| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: distractions which are, to say the least, unsuited to children. But
one of them, the distraction of seeing the world, is innocent and
beneficial. Also it is childish, being a continuation of what nurses
call "taking notice," by which a child becomes experienced. It is
pitiable nowadays to see men and women doing after the age of 45 all
the travelling and sightseeing they should have done before they were
15. Mere wondering and staring at things is an important part of a
child's education: that is why children can be thoroughly mobilized
without making vagabonds of them. A vagabond is at home nowhere
because he wanders: a child should wander because it ought to be at
home everywhere. And if it has its papers and its passports, and gets
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: always belittling and in the direction of simplification. This
explains the fact that, from the social point of view, there is
in reality scarcely any such thing as a hierarchy of ideas--that
is to say, as ideas of greater or less elevation. However great
or true an idea may have been to begin with, it is deprived of
almost all that which constituted its elevation and its greatness
by the mere fact that it has come within the intellectual range
of crowds and exerts an influence upon them.
Moreover, from the social point of view the hierarchical value of
an idea, its intrinsic worth, is without importance. The
necessary point to consider is the effects it produces. The
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: For every kind of beast and man
Is marching in that caravan.
As first they move a little slow,
But still the faster on they go,
And still beside me close I keep
Until we reach the town of Sleep.
V
Whole Duty of Children
A child should always say what's true
And speak when he is spoken to,
And behave mannerly at table;
A Child's Garden of Verses |
