st schoolboys are often inferior in
ability both to those who rank above and below them in school
attainment. They neither profit by the teaching process, nor do they
possess those qualities that would enable them to resist its
consequences. Thus they fall between two stools, being carried out of
their natural sphere, and at the same time failing to attain such a
measure of artificial success as would afford them compensation for the
injury.

Success in life is not an easy thing to generalize about. It is,
however, important to note as far as possible the results brought about
by school education. The boy who is trained to pass examinations has a
respectable chance of getting into some branch of the public service;
and, as we have seen, it is from amongst his ranks that the permanent
officials of the various departments of Government are recruited. A
great number of those who distinguish themselves academically also pass
into the teaching profession; though a considerable percentage of
graduates, for reasons that will be discussed in due course, drift into
the ranks of the unemployed.

The average schoolboy, who does his work mechanically and without
enthusiasm, probably furnishes the greatest number of examples of the
misplaced individual. His application to his studies is not natural; it
is enforced by what is called school discipline. That is to say, the
authorities devise every conceivable form of punishment to make a
constant grind at obligatory subjects less disagreeable than the
consequences of idleness. These are the simple arts by means of which
unwilling boys are driven, like cattle, along the highway of what is
termed, by an inaccurate application of the English language, knowledge.

Anybody who has been coerced, and _poena_ed, and flogged through the
curriculum of a public school will acknowledge that the performance is
not an exhilarating one for the victim. It is preposterous to dignify
this nigger-driving by the term 'education.' One might as well talk of
the Chinese eagerly embracing Christianity, when, as a matter of fact,
the missionaries have been forced upon them, like their foreign trade,
at the point of the bayonet.

The wonder is that anybody survives the process and retains his sanity.
That many nervous temperaments and highly-gifted minds do not survive it
is a point of so much importance that it will be dealt with later on in
a separate chapter. What needs emphasizing here is that to make b