As profound distrust of the teacher was the basis of the policy of the Department, so profound distrust of the child was the basis of the policy of the teacher.

To leave the child to find out anything for himself, to work out anything for himself, to think out anything for himself, would have been regarded as a proof of incapacity, not to say insanity, on the part of the teacher, and would have led to results which, from the "percentage" point of view, would probably have been disastrous.
There were few inspectors who were not duly impressed from 1895 onwards by the gravity of the evils that inspection, as distinguished from mere examination, revealed to them; but it may be doubted if there were many inspectors who realised then, what some among them see clearly now, that the evils which distressed them were significant as symptoms even more than as sources of mischief,--as symptoms of a deep-seated and insidious malady, of the gradual ossification of the spiritual and mental muscles of both the teacher and the child, of the gradual substitution in the elementary school of machinery for life.
For us of the Twentieth Century who know enough about education to be aware of the shallowness of our knowledge of it, and of the imperfection of the existing educational systems of our country, it may be difficult to realise that in the years when things were at their worst, at any rate in the field of elementary education, the Nation in general and the "Department" in particular were well content that things should remain as they were,--well content that the elementary school should be, not a nursery of growing seedlings and saplings, but a decently efficient mill, and that year after year this mill should keep on grinding out its dreary and meaningless "results." But in truth that ignorant optimism, that cheap content with the actual, was a sure proof that things _were_ at their worst;--for "When we in our viciousness grow hard, (O misery on't) the wise gods seal our eyes In our own filth; drop our clear judgments: make us Adore our errors"; and the multiform discontent with education in its present stage of development, which is characteristic of our own generation, and which is in some ways so confusing and disconcerting, and so unfavourable to the smooth working of our educational machinery, has the merit of being a healthy and hopeful symptom.
But bad as things were in those days, there was at least one redeeming feature.

The children were compelled to _work_, to exert themselves, to "put their backs into it." The need for this was obvious.

The industry of the child meant so much professional reputation and, in the last resort, so much bread and butter to his teacher.

It is true that the child was not allowed to do anything by or for himself; but it is equally true that he had to do pretty strenuously whatever task was set him.