n6 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY 



with the adult mind, the inexperience of many of the 

 teachers, the superficiality of their training, the relative 

 proportions of teachers and taught, the impossibility of 

 intimate contact between them in the time and space 

 allotted, the artificiality of the discipline, and the in- 

 evitable destruction of much of the natural intimacy 

 between parents and children, master and apprentice, 

 as a result of enforced absence during school-hours 

 from the home, the field and the workshop, do not 

 give us any assurance that our methods of training 

 will stand the strain of a careful inquiry into their 

 effects on the national character. 



There is, to put it mildly, a strong probability that 

 the environment normally provided by the parents and 

 the immediate family will be fairly well suited to 

 children who inherit the same inborn qualities, that the 

 same occupations will attract their capacity, the same 

 interests absorb their leisure hours. Again, a closer 

 acquaintance with the parental aptitudes and failings 

 and with the communal life of a district or of a class 

 of workers would often enable us to suggest and plan 

 out a course of training more in accordance with the 

 probable qualities of the children than the present 

 uniform system of education, given the liberty and 

 encouragement to make the attempt. 



Even the recognition of the well-ascertained fact 

 that town life and country life are responsible for 

 entirely different modes of thought and development, 

 and make quite other demands on the character and 

 capacities of men and women, would be a first step 

 towards supplying education and training of the type 

 fitted to the intelligences of the children who have to 



