rs
how many books he might read which really belong to him, is enough to
make a mere reformer or outlaw or parent-interferer of any man who is
compelled to witness it.

But it seems that the only way to interfere with one of these great
reading-machines is to stop the machine. One would say theoretically
that it would not take very much to stop it--a mere broken thread of
thought would do it, if the machine had any provision for thoughts. As
it is, one can only stand outside, watch it through the window, and do
what all outsiders are obliged to do, shout into the din a little good
advice. If this good advice were to be summed up in a principle or
prepared for a text-book it would be something like this:

The whole theory of our prevailing education is a kind of unanimous,
colossal, "I can't," "You can't"; chorus, "We all of us together can't."
The working principle of public-school education, all the way from its
biggest superintendents or overseers down to its littlest tow-heads in
the primary rooms, is a huge, overbearing, overwhelming system of not
expecting anything of anybody. Everything is arranged throughout with
reference to not-expecting, and the more perfectly a system works
without expecting, or needing to expect, the more successful it is
represented to be. The public does not expect anything of the
politicians. The politicians do not expect anything of the
superintendents. The superintendents do not expect anything of the
teachers, and the teachers do not expect anything of the pupils, and the
pupils do not expect anything of themselves. That is to say, the whole
educational world is upside down,--so perfectly and regularly and
faultlessly upside down that it is almost hopeful. All one needs to do
is to turn it accurately and carefully over at every point and it will
work wonderfully.

To turn it upside down, have teachers that believe something.

III

Eclipse

When it was decreed in the course of the nineteenth century that the
educational world should pass over from the emphasis of persons to the
emphasis of things, it was decreed that a generation that could not
emphasise persons in its knowledge could not know persons. A generation
which knows things and does not know persons naturally believes in
things more than it believes in persons.

Even an educator who is as forward-looking and open to human nature as
President Charles F. Thwing, with all his emphasis of knowing persons
and believing