THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 107 



ing its limitations, there was no more important element 

 of stability in the country, and, especially in contact 

 with the very young, its influence was most valuable. 

 The simplicity, the straightforwardness, the frank accept- 

 ance of authority which are concomitant to this type of 

 mind appeal especially to the undeveloped faculties 

 of the child, and can impress without confusing or 

 fatiguing them. Hence we are all ready to acknow- 

 ledge the immense advantage to be obtained by the 

 association of children and young people of all ranks 

 with the steadfast, right-living members of the cottar 

 or fisher class, where this more direct, more intuitive 

 sense of natural order has often found its resting-place. 

 Many of us whose chief sources of knowledge have 

 been from academic and literary spheres have little to 

 show compared with the stores of experience, personal 

 and racial, treasured up in the minds of these people 

 of steadfast faith and undisturbed wisdom. Yet one 

 of the results of modern tendencies in education has 

 been to slight the value of this fund of human lore, 

 partly on account of its inability to express itself in 

 terms of the current superficial philosophy, and partly 

 on account of the intuitive as against the argumentative 

 form of support with which it upheld the substance of 

 its faith. Not only have the children, owing to the 

 hours allotted to compulsory schooling, been withdrawn 

 for long hours from the homes where this most valu- 

 able influence would have found its normal sphere of 

 action, but many of the ideas imbibed during school- 

 hours have served directly to create an attitude of 

 contempt and inattention for any knowledge not to 

 be acquired in a school primer or text-book. Much 



