American.
VI
THE PLACE OF LITERATURE IN EDUCATION
By NOWELL SMITH
Head Master of Sherborne School
Education is a subject upon which everyone—or at least every parent—considers himself entitled to have opinions and to express them. But educational treatises or the considered views of educational experts have a very limited popularity, and in fact arouse little interest outside the circle of the experts themselves. Even the average teacher, who is himself, if only he realised it, inside the circle, pays little heed to the broader aspects of education, chiefly, no doubt, because in the daily practice of the art of education he cannot step aside and see it as a whole; he cannot see the wood for the trees. The indifference of laymen however is mainly due to the fact that educational theory, like other special subjects, inevitably acquires a jargon of its own, an indispensable shorthand, as it were, for experts, but far too abstract and technical for outsiders.