n
principle; and that teaching itself, as opposed to natural development
and self-culture, is the greatest obstacle to human progress that social
evolution has ever had to encounter.

HAROLD E. GORST.

LONDON,
_April, 1901._

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. FLOURISHING MEDIOCRITY 1

II. SQUARE PEGS IN ROUND HOLES 8

III. THE DESTRUCTION OF GENIUS 18

IV. HUMAN FACTORIES 26

V. THE GREATEST MISERY OF THE GREATEST NUMBER 35

VI. THE OUTPUT OF PRIGS 44

VII. BOY DEGENERATION 53

VIII. THE STRUGGLE OF THE EDUCATED 62

IX. WOMAN'S EMPIRE OVER MAN 68

X. YOUTH AND CRIME 77

XI. MENTAL BREAKDOWN 86

XII. EVIDENCE OF HISTORY 92

XIII. THE APOTHEOSIS OF CRAM 109

XIV. THE GREAT FALLACY 118

XV. REAL EDUCATION 126

XVI. THE OPEN DOOR TO INTELLIGENCE 135

THE CURSE OF EDUCATION

CHAPTER I

FLOURISHING MEDIOCRITY

Humanity is rapidly becoming less the outcome of a natural process of
development, and more and more the product of an organized educational
plan. The average educated man possesses no real individuality. He is
simply a manufactured article bearing the stamp of the maker.

Year by year this fact is becoming more emphasized. During the past
century almost every civilized country applied itself feverishly to the
invention of a national plan of education, with the result that the
majority of mankind are compelled to swallow a uniform prescription of
knowledge made up for them by the State. Now there is a great outcry
that England is being left behind in this educational race. Other
nations have got more exact systems. Where the British child is only
stuffed with six pounds of facts, the German and French schools contrive
to cram seven pounds into th