Elizabeth McCracken

The American Child Elizabeth McCracken

It seems to me that we desire with a great desire to make the boys and girls do; that all of the "very much" that we do for them is done in order to teach them just that-to do. It is a large and many-sided and varicolored desire, and to follow its leadings is an arduous labor; but is there one of us who knows a child well who has not this desire, and who does not cheerfully perform that labor? Having decided in so far as we are able what were good to do, we try, not only to do it ourselves, in our grown-up way, but so to train the children that they, too, may do it, in their childish way. The various means that we find most helpful to the end of our own doing we secure for the children, -adapting them, simplifying them, and even re-shaping them, that the boys and girls may use them to the full