I was treated as a human being capable of understanding things if they were explained to me both at home and at school. While at school it never occurred to me that life could be any different other than in some distant abstract way that was surely in the past. The only negative I can remember about school and then only up to the age of nine or ten was a small amount of corporal punishment. This never happened at home, my parents had a conscious policy to never hit us.
It was only when I left home to go to university that I discovered that other people had parents or schools, or both, that didn't treat them with respect.
In retrospect I can see that it allowed me to have my own opinions and argue for them with anyone, schoolfriends, my parents, teachers. I mean argue in the technical sense of presenting my views and any evidence I had and being willing to be persuaded by the opposing argument, not in the sense of a violent disagreement. It also made me willing to assume that people generally act in good faith, and I believe this has served me well.
