Topic

Children

Children appear in this collection mainly as occasions for adults to examine themselves. Twain's youth-is-wasted-on-children barb is placed alongside Homer's darker observation that few sons attain the praise of their great fathers — most disgrace them — which restores some gravity. Aristotle's praise of educators over parents, on the grounds that parents gave only life while teachers gave the art of living, is as radical now as when it was written. Montaigne's insistence that children's games are their most serious-minded activity has influenced educational philosophy ever since and deserves its place near Einstein's six-year-old test. Shaw's book rule — never give a child a book you wouldn't read yourself — is more exacting than it sounds: most adults would have to clear their shelves. Mother Teresa's instruction to love children in the home before going out to love the world corrects the tendency toward a grand humanitarianism that begins anywhere except where you live. Hemingway's remark about recovering the courage to do what children did naturally rounds the collection back to what we lose, not only what we teach.