“There are some things children cannot know, because once they learn them they are no longer children.”

Source: Summerhill (1960), p. 12
Context: You cannot make children learn music or anything else without to some degree converting them into will-less adults. You fashion them into accepters of the status quo – a good thing for a society that needs obedient sitters at dreary desks, standers in shops, mechanical catchers of the 8:30 suburban train – a society, in short, that is carried on the shabby shoulders of the scared little man – the scared-to-death conformist.

Source: Quantum Reality - Beyond The New Physics, Chapter 10, Quantum Realities: Four More, p. 197

As quoted in The 21st Century Elementary Library Media Program (2009) by Carl A. Harvey, p. 3

The Shining (1977)

Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)
Context: We can justify the list we will submit on several grounds. First, many of these questions have literally been asked by children and adolescents when they are permitted to respond freely to the challenge of "What's Worth Knowing?" Second, some of these questions are based on careful listening to students, even though they were not at the time asking questions. Very often children make declarative statements about things when they really mean only to elicit an informative response. In some cases, they do this because they have learned from adults that it is "better" to pretend that you know than to admit that you don't. (An old aphorism describing this process goes: Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods.) In other cases they do this because they do not know how to ask certain kinds of questions. In any event, a simple translation of their declarative utterances will sometimes produce a great variety of deeply felt questions.

Source: Parting Glances: Oranges & lemons sliced http://www.pridesource.com/article.shtml?article=17348 (February 2, 2006).

Directive (1947)

The Sacred Pipe (1953)

Source: Pet Sematary