24/59 No instinct is more ruthlessly repressed by those to whom the education of the child is entrusted. No instinct dies out so completely (except so far as it is kept alive by purely utilitarian considerations) when education of the conventional type has done its deadly work. It has been said that children go to school ignorant but curious, and leave school ignorant and incurious. This gibe is the plain statement of a patent truth. The child pulls his toys to pieces in order that he may, if possible, reconstruct them, and so be the better able to control the working of them. |