In calling this little book 'The Curse of Education,' I trust that I shall not be misunderstood to disparage culture. The term 'education' is used, for want of a better word, to express the conventional mode of teaching and bringing up children, and of educating youth in this and other civilized countries. It is with education systems, with the universal method of cramming the mind with facts, and particularly with the manufacture of uniformity and mediocrity by subjecting every individual to a common process, regardless of his natural bent, that I have chiefly to find fault. At a moment when the country is agitated with questions of educational reform, I thought it might be useful to draw attention to what I believe to be a fact, namely, that the foundations of all existing education systems are absolutely false in principle; and that teaching itself, as opposed to natural development and self-culture, is the greatest obstacle to human progress that social evolution has ever had to encounter.

HAROLD E. GORST.
London,
April, 1901.

CONTENTS

CHAPTERPAGE
[I.]FLOURISHING MEDIOCRITY[1]
[II.]SQUARE PEGS IN ROUND HOLES[8]
[III.]THE DESTRUCTION OF GENIUS[18]
[IV.]HUMAN FACTORIES[26]
[V.]THE GREATEST MISERY OF THE GREATEST NUMBER[35]
[VI.]THE OUTPUT OF PRIGS[44]
[VII.]BOY DEGENERATION[53]
[VIII.]THE STRUGGLE OF THE EDUCATED[62]
[IX.]WOMAN'S EMPIRE OVER MAN[68]
[X.]YOUTH AND CRIME[77]
[XI.]MENTAL BREAKDOWN[86]
[XII.]EVIDENCE OF HISTORY[92]
[XIII.]THE APOTHEOSIS OF CRAM[109]
[XIV.]THE GREAT FALLACY[118]
[XV.]REAL EDUCATION[126]
[XVI.]THE OPEN DOOR TO INTELLIGENCE[135]

THE CURSE OF EDUCATION

CHAPTER I
FLOURISHING MEDIOCRITY