That they are so paralleled--that salvation by machinery has found its most exact counterpart in education by machinery--the history of education has made abundantly clear.
Whatever else the current system of education may do to the child, there is one thing which it cannot fail to do to him,--to blight his mental growth.

What particular form or forms this blighting influence may take will depend in each particular case on a variety of circumstances.

Experience tells us that what happens in most cases is that Western education strangles some faculties, arrests the growth of others, stunts the growth of a third group, and distorts the growth of a fourth.
Is it intended that education should do all this?
This question is not so paradoxical as it sounds.

My primary assumption that the function of education is to foster growth may be a truism in the eyes of those who agree with it; but Western orthodoxy, just so far as it is self-conscious and sincere, must needs repudiate it as a pestilent heresy.

For if what grows is intrinsically evil, what can growth do for it but carry it towards perdition?
What is it that grows?
It is time that I should ask myself this question.