That is the inevitable circle. Go beyond it, and the child will
not understand you. What sort of use is there in such teaching?
I should greatly like to know what you would substitute for this
dialogue. It would have puzzled Locke himself. It is no part of a
child's business to know right and wrong, to perceive the reason
for a man's duties.

Nature would have them children before they are men. If we try
to invert this order we shall produce a forced fruit immature and
flavourless, fruit which will be rotten before it is ripe; we shall
have young doctors and old children. Childhood has its own ways
of seeing, thinking, and feeling; nothing is more foolish than to
try and substitute our ways; and I should no more expect judgment
in a ten-year-old child than I should expect him to be five feet
high. Indeed, what use would reason be to him at that age? It is
the curb of strength, and the child does not need the curb.

When you try to persuade your scholars of the duty of obedience, you
add to this so-called persuasion compulsion and threats, or still
worse, flattery and bribes. Attracted by selfishness or constrained
by force, they pretend to be convinced by reason. They see as soon
as you do that obedience is to their advantage and disobedience to
their disadvantage. But as you only demand disagreeable things of
them, and as it is always disagreeable to do another's will, they
hide themselves so that they may do as they please, persuaded that
they are doing no wrong so long as they are not found out, but
ready, if found out, to own themselves in the wrong for fear of
worse evils. The reason for duty is beyond their age, and there
is not a man in the world who could make them really aware of it;