The Impulse to Shove

Children begin clear-eyed. Their vision is not clouded by sentimentality. They see the peculiarity of a thing, of a person. They see things we would rather they didn't see. They ask questions we either cannot answer or do not wish to answer. Yet we cannot bear their uncertainty and tell ourselves we must spare them it. So we hastily stop up their curiosity, their speculations, their first intimation of life's mystery with our formulas, a kind of mental spoon-feeding, about which Randall Jarrell, in the essay* cited above, quotes E.M. Forster, who said, "The only thing we learn from spoon-feeding is the shape of the spoon." The contents of that spoon may change from period to period, but the impulse to shove it into a child's mouth does not seem to.

*"The Taste of the Age"

Other Places, in News From The World: Stories & Essays, Paula Fox