otive force is duly transmitted to every part of the school
by means of a well-planned and carefully-elaborated machinery,
analogous to that by which water and gas are laid on at every
tap in every house in a well-governed town. Only those who are
intimately acquainted with the inside of the elementary school can
realise to what an extent the machinery of education has in recent
years encroached upon the vital interests of the school and the time
and thought of the teacher. In schools which are administered by
business-like and up-to-date Local Authorities, this encroachment is
becoming as serious as that of drifting sands on a fertile soil.
Time-tables, schemes of work, syllabuses, record books, progress
books, examination result books, and the rest,--hours and hours are
spent by the teachers on the clerical work which these mechanical
contrivances demand. And the hours so spent are too often wholly
wasted. The worst of this machinery is that, so long as it works
smoothly, all who are interested in the school are satisfied. But
it may all work with perfect smoothness, and yet achieve nothing
that really counts. I know of hundreds of schools which are to all
appearance thoroughly efficient,--schools in which the machinery of
education is as well contrived as it is well oiled and cleaned,--and
yet in which there is no vital movement, no growth, no life. From
highest to lowest, all the inmates of those schools are cheating
themselves with forms, figures, marks, and other such empty symbols.

The application of the conventional motive force to the school
children goes by the name of _Discipline_. If the pressure at each
tap is steady, constant, and otherwise effective, the discipline is
good. If it is variable, intermittent, and otherwise ineffective,
the discipline is bad. The life of the routine-ridden school is so
irksome to the child, that if he is healthy and vigorous he will long
to find a congenial outlet for his vital energies, which are as a
rule either pent back (as when he sits still listening to a lecture),
or forced into uninteresting and unprofitable channels. When this
desire masters him during school hours, it goes by the name of
"naughtiness," and is regarded as a proof of the inborn sinfulness
of his "fallen" nature. To repress the desire, to keep the child in
a state either of absolute inaction or of mechanically regulated
activity, is the function of school discipline. Whatever in the
child's life is f