Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/137

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THE PROJECTION OF MOVEMENT
111

make later in metal. (Some of these American boys have been brought up in the backwoods, and the teacher, at this stage, turns aside to hear their impressions and talk of trees. Their fresh bright talk of the virgin forest and its wonders arrests the casual reader, but it will be matched in England perhaps one day, when geography is taught out of doors.) Then they go into the wood-turner's shop, and there they are introduced to steam-driven machinery of whose power they are warned: "Death lurks in the shafts and pulleys." Work is certainly not play here. The pupils manage edged tools driven by machinery. Ernst is das Leben—revolutions are not made with rose water. Neither are men made by handling toys and making verses. The new education is much more tender than the old— but it is also a great deal more stern and grave. Its tenderness is real, and it is safeguarded by knowledge; its sternness is not in the mien of a teacher, but in the nature of the things to which the pupil has access. Thus the early education (with its care of the body) generates power, but power can continue to be generated only through the exercise of what has already come into existence. The pupil passes from the metal work to the forging room. At every step the work grows more grave, more absorbing. It is, as we