id once,
'You teach your children the use of the globes, and when they get older you
wonder that they do not seek your society!' The whole thing is so devilish
dull, and it saves the teacher such a lot of trouble! I myself was fairly
quick as a boy, and found that it paid to do what I was told. But I never
made the smallest pretence to be interested in what I had to do--grammar,
Euclid, tiny scraps of Latin and Greek. I used to thank God, in Xenophon
lessons, when a bit was all about stages and parasangs, because there were
fewer words to look out. The idea of teaching languages like that! If I had
a clever boy to teach a language, I would read some interesting book with
him, telling him the meaning of words, until he got a big stock of ordinary
words; I would just teach him the common inflexions; and when he could read
an easy book, and write the language intelligibly, then I would try to
teach him a few niceties and idioms, and make him look out for differences
of style and language. But we begin at the wrong end, and store his memory
with exceptions and idioms and niceties first. No sensible human being who
wanted, let us say, to know enough Italian to read Dante, would dream of
setting to work as we set to work on classics. Well then," Father Payne
went on, "I should cultivate the imagination of children a great deal more.
I should try to teach them all I could about the world as it is--the
different nations, and how they live, the distribution of plants and
animals, the simpler sorts of science. I don't think that it need be very
accurate, all that. But children ought to realise that the world is a big
place, with all sorts of interesting and exciting things going on. I would
try to give them a general view of history and the movement of
civilisation. I don't mean a romantic view of it, with the pomps and shows
and battles in the foreground; but a real view--how people lived, and what
they were driving at. The thing could be done, if it were not for the
bugbear of inaccuracy. To know a little perfectly isn't enough; of course,
people ought to be able to write their own language accurately, and to do
arithmetic. Outside of that, you want a lot of general ideas. It is no good
teaching everything as if everyone was to end as a Professor."

"That is a reasonable general scheme," said Barthrop, "but what about
special aptitudes?"

"Why," said Father Payne, "I should go on those general lines till boys and
girls were abo