The big national college entrance exam – the dreaded gaokao – has just finished in China.  Danwei has a collection of some of the various essay questions posed in different provinces.  As I read through them I thought that one, at least, could be readily answered with a reference to the Daodejing and Zhuangzi.  This question, from Jiangxi:

Recovering childhood (找回童年) — "Why do we want to recover
childhood? Because society it too utilitarian, children have too much
pressure, and childhood ends too early. Society needs innocence and
required a return to childhood."

A Daoist–inspired response would start by agreeing that society is too utilitarian – and that is a bad thing; it takes us away from Dao (Way), the natural unfolding of things.  And, yes, childhood ends to early.  But a Daoist would push further and argue that a return to childhood is necessary because it is the youngest, infants especially, who have not yet been contaminated with the expectations and desires and understandings that obstruct our apprehension of, and adherence to, Dao.  We learn to close ourselves off from the spontaneous expression of nature – ziran.  We come to believe that we can meaningfully control our lives and fates.  It is not just that society needs innocence, but that each of us is, as Zhuangzi says, hurtling toward oblivion:

Once we happen into the form of
this body, we cannot forget it.  And so
it is that we wait out the end. 
Grappling and tangling with things, we rush headlong toward the end, and
there’s no stopping it.  It’s sad, isn’t
it? We slave our lives away and never get anywhere, work ourselves ragged and
never find our way home.  How could it be
anything but sorrow?  People can talk
about never dying, but what good is that? 
This form we have soon becomes others, and the mind vanishes with
it.  How could it be called anything but
great sorrow?  Life is total
confusion.  Or is it that I’m the only
one who’s confused? (20)

We need to return to childhood because of what "childhood" stands for: the unadulterated human experience, without guile or goals, free from societal standards or strictures.  And that liberating possibility (I have always thought Zhuangzi was very much about liberation) is captured in section 55 of the Daodejing (Lau translation):

One who possesses virtue in abundance is comparable to a new born babe:

Poisonous insects will not sting it;
Ferocious animals will not pounce on it;
Predatory birds will not swoop down on it.
Its bones are weak and its sinews supple yet its hold is firm.
It does not know the union of male and female yet its male member will stir:
This is because its virility is at its height.

It howls all day yet does not become hoarse:
This is because its harmony is at its height.
To know harmony is called the constant;
To know the constant is called discernment.
To try to add to one's vitality is called ill-omened;
For the mind to egg on the breath is called violent.

A creature in its prime doing harm to the old
Is known as going against the way.
That which goes against the way will come to an early end.

I have to believe that some students in Jiangxi invoked these passages…