That glorification of indolence which we call the principle of laissez-faire is so successful in this department of our public life that what ought to be the State’s chief concern is hardly ever mentioned in our orgies of parliamentary debate. We peck at it occasionally. We enact that babies must have orange-boxes, and that children must not smoke cigarettes or approach within a certain number of yards of a bar (so that we get bar-scenes outside the door); and occasionally the representatives of rival sects get up a grand debate on the Bible in the school. These things emphasise the general neglect. Laissez-faire meant originally, “Leave things as they are”—it sounded better in French, but, like many ancient sentiments, it was converted into a respectable philosophy: “The State must leave as much as possible to the individual and the amateur.” Nineteenth-century Radicals fought heroically for this Conservative principle.
Education, however, was so flagrantly neglected by the parent and the Church that we had to compromise and take the child’s mind out of their care: leaving its body and character to the old hazards. At last it dawns on us that a sound body and character are just as important to the State as the capacity to read comic journals and stories: that the entire being of the child needs expert training, and it is worth the State’s while to give it. This broad ideal of education is increasingly accepted by pædagogists and social writers, and it is already largely embodied in educational practice. It has
