Randolph S. Bourne

“ Hand-educated children have had to go the way of hand-made buttons. Children have had to be massed together into a classroom, just as cotton looms have had to be massed together into a factory. The difficulty is that, unlike cotton looms, massed children make a social group, and that the mind and personality can only be developed by the freely inter-stimulating play of minds in a group. ”

“ Now I know all about the logic of the classroom, the economies of time, money, and management that have to be met. I recognize that in the cities the masses that come to the schools require some sort of rigid machinery for their governance. ”

“ Is it not very curious that we spend so much time on the practice and methods of teaching, and never criticise the very framework itself? Call this thing that goes on the modern schoolroom schooling, if you like. ”

“ He might almost have convinced himself that the business of adult American life was actually run according to the rules of parliamentary order, instead of on the plane of personal intercourse, of quick interchange of ideas, the understanding and the grasping of concrete social situations. ”

“ Their attitude towards the teacher, a young man just out of college and amazingly conscientious and preserving, was that good-humored tolerance which has to take the place of enthusiastic interest in our American school. ”