The profession of teaching has long been characterised by certain habitual convictions, which
Spencer undertook to shake rudely, and even to deride. The first of these convictions is that
all education, physical, intellectual, and moral, must be authoritative, and need take no
account of the natural wishes, tendencies, and motives of the ignorant and undeveloped child.
The second dominating conviction is that to teach means to tell, or show, children what they
ought to s ...