"the simple life." Their natural disgust with the visions of cockney
book fanciers blowing themselves out with "the wind on the heath,
brother," and of anarchists who are either too weak to understand that
men are strong and free in proportion to the social pressure they
can stand and the complexity of the obligations they are prepared to
undertake, or too strong to realize that what is freedom to them may be
terror and bewilderment to others, will drive them back to the home and
the school if these have meanwhile learned the lesson that children are
independent human beings and have rights.




Wanted: a Child's Magna Charta

Whether we shall presently be discussing a Juvenile Magna Charta or
Declaration of Rights by way of including children in the Constitution
is a question on which I leave others to speculate. But if it could
once be established that a child has an adult's Right of Egress from
uncomfortable places and unpleasant company, and there were children's
lawyers to sue pedagogues and others for assault and imprisonment, there
would be an amazing change in the behavior of schoolmasters, the quality
of school books, and the amenities of school life. That Consciousness of
Consent which, even in its present delusive form, has enabled Democracy
to oust tyrannical systems in spite of all its vulgarities and
stupidities and rancors and ineptitudes and ignorances, would operate as
powerfully among children as it does now among grown-ups. No doubt the
pedagogue would promptly turn demagogue, and woo his scholars by all the
arts of demagogy; but none of these arts can easily be so dishonorable
or mischievous as the art of caning. And, after all, if larger liberties