you were a boy." I immediately procured the time sheets of half a dozen
modern schools, and found, as I expected, that they might all have been
my old school: there was no real difference. I may mention, too, that
I have visited modern schools, and observed that there is a tendency to
hang printed pictures in an untidy and soulless manner on the walls,
and occasionally to display on the mantel-shelf a deplorable glass case
containing certain objects which might possibly, if placed in the hands
of the pupils, give them some practical experience of the weight of
a pound and the length of an inch. And sometimes a scoundrel who has
rifled a bird's nest or killed a harmless snake encourages the children
to go and do likewise by putting his victims into an imitation nest and
bottle and exhibiting them as aids to "Nature study." A suggestion that
Nature is worth study would certainly have staggered my schoolmasters;
so perhaps I may admit a gleam of progress here. But as any child who
attempted to handle these dusty objects would probably be caned, I do
not attach any importance to such modernities in school furniture.
The school remains what it was in my boyhood, because its real object
remains what it was. And that object, I repeat, is to keep the children
out of mischief: mischief meaning for the most part worrying the
grown-ups.




What is to be Done?

The practical question, then, is what to do with the children. Tolerate
them at home we will not. Let them run loose in the streets we dare not
until our streets become safe places for children, which, to our utter
shame, they are not at present, though they can hardly be worse than