These schools of Unreason surprised me much. It would be easy to fall
into pseudo-utilitarianism, and I would fain believe that the system may
be good for the children of very rich parents, or for those who show a
natural instinct to acquire hypothetical lore; but the misery was that
their Ydgrun-worship required all people with any pretence to
respectability to send their children to some one or other of these
schools, mulcting them of years of money. It astonished me to see what
sacrifices the parents would make in order to render their children as
nearly useless as possible; and it was hard to say whether the old
suffered most from the expense which they were thus put to, or the young
from being deliberately swindled in some of the most important branches
of human inquiry, and directed into false channels or left to drift in
the great majority of cases.
I cannot think I am mistaken in believing that the growing tendency to
limit families by infanticide--an evil which was causing general alarm
throughout the country--was almost entirely due to the way in which
education had become a fetish from one end of Erewhon to the other.
Granted that provision should be made whereby every child should be
taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, but here compulsory state-aided
education should end, and the child should begin (with all due
precautions to ensure that he is not overworked) to acquire the rudiments
of that art whereby he is to earn his living.
Pages:
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235