human being according to one
pattern; not into a well-rounded individuality, but into a patient work
slave, professional automaton, tax-paying citizen, or righteous
moralist. If one, nevertheless, meets with real spontaneity (which, by
the way, is a rare treat,) it is not due to our method of rearing or
educating the child: the personality often asserts itself, regardless of
official and family barriers. Such a discovery should be celebrated as
an unusual event, since the obstacles placed in the way of growth and
development of character are so numerous that it must be considered a
miracle if it retains its strength and beauty and survives the various
attempts at crippling that which is most essential to it.

Indeed, he who has freed himself from the fetters of the
thoughtlessness and stupidity of the commonplace; he who can stand
without moral crutches, without the approval of public opinion--private
laziness, Friedrich Nietzsche called it--may well intone a high and
voluminous song of independence and freedom; he has gained the right to
it through fierce and fiery battles. These battles already begin at the
most delicate age.

The child shows its individual tendencies in its plays, in its
questions, in its association with people and things. But it has to
struggle with everlasting external interference in its world of thought
and emotion. It must not express itself in harmony with its nature, with
its growing personality. It must become a thing, an object. Its
questions are met with narrow, conventional, ridiculous replies, mostly
based on falsehoods; and, when, with large, wondering, innocent eyes, it
wishes to behold the wonders of the world, those about it quickly lock
the windows and doors, and keep the delicate human plant in a hothouse
atmosphere, where it can neither breathe nor grow freely.

Zola, in his novel "Fecundity," maintains that large sections of people
have declared death to the child, have conspired against the birth of
the child,--a very horrible picture indeed, yet the conspiracy entered
into by civilization against the growth and making of character seems to
me far more terrible and disastrous, because of the slow and gradual
destruction of its latent qualities and traits and the stupefying and
crippling effect thereof upon its social well-being.

Since every effort in our educational life seems to be directed toward
making of the child a being foreign to itself, it must of necessity
produce