Unit 1 section B passage 5 Parents want two opposite things at once: they want their children to excel, and they want their children to be docile. But the two do not go together, and never have. Every study made of “achievers” in a genuinely creative sense— that is, people who were truly innovative, whose existence made some positive difference for the human race—has shown that as children these people were anything but docile and conformist. Almost all were independent, in mind and spirit, if not in body. They began thinking for themselves at an early age, and either rejected or modified their parents’ code of conduct and scale of values. Many were not popular with their peers, and most of them were found either “stupid” or “difficult” by their teachers. Actually, when parents say they want a child to “excel,” what they customarily mean is that they want him to be successful and to be popular. But genuine achievers are often those who fail for a long time, and who rarely attain popularity outside a small circle. And they have often had severe educational problems, from St. Thomas Aquinas, who was called a “dumb ox” at school, to Thomas Edison, who received depressingly poor grades and left school before the age of twelve. A creative and imaginative child is a great burden to the ordinary parents, and this is why a repressive society produces so few of them; the weaker spirits are crushed, and the hardier ones often overreact in a way that turns them into delinquents (少年犯) , or actual criminals if they happen to live in a squalid (污秽的) environment .