simple matter to compute
in days and weeks the time lost during the year by the thirty-minute
teacher, and then estimate the many things that the pupils could
accomplish in that time. If the thirty-minute teacher could be
transformed into a ten-minute teacher, the children could have three
more hours each day for play, and that would be far better for them than
the ordeal of sitting there in the class, the unwilling witnesses, or
victims, of the time-wasting process. Or they might read a book in the
two hundred minutes and that would be more enjoyable, and the number of
books thus read in the course of a year would aggregate quite a library.
Or, again, they might take some additional studies and so make great
gains in mental achievements in their twelve years of school life. Or
they might learn to work with their hands and so achieve self-reliance,
self-support, and self-respect.

=Conservation.=--In a word, there is no higher type of conservation than
the conservation of childhood, in terms of time and interest. The two
hundred minutes a day are a vital factor in the life of the child and
must be regarded as highly valuable. The teacher, therefore, who
subtracts this time from the child's life is assuming a responsibility
not to be lightly esteemed. She takes from him his most valuable
possession and one which she can never return, try as she may. Worst of
all, she purloins this element of time clandestinely, albeit
seductively, in the guise of friendship. The child does not know that he
is the victim of unfair treatment until it is too late to set up any
defense. He is made to think that that is the natural and, therefore,
only way of school, and that he must take things as they come if he is
to prove himself a good soldier. So he musters what heroism he can and
tries to smile while the teacher despoils him of the minutes he might
better be employing in play, in reading, or in work.

=The teacher's complacency.=--This would seem a severe indictment if it
were incapable of proof, but having been proved by incontrovertible
evidence its severity cannot be mitigated. We can only grieve that the
facts are as they are and ardently hope for a speedy change. The chief
obstacle in the way of improvement is the complacency of the teacher.
Habits tend to persist, and if she has contracted the habit of much
speaking, she thinks her volubility should be accounted a virtue and
wonders that the children do not applaud the bromidic