People talk of the difficulty of teaching young children such matters,
and in the same breath insist upon their learning their Catechism,
which contains propositions far harder to comprehend than anything in
the educational course I have proposed. Again, I am incessantly told
that we, who advocate the introduction of science into schools, make no
allowance for the stupidity of the average boy or girl; but, in my
belief, that stupidity, in nine cases out of ten, "_fit, non nascitur_,"
and is developed by a long process of parental and pedagogic repression
of the natural intellectual appetites, accompanied by a persistent
attempt to create artificial ones for food which is not only tasteless,
but essentially indigestible.

Those who urge the difficulty of instructing young people in science are
apt to forget another very important condition of success--important in
all kinds of teaching, but most essential, I am disposed to think, when
the scholars are very young. This condition is, that the teacher should
himself really and practically know his subject. If he does, he will be
able to speak of it in the easy language, and with the completeness of
conviction, with which he talks of any ordinary every-day matter. If he
does not, he will be afraid to wander beyond the limits of the technical
phraseology which he has got up; and a dead dogmatism, which oppresses,
or raises opposition, will take the place of the lively confidence, born
of personal conviction, which cheers and encourages the eminently
sympathetic mind of childhood.

I have already hinted that such scientific training as we seek for may
be given without making any extravagant claim upon the time now devoted
to education. We ask only for "a most favoured nation" clause in our
treaty with the schoolmaster; we demand no more than that science shall