therefore, they have to humbug the parent and pass the time by unreal
inventions. The case is not a bit better in the higher grade schools.
They do not do so much of the bogus teaching of English, but they do
nothing whatever in its place.

Now it is little use to goad the members of an ill-trained, ill-
treated, ill-organized, poorly respected and much-abused [Footnote:
_Peccavi._] profession with reproaches for doing what they cannot
do, or to clamour for legislation that will give more school time or
heavier subsidies to the pretence of teaching what very few people are
able to teach. We all know how atrociously English is taught, but
proclaiming that will not mend matters a bit, it will only render
matters worse by making schoolmasters and schoolmistresses shameless
and effortless, unless we also show how well English may be taught. The
sane course is to begin by establishing the proper way to do the thing,
to develop a proper method and demonstrate what can be done by that
method in a few selected schools, to prepare and render acceptable the
necessary class-books, and then to use examination and inspector, grant
in aid, training college, lecture, book and pamphlet to spread the
sound expedients. We want an English Language Society, of affluent and
vigorous people, that will undertake this work. And one chief duty of
that society will be to devise, to arrange and select, to print
handsomely, to illustrate beautifully and to sell cheaply and
vigorously _everywhere,_ a series of reading books, and perhaps of
teachers' companions to these reading books, that shall serve as the
basis of instruction in Standard English throughout the whole world.
These books, as I conceive them, would begin as reading primers, they
would progress through a long series of subtly graded stories, passages
and extracts until they had given the complete range of our tongue.
They would be read from, recited from, quoted in exemplification and