opportunities out of school. The school is therefore not preparing
him for life.

* * * * *

Freedom in the transition and the junior school must be differently
applied: individual life begins to merge into community life, and the
children begin to learn that things right for individuals may be wrong
for the community. But the problem of freedom is not as easy as the
problem of authority: standards must be greatly altered and outward
docility no longer mistaken for training in self-control. Individual
training cannot suddenly become class discipline, neither can children
be switched from the Nursery School to a full-blown class system.

The idea of class teaching must be postponed, for out of it come most of
the difficulties of discipline, and it is not the natural arrangement at
this transitional period. A teacher is imposing on a number of very
different individuals a system that says their difficulties are alike,
that they must all work at one rate and in one way: and so we have the
weary "reading round" class, when the slow ones struggle and the quick
ones find other and unlawful occupation: we have the number lessons
broken by the teacher's breathless attempts to see that all the class
follows: we have the handwork that imposes an average standard of work
that fits nobody exactly. Intellectual freedom can only come by
individual or group work, while class teaching is only for such
occasions as a literature or a singing lesson, or the presentation of an
occasional new idea in number. Individual and group work need much
organisation, but while classes consist of over forty children there is
no other way to permit intellectual and moral freedom. Of course the
furniture of the room will greatly help to make this more possible, and
it is hoped that an enlightened authority will not continue to supply
heavy iron-framed desks for the junior school, those described as "desks
for listening."

The prevailing atmosphere should be a busy noise and not silence--it
should be the noise of children working, oftener than of the teacher
teaching, _i.e._ teaching the whole class. The teacher should be more
frequently among the children than at her desk, and the children's
voices should be heard more often than hers.

Such children will inevitably become intellectually independent and
morally self-controlled. Most of the order should be taken in hand by
children in office, and they should be distin