Idea Of Children
The sudden silence is ominous. We look quickly at each other and rush for the next room. Where once there were two little boys fighting over who got to play with the fast red car, there are now two little hooligans admiring the mural they'd made on the wall with broken crayons and their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We knew it, when it comes to kids, silence is not golden, it's trouble brewing. Like most parents I know, I hope for the best from my children, but realistically I expect the worst. This seems to be the complete opposite of the adult behavior that R. Keith Miller describes in his essay, "The Idea of Children". He chastizes adults who have "sentimentalized children and fostered a variety of misconceptions about childhood." These misconceptions include the notion that children are sensitive, imaginative, creative and somehow a wonderful little minority group that are supposed to be creative, free and natural. Miller objects to these beliefs because he feels that these adult misconceptions about childhood have lead to the raising of sullen, spoiled, undereducated adolescents. I'm not sure where he's hanging out, but none of the parents I come into c
Any adult who has spent more than five minutes on any school playground anywhere in America will immediately recognize Miller's description of playground behavior, "the taunts, the name-calling, the systematic victimization of any child who is weak or just plain different." This behavior has gotten so bad, that school boards have whole policies in place to deal with the "harrassment". It used to be that any kid caught being bad was taken to the principal's office for a paddling , not anymore. Now we have sensitivity classes for children and parents. Unfortunately, the majority of the time a kid is punished at school, the parent doesn't enforce the school penalty at home. If we're really lucky they'll just ignore the whole thing, if we're not so lucky, they come to school and complain about that little Tommy had to sit at recess for calling the teacher that name. Miller is right, we are raising irresponsible children, but it's not because we think they're different, or specia! their siblings. No, Miller has it all wrong, adults don't "see children as we wish they were", we see them exactly as they are. The problems Miller describes are because we see, but some of us
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Approximate Word count = 792
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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