CHAPTER IV.
A SCHOOL IN UTOPIA Having painted in gloomy colours some of the actualities of elementary education, I will now try to set forth its possibilities.
In opposing the actual to the possible, I am perhaps running the risk of being misunderstood.

The possible, as I conceive it, is no mere "fabric of a dream." What are possibilities for the elementary school, as such, are already actualities in certain schools.

Were it not so, I should not speak of them as possibilities.

I do not pretend to be a prophet, in the vulgar sense of the word.

The ends which I am about to set before managers and teachers are ends which have been achieved, and are being achieved, _under entirely normal conditions_, in various parts of the country, and which are therefore not impracticable.