addition to much reading aloud and recitation from memory the work of
instruction might consist very largely of continually more extensive
efforts towards original composition. Paraphrasing is a good exercise,
provided that it does not consist in turning good and beautiful English
into bad. I do not see why it should not follow the reverse direction.
Selected passages of mean, stereotyped, garrulous or inexact prose
might very well be rewritten, under the direction of an intelligent
master. Retelling a story that has just been read and discussed, with a
change of incident perhaps, would also not be a bad sort of exercise,
writing passages in imitation of set passages and the like. Written
descriptions of things displayed to a class should also be instructive.
Caught at the right age, most little girls, and many little boys I
believe, would learn very pleasantly to write simple verse. This they
should be encouraged to read aloud. At a later stage the more settled
poetic forms, the ballade, the sonnet, the rondeau, for example, should
afford a good practice in handling language. Pupils should be
encouraged to import fresh words into their work--even if the effect is
a little startling at times--they should hunt the dictionary for
material. A good book for the upper forms in schools dealing in a
really intelligent and instructive way with Latin and Greek, so far as
it is necessary to know these languages in order to use and manipulate
technical English freely, would, I conceive, be of very great service.
It must be a good exercise to write precise definitions of words. Logic
also is an integral portion of the study of the mother-tongue.

But to throw out suggestions in this way is an easy task. The
educational papers are full of this sort of thing, educational
conferences resound with it. What the world is not full of is the
capacity to organize these things, to drag them, struggling and
clinging to a thousand unanticipated difficulties, from the region of