Yesterday week, Sir John Lubbock made an effective protest against
the tendency of the Education Office to insist on the routine " extra " subjects of history and geography and grammar, and thereby practically exclude those on which well-informed teachers are best able at times to arouse and rivet the interest of their class. The danger in all these cut-and-dried systems of education is unquestionably the loss of freshness, the danger of setting up a droning, mechanical, lesson-giving machine, from which all vividness is excluded, by the rules laid down. The House of Commons hardly sees this danger sufficiently, and does not give sufficient heed to Sir John Lubbock's warnings. The truth is, that as regards "extra" subjects, it is infinitely more important that they should be subjects in which the teacher has himself a deep and personal interest, than that they should include this or that. Education that does not impress and vivify children's minds does not do its chief office. The mere drill will only harden minds which are not already lively and eager.
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