““Just as soon as children develop awareness, it is essential to demonstrate to them by word and deed that they must submit,” advised Swiss philosopher Johann Georg Sulzer in his 1748 Essay on the Education and Instruction of Children, a text not atypical of its type and time. “It is impossible to reason with young children,” Sulzer asserted. “Thus, willfulness must be driven out in a methodical manner. It is quite natural for the child’s soul to want to have a will of its own. . . . One of the advantages of these early years is that force and compulsion can be used. Over the years, children forget everything that happened to them in early childhood. If their wills can be broken at this time, they will never remember afterwards that they had a will.””
