(3) The answer given by a great
educational authority, Miss Dorothea Beale, the late Principal of
Cheltenham College, may appeal to those who are struck by the theory if
they do not advocate it in practice. When this difficulty was laid
before her she was not in favour of departing from the usual course, or
insisting on the knowledge of grown-up life before its time, and she
pointed out that in case of accidents or surgical operations it was not
the doctors nor the nurses actively engaged who turned faint and sick,
but those who had nothing to do, and in the same way she thought that
such instruction, cut off from the duties and needs of the present, was
not likely to be of any real benefit, but rather to be harmful.
Considering how wide was her experience of educational work this opinion
carries great weight.
CHAPTER VI.
LESSONS AND PLAY.
"What think we of thy soul?
* * * *
"Born of full stature, lineal to control;
And yet a pigmy's yoke must undergo.
Yet must keep pace and tarry, patient, kind,
With its unwilling scholar, the dull, tardy mind;
Must be obsequious to the body's powers,
Whose low hands mete its paths, set ope and close its ways,
Must do obeisance to the days,
And wait the little pleasure of the hours;
Yea, ripe for kingship, yet must be
Captive in statuted minority!"
"Sister Songs," by FRANCIS THOMPSON.
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