OF EDUCATION 53 



tant years of the scholastic course : yet the teacher 

 accomplishes very little except to stultify the quick 

 perceptions of childhood. The reason is obvious. 

 He begins by the contravention of Nature's law, 

 superimposes arbitrary and unnatural work, and fails 

 to perceive that he is to aid that spontaneous educa- 

 tion which has already accomplished so much. Those 

 wonderful intuitive attainments, without which the 

 child would require protection every moment, are all 

 overlooked or counted as nothing. The observing 

 faculties, those natural avenues of knowledge, with- 

 out which all education would be an impossibility, 

 are suppressed or practically ignored ; and the child 

 is treated as if the only road to learning were through 

 the arbitrary signs of ideas — as if the knowledge of 

 things were nothing, but the knowledge of words the 

 great desideratum. 



We might as well expect an ample harvest from 

 sowing in the eternal snows of the Himalaya, as to 

 expect much real culture in our primary schools as 

 now organized. And the time has now come when 

 this inappropriate and profitless course, long sus- 

 tained by the power of old tradition, must gradually 

 give way for a more philosophic and natural one. 

 Efforts to improve our schools of higher grade will 

 be of little avail until the method in our primary 



