Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful.

Mead argues against teaching children to sort people into fixed categories (age, sex, race, class, religion) and then treating those categories as moral or personal destinies. Instead, she insists that children should learn variability within every group: character and conduct differ from person to person, so no label can substitute for judgment based on individual behavior. The deliberately blunt contrast—“loathsome” versus “delightful”—underscores that every community contains both admirable and objectionable individuals, and that prejudice often persists because education offers stereotypes rather than lived complexity. The quote reflects a humanistic, anti-essentialist view of culture and identity, consistent with Mead’s broader critique of social conditioning.