Is it really supposed that the great names that have been handed down to posterity represent all the genius to which the world has given birth?
The idea is preposterous.
For every man of genius or talent who has been permitted to survive, education systems have killed a hundred.
If it had not been for Dr. Rothmann, there would probably have been no Linnæus to revolutionize the system of botanical classification. Had tyrannical parents and schoolmasters compelled Watt and Newton to give up mechanics and scientific study for a thorough cramming in Latin grammar and Greek roots, we might to-day be without a steam-engine or a theory of the law of gravitation. Even the genius of Napoleon and Wellington might easily have been crushed under the auspices of a modern competitive examination.
Would stupid Oliver Goldsmith have written his immortal 'Vicar of Wakefield' and 'She Stoops to Conquer,' or would idle Sheridan have penned the exquisite comedies that have not to this day been approached by any subsequent writer, if their idleness and stupidity had been submitted to the test of an enforced academic training for classical or mathematical honours?
Surely the evidence of history points to only one conclusion—namely, that all the genius in the world cannot survive the hopeless imbecility of educational methods, except by successfully dodging them through stupidity and idleness, whilst the faculties develop themselves at stolen intervals.
CHAPTER XIII
THE APOTHEOSIS OF CRAM
We have reached a point at which it is advisable to take a broad survey of the direction in which education systems are hurrying the world. Have these educational methods a definite objective, or is their sole purpose the production of scholars manufactured en bloc?
These are important questions that need careful answering. Upon the face of it, there is no doubt that in this country, at least, educational establishments have, up to the present, aimed only at turning out scholars of certain intellectual types. The result of this process has been shown in the preceding pages to be sufficiently disastrous in its effects upon its victims. There are, in fact, few social evils which cannot be traced, directly or indirectly, to its agency.