In the two great schools which God is supposed to have opened for Man's benefit, freedom and initiative have ever been regarded (and with good reason) as the gravest of offences.

Literal obedience has been exacted by the Law; blind obedience by the Church; passive obedience--the obedience of a puppet, or at best of an automaton--by both.

The need for this insistence on the part of Law and Church is obvious.

If any lingering desire to think things out for himself, if any intelligent interest in what he was taught, survived in the disciple, the whole system of salvation by machinery would be in danger of being thrown out of gear.
As it has been, and still is, in the schools which God has opened for Man, so it has been, and still is, in the schools which Man has opened for the child.

Blind, passive, literal, unintelligent obedience is the basis on which the whole system of Western education has been reared.