historical views of children

From prehistoric times to the present, children have been seen and not heard.



"The 'conversation bubble,' a staple of comic art, originated in ancient times. At the Lascaux cave site, such bubbles are found in some of the later wall paintings.... Remarkably, though crude drawings of children are included in many of the paintings, not a single one is drawn with a conversation bubble... perhaps the earliest confirmation of the adage, 'Children are to be seen and not heard.'"

Quincy Peters, Comic Books: A History


"The most important rite of passage is the transition from youth to adulthood, a ritual known as freeing the voice. The child is gagged and lashed to a pole in the center of the village, and a circle of elders surround him, chanting and covering their ears. The child must struggle to break free, and when he is successful, the elders unstop their ears and sit at his feet, listening carefully as the child delivers an impromptu speech."

Margaret Mead, Life Among the Therenog


"Just as Paul commanded Corinthian women to remain silent in church, so must a father command his children to remain silent in the home."

Philo of Hippolyta, Declarations


"He was a saucy brat, disrupting my finely-crafted repartee with his oafish ponderances. Imagine it--about to deliver a line guaranteed to provoke mirth and merriment, and perhaps secure a place on the staff of the Encyclopedia, when interrupted by the complaint that if God had wanted us to wear spectacles he would have given us shapelier noses. How one wishes for the inaudible children of yore!"

Voltaire, Letters to French Dignitaries


"Sustained periods of silence in children under the age of eighteen... [was] found to have a positive, rather than a negative, effect on test results in both linguistic and mathematical categories."

B.F. Skinner, Learning by Behavior Modification


"Hey, I mighta said some things I regret, but I never talked back to my folks. I was a good kid."

Al Capone, Testimony Before the Senate Tariffs Subcommittee, June 15, 1927


(Quotes added at the behest of a critical reader.)



[twenty-seventh in a series]