If thinking is primary, and I most emphatically think it is, then the oral method is imperative. I do not speak of arithmetic and the English language in order to present a method, although the method is implied, but for the primary purpose of directing attention to the importance of giving education the place it deserves in our life relations. Education is for the enrichment of life rather than for ornamentation. If taught in harmony with actual life needs, success is assured. I am not in sympathy with commencement addresses that speak of education as a process that can be completed in four years or more and said completion is ratified by conferring a diploma.
Education is life.
It involves growth, development and training. Many people entertain a very old superstition, which grows out of the notion already mentioned, that education is a preparation or this or that vocation. Consequently present school laws are undemocratic. Free schools are open for a class for those who are five to twenty-one years of age. This is all wrong.