If anyone, impressed by my view that the rights of a child are precisely
those of an adult, proceeds to treat a child as if it were an adult, he
(or she) will find that though the plan will work much better at some
points than the usual plan, at others it will not work at all; and this
discovery may provoke him to turn back from the whole conception of
children's rights with a jest at the expense of bachelors' and old
maids' children. In dealing with children what is needed is not logic
but sense. There is no logical reason why young persons should be
allowed greater control of their property the day after they are
twenty-one than the day before it. There is no logical reason why I,
who strongly object to an adult standing over a boy of ten with a Latin
grammar, and saying, "you must learn this, whether you want to or not,"
should nevertheless be quite prepared to stand over a boy of five with
the multiplication table or a copy book or a code of elementary good
manners, and practice on his docility to make him learn them. And there
is no logical reason why I should do for a child a great many little
offices, some of them troublesome and disagreeable, which I should
not do for a boy twice its age, or support a boy or girl when I would
unhesitatingly throw an adult on his own resources. But there are
practical reasons, and sensible reasons, and affectionate reasons for
all these illogicalities. Children do not want to be treated altogether
as adults: such treatment terrifies them and over-burdens them with
responsibility. In truth, very few adults care to be called on for
independence and originality: they also are bewildered and terrified
in the absence of precedents and precepts and commandments; but modern
Democracy allows them a sanctioning and cancelling power if they are
capable of using it, which children are not. To treat a child wholly
as an adult would be to mock and destroy it. Infantile docility and
juvenile dependence are, like death, a product of Natural Selection;
and though there is no viler crime than to abuse them, yet there is no
greater cruelty than to ignore them. I have complained sufficiently
of what I suffered through the process of assault, imprisonment,
and compulsory lessons that taught me nothing, which are called my
schooling. But I could say a good deal also about the things I was not
taught and should have been taught, not to mention the things I was
allowed to do which I should not have been allowed to do. I have no
recollection of being taught to read or write; so I presume I was born
with both faculties; but many people seem to have bitter recollections
of being forced reluctantly to acquire them. And though I have the
uttermost contempt for a teacher so ill mannered and incompetent as to
be unable to make a child learn to read and write without also making it
cry, still I am prepared to admit that I had rather have been compelled
to learn to read and write with tears by an incompetent and ill mannered
person than left in ignorance. Reading, writing, and enough arithmetic
to use money honestly and accurately, together with the rudiments of law
and order, become necessary conditions of a child's liberty before it
can appreciate the importance of its liberty, or foresee that these
accomplishments are worth acquiring. Nature has provided for this by
evolving the instinct of docility. Children are very docile: they have
a sound intuition that they must do what they are told or perish. And
adults have an intuition, equally sound, that they must take advantage
of this docility to teach children how to live properly or the children
will not survive. The difficulty is to know where to stop. To illustrate
this, let us consider the main danger of childish docility and parental
officiousness.