not go to school, and the coster knows that his son will become an
illiterate hooligan if he is left to the streets, there is no real
alternative for either of them. Child life must be socially organized:
no parent, rich or poor, can choose institutions that do not exist; and
the private enterprise of individual school masters appealing to a
group of well-to-do parents, though it may shew what can be done by
enthusiasts with new methods, cannot touch the mass of our children.
For the average parent or child nothing is really available except the
established practice; and this is what makes it so important that the
established practice should be a sound one, and so useless for clever
individuals to disparage it unless they can organize an alternative
practice and make it, too, general.




The Pursuit of Manners

If you cross-examine the duke and the coster, you will find that they
are not concerned for the scholastic attainments of their children.
Ask the duke whether he could pass the standard examination of
twelve-year-old children in elementary schools, and he will admit,
with an entirely placid smile, that he would almost certainly be
ignominiously plucked. And he is so little ashamed of or disadvantaged
by his condition that he is not prepared to spend an hour in remedying
it. The coster may resent the inquiry instead of being amused by it;
but his answer, if true, will be the same. What they both want for their
children is the communal training, the apprenticeship to society, the
lessons in holding one's own among people of all sorts with whom one is
not, as in the home, on privileged terms. These can be acquired only by