traditional, stereotyped, race-track teaching. We assume that children are
all alike, that they are standardized children, and so we prescribe for
them a standardized diet and serve it by standardized methods. If we were
producing bricks instead of embryo men and women our procedure would be
laudable, for, in the making of bricks, uniformity is a prime necessity.
Each brick must be exactly like every other brick, and, in consequence, we
use for each one ingredients of the same quality and in like amount, and
then subject them all to precisely the same treatment.

This procedure is well enough in the case of inanimate bricks, but it is
far from well enough in the case of animate, sentient human beings. It
would be a calamity to have duplicate human beings, and yet the
traditional school seems to be doing its utmost to produce duplicates. The
native tendencies of one boy impel him toward the realms of nature, but,
all heedless of this big fact, we bind him hard and fast to some academic
post with traditional bonds of rules and regulations and then strive to
coerce him into partaking of our traditional pabulum. His inevitable
rebellion against this regime we style incorrigibility, or stupidity, and
then by main strength and authority strive to reduce him to submission
and, failing in this, we banish him from the school branded for life. Our
treatment of this boy is due to the fact that another boy in the school is
endowed with other native tendencies and the teacher is striving to
fashion both boys in the same mold.

In striving to inculcate the quality of integrity, wholeness, soundness,
rectitude in Sam Brown our aim is to develop this specific boy into the
best Sam Brown possible and not to try to make of him another Harry Smith.
We need one best Sam Brown and one best Harry Smith but not two Harry
Smiths. If we try to make our Sam Brown into a second Harry Smith, society
is certain to be the loser to the value of Sam Brown. We want to see Sam