once be established that a child has an adult's Right of Egress from
uncomfortable places and unpleasant company, and there were children's
lawyers to sue pedagogues and others for assault and imprisonment, there
would be an amazing change in the behavior of schoolmasters, the quality
of school books, and the amenities of school life. That Consciousness of
Consent which, even in its present delusive form, has enabled Democracy
to oust tyrannical systems in spite of all its vulgarities and
stupidities and rancors and ineptitudes and ignorances, would operate as
powerfully among children as it does now among grown-ups. No doubt the
pedagogue would promptly turn demagogue, and woo his scholars by all the
arts of demagogy; but none of these arts can easily be so dishonorable
or mischievous as the art of caning. And, after all, if larger liberties
are attached to the acquisition of knowledge, and the child finds
that it can no more go to the seaside without a knowledge of the
multiplication and pence tables than it can be an astronomer without
mathematics, it will learn the multiplication table, which is more than
it always does at present, in spite of all the canings and keepings in.

The Pursuit of Learning

When the Pursuit of Learning comes to mean the pursuit of learning by
the child instead of the pursuit of the child by Learning, cane in
hand, the danger will be precocity of the intellect, which is just as
undesirable as precocity of the emotions. We still have a silly habit of
talking and thinking as if intellect were a mechanical process and not a
passion; and in spite of the German tutors who confess openly that three
out of every five of the young men they coach for examinations are lamed
for life thereby; in spite of Dickens and his picture of little Paul
Dombey dying of lessons, we persist in heaping on growing children and
adolescent youths and maidens tasks Pythagoras would have declined out
of common regard for his own health and common modesty as to his own
capacity. And this overwork is not all the effect of compulsion; for
the average schoolmaster does not compel his scholars to learn: he only
scolds and punishes them if they do not, which is quite a different
thing, the net effect being that the school prisoners need not learn
unless they like. Nay, it is sometimes remarked that the school
dunce--meaning the one who does not like--often turns out well
afterwards, as if idleness were a sign of abili