If you were to ask a group of grade schoolers their opinions on grown-ups, what would they say? In our age of participation awards and “good job,” would the descriptives be more positive than negative? In a 1931 issue of Harper’s Magazine, a schoolteacher asked her students, ages 7 to 11, that very question. And, for the most part, what they said wasn’t too positive. They resented all the discipline, all the rules, and being bossed around. (The term “boss” comes up frequently.)
According to Agnes, grown-ups “think we are cold when we arn’t and make us put on coats and hats when we don’t want to. They make me very mad at times and other times make me very happy but never mediom [so much mind control!]. They are either very quite or very noisy. They don’t have as much fun as we do. Their hair is always fixt and hands washed. It has always been a mistory to me how they do it.”
