow between the buildings, the developers decided not to - to see what happened.

After a while, it was clear where people chose to walk, and then the paths were built to keep shoes dry in more muddy and rainy weather.

Just a simple choice of trust, of: let’s see what happens if we let people do it themselves.

The managed childhood and the problem of lack of freedom 

I see the same structures in place in the case of childhood: 

Children are overly managed and not trusted. 

We as a culture believe children need to be instructed and taught all the time. 

We as parents and educators and experts of all sorts believe we have to do well in forming them, making sure of a lot of things: That they are well behaved, well educated, have good morals, can do sports and play music, are taught this that and the other. We believe that we, the adults need to be in charge of this learning, forming, teaching - to make sure happens. And happens in the right way. And order. 

There is a TON of advice out there for parents, and a ton of ways to keep track: Habit trackers, reward charts, methods to coerce and punish in different ways. Governments gives advice as to what children eat, how much exercise they have and even what books and for how long we read to them.

Standardised tests and charts for growth and checklists for developmental markers come flowing in the hundreds toward children and childhood, it is overwhelming. 

The metamessage of overly controlling things - how we learn we are useless and helpless

The metamessage is twofold: 

A. Children are not to be trusted to mature in a natural flowstate of exploring what life is. Children are not to be trusted. Period. 

B. Parents have no clue what they are doing, so they need governance and guidance.

The metamessage is “You don't know what you are doing, you need to be guided.” 

The metamessage is: “You are helpless and hopeless and if you don't follow the instructions it will go Oh So Wrong, on oh so many levels.

As I was out running on the French countryside a few days ago, I passed the adult from a nursery out walking with maybe eight cute little French children, and I was thinking about this topic.

Nice woolen stylish coats and bows in the hair, the little girls were walking politely next to the pushchairs with the youngest. The oldest, a boy of maybe five, was running in front, but held back “by good upbringing”, never getting more than four meters in front of the group, with his ribbed jeans, sneakers and hoodie, he looked like a young adult. No stick in hand, and the ribbed jeans were not from playing, they were “stylish” (not that I particularly agree with the style, but I even less agree with dressing up a five-year-old to look like a teenager), no mud on the shoes, not freedom to move.

Children need exercise and fresh air, so the nursery goes for a walk. The children politely smiled and said Bonjour as I passed, after the teachers had instructed them to move for me, and I was saddened. I literally was given half of the road, which was not necessary, and I did not see the children explore the plants next to the sidewalk, pick up stones and flowers, run and push and play.

I did not see any playing or exploration at all… !!!

This was a group of children getting fresh air and exercise while being managed and controlled at such a young age.

And I was thinking about these children and their future in the french school system, how they will be sat down and told what to do by well meaning teachers, and how their parents equally, even more, well meaning, and even well meaning with love behind it, will instruct them to comply and be proud of test results if they are good and ashamed if they are not, how they will do homework and internalize the system, the meta message: 

“You better do what we tell you to do because otherwise you will be falling through the cracks, failing in life, you will be lost and helpless and hopeless.

Your value can be measured on your test results, your success is defined by someone else, your own passions are a distraction, your personality is potentially a problem, you need to force yourself, work hard, trust this seemingly useless nonsense is exactly what you need, and if you do all of the above mentioned, you might get a good life in the end and today a bit of screentime where you can waste your time doing the things you find interesting and fun.”

It is heartbreaking.

The mechanism of telling people what to do and how to do it, how to register they did it and then checking they did both - is ongoing in corporate life as well as in children's lives. I have even seen it in relationships: Running a family with exactly this structure.

The freedom to be

Children do need fresh air and movement. Sometimes. But much more than this, they need to be trusted, and they need love. 

They need the freedom to explore, create, enjoy, and grow, learning from all that happens, forming structure, having passions, going through phases and unfolding ideas. We all need that. In our work lives as well as in our private lives. We need freedom to be, in order to explore and enjoy life but also in order to learn, if that is an agenda, and in order to produce effectively.

A dear friend of mine, Carla Martinez, with whom I co-hosted the first season of The Ladies Fixing the World podcast, once put it this way: “The amount of freedom you can have - equals the amount of uncertainty you can handle.”

I will say it again: The amount of freedom you can have equals the amount of uncertainty you can handle.

The illusion of safety

You see, a lot of this Managerialism is bullshitting ourselves. 

We convince ourselves it is needed. 

If you don't take control of your own life, someone else will jump to the task and control it, Dennis Nørmark said when we talked on our podcast, and he is right. If we don't hold on to our freedom, it will be absorbed quickly by others, who will gladly benefit from the situation.

One major problem is, we convince ourselves, we even make sure to convince our children from an early age, that this management is needed, that we are somewhat helpless, that we need guidance, instruction, systems, measurement, and we need to overcome our foolish passions, our childish playfulness, our ineffective creativity, our lazy longing for pauses and rest.

We convince ourselves it is needed, and we fool ourselves to believe this will keep us safe from all sorts of harm.

This is an illusion.

First of all, there is no guarantee success follows this kind of childhood. Lots of children fail. Most of them fail. The whole grading system has a lot of space for failure, there needs to be some to fail in order for others to succeed. In the Danish grading system, there is no longer any space for “out of the box thinking”, outstanding, surprising, strange, wild thinking is simply not measured. When I grew up, the top score was 13 and would honor exactly that wild kind of thinking. Now the top score is 12, and it simply equals 100%. One hundred percent doing what you were told to do. One hundred percent doing it the way you were instructed and doing this to perfection.

How can we then evolve? 

How can we thrive? 

And what about everyone, who do things differently, creatively in the not top end? 

Why is there only one axis here? 

Do we only need one kind of people as a society?

And by the way. Even those who meet all the marks. Even the ones who play an instrument and get the top score and look good and can run fast can meet trouble in their lives, can get fired, get cancer, get cheated on, be victims of crime or never get a job or develop a depression.

Complying with the system and even succeeding will not keep us safe and happy.

The problems begin early on when we put jeans on babies, keep them on sleep schedules, comply with “advice” and make checklists, physical or mental. They continue through lots of years of schooling and are well installed, internalised and hard to get rid of before the children are even out of school.

It is like Pavlovian dogs. 

And the consequences are overwhelming. 

Structures like this, installed early on, are hard to get rid of on a personal level. Structures like this guiding our society, structures being a standard method, are hard to work around and change.

I am pretty sure a lot would be gained if we did it, though. People would be happier, more well educated, we would not need all the drugs to keep children in schools, and people out of stress reactions and depressions, we would have more beauty and more joy. My best guess is we would also have better businesses, producing better products in better ways.

Conclusions and perspectives

What to do then?

It is hard to say.

Maybe make a rebellion. A local, private revolution. I personally live a life as a nomad and an unschooler, and have taught myself to handle a lot of uncertainty, and even on days where it feels hard, I know why I do it, why it is worth it. 

Because I am not sacrificing my freedom to live a life of joy and passion on the altar of illusionary safety. Because I do not believe anyone else to be experts on what makes my life flow. Especially not standardised advice.

But I am a bit radical. I know it. Less can do it.

Making a rebellion can very well begin by understanding the mechanisms. Deconstructing the system. Putting in some hours of evaluation. Asking questions like: Why are we doing this? Does it make sense? Do we need to plan, instruct, measure and evaluate? What would happen if we were just in flow, if we let go? Stop to think about value, make a change in your own mind, make your own hierarchy. Don't forget the importance of care, joy, play, don't take advice at face value, ask yourself the price of instruction. Is it good advice? Is it worth it to follow someone else's plan?

And stop yourself, maybe, if you are taking control over someone else's life, eating away their freedom.

I can not get anywhere near covering these three areas of childhood, work life and freedom in one blog post. Lots of books are out there on each and even some on the combination. A rebellion, a change would also come from exploring some of that. What can we think about these things, how can we understand them and what kind of change might be needed? In your life?

So I will end with a piece of advice, on top of the above mentioned. It is the best piece of advice I have had in my entire life, I might not get any better advice ever. Ever. 

Do not give advice if you are not asked for it.

Don't try to help, if no-one asked you for help. 

And if you find it really, really hard to stop yourself, ask permission and accept a no.

This is a radical thing to (not) do, especially in the case of parenting. The next level would be not to look for external advice when a task presents itself. Look for your inner guidance, your value system, the vibe of things, for motivation, joy, meaningfulness, exploration.

This is my humble advice. Respectfully.

Cecilie

As always an comments, ideas, reactions or questions are more than welcome in the comment section or in an e-mail. I respond to everything in my own time, reach out at hi@cecilieconrad.com if you don't want to leave a public comment. But don't forget: A public comment could be valuable for many people, so consider not being shy.