The teacher exactly measures the child's capacity, to begin with; and from thence onwards the tasks imposed are nicely gauged to the gradual development of that capacity, the tasks keep pace with the steps of the child's progress, they don't jump miles and leagues ahead of it by irrational caprice and land in vacancy--according to the average public-school plan.
In the public school, apparently, they teach the child to spell cat, then ask it to calculate an eclipse; when it can read words of two syllables, they require it to explain the circulation of the blood; when it reaches the head of the infant class they bully it with conundrums that cover the domain of universal knowledge.

This sounds extravagant--and is; yet it goes no great way beyond the facts.
I received a curious letter one day, from the Punjab (you must pronounce it Punjawb).

The handwriting was excellent, and the wording was English -- English, and yet not exactly English.

The style was easy and smooth and flowing, yet there was something subtly foreign about it--A something tropically ornate and sentimental and rhetorical.

It turned out to be the work of a Hindoo youth, the holder of a humble clerical billet in a railway office.