depend on the school for standards of English.

And it is the elementary school which must meet the need, if it is to be
met at all. For the conception of English expression which I am talking
of can find no mode of instruction adequate to its meaning, save in
constant appeal to the ear, at an age so early that unconscious habit is
formed. No rules, no analytical instruction in later development, can
accomplish what is needed. Hearing and speaking; imitating, unwittingly
and wittingly, a good model; it is to this method we must look for
redemption from present conditions.

I believe we are on the eve of a real revolution in English
teaching,--only it is a revolution which will not break the peace. It
will introduce a larger proportion of oral work than has hitherto been
contemplated in secondary school work. It will recognise the fact that
English is primarily something spoken with the mouth and heard with the
ear. And this recognition will have greatest weight in the systems of
elementary teaching.

It is as an aid in oral teaching of English that story-telling in school
finds its second value; ethics is the first ground of its usefulness,
English the second,--and after these, the others. It is, too, for the
oral uses that the secondary forms of story-telling are so available. By
secondary I mean those devices which I have tried to indicate, as used
by many teachers, in the chapter on "Specific Schoolroom Uses," in my
earlier book. They are retelling, dramatisation, and forms of seat-work.
All of these are a great power in the hands of a wise teacher. If
combined with much attention to voice and enunciation in the recital of
poetry, and with much good reading aloud _by the teacher_, they will go
far toward setting a standard and developing good habit.