Take, for example, the question of the education of boys.
Almost every post brings me pamphlets expounding some advanced and
suggestive scheme of education; the pupils are to be taught separate;
the sexes are to be taught together; there should be no prizes;
there should be no punishments; the master should lift the boys
to his level; the master should descend to their level; we should
encourage the heartiest comradeship among boys, and also the tenderest
spiritual intimacy with masters; toil must be pleasant and holidays
must be instructive; with all these things I am daily impressed
and somewhat bewildered. But on the great Buttons' principle I
keep in my mind and apply to all these ideals one still vivid fact;
the face and character of a particular schoolboy whom I once knew.
I am not taking a mere individual oddity, as you will hear.
He was exceptional, and yet the reverse of eccentric; he was
(in a quite sober and strict sense of the words) exceptionally average.
He was the incarnation and the exaggeration of a certain spirit
which is the common spirit of boys, but which nowhere else became
so obvious and outrageous. And because he was an incarnation he was,
in his way, a tragedy.
I will call him Simmons. He was a tall, healthy figure, strong, but a
little slouching, and there was in his walk something between a slight
swagger and a seaman's roll; he commonly had his hands in his pockets.
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