What Is and What Might Be | Page 2

on the hostile forces which have been too
strong for many of them,--on the false assumptions of Western
philosophy, on the false standards and false ideals of Western

civilisation, on various "old, unhappy, far-off things," the effects of
which are still with us, foremost among these being that deadly system
of "payment by results" which seems to have been devised for the
express purpose of arresting growth and strangling life, which bound us
all, myself included, with links of iron, and which had many zealous
agents, of whom I, alas! was one.


PART I
WHAT IS
OR
THE PATH OF MECHANICAL OBEDIENCE
CHAPTER I
SALVATION THROUGH MECHANICAL OBEDIENCE
The function of education is to foster growth. By some of my readers
this statement will be regarded as a truism; by others as a challenge; by
others, again, when they have realised its inner meaning, as a "wicked
heresy." I will begin by assuming that it is a truism, and will then try to
prove that it is true.
The function of education is to foster growth. The end which the
teacher should set before himself is the development of the latent
powers of his pupils, the unfolding of their latent life. If growth is to be
fostered, two things must be liberally provided,--nourishment and
exercise. On the need for nourishment I need not insist. The need for
exercise is perhaps less obvious, but is certainly not less urgent. We
make our limbs, our organs, our senses, our faculties grow by
exercising them. When they have reached their maximum of
development we maintain them at that level by exercising them. When

their capacity for growth is unlimited, as in the case of our mental and
spiritual faculties, the need for exercise is still more urgent. To neglect
to exercise a given limb, or organ, or sense, or faculty, would result in
its becoming weak, flabby, and in the last resort useless. In childhood,
when the stress of Nature's expansive forces is strongest, the neglect of
exercise will, for obvious reasons, have most serious consequences. If a
healthy child were kept in bed during the second and third years of his
life, the damage done to his whole body would be incalculable.
These are glaring truisms. Let me perpetrate one more,--one which is
perhaps the most glaring of all. The process of growing must be done
by the growing organism, by the child, let us say, and by no one else.
The child himself must take in and assimilate the nourishment that is
provided for him. The child himself must exercise his organs and
faculties. The one thing which no one may ever delegate to another is
the business of growing. To watch another person eating will not
nourish one's own body. To watch another person using his limbs will
not strengthen one's own. The forces that make for the child's growth
come from within himself; and it is for him, and him alone, to feed
them, use them, evolve them.
All this is--
"As true as truth's simplicity, And simpler than the infancy of truth."
But it sometimes happens that what is most palpable is least perceptible;
and perhaps it is because the truth of what I say is self-evident and
indisputable, that in many Elementary Schools in this country the
education given seems to be based on the assumption that my "truisms"
are absolutely false. In such schools the one end and aim of the teacher
is to do everything for the child;--to feed him with semi-digested food;
to hold him by the hand, or rather by both shoulders, when he tries to
walk or run; to keep him under close and constant supervision; to tell
him in precise detail what he is to think, to feel, to say, to wish, to do;
to show him in precise detail how he is to do whatever may have to be
done; to lay thin veneers of information on the surface of his mind;
never to allow him a minute for independent study; never to trust him
with a handbook, a note-book, or a sketch-book; in fine, to do all that

lies in his power to prevent the child from doing anything whatever for
himself. The result is that the various vital faculties which education
might be supposed to train become irretrievably starved and stunted in
the over-educated school child; till at last, when the time comes for him
to leave the school in which he has been so sedulously cared for, he is
too often thrown out upon the world, helpless, listless, resourceless,
without a single interest, without a single purpose in life.
The contrast between elementary education as it too often is, and as it
ought to be if the truth of my "truisms" were widely accepted, is so
startling that