handicap them
throughout their whole life. Parents profess that they have done their
best with this or that child and that they have failed, but the fault
largely lies in the parents undertaking the task with every expectation
of failure, and the chief characteristics noticed by the child have been
the parental irritability, impatience and incompetence. Having estimated
these the child then knows exactly how to gain its own ends and has
sufficient determination to persevere until it does. A certain amount of
harsh treatment will suffice, until the child is old enough to rebel, in
order to keep it in check, or, as is just as often the case, the child
may be allowed to have its own way entirely. Under such circumstances it
is not a matter of great wonderment that the child should be looked upon
as a burden to be fed, clothed, and tolerated until it is old enough to
"do something" for itself.

But our school system is also at fault, for by it our children are
crammed with an amount of information the whole, or even the greater
part, of which very few of them will ever use. Imagine the object, if
one can, of spending the precious hours of a child's educational life in
teaching it the names of every dozen or so of the different towns of
each county in the United Kingdom, and at the same time entirely
neglecting its moral training and giving very little attention to the
physical.

If a child be bright he has every consideration from his teachers and
receives from his companions the opprobious nickname of "Teacher's Pet."
He gains a reward, perhaps a medal, and at the annual distribution of
prizes the speech-makers point to the coming legislators and successful
men of business in a manner which conveys to this scholar the idea that
the one thing to live for is to gain an exalted position in the world.
This would not be so bad in itself, were it not that the love for honest
labour is not inculcated at the same time, and consequently the children
imagine that they are going to be pitchforked into prominence. As an
evidence, witness the speculative spirit so universal among our youth.
They hope to make their way in life simply by "striking it lucky."
Personally I have spoken to a large number of boys about the ages of
from fourteen to sixteen years and I have never yet been able to find a
boy who could tell me definitely what he would like to be. His father
looks about for something for him to do without any knowledge of the
b