Two kinds of stealing should be distinguished: stealing by a
normal child and stealing by a neurotic child.

A natural, normal child will steal. He simply wants to satisfy
his acquisitive urge; or with his friends, he wants the adventure.
He has not yet made the distinction between mine and thine.
Many Summerhill children engage in this kind of stealing up to
a certain age. They are free to live out this stage.

Speaking to a number of schoolmasters about their orchards, I
have had them tell me that their pupils take most of the fruit.
Now we have a large garden at Summerhill filled with fruit
trees and bushes, but our children rarely steal the fruit. Some
time ago, two boys were charged at a General School Meeting
with pinching fruit. They were new boys. When their con-
sciences were abolished, they had no further interest in fruit
stealing.

School thieving is for the most part a communal affair. The
communal theft would suggest that adventure plays an impor-
tant part in stealing; not only adventure, but showing off, enter-
prise, leadership.

Only occasionally does one see the lone crook--always a sly
boy with an angelic innocence all over his face, who gets away
with much because at Summerhill there is no gang rat to be-
tray him. No, you can never tell a young thief by his face. In-
deed, I have a boy with such an innocent smile and such clear,
blue, guileless eyes that I have a good suspicion that he is not en-
tirely ignorant of the whereabouts of a certain can of fruit that
disappeared from the school larder last night.

However, I have seen many a child who would steal at the age

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