L.—EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE 195 
who are responsible for the education of the young may supplement or 
counteract the influence of the home (which in this matter is inevitably 
the most important) in the presentation of values for choice, or, in other 
words, of standards of good and bad, fair and ugly. Many of these ways 
are familiar and obvious ; the most powerful no doubt are wise suggestion 
and example ; but it is clear that not only in the general life of the school 
as a society, but also in the choice of literature, in the study of characters 
both in literature and history, and in the presentation, in however simple 
a form, of the working in history of cause and effect, an immense oppor- 
tunity is open to the teacher, though how far that opportunity is diminished 
at least in Secondary Schools (happily, much less in Primary) by the 
cramping influence of examinations is a very grave question, to which 
Ishall return. Further, I am convinced that the tendency for many years 
to relegate the study of the Bible to a place of almost complete unimport- 
ance in the curriculum has been a fatal mistake, though here again it is 
the Secondary rather than the Primary Schools that are most guilty. 
Almost all the principles which distinguish the most progressive modern 
civilisation from the barbarism to which some apparently desire to return 
are those which are found in the New Testament and which as a mere 
matter of history have found their way into civilisation from that source ; 
and it is significant that both in Germany and Russia the consciousness of 
this has been so strong that the suppression of freedom has been closely 
combined with an attack upon the Christian religion. If it is urged that 
the young ought to be left free to make up their own minds about religious 
matters, I reply that they have at least the right to be given the chance to 
do so by being supplied with the materials for the decision, as is done 
in regard to every other matter which is of importance; otherwise 
they have no real freedom of choice ; and it is at least reassuring that in 
our Training Colleges and in the Training Departments of Univer- 
sities, and still more in the minds of the future teachers themselves, more 
attention is now being given to the best ways of teaching a subject 
which both for the understanding of human nature and society and for its 
bearing on practical life is far more important than any other. But in 
what I propose to say about training in thinking generally, training in 
thinking about values will be implicitly considered, and to this we may 
now proceed. 
For education has much more to do in the cause of freedom than the 
1 Sir Percy Nunn (op. cit., p. 98) wisely insists that ‘ the old pedagogic arts, 
which represent not merely the blunders of the past but also the successes won 
during centuries of sincere and patient effort, can never become obsolete’ and 
that suggestion on the part of the teacher (which is one of the most effective 
forms of guidance) ‘ is not by nature a foe to spontaneity, but a necessary instru- 
ment in the process by which a man becomes truly the captain of his own soul.’ 
The young scholar will assuredly be exposed to the strong influence of suggestion 
exercised by his companions ; and to rule out suggestion, and even something 
more, by older and wiser personalities would be merely silly. Even the most 
rigid applicants of the principles of Mme Montessori (whose influence for good 
upon educational practice is unquestioned) admit a very large measure of guid- 
ance and suggestion, and restrict the imperfectly developed freedom of the very 
young by a careful limitation of the possibilities of choice and of going seriously 
wrong. 
