The Curse of Education

mmon, than to see men occupying positions for which they are unfitted by nature and therefore by inclination; whilst it is obvious that, had the circumstan

on society at large, upon the progress of nations, and upon the development of the human race. One of the advantages of the division of labour which is most emphasized by political economists is that it offers a fair f

oping a natural bent. He was not taken by the State almost from infancy, crammed with useless knowledge, and totally unfitted for any employment within his reach. The object was not to educate him above hi

use. There are many such examples to be met with in the biographies of men who attained em

s, was brought up by his father to be a musician. In spite of his predilection for astronomy, he continued to earn his bread b

lligent than Michael Faraday's pastors and masters discovered that the youth had a great natural love of studying science, and sent him to hear a course of lectures delivered

xhibited no taste for books; therefore his father decided to apprentice him to a shoemaker. Fortunately, however, a discriminati

have been adduced of great geniuses who have contrived, by the accident of circumstances or through sheer force of character, to escape from an environment which was forced upon them against their natural inclination. But it is not everybody who is gifted with such commanding talent and so much obstinacy and persev

ife than of those who were placed exactly in the position best suited to their taste and capacity. The failures in life are s

inted out that the public service and the professions are almost entirely filled with what must be called mediocrity; and one of the most potent c

faculties were undeveloped during the early years of schooling. Mathematicians, philosophers, even poets, are tied to trade or to some equally unsuitable occupation. Scores of so-called literary men ou

ual, it is to society at large, and to the whole world. No one will deny the fact; but to how many will it occur that such anomalies cann

. There are plenty of individuals who are ready to tinker with existing institutions, and who erroneously dignify that process by the name of reform. But nothing is more despairing than the effort to

e not much better distributed amongst the various professions and occupations than they are here. I have made inquiries amongst Americans of wide experience and observation, and ha

appliances of one kind and another. One day the youth's father came to him and said: 'I don't know what to make of B--. Could you find him a place in a wholesale merchant's office?' When it was pointe

ed axiom that children are to be manufactured into anything that happens to suit the taste or convenience of their guardians, that it probably never occurred to the parent in question that he was committing a cruel and foolish act in forcing his son out of the path into which the boy's natura

t a number of years in the country, and enjoyed an intimate acquaintance with many German families. Nothing has left upon my mind a deeper impression than the tragedy I witnessed of a boy

res of Wagner's music dramas. His taste, his musical memory, the enormous natural ability which enabled him to surmount all technical difficulties w

, of the boy's natural bent, and the application of absolute compulsion to force him, against every natural instinct, to

sities of Jena and Zürich. When I last saw him he was a plodding lawyer of the conventional type, doing his duties in a listless manner, with very indifferent success, and quite broken down in spirit. The Gymnasium, the university, and the parental obstinacy had done

do is to stuff the pupil with a certain quantity of facts according to a fixed curriculum. It does not pretend to exercise any other function. There is no effort to differentiate between individuals, or to discover the natural bent of each particular child. Instruction consis

n, and nobody bothers his head about the principles or the effects of the process. The parent leaves everything to the school, regardless of the fact that schools do not pretend to concern themselves about the

burden to himself and to those by whom he is surrounded. Natural tendencies cannot be wholly suppressed, even by education systems; and the victim's existence is not rendered more bearable by the refl

ction of a dead level of mediocrity. In many cases-such as, for example, in Prussia-this is done by design, and not by accident. Instruction is imparted in such a manner that no regard is paid to individual propensities. All are subjected, more or less, to the same proces

table state of affairs, is so much waste and extravagance. Not only does it bring in no practical return, but it works out in a precisely opposite direction. Schools and colleges that only

oubted if this expenditure is as costly in the end as that which goes to support a systematic manufacture of the unfit