I shall assume that, by the time a child is five years old, he knows how to read and write. This should be the business of the Montessori school, or whatever improvement upon it may hereafter be devised. There, also, the child learns a certain accuracy in sense-perception, the rudiments of drawing and singing and dancing, and the power to concentrate upon some educational occupation in the middle of a number of other children. Of course the child will not be very perfect in these respects at five years old, and will need further teaching in all of them for some years to come. I do not think that anything involving severe mental effort should be undertaken before the age of seven, but by sufficient skill difficulties can be enormously diminished. Arithmetic is a bugbear of childhood--I remember weeping bitterly because I could not learn the multiplication table--but if it is tackled gradually and carefully, as it is by means of the Montessori apparatus, there is no need of the sense of blank despair which its mysteries used to inspire. In the end, however, there must be a good deal of rather tiresome mastering of rules if sufficient facility is to be acquired. This is the most awkward of early school subjects to fit into a curriculum intended to be interesting; nevertheless, a certain degree of proficiency is necessary for practical reasons. Also, arithmetic affords the natural introduction to accuracy: the answer to a sum is either right or wrong, and never “interesting” or “suggestive”. This makes arithmetic important as one element in early education, quite apart from its practical utility. But its difficulties should be carefully graded and spread out thin; not too much time at a stretch should be devoted to them.