The Curse of Education

ndards, on the cramming system, what becomes of those

form. There is a small percentage of boys at the top of each class who are considered the most intelligent, and by whom most of the questions asked by the master are answered. The remainin

olars who pass through such institutions. It still remains for us to discover the r?le which is played by the other four-fifths in school-life. According to scholastic methods of classification, the bulk of this resi

gainst the grain. They suffer more under the system than the dull, the lazy, and the fractious, who escape its worst evils, either because some active power

it by the teaching process, nor do they possess those qualities that would enable them to resist its consequences. Thus they fall between two stools, being car

e chance of getting into some branch of the public service; and, as we have seen, it is from amongst his ranks that the permanent officials of the various departments of Government are recruited. A great number of thos

t is enforced by what is called school discipline. That is to say, the authorities devise every conceivable form of punishment to make a constant grind at obligatory subjects less disagreeable than the cons

arating one for the victim. It is preposterous to dignify this nigger-driving by the term 'education.' One might as well talk of the Chinese eagerly

ill be dealt with later on in a separate chapter. What needs emphasizing here is that to make boys do certain things under compulsion is not developing their faculties, but is absolutely

ucation. At the same time, my object will be, if possible, to form Christian men, for Christian boys I can scarcely hope to make; I mean that, from the natural imperfect state of boyhood, they are not susceptible of Christian p

e to me, there came fresh persecution on that very account, and divers instances of boys joining in it out of pure cowardice, both physical and moral, when, if left to themselves, they would rather have shunned it. And the exceedingly small number of boys who can be relied on for active and steady good on these occasions, and the way in which the decent and respectable of ordinary life (Carlyle's "Shams") are sure on these occasions to swim wit

oy spends a great deal of his time in cheating the masters, lying to the authorities, and playing every sort and kind of mischievous or disreputable prank that comes into his head. But it is better to have

cause than natural instinct. It is to be found in the system of education which not only fails to develop and encourage the boy's individual tastes or faculties, but actually forces upon him occupations that are, fo

courage the faculties that nature intended a particular boy to develop, a vacuum is created. This vacuum must be filled up, and it is no earthly use trying to fill it up, against the grain, with mathematical pr

re they are, and the laws of nature have decreed that they shall be constantly expended and renewed. If this or that boy's store of energy is not turned into one channel, it will expend itself through another. If the schoolmaster were to take the trouble to fi

they make use of their leisure hours. There would be a great uproar amongst parents if their sons were forbidden to join in the games they wished to play, and compelled to play those for which they had no taste. It would be considered monstrous to remove a boy who was a ca

s, it is true, there is the choice of a classical or a modern side; but the choice is the parents', not the boy's. The latter is always treated, in reference to his school-work, as

rst possible treatment for the brain. Whilst our lunatics, however, are treated in this humane and rational spirit, the educational expert is

mind because it is applied directly. If physical restraint acts perniciously upon the reasoning powers, a far greater degree of harm must be cause

er must necessarily be the one perfect method-just as the fond mother, whose infant has been enabled by means of a phenome

ically wrong somewhere. If a few manage to survive the treatment and remain the ten righteous individuals, what is to be said of the degeneration of the ma

trying to find an egress. But the parent and the pedagogue, in their blindness, can only see in this law of nature a wicked