Thursday, June 28, 2012



I would far rather have been apprenticed as a bricklayer’s mate, or run errands 
as a messenger boy, or helped my father to dress the front windows of a grocer’s 
shop. It would have been real; it would have been natural; it would have taught 
me more; and I should have done it much better. Also I should have got to know 
my father, which would have been a joy to me… . Certainly the prolonged 
education indispensable to the progress of Society is not natural to mankind. It 
cuts against the grain. A boy would like to follow his father in pursuit of food or 
prey. He would like to be doing serviceable things so far as his utmost strength 
allowed. He would like to be earning wages however small to help to keep up the 
home. He would like to have some leisure of his own to use or misuse as he 
pleased… . And then perhaps in the evenings a real love of learning would come 
to those who were worthy—and why try to stuff it into those who are not?—and 
knowledge and thought would open the “magic casements” of the mind.
(Churchill, in West, 1991, p. 154) 

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