i7 



It is perhaps a question whether it does or not ; but again we 

 hear from Thring — " A great memory is a great maker of 

 common-place, unless overmatched by much original power, 

 and the attempt to load the mind with knowledge often means 

 crowding out all originality and freshness, and putting very little 

 in." 



It is to be admitted, however, that the acquirement of 

 knowledge by the pupil, in a legitimate and natural way, is a 

 necessary factor in education. The definition of education by 

 Spencer also demands more directly the acquirement of a 

 considerable amount of knowledge for its own sake — of a kind, 

 moreover, not usually taught in the schools at all— such as that 

 in preparation for parenthood and citizenship. The old 

 method was, of course, to hammer it in with a stick, after 

 having previously (also, of course) neglected entirely the cul- 

 tivation of the child's curiosity or natural desire for infor- 

 mation. As Spencer puts it : "We drag the child away from 

 the facts in which it is interested, and which it is actively 

 assimilating of itself. We put before it facts far too complex 

 for it to understand, and therefore, distasteful to it. Finding 

 that it will not voluntarily acquire these facts we thrust them 

 into its mind by force of threats and punishment. By thus 

 denying the knowledge it craves, and cramming it with know- 

 ledge it cannot digest we produce a morbid state of its faculties, 

 and a consequent disgust for knowledge in general." 



Corporal punishment was too often, on the part of the teacher, 

 a mere revenge for trouble given, and so utterly bad for both 

 teacher and pupil. As an old song says — 



" If the mind would'nt mark, 



Then, faith, he'd mark the back, 

 And he gave them his own 

 With the devil's own whack." 



In the pupil it cannot fail to produce a deadening of all elas- 

 ticity and original mind power, and a brutalizing of himself and 

 his companions who are witnesses. Thring, however, thought 

 flogging a necessity in a great school ; it was at the same time 

 to be under the most carefully-made restrictions, and only to be 



