Children | Kevin Barrett's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Children’

I’m Willing

Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Adults, Biscuits, Cake, Children, Daze, Earth, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Motives, Philosophy, Quotes, The Rod, The Sorrows of Young Werther, Wander on March 29, 2026| Leave a Comment »

No one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod.

― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
From: “The Sorrows of Young Werther“

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Click here (29 March) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Probably Not, Anyway

Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Children, Fathers, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Moral Code, Philosophy, Quotes on February 9, 2026| Leave a Comment »

The moral code which was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for our children.

— Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

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Click here (9 February) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Educational Feedback Loop

Posted in Education, Philosophy, Quotes, Science and Learning, tagged Children, Curiosity, Education, Exploration, John C. Holt, Learning, Philosophy, Quotes, Responses, Teachers on December 12, 2025| 2 Comments »

When children are very young, they have natural curiosities about the world and explore them, trying diligently to figure out what is real. As they become “producers ” they fall away from exploration and start fishing for the right answers with little thought. They believe they must always be right, so they quickly forget mistakes and how these mistakes were made. They believe that the only good response from the teacher is “yes,” and that a “no” is defeat.

― John C. Holt,
From his book: “How Children Fail“

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Click here (12 December) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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How #47:DonTheWannaBeDictator Treats Opposition And Friends

Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Children, Coercion, Consequence, Duty, Fear, How Children Fail, Ideas, Illusions, John C. Holt, Philosophy, Quotes on December 2, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The idea of painless, nonthreatening coercion is an illusion. Fear is the inseparable companion of coercion, and its inescapable consequence. If you think it your duty to make children do what you want, whether they will or not, then it follows inexorably that you must make them afraid of what will happen to them if they don’t do what you want. You can do this in the old-fashioned way, openly and avowedly, with the threat of harsh words, infringement of liberty, or physical punishment. Or you can do it in the modern way, subtly, smoothly, quietly, by withholding the acceptance and approval which you and others have trained the children to depend on; or by making them feel that some retribution awaits them in the future, too vague to imagine but too implacable to escape.

― John C. Holt
From: “How Children Fail“

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Click here (2 December) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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On The Record

Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Children, Fallout, Philosophy, Pity, Prejudice, Quotes, Rod Serling, Scapegoating, Suspicion, The Twilight Zone, Unborn on November 4, 2025| Leave a Comment »

For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone.

— Rod Serling

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Click here (4 November) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Recognizing Fear

Posted in Education, Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Bad Habits, Children, Education, Fear, Philosophy, Quotes, School on May 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »

For many years I have been asking myself why intelligent children act unintelligently at school. The simple answer is, “Because they’re scared.” I used to suspect that children’s defeatism had something to do with their bad work in school, but I thought I could clear it away with hearty cries of “Onward! You can do it!” What I now see for the first time is the mechanism by which fear destroys intelligence, the way it affects a child’s whole way of looking at, thinking about, and dealing with life. So we have two problems, not one: to stop children from being afraid, and then to break them of the bad thinking habits into which their fears have driven them.

What is most surprising of all is how much fear there is in school. Why is so little said about it. Perhaps most people do not recognize fear in children when they see it. They can read the grossest signs of fear; they know what the trouble is when a child clings howling to his mother; but the subtler signs of fear escaping them. It is these signs, in children’s faces, voices, and gestures, in their movements and ways of working, that tell me plainly that most children in school are scared most of the time, many of them very scared. Like good soldiers, they control their fears, live with them, and adjust themselves to them. But the trouble is, and here is a vital difference between school and war, that the adjustments children make to their fears are almost wholly bad, destructive of their intelligence and capacity. The scared fighter may be the best fighter, but the scared learner is always a poor learner.

― John C. Holt
From his book: “How Children Fail“

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Click here (25 May) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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#47DonTheFelon Is Both Child And Father

Posted in Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, tagged #47DonTheFelon, American Politics, Censorship, Children, Fathers, Fear, Ignorance, Laurie Halse Anderson, Politics, Quotes on February 20, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.

— Laurie Halse Anderson

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Click here (20 February) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Learning From The Pure Hearted

Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Black Elk, Children, Learning, Men, Oglala Lakota Sioux, Philosophy, Quotes, The Great Spirit on October 23, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Grown men can learn from very little children for the hearts of the little children are pure. Therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.

— Black Elk
Oglala Lakota Sioux

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Click here (23 October) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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The “Best” Teachers Do NOT Assume This

Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Children, Education, John C. Holt, Learning, Philosophy, Quotes, Schools on October 3, 2024| 2 Comments »

Schools assume that children are not interested in learning and are not much good at it, that they will not learn unless made to, that they cannot learn unless shown how, and that the way to make them learn is to divide up the prescribed material into a sequence of tiny tasks to be mastered one at a time, each with it’s appropriate ‘morsel’ and ‘shock.’ And when this method doesn’t work, the schools assume there is something wrong with the children — something they must try to diagnose and treat.

― John C. Holt

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Click here (3 October) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Who Says Times Have Changed?

Posted in Humor, Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Authority, Children, Disrespect, Exercise, Humor, Luxury, Manners, Philosophy, Quotes, Socrates on July 28, 2024| 2 Comments »

The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.

― Socrates

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Click here (28 July) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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The Marvel Of Ordinary Life

Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Children, Crying, Death, Joy, Life, Philosophy, Pleasure, Quotes, The Parent's Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents, William Martin, Wonder on May 23, 2024| 2 Comments »

Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.

― William Martin
From his book: “The Parent’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents“

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Click here (23 May) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Ba-Wah!!

Posted in Humor, Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Children, Groucho Marx, Humor, Mothers, Philosophy, Quotes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sleep on March 19, 2024| 2 Comments »

My mother loved children – she would have given anything if I had been one.

— Groucho Marx

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Particularly before two years of age! — kmab]

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Click here (19 March) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Anything, Everything, Everywhere

Posted in Education, Philosophy, Quotes, Science and Learning, tagged Children, Education, John C. Holt, Learning, Learning All the Time, Philosophy, Quotes on February 24, 2024| 2 Comments »

Children learn from anything and everything they see. They learn wherever they are, not just in special learning places.

― John C. Holt
From his book: “Learning All the Time“

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Click here (24 February) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Where To We Begin

Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Children, Mahatma Gandhi, Philosophy, Quotes, Real Peace, World Peace on October 15, 2023| 2 Comments »

If we are to reach real peace in the world, we shall have to begin with the children.

— Mahatma Gandhi

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Click here (15 October) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Never A Real One Anyway

Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Bette Davis, Children, Parenting, Philosophy, Quotes on September 19, 2023| 2 Comments »

If you’ve never been hated by your child, you’ve never been a parent.

— Bette Davis

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Click here (19 September) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.