There are many elementary schools in England in which bold and successful departures have been made from the beaten track; and in each of these cases what is at present a mere possibility for most schools has been actually realised.

And there is one elementary school at least in which the beaten track has been entirely abandoned, with the result that possibilities (as I may now call them) which I might perhaps have dismissed on _a priori_ grounds as too fantastic for serious consideration, have become part of the everyday life of the scholars.
That school shall now become the theme of my book; for I feel that I cannot serve the cause of education better than by trying to describe and interpret the work that is being done in it.

The school belongs to a village which I will call Utopia.

It is not an imaginary village--a village of Nowhere--but a very real village, which can be reached, as all other villages can, by rail and road.

It nestles at the foot of a long range of hills; and if you will climb the slope that rises at the back of the village, and look over the level country that you have left behind, you will see in the distance the gleaming waters of one of the many seas that wash our shores.