Adults find it very hard to realize that young children have no
regard for property. They do not destroy it deliberately--they
destroy it unconsciously.

I once saw a normal, happy girl burning holes with a red-hot
poker into the walnut mantelpiece in our staff room. When
challenged, she started and seemed quite surprised. "I did it
without thinking," she said, and she spoke truthfully. Her
action was a symbolic one beyond the control of the conscious
mind.

The fact is that adults are possessive about things of value
and children are not. Any living together between children and
adults must therefore result in conflict over material things. At
Summerhill, the children will turn up the furnace five min-
utes before going up to bed. They will generously heap it with
coals--for coals to them are only black rocks while to me they
mean a bill of one thousand dollars a year. The children will
leave electric lights on because they do not associate light with
electricity bills.

Furniture to a child is practically nonexistent. So at Summer-
hill we buy old car seats and old bus seats. And in a month or
two they look like wrecks. Every now and again at mealtime,
some youngster waiting for his second helping will while away
the time by twisting his fork almost into knots. This is usually
done unconsciously or, at best, semiconsciously. And it isn't
only school property that a child neglects or destroys: he leaves
his new bicycle out in the rain after the newness has had a three
weeks' vogue.

Children's destructiveness at the age of nine or ten is not

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