er-estimate its capacity for
mischief. In the act of arresting growth it must needs distort
growth, and in doing this it must needs deaden and even destroy the
life which is ever struggling to evolve itself. It is well that from
time to time we should ask ourselves what compulsory education has
done for the people of England. How much it has done to civilise
and humanise the masses is beginning to be known to all who are
interested in social progress, and I for one am ready to second any
vote of thanks that may be proposed to it for this invaluable
service.[15] But when we ask ourselves what it has done to _vitalise_
the nation, we may well hesitate for an answer. Twenty years ago, in
the days of "schedules" and "percentages," elementary education was,
on balance, an actively devitalising agency. The policy of the
Education Department made that inevitable. But things have changed
since then; and it is probable that the balance is now in favour of
the elementary school. But the balance, though growing from year to
year, is as yet very small compared with what it will be when the
teacher, relieved from the pressure of the still prevailing demand
for "results," is free to take thought for the vital interests of the
child.

Whom shall we blame for the shortcomings of our elementary schools?
The Board of Education? Their Inspectors? The Teachers? The Training
Colleges? The Local Authorities? We will blame none of these. We will
blame the spirit of Western civilisation, with its false philosophy
of life and its false standard of reality.

Shall we blame the Board because, in the days when they called
themselves the Department, they made the teachers of England the
serfs of their soul-destroying Code? For my own part I prefer to
honour the Board, not only because on a certain day they liberated
their serfs by a departmental edict, but also and more especially
because, in defiance of the protests and criticisms of Members of
Parliament, employers of labour, Chairmen of Education Committees,
and others, in defiance of the ubiquitous pressure of Western
externalism and materialism, in defiance of the trend of contemporary
opinion, in defiance of their own practice,--for they themselves are
an examining body whose nets are widely spread,--they refuse to
revoke the gift of freedom, which they gave, perhaps over-hastily, to
the teachers of England, and continue to exempt them, so far as their
own action is concerned, from the pre