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CHAPTER VIII


SHAMS OF THE SCHOOL


The constructive scheme which I have in mind throughout this criticism of our prejudices and institutions may, as I said, be summed essentially in two words: industrial organisation and education. When we have reformed our administrative machinery, which we miscall “government,” and abandoned our military and naval atrocities, and simplified international life, our chosen public servants will find that these two are their chief concerns. Probably the supreme concern will—once we have constructed an orderly industrial machinery—be education, in the sense which I would attach to the word. Every year a million new citizens will join the community, and it will be the State’s first business to see that they are thoroughly prepared in every respect to contribute to its weal and happiness, and that they maintain throughout life sufficient intellectual alertness to control their common concerns with wisdom and in a progressive spirit. It is as a necessary preliminary to this that I have dealt critically and reconstructively with the home and the parent.