Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

-- JAMES BALDWIN,
Nobody Knows My Name:
More Notes of a Native Son
3, 1961

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It's frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself.

SIMONE de BEAUVOIR
Les Belles Images
3, 1966
tr. Patrick O'Brian, 1968

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The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom.

HENRY WARD BEECHER
"The Family," Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
ed. William Drysdale, 1887

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[In April 1950, a "mute and autistic" 341/2-month-old boy was administered 20 ECTs after being referred to the children's ward of New York's Bellevue Hospital. A month later he was discharged.] The discharge note indicated "moderate improvement, since he was eating and sleeping better, was more friendly with the other children, and he was toilet trained."

LAURETTA BENDER
"The Development of a Schizophrenic Child Treated with Electric Convulsions at Three Years of Age,"
in Gerald Caplan, ed.
Emotional Problems of Early Childhood 1955

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We are now conducting a sort of general warfare against children, who are being abandoned, abused, aborted, drugged, bombed, neglected, poorly raised, poorly fed, poorly taught, and poorly disciplined. Many of them will not only find no worthy work, but no work of any kind. All of them will inherit a diminished, diseased, and poisoned world. We will visit upon them not only our sins but also our debts. We have set before them thousands of examples - governmental, industrial, and recreational - suggesting that the violent way is the best way. And we have the hypocrisy to be surprised and troubled when they carry guns and use them.

WENDELL BERRY
"The Obligation of Care,"
Sierra
September-October 1995

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Tew bring up a child in the wa he should go - travel that wa yourself.

JOSH BILLINGS
His Sayings
78, 1867

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I'm starting to wonder what my folks were up to at my age that makes them so doggoned suspicious of me all the time!

MARGARET BLAIR
in Leonard Louis Levinson, ed.
Bartlett's Unfamiliar Quotations
p. 336, 1971

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Fathers and mothers have lost the idea that the highest aspiration they might have for their children is for them to be wise - as priests, prophets or philosophers are wise. Specialized competence and success are all that they can imagine.

ALLAN BLOOM
"The Clean Slate,"
The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students, 1987

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Dr. [Paula] Menyuk and her co-workers [at Boston University's School of Education] found that parents who supplied babies with a steady stream of information were not necessarily helpful. Rather, early, rich language skills were more likely to develop when parents provided lots of opportunities for their infants and toddlers to "talk" and when parents listened and responded to the babies' communications.

JANE E. BRODY
"Talking to the Baby: Some Expert Advice,"
New York Times
5 May 1987

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"Teachers"... treat students neither coercively nor instrumentally but as joint seekers of truth and of mutual actualization. They help students define moral values not by imposing their own moralities on them but by positing situations that pose hard moral choices and then encouraging conflict and debate. They seek to help students rise to higher stages of moral reasoning and hence to higher levels of principled judgment.

JAMES MacGREGOR BURNS
Leadership
17, 1978

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Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a boy?

LORD BYRON
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
2.23, 1812-1818

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A child. . . opens and closes like a blossom.

ELIAS CANETTI, 1978
The Secret Heart of the Clock: Notes, Aphorisms, Fragments: 1973-1985
tr. Joel Agee, 1989

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Education should be constructed on two bases: morality and prudence. Morality in order to assist virtue, and prudence in order to defend you against the vices of others. In tipping the scales toward morality, you merely produce dupes and martyrs. In tipping it the other way, you produce egotistical schemers.

CHAMFORT (1741-1794)
Maxims and Thoughts
5, 1796
tr. W. S. Merwin, 1984

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While you were a child, I endeavored to form your heart habitually to virtue and honor, before your understanding was capable of showing you their beauty and utility.

LORD CHESTERFIELD
letter to his son
3 November 1749

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Birth is much, but breeding's more.

JOHN CLARKE, ed.
Proverbs: English and Latine
p. 103, 1639

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It [is] very unfair to influence a child's mind by inculcating any opinions before it [has] come to years of discretion to choose for itself.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
(1772-1834)
in Tryon Edwards et al., eds.
The New Dictionary of Thoughts
p. 156, 1891-1955

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A youth is to be regarded with respect.

CONFUCIUS
(551-479 B.C.)
Confucian Analects
9.22
tr. James Legge, 1930

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A belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, while the brain is impressible, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason.

CHARLES DARWIN
The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex
2nd ed., 4, 1874

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