Can children be evil?

One is driven immediately, in despair, to ask why. We want instinctively to know how on earth it is possible for children to be so sadistic. Or is something more sinuous, more elusive than sadism at work here?

Two boys apparently attacked two other boys in Saturday afternoon sunshine, leaving one covered in blood and mud and the other in a critical condition.

All four of them are mere infants, aged nine, ten and 11, still in what we fondly assume is an age wherein innocence prevails.

Let us remind ourselves what 'intensive care' means. The 11-year- old was left fighting to keep hold of his fragile young life after a vicious attack that almost killed him. And that attack, with knives, bricks and, worst of all, cruel indifference, was perpetrated by other children.

Of course, the easy, unreflective word which springs to mind is that these boys must be inherently 'evil'. It is the word for which we always reach when there is something so nasty that we cannot comprehend it.

In other words, it is a word which rescues us from the torment of having to think and work it out, or from the awkward possibility that the responsibility for this viciousness may lie with the adult world that has nurtured these boys. Much simpler to call them 'evil', and then nobody is to blame. It is all the fault of the devil.

So let us please dismiss this lazy buffoonery at the outset. None of these four boys was born evil, not the victims and not the attackers. They were all four little helpless infants, thrust into life, like all of us, with explosive excitement, then immediately dependent on those at hand for survival first, for development after.

answer link :https://www.quora.com/Can-children-be-evil/answer/Tsz-Ching-Lee-4