As a partial compensation for this work of wanton destruction, it made the child blindly obedient, mechanically industrious, and (within very narrow limits) accurate and thorough.

I have described it at some length because I see clearly that no one who does not realise what the elementary school used to be, in the days of its sojourn in the Land of Bondage, can even begin to understand why it is what it is to-day.
Having for thirty-three years deprived the teachers of almost every vestige of freedom, the Department suddenly reversed its policy and gave them in generous measure the boon which it had so long withheld.
Whether it was wise to give so much at so short a notice may be doubted.

What is beyond dispute is that it was unwise to expect so great and so unexpected a gift to be used at once to full advantage.
A man who had grown accustomed to semi-darkness would be dazzled to the verge of blindness if he were suddenly taken out into broad daylight.

This is what was done in 1895 to the teachers of England, and it is not to be wondered at that many of them have been purblind ever since.

For thirty-three years they had been treated as machines, and they were suddenly asked to act as intelligent beings.