We have to convert the public mind in this country to faith in trained and disciplined reason.  We have to convince our fellow-citizens not only that the duty of self-preservation requires us to be mentally as well equipped as the French, Germans and Americans, but that a trained intelligence is in itself “more precious than rubies.”  Blake said that “a fool shall never get to Heaven, be he never so holy.”  It is at any rate true that ignorance misses the best things in this life If Englishmen would only believe this, the whole spirit of our education would be changed, which is much more important than to change the subjects taught.  It does not matter very much what is taught; the important question to ask is what is learnt.  This is why the controversy about religious education was mainly fatuous.  The “religious lesson” can hardly ever make a child religious; religion, in point of fact, is seldom taught at all; it is caught, by contact with someone who has it.  Other subjects can be taught and can be learnt; but the teaching will be stiff collar-work, and the learning evanescent, if the pupil is not interested in the subject.  And how little encouragement the average boy gets at home to train his reason and form intellectual tastes!  He may probably be exhorted to “do well in his examination,” which means that he is to swallow carefully prepared gobbets of crude information, to be presently disgorged in the same state.  The examination system flourishes best where there is no genuine desire for mental cultivation.  If there were any widespread enthusiasm for knowledge as an integral part of life the revolt against this mechanical and commercialised system of testing results would be universal.  As things are, a clever boy trains for an examination as he trains for a race; and goes out of training as fast as possible when it is over.  Meanwhile the romance of his life is centred in those more generous and less individual competitions in the green fields, which our schools and universities have developed to such perfection.  In classes which have small opportunities for physical exercises, vicarious athletics, with not a little betting, are a disastrous substitute.  But the soul is dyed the colour of its leisure thoughts.  “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”  This is why no change in the curriculum can do much for education, as long as the pupils imbibe no respect for intellectual values at home, and find none among their school-fellows.  And yet the capacity for real intellectual interest is only latent in most boys.  It can be kindled in a whole class by a master who really loves and believes in his subject.  Some of the best public school teachers in the last century were hot-tempered men whose disciplinary performances were ludicrous.  But they were enthusiastic humanists, and keen scholars passed year by year out of their class-rooms.