We seem to be content to produce weaklings if only we can push them
through the gateway of promotion. It matters not that they are unable to
find their way alone through the mazes of life; let them acquire that
ability later, after they have passed beyond our control. Again quoting
from Professor Swift, "Following a leader, even though that leader be the
teacher, tends to take from children whatever latent ability for
initiative they may have."

There is a story of an indulgent mother who was quite eager that her boy
should have a pleasant birthday and so asked him what he would most like
to do. The answer came in a flash: "Thank you, Mother, I should most like
just to be let alone." This answer leads us at once to the inner sanctuary
of childhood. Children yearn to be let alone and must grow restive under
the incessant attentions of their elders. In school there is ever such a
continuous fusillade of questions and answers, assigning of lessons,
recitations, corrections, explanations, and promulgations, rules and
restrictions that the children have no time for growing inside. They are
not left to their own devices but are pulled and pushed about, and
managed, and coddled or coerced all day long, so that there is neither
time nor scope for the exercise and development of initiative. The
teacher, at times, seems to think of the school as a mammoth syringe with
which she is called upon to pump information into her bored but passive
pupils.

Silence is the element in which initiative thrives, but our school
programs rarely provide any periods of silence. They assume that to be
effective a school must be a place of bustle, and hurry, and excitement,
not to mention entertainment. Sometimes the child is intent upon
explorations among the infinities when the teacher summons him back to
earth to cross a _t_ or dot an _i_. The teacher who would implant a