What Is and What Might Be / A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular

BY EDMOND HOLMES
AUTHOR OF THE CREED OF CHRIST, THE CREED OF BUDDHA, THE SILENCE OF LOVE, THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE, ETC.
LONDON CONSTABLE & COMPANY 1912
First published, May 1911. Second impression, July 1911. Third impression, September 1911. Fourth impression, November 1911. Fifth impression, January 1912. Sixth impression, October 1912.

Transcriber's Note: Obvious printer errors have been corrected. All other inconsistencies are as in the original.


The function of education is to foster growth. By some of my readers this statement will be regarded as a truism; by others as a challenge; by others, again, when they have realised its inner meaning, as a wicked heresy. I will begin by assuming that it is a truism, and will then try to prove that it is true.
The function of education is to foster growth. The end which the teacher should set before himself is the development of the latent powers of his pupils, the unfolding of their latent life. If growth is to be fostered, two things must be liberally provided,—nourishment and exercise. On the need for nourishment I need not insist. The need for exercise is perhaps less obvious, but is certainly not less urgent. We make our limbs, our organs, our senses, our faculties grow by exercising them. When they have reached their maximum of development we maintain them at that level by exercising them. When their capacity for growth is unlimited, as in the case of our mental and spiritual faculties, the need for exercise is still more urgent. To neglect to exercise a given limb, or organ, or sense, or faculty, would result in its becoming weak, flabby, and in the last resort useless. In childhood, when the stress of Nature's expansive forces is strongest, the neglect of exercise will, for obvious reasons, have most serious consequences. If a healthy child were kept in bed during the second and third years of his life, the damage done to his whole body would be incalculable.
These are glaring truisms. Let me perpetrate one more,—one which is perhaps the most glaring of all. The process of growing must be done by the growing organism, by the child, let us say, and by no one else. The child himself must take in and assimilate the nourishment that is provided for him. The child himself must exercise his organs and faculties. The one thing which no one may ever delegate to another is the business of growing. To watch another person eating will not nourish one's own body. To watch another person using his limbs will not strengthen one's own. The forces that make for the child's growth come from within himself; and it is for him, and him alone, to feed them, use them, evolve them.