They should be saved from the petting of the elder girls, in whom this apparent kindness is often a selfish pleasure, bad on both sides.
For older children the difficulties are not quite the same, and instead of forcing them on too fast, school life may even keep them back.

When children are assembled together in considerable numbers the intellectual level is that of the middle class of mind and does not favour the best, the outlook and conversation are those of the average, the language and vocabulary are on the same level, with a tendency to sink rather than to rise, and though emulation may urge on the leading spirits and keep them at racing speed, this does not quicken the interest in knowledge for its own sake, and the work is apt to slacken when the stimulus is withdrawn.

And all the time there is comfort to the easy-going average in the consciousness of how many there are behind them.
The necessity for organization and foresight in detail among large numbers is also unfavourable to individual development.

For children to find everything prepared for them, to feel no friction in the working of the machinery, so that all happens as it ought to, without effort and personal trouble on their part, to be told what to do, and only have to follow the bells for the ordering of their time--all this tends to diminish their resourcefulness and their patience with the unforeseen checks and cross-purposes and mistakes that they will have to put up with on leaving school.

As a matter of fact the more perfect the school machinery, the smoother its working, the less does it prepare for the rutty road afterwards, and in this there is some consolation when school machinery jars from time to time in the working; if it teaches patience it is not altogether regrettable, and the little trouble which may arise in the material order is perhaps more educating than the regularity which has been disturbed.
We are beginning to believe what has never ceased to be said, that lessons in lesson-books are not the whole of education.