his question. If he did, he would answer it by saying that the end
of education is to enable the child to produce certain outward and
visible results,--to do by himself what he has often done, either in
imitation of his teacher, or in obedience to his repeated directions;
to say by himself what he has said many times in chorus with his
class-mates; to disgorge some fragments of the information with which
he has been crammed; and so forth. What may be the value of these
outward results, what they indicate, what amount or kind of mental
(or other) growth may be behind them,--are questions which the
teacher cannot afford to consider, even if he felt inclined to
ask them. His business is to drill the child into the mechanical
production of quasi-material results; and his success in doing this
will be gauged in due course by an "examination,"--a periodic test
which is designed to measure, not the degree of growth which the
child has made, but the industry of the teacher as indicated by the
receptivity of his class.

The truth is that inward and spiritual growth, even if it were
thought desirable to produce it and measure it, could not possibly be
measured. The real "results" of education are in the child's heart
and mind and soul, beyond the reach of any measuring tape or weighing
machine. It follows that if the work of the teacher is to be tested,
an external test must be applied. This means that external results,
results which can be weighed and measured, must be aimed at by both
teacher and child, and that the value of these as symbols of what is
inward and intrinsic must be wholly ignored. Not that the inward
results of education would in any case be seriously considered. When
education is based on the passivity of the child, nothing matters to
him or to his teacher except the accuracy with which he can reproduce
what he has been taught,--can repeat what he has been told, or do by
himself what he has been told how to do. What connection there may be
between these achievements and his mental state matters so little
that the bare idea of there being such a connection is, as a rule,
entirely lost sight of. The externalisation of religion in the West,
as evidenced by its ceremonialism and its casuistry, has faithfully
mirrored itself in the externality of Western education. The
examination system (which I will presently consider) keeps education
in the grooves of externality, and drives those grooves so deep as
to make esca