304 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



its reward ? Is purity fostered by the promiscuous herding of hundreds 

 of children, old and young, corrupt and innocent, in the same building, 

 under teachers whose time must be given to mint, anise and cummin 

 rather than to these weightier matters of the Eternal Law? Says M. 

 de Coubertin, " Not ignorance and sloth of mind threaten our younger 

 generation so much as moral inertia and atrophy of the will. The su- 

 preme problem is to cure these." This moral inertia can be overcome, 

 this will of the child can be developed and trained only by treating 

 each pupil as a special problem to be worked out with knowledge, with 

 sympathy, with tact, with enthusiasm, by every teacher under whose 

 control the child is brought. 



The bottom fallacy of much of the acknowledged inefficiency of pub- 

 lic education is that equality implies uniformity. We are to give all 

 youth an equal chance; therefore let us put it through one common 

 course of study, therefore let us give it a discipline of the barracks. 

 But this is not to secure to children an equal opportunity at all. Whose 

 omniscience devised this uniform course which is so to act upon the 

 antipodal natures of John and of Patrick, of Marie and of Tessa as to 

 give them an equal chance to develop into their very best ? Who found 

 this universal solvent of all the oddities, stupidities and personalities 

 of a townful of child nature? A uniform course is the very em- 

 bodiment of inequality, making the weak weaker, the dull duller, the 

 cross-grained more out of touch with the rest of mankind. Such a 

 course may suit three children out of every twenty; but the remaining 

 seventeen are mainly stupefied by it, learning only to associate what is 

 most disagreeable, what is most useless, what is most quickly to be for- 

 gotten with those school years during which it was vainly attempted to 

 fit their tender and growing individualities to an arbitrary mould. 

 The only way in which to give every child an equal chance with every 

 other is to provide for each the atmosphere and incentives suited to his 

 particular needs and nature. Then that nature will respond and grow, 

 revealing powers and aptitudes inconceivable under the blight of uni- 

 formity. There is no such thing as an " average child." He is a 

 fiction as absurd as the passionless man of the old political economy. 

 As well might one talk of an average vegetable and subject all plants to 

 an unchanging regimen. 



The fundamental principle of the " new education " which is as old 

 as India and Greece — is to develop and strengthen individuality. All 

 men are born free : you shall not make them slaves to a fictitious aver- 

 age. All men are born equal before the law : you shall not make them 

 unequal before the law by forcing upon them a common training which 

 gives those few whom the course happens to fit an enormous advantage, 

 leaving the rest substantially untouched by the real forces of education. 

 So much of the military, disciplinary side of the school as promotes 



