know, has frequently been called "the century
of the child." When, however, we turn to the books of Ellen Key, who has
most largely and sympathetically taken this point of view, one asks
oneself whether, after all, the child's century has brought much to the
child. Ellen Key points out, with truth, that, even in our century,
parents may for the most part be divided into two classes: those who act
as if their children existed only for their benefit, and those who act as
if they existed only for their children's benefit, the results, she adds
being alike deplorable. For the first group of parents tyrannise over the
child, seek to destroy its individuality, exercise an arbitrary discipline
too spasmodic to have any of the good effects of discipline and would
model him into a copy of themselves, though really, she adds, it ought to
pain them very much to see themselves exactly copied. The second group of
parents may wish to model their children not after themselves but after
their ideals, yet they differ chiefly from the first class by their
over-indulgence, by their anxiety to pamper the child by yielding to all
his caprices and artificially protecting him from the natural results of
those caprices, so that instead of learning freedom, he has merely
acquired self-will. These parents do not indeed tyrannise over their
children but they do worse; they train their children to be tyrants.
Against these two tendencies of our century Ellen Key declares her own
Alpha and Omega of the art of education. Try to leave the child in peace;
live your own life beautifully, nobly, temperately, and in so living you
will sufficiently teach your children to live.

It is not my purpose here to consider how far this conception of the duty
of parents towards children is justified, and whether or not peace is the
best preparation for a world in which struggle dominates. All these
questions about education are rather idle. There are endless theories of
education but no agreement concerning the value of any of them, and the
whole question of education remains open. I am here concerned less with
the duty of parents in relation to their children than with the duty of
children in relation to their parents, and that means that I am not
concerned with young children, to whom, that duty still presents no
serious problems, since they have not yet developed a personality with
self-conscious individual needs. Certainly the one attitude must condition
the ot