SCHOOLS AND FAKMING 



and the daily life. Mere abstract ideals 

 are no ideals at all : they are only dreams. 



But these things are not difficult to teach. 

 We think that they are difficult because few 

 persons have yet been trained to teach 

 them. We are so obsessed with the book 

 habit, and so possessed by what has been, 

 and so depressed by the domination of 

 educational method, that we are not free 

 really to teach. 



They say to me that this kind of teach- 

 ing would lack definiteness and consecu- 

 tiveness and would tend to looseness of 

 school work. My first reply is that I would 

 like to see school work loosened up. I am 

 leaving the old order of school work be- 

 hind. My second reply is that a good 

 teacher would make this kind of teaching* 

 just as definite and systematic as any 

 other ; and I am not at all alarmed by the 

 old bugaboo of " drill" and " mental dis- 

 cipline." Such work, when well done, 

 should have vitality, and this is exactly 

 what the old process so often lacks; it 

 would lend itself in the least degree to 

 memorizing and mummery. 

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