604 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 
child’s life the creation of its power to reason is more wonderful than anything 
else, and this reasoning power comes altogether by observation and experiment. 
An affectionate parent easily finds methods of helping Nature in this process. 
The unspoilt boy of six years seems to forget nothing that he hears; he has 
gathered a most wonderful vocabulary; he knows endless nursery rhymes and 
simple poetry ; he is as active and adventurous as a kitten, and everything he does 
is cultivating his senses. This is the time when he fills the smallest playground 
(which to grown-ups seems bare and desolate) with giants and fairies and Indians 
and pirates, with forests and mountains and rivers and oceans. His imagination 
is so extraordinary that the most uncouth creation of his own gives him exquisite 
pleasure. Why do I dwell upon this stage of a boy’s development? Because it 
has been so perfect! Nature has learnt to do this to children during perhaps 
hundreds of thousands of years, and it has been the most important time of a 
boy’s life, the time when, if parents will only give the boy their love and greatly 
let him alone otherwise, he develops mentally more than during all the rest 
of his life. Speaking broadly, he has done nothing in all this time except 
what Nature and affection made pleasant to him. I have studied the science of 
education and practised the art of teaching all my life, and I say that all our 
failures are due to our neglect of Nature’s methods, and our schools destroy the 
good effects which Nature has produced. 
As a rule I do not like to be told that certain subjects must be compulsory, 
but surely every child of eleven must have some such qualifications as these : 
(1) The power to speak and read and write in his own language. (2) To be able to 
do easy computation. (3) To have an exact knowledge of the simplest principles of 
Natural Science from his own observation and experiment. I think that every ob- 
server must acknowledge that these powers are possible for almost every boy of 
eleven. Some of us have for many years been endeavouring to show how the child 
of six may acquire these powers by the age of eleven if Nature’s methods—that 
is, Kindergarten methods—are followed. For example, he plays at keeping shop, 
selling or buying things by weight and measure, and paying or receiving actual 
money and giving change. He weighs and measures with greater and greater 
accuracy as he makes experiments in mechanics and heat and chemistry. Every 
boy is fond of stories, and if treated reasonably is easily induced to learn to read. 
Reading aloud is easily made a pleasure and a habit, and so the boy learns to 
speak properly. Any boy whatever will become fond of reading if the people 
about him are fond of reading: I state this as a fact which I have investigated. 
A boy who is fond of reading gets later on to know the value of books and the 
use of books, and he will go on educating Limself till he dies. Any attempt at 
coercion, unless it is the very gentle coercion of a person whom he loves, is fatal ; 
even coaxing is not always good. He assimilates knowledge from everything 
which he does, and therefore he ought to be induced to do things which not only 
keep him healthy, but which give him knowledge and teach him to reason. Do 
you remember how angry Lanfranc of Bec was at the idea that any pupil could 
be forced to learn; he said ‘ it turned men into beasts.’ I speak to you who love 
children, who love young people, who know that there is hardly one child in a 
hundred, even among rather spoilt children, who does not love to do his duty. 
Under the best and most loving of teachers a lonely child has enormous dis- 
advantages, but these can generally be remedied. ‘The usual mistake is to send it 
to a large school. If it is merely a day school there is no great harm. But no 
child under thirteen ought to be sent to a boarding school unless it is a small 
school and the master and his wife have a love and sympathy for other people’s 
children, There are such people in the world, God bless them! but they are not 
numerous. They are so few that we must return to Nature as the best of 
teachers. The time is coming when a child’s own father and mother will have 
much more knowledge and wisdom than they have now, and they will refuse to 
give up to others the doing of their highest duties. It is at present not sufficiently 
recognised that the most important duty of the parents is the education of their 
children, At present, men who are building up fortunes are too busy to think of 
their children, and so we find that the sons of Lord Chancellors and other success- 
ful men have been marrying chorus girls‘and squandering those very fortunes to 
which their education was sacrificed. Of course, if parents are uneducated, and 
therefore selfish or otherwise foolish, any kind of school may be better than home 
for their doomed children. It is one of the great advantages of poverty that the 
