emed to
the child to be made up of a number of kinds of arithmetic, each process
having its own rules and methods of procedure; but it never entered into
his mind, and but seldom into that of his teacher, that the various
arithmetical processes are at bottom but diverse forms of the one
fundamental process of adding to or subtracting from a group. Proportion
was one kind of arithmetic, simple interest another, but that these
processes symbolised real group-forming processes, or that they had to
do with any of the realities of life, was apprehended, if at all, in the
most imperfect and hazy manner.

In a similar manner, the overcoming of the mechanical difficulties of
language construction occupied the major portion of the attention of the
child during the school period, and the function of language in
conveying a knowledge of things and persons and events received but a
small share of his attention. Meanings of words were indeed tabulated
and learnt by heart, and as a rule the child on examination-day could
make a fair show in deluding the inspector that the passage read was
intelligently apprehended. In very much the same way, the overcoming of
the mechanical difficulties of writing and the drilling of the child to
form his letters in a uniform style received the chief share of the
school-time devoted to the subject.

The interest and attention of the child having been thus mainly occupied
in the overcoming of the mechanical difficulties involved in the
learning of the three grant-earning subjects, and little attention
having been paid to the use of these arts, it followed that upon the
conclusion of the school period the child left the school without any
real interests having been established as the result of the educative
process.

Moreover, except in so far as by their teaching we may establish habits
of order and of accuracy, the three elementary subjects in themselves
possess no moral or social intent; hence unless we can make the child
realise their value as instruments for the attainment of ends of social
worth they in themselves fail to play any important part in the building
up of character.

Let me put this in another way. We have defined education as the process
of acquiring and systematising experiences that will render future
action more efficient, or alternatively it is the process by which we
organise and establish in the mind systems of ideas for the attainment
of ends. But if we make the acquisiti