I appeal to you, fathers and mothers, and to you, liberal-minded
readers, asking you to turn your attention to the education of your
children, to the training of the young generation of future citizens. I
do not appeal to our official educators, to our scientific,
psychological pseudagogues, to the clerks of our teaching shops,—for
they are beyond all hope. From that quarter I expect nothing but attacks
and abuse. We cannot possibly expect of the philistine-educator and
mandarin-pseudagogue the adoption of different views of education. We
should not keep new wine in old goat-skins. The present school-system
squanders the resources of the country and wastes the energies, the
lives of our children. Like Cato our cry should be _Carthago delenda
est_,—the school-system should be abolished and with it should go the
present psychologizing educator, the schoolmaster and the schoolma’am.
Fathers and mothers, you keep in your hands the fate of the young
generation. You are conscious of the great responsibility, of the vast,
important task laid upon you by the education of your children. For,
according to the character of the training and education given to the
young, they may be made a sickly host of nervous wrecks and miserable
wretches; or they may be formed into a narrow-minded, bigoted, mediocre
crowd of self-contented “cultured” philistines, bat-blind to evil; or
they may be made a _great race of genius_ with powers of rational
control of their latent, potential, reserve energy. The choice remains
with you.