When the Pursuit of Learning comes to mean the pursuit of learning by
the child instead of the pursuit of the child by Learning, cane in
hand, the danger will be precocity of the intellect, which is just as
undesirable as precocity of the emotions. We still have a silly habit of
talking and thinking as if intellect were a mechanical process and not a
passion; and in spite of the German tutors who confess openly that three
out of every five of the young men they coach for examinations are lamed
for life thereby; in spite of Dickens and his picture of little Paul
Dombey dying of lessons, we persist in heaping on growing children and
adolescent youths and maidens tasks Pythagoras would have declined out
of common regard for his own health and common modesty as to his own
capacity. And this overwork is not all the effect of compulsion; for
the average schoolmaster does not compel his scholars to learn: he only
scolds and punishes them if they do not, which is quite a different
thing, the net effect being that the school prisoners need not learn
unless they like. Nay, it is sometimes remarked that the school
dunce--meaning the one who does not like--often turns out well
afterwards, as if idleness were a sign of ability and character. A much
more sensible explanation is that the so-called dunces are not exhausted
before they begin the serious business of life. It is said that boys
will be boys; and one can only add one wishes they would. Boys really
want to be manly, and are unfortunately encouraged thoughtlessly in this
very dangerous and overstraining aspiration. All the people who have
really worked (Herbert Spencer for instance) warn us against work as
earnestly as some people warn us against drink. When learning is placed
on the voluntary footing of sport, the teacher will find himself saying
every day "Run away and play: you have worked as much as is good for
you." Trying to make children leave school will be like trying to make
them go to bed; and it will be necessary to surprise them with the idea
that teaching is work, and that the teacher is tired and must go play or
rest or eat: possibilities always concealed by that infamous humbug
the current schoolmaster, who achieves a spurious divinity and a witch
doctor's authority by persuading children that he is not human, just as
ladies persuade them that they have no legs.