Creativity is constrained in many ways, but there is always a personal dimension involved. Post-structuralist theorists such as Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Rosalind Krauss all tend to foreground the role of prototypes, conceptualized as languages, in a too rigid (death of the author) and too underdetermined (contingency) manner. Both Adolf Hitler and Thomas Mann wrote in German, and both considered themselves to be artists, but their German creativity had very different aims. Neither have ideas of children as romantic geniuses or the theory of explaining individuals which have made a historical impact as result of “genius” been helpful. Historical impact is basically the result of a sociocognitive role (pioneers solving tricky problems such as how to transform a civilized nation into a brutal one and how to explain this feat retrospectively). But such roles are best seen as results of personal learning processes, involving two other roles, novices and professionals.

Children in early Egyptian monasteries were simultaneously a special, protected class and one of the most vulnerable populations – in some ways protected from the realities of the poverty-stricken world outside the monastic walls and the rigors of asceticism within, in other ways still vulnerable to the whims, desires, and ambitions of the adult monks around them. A status above the enslaved, but well below free adult men, children even in the monastery found their standing and status subject to negotiation. Children were in many ways a gift; caring for them was regarded as a sacred duty commanded directly by God. Their many needs and challenges, however, remained secondary to those of their adult caregivers. This chapter examines the education of children, their discipline (including corporal punishment), and their preparation for future lives as monastics.