dole of not very accurate information; something to be
swallowed by the beginner in the art of living whether he liked it or
not, and was hungry for it or not: and which had been chewed and digested
over and over again by people who didn't care about it in order to serve
it out to other people who didn't care about it."

I stopped the old man's rising wrath by a laugh, and said: "Well, _you_
were not taught that way, at any rate, so you may let your anger run off
you a little."

"True, true," said he, smiling. "I thank you for correcting my
ill-temper: I always fancy myself as living in any period of which we may
be speaking. But, however, to put it in a cooler way: you expected to
see children thrust into schools when they had reached an age
conventionally supposed to be the due age, whatever their varying
faculties and dispositions might be, and when there, with like disregard
to facts to be subjected to a certain conventional course of 'learning.'
My friend, can't you see that such a proceeding means ignoring the fact
of _growth_, bodily and mental? No one could come out of such a mill
uninjured; and those only would avoid being crushed by it who would have
the spirit of rebellion strong in them. Fortunately most children have
had that at all times, or I do not know that we should ever have reached
our present position. Now you see what it all comes to. In the old
times all this was the result of _poverty_. In the nineteenth century,
society was so miserably poor, owing to the systematised robbery on which
it was founded, that real education was impossible for anybody. The
whole theory of their so-called education was that it was necessary to
shove a little information into a child, even if it were by means of
torture, and accompanied by twaddle which it was well known was of no
use, or else he would lack information lifelong: the hurry of poverty
forbade anything else. All that is past; we are no longer hurried, and
the information lies ready to each one's hand when his own inclinations
impel him to seek it. In this as in other matters we have become
wealthy: we can afford to give ourselves time to grow."

"Yes," said I, "but suppose the child, youth, man, never wants the
information, never grows in the direction you might hope him to do:
suppose, for instance, he objects to learning arithmetic or mathematics;
you can't force him when he _is_ grown; can't you force him while he is
growing, and oughtn't y