There is no nonsense about it, no cant of idealism, no taint of socialism.

It keeps the "lower orders" in their places, and forbids them to dream of rising above "that state of life unto which it" has pleased "God to call them." As it is a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the conventional type of education, my objection to it is that it makes the best possible provision for securing the end which the conventional type seems to have set before itself,--in other words, for depressing the vitality of the child, for starving his faculties, for arresting his growth.

As such, it has not even the merit of being sordidly useful; for unless stupidity is a better thing than intelligence, slowness than alertness, helplessness than initiative, lifelessness than vital activity, the child who has passed through that dreary mill will be far less effective, even as a day-labourer, than the child whose school-life has been one of continuous and many-sided growth.

It is strange that the reactionary members of the "upper classes" should be too short-sighted to discern this obvious truth.

But perhaps they have a secret conviction that by so educating the "lower orders" as to make them slow and stupid, helpless and lifeless, they will be the better able to keep them in a state of subservience to and dependence on themselves.[22] If this is so, there is method in the madness of the "upper classes"; and their conception of the course that education ought to take has the merit of being entirely true to their basely selfish conception of the end that education ought to serve.
I have alluded to this pseudo-utilitarian theory, not because it is intrinsically worthy of serious attention, but because there is undoubtedly a strong and influential current of opinion which sets in its direction.