=The Children’s Magna Carta.=—My plea is, and I think I have justified it by experience, that many doors shall be opened to boys and girls until they are at least twelve or fourteen, and always the doors of good houses, (‘Education,’ says Taine, ‘is but a card of invitation to noble and privileged salons’); that they shall be introduced to no subject whatever through compendiums, abstracts, or selections; that the young people shall learn what history is, what literature is, what life is, from the living books of those who know. I know it can be done, because it is being done on a considerable scale. If conviction has indeed reached us, the Magna Carta of children’s intellectual liberty is before us. The need is immediate, the means are evident. This, at least, I think we ought to claim, that, up to the age of twelve, all boys and girls shall be educated on some such curriculum, with some such _habit_ of _Books_ as we have been considering.[24] Appendices APPENDIX I _Questions for the Use of Readers_[25] CHAPTER I DOCILITY AND AUTHORITY IN THE HOME AND SCHOOL 1. In what points are there better relations between children and their elders than there were a generation or two ago? 2. Characterise the elder generation of parents. 3. What of ‘ill-guided’ homes? 4. Give an example of martinet rule. Name some notable men who grew up under such rule. 5. Compare the arbitrary parent now with the arbitrary parent of the past. 6. Was arbitrary rule a failure? 7. What thought should encourage our own efforts? 8. Show that arbitrariness arose from limitations. 9. That it is one cause of the reticence of children. 10. In what way has the direction of philosophic thought altered the relations of parents and children? 11. What effect has the doctrine of the ‘Infallible Reason’ upon authority? 12. Show that English thought again proclaims the apotheosis of Reason. 13. What is the final justification of the idea of authority? 14. Why is the enthronement of the human reason the dethronement of the highest authority? 15. Show that the spread of an idea is ‘quick as thought.’ 16. Why has the notion of the finality of human reason become intolerable? 17. On what grounds would you say that authority and docility are fundamental principles? 18. Show that self-interest does not account for the response of docility to authority. 19. Show that the work of the rationalistic philosophers was necessary. 20. Show that they hold a brief for human freedom. 21. Describe the way in which the education of the world seems to be carried on. 22. Show the danger of the notion that authority is vested in persons. 23. Show that a person in authority is under authority. CHAPTER II DOCILITY AND AUTHORITY IN THE HOME AND SCHOOL _Part II.—How Authority Behaves_ 1. Show, by example, that it is easy to go wrong on principle. 2. Distinguish between authority and autocracy. 3. How does autocracy behave?