Unenthusiastic educators

It is rare to come across anyone enthusiastic for our system of elementary instruction.  It is not common to find anyone who is even free from grave misgivings about it.  Nobody seems very keen about education — least of all the educators.  I have a huge personal respect for the teachers in the Church and State schools, in regard to their untiring cheerfulness, industry, and courage.  But I never met one of them who seemed at all certain that the system was doing any good.

G.K. Chesterton, The Illustrated London News, August 24, 1912, quoted in Common Sense 101, p. 108.