What Is and What Might Be / A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular

A critique of contemporary elementary education argues that Western externalism and an emphasis on outward results have produced schools that stifle children's inner growth. It contends education's function is to foster organic development by supplying nourishment and opportunities for exercise, and that growth must be enacted by the child rather than imposed by teachers. The author criticizes systems of mechanical obedience and payment by results for promoting surface learning and arrested development, urges a change in conceptions of reality and value toward inward vitality, and acknowledges exemplary teachers and experimental schools that already practise emancipative, growth-centered methods.