se their
bringing-up has consisted in a persistent inoculation with the material
facts of life, and a correspondingly persistent elimination of all
imaginative ideas. 'Don't let the children believe such rubbish!' is a
constant ejaculation of the mechanical-minded person who does not
permit himself to suffer any illusions, and who has long since 'done
with romance and all that kind of twaddle.'

At any cost the imagination of the child should be encouraged and
developed. It is the richest vein in the whole mental machinery of man,
the faculty within which genius most frequently lurks, and where it can
be most easily and permanently destroyed. Grown-up people should
remember that an indiscreet answer to a childish question, or a snub
administered to an inquiring mind, is often sufficient to check thought.
It should be mainly the care of the parent to encourage the imagination
in young children, recollecting that up to a certain age its development
depends upon all the absurdities and fantastic notions of childhood
which the average adult is so fond of repressing.

By the exercise of prudence and some show of sympathy, it would then be
possible to bring a child up to the age of seven or eight without
damaging its mind or destroying its faculties. From that point onwards
the child's education ought to depend upon the individual himself. There
should be no such thing as instruction, in the sense which implies the
cramming of the brain with information, or such mental gymnastics as
conjugating irregular verbs and hunting for the least common multiple.

The position of teacher and pupil would have to be practically reversed.
The pupil would lead, and the teacher follow. In fact, the latter should
become an adviser rather than instructor, the child selecting those
studies, or those arts or crafts, which are to be made the principal
objective of its education, whilst to the mentor would fall the role of
encouraging and assisting the course of study or practice at a morally
safe distance.

Boys and girls would then not learn, but investigate. The process of
learning should be got rid of altogether, being a clumsy, dronish way of
acquiring knowledge, and one that tends to keep the brain in a perpetual
state of dependence.

Ignorance, one ought to remember, is a valuable incentive to
investigation. Young people should be left as much as possible to find
things out for themselves. Education should resemble a person groping
fo