ABSTRACT
During the past hundred years there has grown up in our midst a new despotism: the rule of the teachers. Today they claim to decide what kind of people we shall be. This is not a joint and generally agreed decision even among the teachers themselves. One school has decided that Englishmen shall be decorous and self-restrained; another that they shall show greater spontaneity, even gaiety; a third that they shall be rooted in the ancient values of their locality; a fourth that they shall have broad horizons, that they shall be ‘universal men’. Curriculum, teaching methods and school organization are shaped to achieve these ends. In order that these, and a thousand others, shall be pursued with all the resources of pedagogic art, it is sufficient that the teachers have decided upon their course.
