supported, but whether the present system of
education should be entirely discarded in favour of an altogether new
plan? that behind all these petty controversies lie great issues,
affecting the fundamental principles of education, which must be pushed
to the front unless the degeneration of the race--an inevitable result
of the present educational method--is to be continued indefinitely?

Let people consider for a moment what is effected by the present system.
The child, as we have seen, is taken by the State at an early age and
subjected, for the most part, to a careful drilling in the three
elementary subjects. There is no harm in knowing how to read and write;
it is a very necessary accomplishment. A little arithmetic is also
indispensable to the fulfilment of many of the commonest duties of
everyday life. But, apart from the iniquity of cramming or forcing the
brain in a particular direction, it must be recollected that by imposing
certain subjects upon the undeveloped mind of a child, others are
necessarily excluded. The process therefore, when rigidly carried out,
has very serious and far-reaching effects. It prevents the development
of the mind in any direction but that which is being enforced.

The harm done to the individual child by this means is incalculable. On
the very threshold of the development of its faculties according to
natural instincts this development is violently arrested by an
artificial operation. Nor does the evil end here. This interference with
Nature is carried on throughout the whole school career of the child,
and the tradition flourishes in a modified form in the colleges and
universities. It is, in fact, the vital principle of modern education.

These schools in which the children of the people are taught are nothing
more than factories for turning out a uniformly-patterned article. They
do not succeed in their object of conferring what is called an
education upon their pupils, but they contrive to drive out all original
ideas without implanting any useful knowledge in their place. The
general result of this wholesale manufacture of dummies will be dealt
with directly. The intention here is merely to point out that the
practical working of the machinery of State education is to check the
natural development of the mind, and to unfit those whom it has
victimized, not only for one, but for all occupations that demand manual
dexterity or practical intelligence.

CHAPTER V

THE