And so on; and so on.

And the outcome of all this elaborate training would be that the child would never learn to talk his mother tongue.
It is by methods analogous in all respects to this that many of the subjects on the time-table are taught in thousands of our schools.
The teacher seems to imagine that he knows, fully and precisely, how each subject ought to be taught; and instead of standing aside, and trying to learn how Nature wishes this or that subject to be taught (if Nature can be said to take any interest in "subjects"), and then trying to co-operate with her subconscious tendencies, he makes out his elaborate scheme of instruction, sets before the child as the goal of his efforts the production of certain formal results, and drives him towards these with whip and bridle, satisfied that if he succeeds in producing them, the subject will have been duly mastered.
And all the time he will not have given a thought to what is happening to the child's inner life.

Yet it is more than probable that the teacher's disregard of, and therefore incessant interference with, the subconscious processes of Nature has quite as disastrous results in the teaching of composition, let us say, or drawing, as it would certainly have in the hypothetical case of the teaching of the child's mother tongue.
But in truth the Utopian conception of what constitutes efficiency differs so radically from the current conception, that little is to be gained by comparing them.

If I am asked by those who value outward and visible results for their own sake, whether the training given in Utopia is "efficient," I can but answer: "Yes, but efficient in a sense which you cannot even begin to understand,--efficient in the sense of developing faculty and fostering life, whereas the price paid for your boasted efficiency is the starvation of faculty and the destruction of life." * * * * * "_But how_," it will be asked, "_are the Utopian children, one and all, induced to exert themselves?
The standard of activity in the school is, on your own showing, exceptionally high.

Much is expected of the children.