ABSTRACT
Education is, to most young people, a painful process, and not its least painful part is instruction in correct social behaviour. I have sometimes passed children playing in the park and heard them say in a loud, clear voice, ‘Mummy, who is that funny old man?’ To which comes a shocked, subdued, ‘Hush! Hush!’ The children become dimly aware that they have done something wrong but are completely at a loss to imagine what it is. All children occasionally get presents that they do not like and are instructed by their parents that they must seem to be delighted with them. As they are also informed that they ought not to tell lies, the result is a moral confusion. By the time we grow up we have learned to keep the virtues of tact and truthfulness in watertight compartments and to know which are the occasions for the one and which for the other.
