It is because the educational reformer is fighting, in his sporadic attempts at reform, against his own deepest conviction, that he achieves so little even in the particular directions in which he sees clearly that reform is needed.
But how, it will be asked, is such a school as I have described to be kept going?
The whole _regime_ must be eminently distasteful to the healthy child, and it can scarcely be attractive to his teacher.

By what motive force, then, is the school to be kept in motion,--in motion, if not along the path of progress, at any rate along the well-worn track of routine?
By the only motive force which the religion and the civilisation of the West recognise as effective,--the hope of external reward, with its complement, the fear of external punishment.

From highest to lowest, from the head teacher of the school to the youngest child in the bottom class, all the teachers and all the children are subjected to the pressure of this quasi-physical force.

The teachers hope for advancement and increase of salary, and fear degradation and loss of salary, or at any rate loss of the hoped-for increment.[14] The children hope for medals, books, high places in their respective classes, and other rewards and distinctions, and fear corporal and other kinds of punishment.

The thoroughly efficient school is one in which this motive force is duly transmitted to every part of the school by means of a well-planned and carefully-elaborated machinery, analogous to that by which water and gas are laid on at every tap in every house in a well-governed town.