of the word) of studying--necessarily devolves on the former; and the
latter, instead of relying upon himself and learning to use his own
wits and resources, becomes more and more helpless and resourceless,
and gradually ceases to take any interest in the work that he is
doing, for its own sake, his chief, if not his sole, concern being
to outwit the examiner and pass a successful examination. (One
frequently meets with clever University students who, having read a
certain book for a certain examination and had no question set from
it, regard the time given to the study of it as wasted, and have
no compunction about expressing this opinion!) If these are evils
incidental--I might almost say essential--to the examination of adult
scholars, it stands to reason that they will be greatly aggravated
when the examinees are young children. For the younger the child, the
more ignorant and helpless he is (however full he may be of latent
capacity and spontaneous activity), and therefore the more ready he
is to lean upon his teacher and to look to him for instruction and
direction.

The desire to outwit, and so win approval from, an examiner, is not
the only reason why the teacher so often reduces to an absurdity the
traditional distrust of the child. His own inability to educate the
child on other lines is another and not less potent reason. The
examination _regime_ to which he has been subjected himself, partly,
perhaps, under compulsion, but also and in larger measure of his
own choice, deprives him, as we have already seen, of much of his
freedom, initiative, and responsibility; and that being so, it is
inevitable that within the limited range of free action which is left
to him, he in his turn should devote his energies to depriving his
pupils of the same vital qualities, and to making them the helpless
creatures of habit and routine which he himself is tending to become.
To give free play to a child's natural faculties and so lead him
into the path of self-development and self-education, demands a high
degree of intelligence on the part of the teacher, combined with the
constant exercise of thought and initiative within a wide range of
free action. If you tell a teacher in precise detail, whether
directly or indirectly, that he is to do this thing, and that
thing, and the next thing, he will not be able to carry out your
instructions, except by telling his pupils, again in precise detail,
that they are to do this thing, an