ild wearing a higher badge than that allotted to it by, say, the
College of Heralds, should immediately be skinned alive with a birch
rod. It might even be insisted that girls with high-class badges should
be attended by footmen, grooms, or even military escorts. In short,
there is hardly any limit to the follies with which our Commercialism
would infect any system that it would tolerate at all. But something
like a change of heart is still possible; and since all the evils of
snobbery and segregation are rampant in our schools at present we may as
well make the best as the worst of them.

Children's Rights and Duties

Now let us ask what are a child's rights, and what are the rights of
society over the child. Its rights, being clearly those of any other
human being, are summed up in the right to live: that is, to have all
the conclusive arguments that prove that it would be better dead, that
it is a child of wrath, that the population is already excessive, that
the pains of life are greater than its pleasures, that its sacrifice in
a hospital or laboratory experiment might save millions of lives,
etc. etc. etc., put out of the question, and its existence accepted
as necessary and sacred, all theories to the contrary notwithstanding,
whether by Calvin or Schopenhauer or Pasteur or the nearest person with
a taste for infanticide. And this right to live includes, and in fact
is, the right to be what the child likes and can, to do what it likes
and can, to make what it likes and can, to think what it likes and
can, to smash what it dislikes and can, and generally to behave in an
altogether unaccountable manner within the limits imposed by the similar
rights of its neighbors. And the rights of society over it clearly
extend to requiring it to qualify itself to live in society without
wasting other peoples time: that is, it must know the rules of the road,
be able to read placards and proclamations, fill voting papers, compose
and send letters and telegrams, purchase food and clothing and
railway tickets for itself, count money and give and take change, and,
generally, know how many beans made five. It must know some law, were it
only a simple set of commandments, some political economy, agriculture
enough to shut the gates of fields with cattle in them and not to
trample on growing crops, sanitation enough not to defile its haunts,
and religion enough to have some idea of why it is allowed its rights
and why it must