EDUCATION 89 



school. There is a dreary waste o time inescapable 

 in the process of mass education. Most of the time 

 of the children in public schools is devoted to waiting, 

 not studying. Studying of a sort is prescribed as a 

 means of filling in the time devoted to waiting. The 

 children wait in classes, and they wait between classes. 

 Occasionally there is an educational contact between 

 teacher and pupil. In between these contacts, the chil- 

 dren are kept out of mischief by an amazingly 

 ingenious series of time-filling exercises. What I con- 

 sider an educational contact is usually a fortunate 

 accident in our conventional schools. Education is the 

 exception, not the rule, because only when a child 

 feels a need for information and explanation, and 

 feels it emotionally and intellectually and not me- 

 chanically, is that educational contact established. 

 Mostly when these needs develop in the lives of school 

 children, the routine of the schoolroom prevents the 

 teacher from responding to it, and the hunger is dis- 

 sipated and replaced by boredom. 



Our experience showed that in such a home as we 

 were establishing these opportunities abounded. Edu- 

 cation was really reciprocal; in the very effort to edu- 

 cate the boys, we educated ourselves. Indeed, it is a 

 notion of mine that no real educational influence is 

 exerted upon the pupil unless there is also an inci- 

 dental educational effect upon the teacher. The aver- 

 age public school is operated upon the theory that 

 this personal relationship is unwise; that the rela- 

 tionship should be impersonal, objective, and me- 



