TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

Two widely differing conceptions of language acquirement now hold the stage in our public schools. From the standpoint of Homer's epic, we may speak of "writing"-yet Homer never held a pen. From the standpoint of the ordinary citizen, who needs merely to be able to write a business letter without gross errors, we may also speak of "writing." Failure to separate the methods and the aims growing out of the two conceptions is responsible for most of the existing dissatisfaction with language methods.

Not one, but many, experimental schools must be established, if nation-wide, scholarly ideals and methods are to displace the cheap and absurd pyrotechnics at present displayed. The study of the humanities has not been discredited, for the study of English is only beginning seriously.

Until

elementary schools establish the study of the mother tongue in a worthy manner, how can we expect Greek and Latin to hold a place?

Are we indeed a nation of confirmed imitators, as has been charged? Popular methods give a savor of truth to the accusation. We brazenly assume to make literary producers of all children, yet succeed in making few of them literate,—that is, informed and accurate in the details of literacy! Our twelveyear-old Aesops and La Fontaines gravely compose in classic form their ethical assignments, and we call all the world to admire. But is it certain that we do

well to develop a generation of moral prigs, who fancy that they are doing what no child—and almost no adult-can ever do?

It is well that we provide opportunity, if convenient, for a Homer to spread his wings, but it is imperative that we teach the rank and file of our youth the elements of literacy. At the present moment so wretched has been the English teaching of the past quarter-century-the great body of our teachers have themselves had no training in the use of idiomatic English. Heads of departments in our great universities are even sending out lists of socalled errors, in which many of the "errors" listed are good and acceptable English idioms, hoary with the age of long and venerable use. Thus our teachers are often asked to drive out a locution which is as firmly intrenched in the thought and genius of the language as is Gibraltar on its foundation.

An eminent man of letters has said of the average language text-book that it "is grotesque in its ignorance. But it is often more than merely negative in results, for it actually inculcates bad habits. Witness the well-nigh universal emphasis upon abbreviations, a thing almost negligible in correct manuscript.

Almost no written composition should be required of children. They should be allowed to spend their time and energy in absorbing the countless impressions of youth, which later, perhaps, may seek expression thru the pen. Not that this is necessarily desirable, for our book-shops overflow with the ill-advised products of mediocrity.

This volume of lessons is the result of the experimental test of many hundreds of children. These tests go to show that the fourth grade of any school may usually be trusted to copy more accurately than do any succeeding grade. This fact has furnished the indictment of prevailing methods, and is warrant for the demand that there be a thoro change.

The method employed in this book is that of making printers' copy, or an exact reproduction as to line, word, letter, and point. This mechanical reproduction is the only sort that the schools should tolerate, for, as a noted teacher of English remarks: "The best reproduction [as the word is generally understood] is the worst language exercise!"

Let us cease to ask our infants for ethical compositions, and let us give them a little time for acquiring a forceful, idiomatic habit of speech! Let us no longer be dominated by the false ideals of a petty, pretentious purism! Let us abandon all the shams of imitation! And let us begin to seek the eternal verities, among which has always been reckoned the aquirement of accuracy in details of scholarship.

Minneapolis, August, 1917

J. S. R.