L.—EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE 201 
pupil who has a line of his own to follow it up, and to see that every 
pupil is mentally active and not merely receptive. Young people have 
not indeed enough experience to prescribe or to conduct their own studies 
to the extent imagined by some enthusiasts ; but they have minds which 
should not be allowed to be inert or be driven along precisely the same route 
as twenty-nine or thirty-nine other minds, and the smaller the class the less 
the risk of this. Even under the present adverse conditions, the teacher 
must be asking himself (as the best teachers do even now) during every 
minute of his work, ‘Am I leading this or that boy or girl not merely to 
absorb but to think?’ And the continuous effort involved in this may 
carry with it the need of an increase in the number of teachers, and 
perhaps some changes in their training. 
It has been impossible to speak to-day of the application of the principles 
which I have been inculcating to University work and to the various 
forms of Adult Education. The more examination-ridden University 
education is, the less it fits men and women for freedom ; but a discussion 
of the methods of University instruction would need much more than 
another hour, and in any case, unless the foundations of freedom are laid 
at school, the University has a very unpromising task. The contribution 
which Adult Education might make is very well discussed by my friends, 
Mr. J. S. Fulton and Mr. C.R. Morris, in Chapter IX of their recentiy 
published book, entitled ‘ In Defence of Democracy,’ and to this I must 
be content to refer. 
The suggestions which I have made as regards educational practice 
have nothing new in them, but I have deliberately chosen familiar in- 
stances to illustrate my main contention ; these matters are continually 
in the minds-of those who take education seriously, and there is indeed 
a danger that we may get too used to hearing about continued education, 
small classes, reform of examinations and the rest. My object has been 
to assert that these are no matters merely of theory or of finance or of 
administrative or political convenience, but of vital and immediate 
urgency, if we are not unconsciously to bring up a race which, with its mind 
stunted, its capacity for freedom undeveloped, will be the easy prey of the 
politician, the journalist and the dictator ; and that if a free democracy 
is to continue, we must educate for it, for in many respects our present 
educational system is better calculated to produce a servile and passive 
mentality than to elicit an activity of mind and an independence worthy of 
free men and women. 
It is evident that these suggestions postulate a great increase in ex- 
penditure upon education. Such expenditure is the premium by which 
the life of a people of free men and women must be assured, and what- 
ever may be the incidental consequences of spending money upon this 
instead of upon other objects, I am convinced that it will be abundantly 
rewarded. We have reached a point in the history of Western civil- 
isation when the forces which make for the enslavement or the inertness 
of mind and spirit are active as they have not been for centuries. It is 
therefore incumbent upon us to test our educational institutions and 
methods at every point by their tendency to produce or to hinder 
