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edn Address

school I was much perplexed by finding that the
word school was a Greek word meaning leisure.
With me school was work, but leisure meant
play. I was quite unable to solve this riddle;
and with children school must always mean work.
The Greeks did not, of course, neglect primary
teaching, but they had no system of State schools
and compulsory education, as we have. Slaves
(whom they called pedagogues) accompanied the
boys to private schools, where they continued
their nursery education in the rudiments, and
were kept out of mischief. And we may for our
purpose consider all merely elementary education
as a continuation of the nursery, and suppose
that education proper begins when a boy is able
and willing to think for himself. ‘The transition
from the time when the child thinks all instruction
 troublesome, to the time when the young
man considers his mental development and the
gaining of knowledge to be his chief interest in
life, is gradual and uncertain; but the two
different attitudes of mind justify the separation
of the two periods.
Here, in Swindon, the Greek notion that