I think the difficulty lies in the immeasurable vanity of the human adult, particularly the pedagogical adult, … which does not permit him to recognize as good any tendency in children to fly in the face of his conceptions of a correct human being; to recognize that may be here is something highly desirable, to be encourage, rather than destroyed as pernicious…. [Y]our teacher has usually well-defined conceptions of what men and women have to be. And if a boy is too lively, too noisy, too restless, too curious, to suit the concept, he must be trimmed and subdued. Voltairine De Cleyre
About This Quote

Teachers are often very harsh when it comes to their students, often punishing them when they are being misbehaving. While teachers may have good intentions, they are usually doing so because they have an expectation that the students will be behaving in accordance with their teacher’s ideals. When this is not the case, they feel the need to change the child’s behavior. To teach children well, teachers must allow them to develop in their own way so that they can grow into adulthood.

Source: The Voltairine De Cleyre Reader

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