To cope with a task which can be stated in these terms, education must
be free. A new age postulates a new education. The traditions which
have dominated hitherto must one by one be challenged to render
account of themselves, that which is good in them must be conserved
and assimilated, that which is effete must be scrapped and rejected.
Neither can the administrative machinery, as it exists, be taken for
granted; unless it shows those powers of adaptation and growth which
show it to be alive and not dead, it too must be scrapped and
rejected; new wine is fatal to old skins. Education must regain once
more what she possessed at the time of the Renascence--the power of
direction; she must be mistress of her fate.
Further, if education is to be a force which makes for co-operation
in place of conflict, she must not be divided against herself. She
must leave behind forever the separations and snobberies, the
misunderstandings, the wordy battles beloved of pedants and
politicians. The smoke and dust of controversy obscures her vision,
and she needs all her energies to tackle the great task which
confronts her. In this regard nothing is so full of promise for the
future as the new sense of unity which is beginning both to animate
and actuate the whole teaching profession, from the University to the
Kindergarten, and has already eventuated in the formation of a
Teachers Registration Council, on which all sorts and conditions of
education are represented.
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