"I believe it, Margaret. My whole theory of education is built on my abject humility. My chief objection to Macdonald is that he ignores his own weaknesses. He has never analysed himself to see what manner of man he is. If he could look into his heart and discover all the little meanesses and follies and hypocrisies he would not have the courage to make a boy salute him; he would not have the impudence to strap a boy for swearing. One of the worst things about Macdonald and a thousand other dominies is that they have forgotten their childhood. A dominie should never grow up. I would take away from all students their text-books on School Management and Psychology, and put into their hands Barrie's _Peter Pan_ and Stevenson's _A Child's Garden of Verses_. "Margaret, why can't people see that the Macdonald system is all wrong? What in all the world is the use of dominies and ministers and parents posing before children? What is respect but a pose? What is Macdonald's sternness but a pose? He is a kindly decent fellow outside his school. The bairns meet with pose the first thing in the morning when they enter the school. They stand up and repeat the Lord's Prayer monotonously, and without the faintest realisation of what they are saying. The dominie closes his eyes and clasps his hands in front of him, and I don't believe there is a single dominie in Scotland who really prays each morning. For that matter I don't believe that there are half-a-dozen ministers who repeat the prayer on Sundays with any thought of its meaning. The morning prayer is a gigantic sham. When I said to Macdonald that I would have it abolished in schools he almost had a fit. The bigger the sham is the louder is the screaming in its defence if you attack it. "Think of all the shams that parents practise. They pretend that babies come in the doctor's pocket; they pretend that a lie is as much an abomination to them as it is to the Lord; they imply by their actions that they never stole apples in their lives; they hint that they don't know what bad language means. They live a life that is one continuous lie." "I don't understand that," said Margaret with a puzzled look. "A mother lies to her child when she tells it that it is wicked when it makes a noise; a father lies to his son when he tells him that he will come to a bad end if he smokes any more cigarettes. Worse than that they lie by negation. The father changes his 'Hell!' into 'Hades!' when he hits his thumb with a hammer; the mother says 'Tut Tut!' when she means 'Damnation!' Both go to church as an example to their offspring ... and going to church is in most cases a lie. Nearly every father of a family says grace before meat, and he generally delays the practice until his first-born is old enough to take notice. Then there is the lie about relationship. A child never discovers that its father has about as much love for its mother's aunt as he has for the King of Siam.