Samuelsen argues that the dysfunctions visible across society trace back to a single root: an education system built on fear, coercion, and the narrative that human beings are separate from one another and from nature. Rewards and punishments push children to suppress their voices and curiosity, producing the learned helplessness Holt observed decades ago. Working at a holistic school in Vermont where student voices were treated as genuinely important, Samuelsen created space for dialogue from almost the first year, using it as a practical counter to that coercive dynamic. The paper asks what becomes possible when children are given room to keep their sense of wonder while also developing the dialogic skills needed for open, direct, and honest conversation. Published in The World Needs Dialogue! Four: Putting Dialogue to Work (2022), the paper makes the case that healthy communities begin in classrooms willing to question what schooling is actually for.