Let me give an illustration of what I will call the opposing methods of education.
We will suppose, for the sake of argument, that the only available book for the instruction of a class of boys was that excellent but abstruse work known as 'Bradshaw's Railway Guide.' The modern schoolmaster would draw up an exhaustive and complicated scheme. So much time would be devoted to parsing every sentence through the book. The figures would be added up, and subtracted, and divided. He would concoct neat little mathematical problems: If the 11.40 express from Paddington travelled to Swindon at fifty miles an hour and broke down half-way, at what o'clock would the 12.15 parliamentary train overtake it? and so forth. But--most valuable exercise of all--long tables of trains would be learnt off by heart, with the names of stopping places and the prices of the first-class tickets.
A genuine educationist would set to work in a much simpler fashion. He would tell the boys to look out a good train from Birmingham to Newcastle. Each boy would be free to tackle the problem in his own fashion, and the task--if successfully accomplished--would do much towards developing the thinking faculties.
In any system of real education it would be impossible for the schoolmaster to dictate the subjects to which the pupil should give his attention, and it would be equally impossible for the parent to say 'I intend my son to enter such-and-such a profession.' Nobody can settle beforehand what talents the child is to develop. That is a private matter in which no third person has any right to interfere between the child itself and Nature.
Modern education consists entirely of interference. There is, in the first place, the interference of the parent, who insists upon an artistic boy becoming a banker, puts an incipient tradesman into the army, or tries to make a scholar out of a mechanic. Then there comes the interference of the schoolmaster, who has his favourite recipe of Latin verses, quadratic equations, and what not, to stuff into every head he can get hold of for a few terms. Lastly appears the Government, which declares that nobody shall enter the army, or navy, or civil service, without devoting his best years to being crammed in such a scandalous fashion, that it is a toss-up whether he breaks down altogether under the ordeal, or simply forgets, a few months after the consummation of the process, all that has been pitchforked into his brain.