I had had my dinner, and was having a smoke in the bothy when I heard the American's voice: "We want to see the dominie!" Margaret came to the door, and I walked out into the yard. The trio gasped when they saw me; then the man placed his arms akimbo and looked at me.
"Well I'm damned!" he said with vehemence.
"Not so bad as that," I said with a grin, "had is a better word." Then they all began to talk at once.
He explained that he was a lawyer from Baltimore: I told him that his concern about the absence of chewing-gum had led me to conjecture that he manufactured that substance. This seemed to tickle him and he made a note of it.
"Be careful!" smiled the pretty lady—his daughter—, "he'll hand over his notes to the newspaper man when he goes back home."
The lawyer knew something about education, and he told me many things about the new education of America; he was one of the directors of a modern school in his own county.
"Come over to the States," he said with eagerness; "we want men of your ideas over there. I reckon that you and the new schools there don't differ at all."
I gave him my impressions of the American schools described by Dewey in his book.
"It seems to me," I said, "that these schools over-emphasise the 'learn by doing' business. Almost every modern reformer in education talks of 'child processes'; the kindergarten idea is carried all the way. Children are encouraged to shape things with their hands."
"Sure," he said, "but that's only a preliminary to shaping things with their heads."