CHAPTER I

A LIBERAL EDUCATION IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS 235

A liberal education, birthright of every child--Good life implies cultivated intelligence--Difficulty of offering Humanism to everyone--Problem solved at last--by the Drighlington School (Yorks)--Teachers, not satisfied--Potency, not property, characteristic of mind--We try to give potency rather than knowledge--Result, devitalisation--Mind receives knowledge _in order to grow, not to know_--Office of teacher depreciated--He has prophetic power of appeal and inspiration--Delightful commerce of equal minds--And friction of wills ceases--Children not products of education and environment--Carlyle on “a person”--Children not incomplete and undeveloped, but ignorant and weak--Potentialities of a child as he is--_David Copperfield_--Knowledge, conceived in mind--Ignorance, a chief cause of our difficulties--Matthew Arnold--Three divisions of knowledge--All classed under Humanism--Mind acts upon it--Vitality results--Mind and knowledge like ball and socket joint--Results of P.N.E.U. method made good by thousands of children--Work done by self-effort--Single reading tested by narration--No revision--For children _know_--Use proper names with ease--Write fully--Rarely make howlers--Get at gist of book or subject--Children of six to eight dictate answers at examination time--Teacher reads with intention--Is careful to produce author--Children listen with attention--No selection of subjects--Book read through--Older children read for themselves--Work done in less time--No preparation--No working-up--Time for vocational work--Such education, a social lever--A venture of faith--In knowledge and in children--A new product appears--Peculiar experience, misleading--General experience testifies to laws--Usual educational equipment based on false assumption--Which intervenes between child and knowledge--Method specially suitable for large classes--Labour of correction minimised--Choice of books--Character of P.U.S. examination--Children reject wrong book--Great cause of Education _v_. Civilisation--Grand elementary principle of pleasure--Only one education common to all.