Such toys can provide for the physical needs of growing children. Such toys help a child discover and experiment with life in the home and community. Such toys promote opportunities for individual expression which may be lacking in the group life of the school
Such toys help the child work off aggressions…
To which I reply:
Dear Friends: As one who has experienced extensively with life in the home and community, using real people in true-to-life situations, I doubt that any playthings could prepare a child for one millionth of what is going to hit him in the teeth, ready or not.
My own feeling is that a child should start experimenting with real people and real communities from the moment of birth, if possible. If, for some reason, these materials are not available, then playthings must be used.
But not bland, pleasing, smooth, easily manipulated playthings like those in your brochure, friends Let there be nothing harmonious about our children’s playthings, lest they grow up expecting peace and order, and be eaten alive.
As for children’s working off aggressions, I’m 100% against it. They are going to need all the aggressions they can contain for ultimate release in the adult world. Name one great man in history who did not go boiling and bubbling through childhood with a lashed-down safety valve.
Let me tell you that the children in my charge for an average of twenty-five hours a week are not likely to lose their keen edge during the forty-five hours they spend with their parents. They aren’t moving hand-carved animals on and off a Noah’s Ark, believe me. They are spying on real grownups all the time, learning what they fight about, what they’re greedy for, how they satisfy their greed, why and how they lie, what makes them go crazy, the different ways they go crazy, and so on.
I cannot predict the fields in which these children of mine will succeed, but I guarantee success for them without exception, anywhere in the civilized world.
Yours for realistic pedagogy,
Howard W. Campbell, Jr.
The second letter?
It, too, addresses Howard W. Campbell, Jr., as ‘Dear Friend,’ proving that at least two out of three letter writers today aren’t sore at Howard W. Campbell, Jr., at all. The letter is from a stockbroker in Toronto, Canada. It is addressed to the capitalistic aspect of me.
It wants me to buy stock in a tungsten mine in Manitoba. Before I did that, I would have to know more about the company. I would have to know in particular whether it had a capable and reputable management.
I wasn’t born yesterday.
The third letter? It is addressed direct to me in prison here.
And ĄX it’s a curious letter, indeed. Let it here be seen whole:
Dear Howard:
The discipline of a lifetime now collapses like the fabled walls of Jericho. Who is Joshua, and what is the tune his trumpets play? I wish I knew. The music that has worked such havoc against such old walls is not loud. It is faint, diffuse, and peculiar.
Could it be the music of my conscience: That I doubt. I have done no wrong to you.
I think the music must be an old soldier’s itch for just a little treason. And treason this letter is.
I here violate direct and explicit orders that were given to me, were given to me in the best interests of the United States of America. I here give you my true name, and I identify myself as the man you knew as ‘Frank Wirtanen.’
My name is Harold J. Sparrow.
My rank at time of retirement from the United States Army was Colonel.
My serial number is 0-61134.
I exist I can be seen, heard, and touched almost any day, in or around the only dwelling on Coggin’s Pond, six miles due west of Hinkleyville, Maine.
I affirm, and will affirm under oath, that I recruited you as an American agent, and that you, at personal sacrifices that proved total, became one of the most effective agents of the Second World War.
If there must be a trial of Howard W. Campbell, Jr., by the forces of self-righteous nationalism, let it be one hell of a contest!
Yours truly,
‘Frank’
So I am about to be a free man again, to wander where I please.
I find the prospect nauseating.
I think that tonight is the night I will hang Howard W. Campbell, Jr., for crimes against himself.
I know that tonight is the night.
They say that a hanging man hears gorgeous music. Too bad that I, like my father, unlike my musical mother, am tone-deaf. All the same, I hope that the tune I am about to hear is not Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas.’
Goodbye, cruel world!
Auf wiedersehen?