“6. Perhaps as much as three-fourths of all your studying in your school-room and colleges is largely done for the direct object of recitation, examination and for obtaining diplomas. The evidence in support of this proposition is that one seldom meets a pupil in your public schools who cares enough for the intrinsic worth of knowledge that he will study when no lessons are assigned. A pupil who has a desire for knowledge and studies for the pleasure the intrinsic value of it gives, would study even better when no lessons are assigned, for then he is free to choose his own branches. Your graduations have also a very evil effect. They tend to impress on the graduates the idea that they have finished their education and need, therefore, no further inquiry. It appears very clear to me that a vast majority of your graduates would have a much better education in their maturer years if they had not been affected by the graduation process. Thus you see that the assignment of lessons, examinations, graduations and diplomas all tend to blight self-inquiry, the only highway by which one can reach the highest and noblest attainments. “7. Your recitation and the showing process, which, as a rule, you recommend so highly, instill into the mind of the pupil the idea and habit that they can do nothing without the assistance of parent and teacher. Thus the child is gradually taught to make no personal effort without the telling and showing processes, and the consequence is, that it kills nearly all originality and self-reliance in the child. “8. Your compulsory attendance, whether enforced by parents or state, tends to make fibbers and schemers out of many pupils who desire to be excused before school lets out, or who desire to be excused by parent or state. It is natural that after a pupil’s mental faculties are exhausted for the time being, it can not continue to pursue its studies without great bodily and mental injury. Under these conditions the child’s healthful instinct generally prompts it to cease studying, after which it begins its ‘mischievous pranks’ as you call them. It is a well known fact that all minds are not endowed with like power of endurance, yet your public schools, as a rule, make no provision for such difference of mental endurance. You compel all to attend school for six hours daily. Thus your compulsion tends to make fibbers and miscreants; it injures the child’s health, prevents the spontaneous development of its faculties and sets it against learning.