“You can easily see that we are all teachers and all pupils at the same time. We study our whole lifetime and graduate only at death. We teach each other when we labor and when we play, in the house and in the field. The teachers, as well as the pupils, perform their manual labor daily; for we believe: 1. That a knowledge of manual labor is the most important education we can receive. 2. That a short, easy day’s manual labor like ours, especially if performed in the open air, is healthful, and promotes the development of body and mind; such labor is the most invigorating food that can be taken. 3. That we have more leisure time for teaching and imparting useful knowledge to our children and to each other than we want, besides the short time we daily devote to manual labor. 4. That labor must be made so easy, attractive and agreeable that we do it for the pleasure that is in it; and 5. That no one should be forced to study or learn what he finds no pleasure in. Your school-houses and your methods of teaching are altogether unnatural, ours are natural; that is the reason you are obliged to use force everywhere. Your _children_ are all right, but your _school_ is nearly all wrong. Your school-houses and your methods of teaching are an infraction of the laws of life and health; that is why your children so often rebel against them. That is the reason why so many of your pupils are tardy, absent, sullen and puny. The child’s instinctive knowledge of life and health, when it remonstrates against your school and your methods of teaching, is a better guide than the perverted reasons of your teachers and parents.” CHAPTER XXII. EDUCATION--THE DIFFERENT BRANCHES. “How, then, do you teach the different branches, Mr. Midith, as the pupils grow older?” asked Mr. Uwins. “I have already explained how we learn our letter, how we learn to print, draw and write. “_Language._--We learn good language, because we hear it continually spoken by our companions, who, in a system like ours, are all well educated and good linguists. We learn to speak by speaking. In a large family like ours, language is very good, and improves rapidly, because there are always sure to be some good linguists who are unconsciously and spontaneously teaching language and grammar to all the rest. Under such conditions you can easily see that we hear scarcely any bad language. We speak fluently and grammatically without particularly studying technical grammar and rhetoric, which, of course, are nothing but the language used by the best speakers and writers of the age in which they live. That is the way we study and learn language, grammar and rhetoric; with a higher development they grow continually more simple. The conditions under our system brings about these favorable and natural opportunities.