It is easier in the face of such failure, it is a much smaller pang to one's conservatism, to strike out from the current curriculum many of the old informational studies, and to substitute for them a training which is largely bodily and emotional and artistic. Reality and sincerity are the two things that we most want in life. The current objections to ideal schemes of organic education are that, with the rapidly turning wheel of fortune in this country, a course of instruction covering fourteen years—that is, from four to eighteen years of age—can not be taken by any large proportion of the children, and even for those who do start out with a reasonable expectation of completing such a course, interruptions are very likely to occur. And the question is pertinently put, What is to become of these children if they are suddenly thrown out upon the world before your carefully co-ordinated scheme of education has done its perfect work, and they have had little or no informational studies? I want to anticipate this objection, and to do it very thoroughly and very clearly. The answer is twofold.
In the first place, with the growth of educational and social ideals, the State will not leave the education of its children to such precarious circumstances. We are already wealthy enough to have all our children withheld from industrial occupations until they are twenty; and when the social conscience becomes sufficiently sensitive to do this we shall be still more wealthy, for we shall have more efficient and intelligent workers. It is a rough guess, but I should say that at the present time half of our workers are busy, not in supplying absolute human wants or even capricious wants, but are kept busy simply because the work of last year was so poorly done. The work of plowing, harrowing, rolling, planting, and harvesting a crop of wheat is practically the same whether you get sixteen or thirty-two bushels to the acre. In the case of material upon which human labor is afterward spent the case is even more striking. Good cloth, for example, will easily wear twice as long as poor cloth. For a given amount of wear poor clothing must be looked upon as a luxury. In addition to the extra work at the mill in producing two yards of poor cloth in place of one yard of good, there is precisely twice the amount of work in the tailoring shop in making up the two suits. There are, of course, clever politicians who would argue that such an abundance of work for the masses is a national blessing. But I do not belong to their company. I do not believe in outwardly directed, compelling, industrial work any more than I believe in suffering and disease. I believe in self-activity, in inwardly directed work that means the expression of ourselves in action, and I believe in the leisure to grow wise.
Thoreau found that by working six weeks he could maintain
