Monthly I am brought into close contact
with the pedagogic intelligence through the medium of three educational
magazines. A certain morbid habit against which I struggle in vain makes
me read everything I catch a schoolmaster writing. I am, indeed, one of
the faithful band who read the Educational Supplement of the _Times_. In
these papers schoolmasters write about their business, lectures upon the
questions of their calling are reported at length, and a sort of invalid
discussion moves with painful decorum through the correspondence column.
The scholastic mind so displayed in action fascinates me. It is like
watching a game of billiards with wooden cushes and beechwood balls.
Sec. 2
But let me take one special instance. In a periodical, now no longer
living, called the _Independent Review_, there appeared some years ago a
very curious and typical contribution by the Headmaster of Dulwich,
which I may perhaps use as an illustration of the mental habits which
seem inseparably associated with modern scholastic work. It is called
"English Ideas on Education," and it begins--trite, imitative,
undistinguished--thus:
"The most important question in a country is that of education, and the
most important people in a country are those who educate its
inhabitants.
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