So far, we have been considering what sort of knowledge should be imparted. I come now to a different set of problems, concerned partly with methods of teaching, partly with moral education and the training of character. Here we are no longer concerned with politics, but with psychology and ethics. Psychology was, until fairly lately, a merely academic study, with very little application to practical affairs. This is all changed now. We have, for instance, industrial psychology, clinical psychology, educational psychology, all of the greatest practical importance. We may hope and expect that the influence of psychology upon our institutions will rapidly increase in the near future. In education, at any rate, its effect has already been great and beneficent. Let us take first the question of “discipline”. The old idea of discipline was simple. A child or boy was ordered to do something he disliked, or abstain from something he liked. When he disobeyed, he suffered physical chastisement, or, in extreme cases, solitary confinement on bread and water. Read, for example, the chapter in “The Fairchild Family” about how little Henry was taught Latin. He was told that he could never hope to become a clergyman unless he learned that language, but in spite of this argument the little boy did not apply himself to his book as earnestly as his father desired. So he was shut up in an attic, given only bread and water, and forbidden to speak to his sisters, who were told that he was in disgrace and they must have nothing to do with him. Nevertheless, one of them brought him some food. The footman told on her, and she got into trouble too. After a certain period in prison, the boy, we are told, began to love Latin and worked assiduously ever after. Contrast with this Chekov’s story about his uncle who tried to teach a kitten to catch mice. He brought a mouse into the room where the kitten was, but the kitten’s hunting instinct was not yet developed, and it paid no attention to the mouse. So he beat it. The next day the same process was repeated, and the next and the next. At last the Professor became persuaded that it was a stupid kitten, and quite unteachable. In later life, though otherwise normal, it could never see a mouse without sweating in terror and running away. “Like the kitten,” Chekov concludes, “I had the honour of being taught Latin by my uncle.” These two stories illustrate the old discipline and the modern revolt against it.