uiring an entirely new language. While he is
learning it Nature is his only teacher, and under her tuition he
masters the new language without the least strain and with complete
success. But let us suppose that it was possible for a teacher of the
conventional type to give minute directions to a child by some other
medium of expression than that of language. And let us suppose that
such a teacher made up her mind that she, and not Nature, was to
teach the child his mother tongue. One can readily imagine what would
happen. The teacher would probably have a theory that no child should
begin to talk till he was two or even two and a half years old; and
if so, the child would be kept in a state of enforced dumbness till
he reached that age. In any case, he would be strictly forbidden
to speak till his teacher gave him formal permission to do so.
Half-an-hour in the morning, and half-an-hour in the afternoon would
probably be set aside for the language lesson. For so many weeks or
months the child would be strictly limited to words of two or three
letters. For so many more weeks or months, to words of four or five
letters. Things which had names of more than the prescribed number
of letters would be kept away from the child; or, if that was
impossible, he would not be allowed to talk about them. For half a
year perhaps he would be limited to the use of nouns and verbs.
Prepositions might then be introduced into his vocabulary; and,
later, adjectives and adverbs. And so on; and so on. And the outcome
of all this elaborate training would be that the child would never
learn to talk his mother tongue.

It is by methods analogous in all respects to this that many of the
subjects on the time-table are taught in thousands of our schools.
The teacher seems to imagine that he knows, fully and precisely, how
each subject ought to be taught; and instead of standing aside, and
trying to learn how Nature wishes this or that subject to be taught
(if Nature can be said to take any interest in "subjects"), and then
trying to co-operate with her subconscious tendencies, he makes out
his elaborate scheme of instruction, sets before the child as the
goal of his efforts the production of certain formal results, and
drives him towards these with whip and bridle, satisfied that if he
succeeds in producing them, the subject will have been duly mastered.
And all the time he will not have given a thought to what is
happening to the child's inner li