But things have changed since then; and it is probable that the balance is now in favour of the elementary school.

But the balance, though growing from year to year, is as yet very small compared with what it will be when the teacher, relieved from the pressure of the still prevailing demand for "results," is free to take thought for the vital interests of the child.
Whom shall we blame for the shortcomings of our elementary schools?
The Board of Education?
Their Inspectors?
The Teachers?
The Training Colleges?
The Local Authorities?
We will blame none of these.

We will blame the spirit of Western civilisation, with its false philosophy of life and its false standard of reality.
Shall we blame the Board because, in the days when they called themselves the Department, they made the teachers of England the serfs of their soul-destroying Code?
For my own part I prefer to honour the Board, not only because on a certain day they liberated their serfs by a departmental edict, but also and more especially because, in defiance of the protests and criticisms of Members of Parliament, employers of labour, Chairmen of Education Committees, and others, in defiance of the ubiquitous pressure of Western externalism and materialism, in defiance of the trend of contemporary opinion, in defiance of their own practice,--for they themselves are an examining body whose nets are widely spread,--they refuse to revoke the gift of freedom, which they gave, perhaps over-hastily, to the teachers of England, and continue to exempt them, so far as their own action is concerned, from the pressure of a formal examination on a uniform scheme of work.
Shall we blame the teachers as a body because too many of them are machine-made creatures of routine?
For my own part I honour the teachers as a body, if only because here and there one of them has dared, with splendid courage, to defy the despotism of custom, of tradition, of officialdom, of the thousand deadening influences that are brought to bear upon him, and to follow for himself the path of inwardness and life.

To blame the average teacher for being unable to resist the pressure to which he is unceasingly exposed would be almost as unfair as to blame a pebble on the seashore for being unable to resist the grinding action of the waves, and would ill become one who has special reason to remember how the Department, in its misguided zeal for efficiency, strove for thirty years or more to grind the teachers of England to one pattern in the mill of "payment by results." It is to a certificated teacher that, as an educationalist (if I may give myself so formidable a title), "I owe my soul." And there are many other teachers to whom my debts, though less weighty than this, are by no means light.

Most of the failings of the elementary teachers are wounds and strains which adverse Fate has inflicted on them.