1. Assume
every child can be trusted.
2. Assume every child is to
be informed as completely as possible of as many
facts and truths as possible, i.e., everything
relevant to the situation.
3. Assume all children have
the impulse to achieve...
4. Assume the competitive
dominance-subordination hierarchy in the jungle
sense can be balanced by development of the
child's cooperative instincts.
5. Assume that every child
will have similar objectives of making friends,
learning, helping others, living peacefully,
enjoying life.
6. Assume good will among
all children rather than overwhelming natural
rivalry or jealousy. 6a. Synergy is also assumed.
7. Assume the child's
innate nature is healthy enough.
8. Assume that the
environment can be made to be healthy enough,
whatever this means.
9. Assume the "ability
to admire"...
10. Assume that the
children are not fixated at the safety-need
level.
11. Assume an active trend
to self-actualization--freedom to effectuate
one's own ideas, to select one's own friends and
one's own kind of people, to "grow," to
try things out, to make experiments and mistakes,
etc.
12. Assume that every child
can enjoy good teamwork, friendship, good group
spirit, good group homonomy, good belongingness,
and group love.
13. Assume hostility to be
primarily reactive rather than innate or
character-based.
14. Assume that children
can take it, that they are tough, stronger than
most people give them credit for.
15. Assumes that children
and all people are improvable.
16. Assume that every child
and every person prefers to feel important,
needed, useful, successful, proud, respected,
rather than unimportant, interchangeable
anonymous, wasted, unused, expendable,
disrespected.
17. That every child
prefers or perhaps even needs to love his parents
or caretakers (rather than to hate them), and
that every child prefers to respect his parents
or caretakers (rather than to disrespect them).
18. Assume that every child
dislikes fearing anyone (more than he likes
fearing anyone), but that he prefers fearing the
parents or caretakers to despising them.
19. Assume every child
prefers to be a prime mover rather than a passive
helper, a tool, a cork tossed about on the waves.
20. Assume a tendency to
improve things, to straighten the crooked picture
on the wall, to clean up the dirty mess, to put
things right, make things better, to do things
better.
21. Assume that growth
occurs through delight and through boredom.
22. Assume a preference for
being a whole person and not a part, not a thing
or an implement, or tool, or "hand."
23. Assume the preference
for playing or working rather than being idle.
24. Assume all human beings
prefer meaningful work to meaningless work.
25. Assume the preference
for personhood, uniqueness as a person, identity
(in contrast to being anonymous or
interchangeable).
26. Assume the children are
courageous enough.
27. Assume the children are
not psychopaths. In other words, they have a
conscience, can feel shame, embarrassment,
sadness, etc.
28. Assume the wisdom and
the efficacy of self-choice.
29. Assume every child
likes to be justly and fairly appreciated,
preferably in public.
30. Assume the defense and
growth dialectic for all these positive trends
that we have already listed above.
31. Assume that every
child, but especially those with some greater
innate potental, prefer responsibility to
dependency and passivity most of the time.
32. Assume every child will
get more pleasure out of loving than they will
out of hating.
33. Assume that children
would rather create than destroy unless they have
been abused or neglected in some way.
34. Assume that every child
would rather be interested than be bored.
35. Assume, at the highest
theoretical levels of thinking, each child's
preference or a tendency to identify with more
and more of the world.
36. Assume each child is
similar but unique and as such has a similar but
unique level of need for truth, beauty, justice,
perfection, friendship, acceptance, freedom,
responsibility, trust, understanding, caring,
support, encouragement, privacy, and so on.
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