230 What We Lose 



presume that most parents will agree in con- 

 demning the ultra-fashionable and most ex- 

 pensive schools as wonderfully well designed to 

 make a child all that it should not be. With 

 the primary schools there is scarcely any choice 

 to be made between those of the city and the 

 country. The home life of the child before 

 twelve years of age counts for so much in form- 

 ing the character and the intellectual judgment 

 of the child that schools, good or bad, are not 

 of great weight. If anything, the little, un- 

 pretentious district school of the smallest 

 country village is better than the city school, 

 because there are fewer children, and conse- 

 quently their idiosyncrasies are more likely to 

 have full play. The worst that can be said of 

 our public-school system is that it tends to 

 eliminate individuality and make each child the 

 counterpart of the standard child, often a very 

 low standard. At the most impressionable 

 age, we send our children to schools in which 

 the effort is to turn out boys and girls all 

 knowing the same thing, taking the same view 

 of every topic, and approaching more closely 

 to a type with which educated persons have 



