And now at last Disease is driving the doctor into schools! Disease and failure![1] A kind of failure that is, however, not nearly so new as we imagine; for it always appears when the workman is banished. There is a kind of stupidity that was noted long ago by Luther, and named by learned men "Stupor Scholasticus." Luther declared that "boys got this particular kind of stupidity from sitting much in schools." Perhaps men get it, too, from sitting too much apart in very high places—from taking no part, however small, in the rougher kind of manual labour. But where the worker and inventor comes, this particular kind of dullness vanishes.
The generation that determines to get real education will banish it for ever. But it cannot be banished without the introduction of manual work into schools. Nor can it be banished without the help of the physiologist.
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Every difficulty that a teacher encounters begins and ends with the organism of the child. There is the power. There too is the defect or weakness.
- ↑ In speaking of failure, I do not cast any shadow on the fair work achieved by thousands of good teachers all over the country. I mean to imply simply that the method that excluded the physiologist and passed by the worker gave a false result—as it was bound to do.
