r services without producing by personal effort the
equivalent of what he or she consumes, inflicts on the community
precisely the same injury that a thief produces, and would, in any
honest State, be treated as a thief, however full his or her pockets
might be of money made by other people. The nation that first teaches
its children that truth, instead of flogging them if they discover
it for themselves, may have to fight all the slaves of all the other
nations to begin with; but it will beat them as easily as an unburdened
man with his hands free and with all his energies in full play can beat
an invalid who has to carry another invalid on his back.

This, however, is not an evil produced by the denial of children's
rights, nor is it inherent in the nature of schools. I mention it only
because it would be folly to call for a reform of our schools without
taking account of the corrupt resistance which awaits the reformer.

A word must also be said about the opposition to reform of the vested
interest of the classical and coercive schoolmaster. He, poor wretch,
has no other means of livelihood; and reform would leave him as a
workman is now left when he is superseded by a machine. He had therefore
better do what he can to get the workman compensated, so as to make the
public familiar with the idea of compensation before his own turn comes.

Taboo in Schools

The suppression of economic knowledge, disastrous as it is, is quite
intelligible, its corrupt motive being as clear as the motive of a
burglar for concealing his jemmy from a policeman. But the other great
suppression in our schools, the suppression of the subject of sex, is a
case of taboo. In mankind, the lower the type, and the less cultivated
the mind, the less courage there is to face important subjects
objectively. The ablest and most highly cultivated people continually
discuss religion, politics, and sex: it is hardly an exaggeration to say
that they discuss nothing else with fully-awakened interest. Commoner
and less cultivated people, even when they form societies for
discussion, make a rule that politics and religion are not to be
mentioned, and take it for granted that no decent person would attempt
to discuss sex. The three subjects are feared because they rouse the
crude passions which call for furious gratification in murder and rapine
at worst, and, at best, lead to quarrels and undesirable states of
consciousness.

Even when this excuse