EDUCATION

in a primary school is the first stage of a process
whose full value will not be reaped until it comes
to fruition in a college education. Arrested short
of that crowning glory the pupil may still get some
good out of what he has learnt; the three R's
are useful even in their elementary forms; but
to get the full benefit of these accomplishments
they must be pursued till they reach the college
stage. The opposite method, which would base
education on what is best for the child and then
adapt the higher stages so as to lead on naturally
from the child stage as its growing-point, has
no more hold on the public education of America
than it has on that of Britain.

Advocates of this method, indeed, are to be
found all over the United States, and I have
myself inspected schools both in the East and
the West where admirable experiments are being
tried out in training children on lines which
vitalize their intelligence and awaken their
creative powers from the very first. But often,
after showing me the astonishing results achieved
in these ways, my informant would take me aside
and tell me a tragic story. " We bring our
pupils/* he would say, " to the point you have
seen; a point where they are fiill of promise
and from which it would be easy to lead them
on. But the stages of their education which
follow, instead of developing what we have
done for them, kill it out. They enter the
educational factory, where everything depends