Child Is the Father of Man

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In the famous poem, The Rainbow, William Wordsworth used the expression, "The child is father of the man." This expression means that all our positive and negative traits are established when we are young. Indeed, if you watch children at play, you will notice them demonstrate certain characteristics which remain with them forever. It is necessary to groom children to adopt healthy attitudes and positive traits so that they grow up to be balanced individuals. There is another saying that children and saints behave similarly. A child is artless and as long as it remains unpolluted by so called ‘growing up’, it will rejoice in the simple but true delights of life like a rainbow. The poet here wishes to remain the wondering child always and not grow into a cynical adult who cannot appreciate the ‘Rainbow’. This also means that that today's children will be the fathers of tomorrow's men. It makes one realize how much potential a seemingly innocent, small, and insignificant child has. This proverb also implies that whatever we teach our children, we must expect to see in future generations, because those will be the attitudes, ideas, and policies that our children will pass on to THEIR children. In India, Mahatma Gandhi is one of our founding fathers and in fact the “Father of the nation”. He was a child once, and so it could have been said of him that this "child is the father of man." Today there are billions of youngsters in the world. One day, a handful of these youngsters will be presidents, tyrants, inventors, scientists, teachers, generals, peacekeepers, innovators, authors, politicians, etc. and they will rule the world and decide their generations' destiny; they will be "fathers of

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