Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Child-Rearing

When the child flies a kite he is training eye and hand to accuracy; when he whips a top, he is increasing his strength by using it, but without learning anything.  I have sometimes asked why children are not given the same games of skill as men; tennis, mall, billiards, archery, football, and musical instruments.  I was told that some of these are beyond their strength, that the child’s senses are not sufficiently developed for others.  These do not strike me as valid reasons; a child is not as tall as a man, but he wears the same sort of coat; I do not want him to play with our cues at a billiard-table three feet high; I do not want him knocking about among our games, nor carrying one of our racquets in his little hand; but let him play in a room whose windows have been protected; at first let him only use soft balls, let his first racquets be of wood, then of parchment, and lastly of gut, according to his progress.