itectural schools. The problem of education is to him of all
things the most vital; in this essay he returns to it again and again,
while of _Kindergarten Chats_ it is the very _raison d'etre_.

I trust that a long disquisition is not necessary in order to
show that the attempt at imitation, by us, of this day, of the
by-gone forms of building, is a procedure unworthy of a free
people; and that the dictum of the schools, that Architecture
is finished and done, is a suggestion humiliating to every
active brain, and therefore, in fact, a puerility and a
falsehood when weighed in the scales of truly democratic
thought. Such dictum gives the lie in arrogant fashion, to
healthful human experience. It says, in a word: the American
people are not fit for democracy.

He finds the schools saturated with superstitions which are the
survivals of the scholasticism of past centuries--feudal institutions,
in effect, inimical to his idea of the true spirit of democratic
education. This he conceives of as a searching-out, liberating, and
developing the splendid but obscured powers of the average man, and
particularly those of children. "It is disquieting to note," he says,
"that the system of education on which we lavish funds with such
generous, even prodigal, hand, falls short of fulfilling its true
democratic function; and that particularly in the so-called higher
branches its tendency appears daily more reactionary, more feudal.
It is not an agreeable reflection that so many of our university
graduates lack the trained ability to see clearly, and to think
clearly, concisely, constructively; that there is perhaps more showing
of cynicism than good faith, seemingly more distrust of men than
confidence in them, and, withal, no consummate ability to interpret
things."

In contrast to the schoolman he sketches the psychology of the
active-minded but "uneducated" man, with sympathy and understanding,
the man who is courageously seeking a way with little to guide and
help him.

Is it not the part of wisdom to cheer, to encourage such a
mind, rather than dishearten it with ridicule? To say to it:
Learn that the mind works best when allowed to work naturally;
learn to do what your problem suggests when you have reduced
it to its simplest terms; you will thus find that all
problems, however complex, take on a simplicity you had
not dreamed of; accept this simplicity bo