382 BRAIN WORK AND 



profile of a fortification ; and how geometry in 

 space became plain when we began to make on a 

 small scale a bastion with embrasures and bar- 

 bettes an occupation which obviously was soon 

 prohibited on account of the state into which we 

 brought our clothes. " You look like navvies," 

 was the reproach addressed to us by our intelli- 

 gent educators, while we were proud precisely of 

 being navvies, and of discovering the use of 

 geometry. 



By compelling our children to study real 

 things from mere graphical representations, in- 

 stead of making those things themselves, we 

 compel them to waste the most precious time ; 

 we uselessly worry their minds ; we accustom 

 them to the worst methods of learning ; we kill 

 independent thought in the bud ; and very 

 seldom we succeed in conveying a real knowledge 

 of what we are teaching. Superficiality, parrot- 

 like repetition, slavishness and inertia of mind 

 are the results of our method of education. We 

 do not teach our children how to learn. 



The very beginnings of science are taught on 

 the same pernicious system. In most schools 

 even arithmetic is taught in the abstract way, 

 and mere rules are stuffed into the poor little 

 heads. The idea of a unit, which is arbitrary 

 and can be changed at will in our measurement 

 (the match, the box of matches, the dozen of 



