The moral accuracy of children

 

Some people have the idea that children are somehow less morally capable or less sensitive than adults, because we adults have had much more experience in feelings and emotions. I can tell you, after ten years teaching in primary schools, that nothing could be further from the truth. I'm afraid this is also another fact that makes me doubt the claims of all religions. In my experience, children start off with a really good moral compass, and sometimes they only lose it when we try to educate them.

But to explain the photograph: These are some of the thirty-odd 'Get Well' cards which my class of eight-year-olds made when I finally told them I had to stop teaching to look after Cro (who they called 'Mrs Gillard' and it was too difficult to explain that wasn't her name, so we let it ride). We hung them up in the bedroom and Cro loved to look at them. I have in fact just taken them down now.

All those children had a very good understanding of what was happening, of how I was feeling, of how they would feel in the same circumstances. And the cards showed the deepest pools of love and fellow-feeling, quite equal to that of adults. Cro was so touched by this honest outpouring that she wrote a poem, which we sent back to the school and which was on the classroom wall and the staffroom wall till the end of term. Here it is:

Class 4

 

Some eight-year olds I'll never see

Sat down with paper, pens and glue

Drew lovely handmade cards for me.

With "get well" thoughts (and glitter too)

They sent me good and cheerful wishes

And friendly hedge-pigs, hats and sea

And pop-up tents and stars and fishes

And in the midst of each was ME

 

All happy as their teacher’s wife

All happy in my lovely life

 

To every girl and every boy,

Whose cards now hang along my room

Dear kids you've filled my life with joy

And banished any hint of gloom

 

My life made shiny and much more

By glitter sprinkled on the floor

© Cro Page 2023

Children will understand very early on what fairness is. In Reception class (Kindergarten across the pond) they conduct all kinds of experiments in sharing, just to get better at it or to make their friends better at it. You can almost see grown up society emerging from their experiments.

And, sadly but interestingly, those children who have had the least stable childhoods, for whatever reason, are the ones who are best at telling when you are lying. It is a useful skill which they have learned by trial and error. And which can serve them well in later life, perhaps as a salesperson, or police officer, or a teacher. So all the skills which children learn by trial and error are very real and usually  very accurate. I always used to tell them "We learn lots of things by making mistakes, and even though you think of the mistakes in maths or writing, we can also learn from the mistakes we make in the way we treat other people. Nobody knows this all perfectly. We learn."

So the message to take from this is that we must not underestimate just how seriously children take life. They play and hoorah and do daft things, but they can feel just as strongly as any adult, and they know right from wrong. Take them seriously.