TRAINING FOR COUNTRY LIFE 21 



down irrevocably to country life and country work. We must leave 

 him free to choose eventually for himself what course he will pursue. 

 However, prima facie he seems destined to life in different surround- 

 ings and to occupying himself in a different calling than his town 

 brother. He is to remain a Greek, and not to become a Janissary. 

 And that will be the best mode of bringing him up which best fits 

 him for the part that he will prima facie be called upon to fill in life. 

 His education is not to teach him what Disraeli's Contarini Fleming 

 contemptuously called " Words, words, words," but to form his 

 character and to open his understanding. That is the accepted 

 object of education, wherever education has approved itself by its 

 results, more especially on rural soil, where the opening of the 

 understanding, the production of a capacity to assimilate knowledge 

 according to developing circumstances, is judged to be of far greater 

 importance than the filtering in of dry booklore. That is, to state 

 one instance, a precedent recognised as brilliant, the principle of the 

 famed Danish " People's High Schools " and, proportionately to 

 their opportunities, also in the Danish elementary schools, which 

 serve to prepare the ground. That is, once more, what we find in 

 Switzerland, the fully " free " education of which country has served 

 us in early years as a guiding light for our own educational policy. 

 Swiss education opens the door to the university to the son of the 

 humblest citizen, town or country. But throughout its organisation 

 it keeps practical ends in view, preparing young people for the work 

 which it is proposed that they shall take to in life. There is no 

 procrustean sameness in it. And in those experimental attempts, of 

 which more than one have been made, both in our own country and 

 in others — more specifically in America — in which teaching, indivi- 

 dualised as in Denmark, so as to bring the teacher's personal influence 

 to bear upon each several pupil — being adapted to his peculiar 

 character and faculties— the result has been distinctly in favour 

 of what may be called " education " as contrasted with mere 

 '' instruction." 



In our rural education we have unfortunately stuck far too much 

 to mechanical " instruction," not even taking sufficient account of 

 differences in circumstances as affecting the aim to be made for, and 

 the methods by which such aims are to be attained. 



Once more let us put the question : What is the object to be 

 aimed at in education ? Evidently such object should be to prepare 

 the young folk being educated in the best manner possible for such 

 course of life as they are intended to be led to follow, taking both 

 surroundings and occupation into account, so as to make them as 



