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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



would be in a position to gauge tlie 

 acquirements of American boys, and 

 the domestic influences which have 

 guided their development, if not 

 they. 



If the universities, by bringing 

 pressure to bear on the secondary 

 schools, can do anything to remedy 

 this state of things they certainly 

 should do it. If the principals are 

 right, however, the outlook is not 

 hopeful. Our own impression is that 

 they are right, and that there is 

 throughout the country a growing- 

 indifference to correct speech and a 

 growing lack of appreciation of the 

 higher uses to which language can 

 be put. The testimony of the princi- 

 pals is enforced by that of a Western 

 teacher, who writes to The Nation to 

 explain the peculiar difficulties under 

 which the schools labor as regards 

 the teaching of English. The pupils, 

 he says, have, out of school, been 

 studying English for fifteen or six- 

 teen years before they reach the high 

 school. " They suppose themselves to 

 be entirely competent, their habits 

 of expression are fixed, and no two 

 of them are alike. ... The home, 

 the very cheap newspaper, the street, 

 have furnished them with their com- 

 mon speech; and, although the first 

 may sometimes be all that can be de- 

 sired, very often the balance of power 

 belongs to the others. . . . Under 

 favorable circumstances the teacher 

 of composition is allowed forty-five 

 minutes a day, for three years, in 

 which, besides teaching something 

 of the history of literature, he is to 

 counteract influences that have fif- 

 teen years the start of him, and fif- 

 teen times as great present oppor- 

 tunity. The only remarkable thing 

 is that, under such circumstances, he 

 accomplishes anything at all." 



The important thing is to have a 

 right understanding of the situation, 

 and the remarks we have just quoted 

 are very much to the point. Large 



masses of people are apt to be rebel- 

 lious in matters of grammar, and, in 

 general, indifferent to established 

 laws of speech. Language which 

 they use for everyday purposes is, in 

 their opinion, "good enough" if it 

 serves those purposes. It is the coin 

 of thought, and so long as it passes 

 current they are satisfied, however 

 clipped or debased it may be. There 

 are no great literary monuments in 

 the background, as it were, of the 

 national consciousness which tend 

 to keep language to a classic form. 

 There is nothing, for example, which 

 exercises at all the same influence 

 upon us as a people as the Homeric 

 poems and the works of the great 

 dramatists but particularly the Ho- 

 meric poems did upon the ancient 

 Greeks. Even if we had any works 

 which stood in something like the 

 same relation to our national life, 

 the printing press has made it un- 

 necessary for us to enrich or burden 

 (as we may consider it) our memories 

 with any portions of such literature. 

 When books were scarce, people had 

 to make books of their minds, but in 

 these days of public libraries no such 

 drudgery as that is necessary; we 

 want our minds for other things. 



How powerless the public school 

 is to hold the nation together in the 

 matter of speech is proved by noth- 

 ing more than by the fact that an 

 ever-i ncreasin g number of no vels and 

 tales of domestic production are 

 written in "dialect." Occasionally 

 we witness learned and most aca- 

 demic discussions as to whether a 

 particular writer has got the " dia- 

 lect " of a particular region in per- 

 fect shape. Poets of considerable 

 note have labored to give currency 

 to very degraded forms of speech. 

 Children are encouraged to slur their 

 words by having the conversation of 

 other children who do likewise served 

 up to them in story books. Public- 

 school teachers themselves in many 



