fe.

For us of the Twentieth Century who know enough about education to
be aware of the shallowness of our knowledge of it, and of the
imperfection of the existing educational systems of our country, it
may be difficult to realise that in the years when things were at
their worst, at any rate in the field of elementary education, the
Nation in general and the "Department" in particular were well
content that things should remain as they were,--well content that
the elementary school should be, not a nursery of growing seedlings
and saplings, but a decently efficient mill, and that year after year
this mill should keep on grinding out its dreary and meaningless
"results." But in truth that ignorant optimism, that cheap content
with the actual, was a sure proof that things _were_ at their
worst;--for

"When we in our viciousness grow hard,
(O misery on't) the wise gods seal our eyes
In our own filth; drop our clear judgments: make us
Adore our errors";

and the multiform discontent with education in its present stage of
development, which is characteristic of our own generation, and which
is in some ways so confusing and disconcerting, and so unfavourable
to the smooth working of our educational machinery, has the merit of
being a healthy and hopeful symptom.

But bad as things were in those days, there was at least one
redeeming feature. The children were compelled to _work_, to exert
themselves, to "put their backs into it." The need for this was
obvious. The industry of the child meant so much professional
reputation and, in the last resort, so much bread and butter to his
teacher. It is true that the child was not allowed to do anything by
or for himself; but it is equally true that he had to do pretty
strenuously whatever task was set him. He had to get up his two (or
three) "Readers" so thoroughly that he could be depended upon to pass
both the reading and the dictation test with success. He had to work
his abstract sums in arithmetic correctly. He had to take in and
remember the historical and geographical information with which he
had been crammed. And so forth. There must be no shirking, no
slacking on his part. His teachers worked hard, though "not according
to knowledge"; and he must do the same. Active, in the higher sense
of the word, he was never allowed to be; but he had to be actively
receptive, strenuously automatic, or his teacher would know the
reason why.

Such was the old _regime_. It