Here we have come to the central fact of the question: a fact nobody
avows, which is yet the true explanation of the monstrous system of
child imprisonment and torture which we disguise under such hypocrisies
as education, training, formation of character and the rest of it. This
fact is simply that a child is a nuisance to a grown-up person. What
is more, the nuisance becomes more and more intolerable as the grown-up
person becomes more cultivated, more sensitive, and more deeply engaged
in the highest methods of adult work. The child at play is noisy and
ought to be noisy: Sir Isaac Newton at work is quiet and ought to be
quiet. And the child should spend most of its time at play, whilst the
adult should spend most of his time at work. I am not now writing on
behalf of persons who coddle themselves into a ridiculous condition of
nervous feebleness, and at last imagine themselves unable to work
under conditions of bustle which to healthy people are cheerful and
stimulating. I am sure that if people had to choose between living where
the noise of children never stopped and where it was never heard, all
the goodnatured and sound people would prefer the incessant noise to the
incessant silence. But that choice is not thrust upon us by the nature
of things. There is no reason why children and adults should not see
just as much of one another as is good for them, no more and no less.
Even at present you are not compelled to choose between sending your
child to a boarding school (which means getting rid of it altogether on
more or less hypocritical pretences) and keeping it continually at home.
Most working folk today either send their children to day schools or
turn them out of doors. This solves the problem for the parents. It does
not solve it for the children, any more than the tethering of a goat in
a field or the chasing of an unlicensed dog into the streets solves
it for the goat or the dog; but it shews that in no class are people
willing to endure the society of their children, and consequently