ulties is to arrest the whole process of his growth.

I will now go back to the _Arithmetic_ lesson. During the years in
which the children in elementary schools were examined individually
in reading, writing, and arithmetic, the one virtue which was
inculcated while the arithmetic lesson was in progress was that of
obedience to the formulated rule. On the yearly examination day it
was customary to give each child four questions in arithmetic, of
which only one was a "problem." Two sums correctly worked secured
a "pass"; and it was therefore possible for the child to achieve
salvation in arithmetic by blindly obeying the various rules with
which his teacher had equipped him. He had, indeed, to decide for
himself in each case which rule was to be followed; but he did this
(in most schools), not by thinking the matter out, but by following
certain by-rules given him by his teacher, which were based on a
careful study of the wording of the questions set by the inspector,
and which held good as long as that wording remained unchanged. For
example, if a subtraction sum was to be dictated to "Standard II,"
the child was taught that the number which was given out first was to
be placed in the upper line, and that the number which came next was
to be subtracted from this. He was not taught that the lesser of the
two numbers was always to be subtracted from the larger; for in order
to apply that principle he would have had to decide for himself which
was the larger of the two numbers, and the consequent mental effort
was one which his teacher could not trust him to make. It is true
that in his desire to save the child from the dire necessity of
thinking, the teacher ran the risk of being discomfited by a sudden
change of procedure on the part of an inspector. The inspector, for
example, who, having been accustomed to say "From 95 take 57," chose
to say, for a change, "Take 57 from 95," would cause widespread havoc
in the first two or three schools that were the victims of his
unlooked-for experiment. But the risks which the teacher ran who
taught his pupils to rely on trickery rather than thought were worth
running; for the inspectors, like the teachers and the children, were
ever tending to become creatures of routine, and the vagaries of
those who had the reputation of being tiresomely versatile could be
provided against--largely, if not wholly--by increased ingenuity on
the part of the teacher, and increased attention to tric