…we have an absolutely extraordinary attitude in our culture and in various other cultures—high civilizations—to the new member of human society. Instead of saying, “Thank you,” to children, “How do you do? Welcome to the human race; we are playing a game, and we are playing by the following rules… We want to tell you what the rules are so that you’ll know your way around, and when you’ve understood what rules we’re playing by, when you get older you may be able to invent better ones.”
But instead of that we still retain an attitude to the child that he is on probation; he’s not really a human being, he’s a candidate for humanity. …we have a whole system of preparation of the child for life, which always is preparation and never actually gets there…. as a result of this problem being insoluble, it is perpetually postponed to the future so that one lives—one is educated—to live in the future, and one is not ever educated to live today.
Alan Watts.
Biblioklept 