emphasis I would repeat here the astonishment that has grown upon me as
I have given my mind to these things, that, save for local exceptions,
there should be no pressure even upon those who desire to become
teachers in our schools or preachers in our pulpits, to attain a
qualifying minimum of correct pronunciation.

Now directly we pass beyond these first three elementary matters,
reading, writing, and pronunciation, and come to the fourth and fifth
items of our scheme, to the complete mastery of English that is, we
come upon a difficulty that is all too completely disregarded in
educational discussions--always by those who have had no real
scholastic experience, and often by those who ought to know better. It
is extremely easy for a political speaker or a city magnate or a
military reformer or an irresponsible writer, to proclaim that the
schoolmaster must mend his ways forthwith, give up this pointless Latin
of his, and teach his pupils the English language "_thoroughly_"--
with much emphasis on the "thoroughly," but it is quite another thing
for the schoolmaster to obey our magnificent directions. For the plain,
simple, insurmountable fact is this, that no one knows how to teach
English as in our vague way we critics imagine it taught; that no
working schoolmaster alive can possibly give the thing the concentrated
attention, the experimental years necessary for its development, that
it is worth nobody's while, and that (except in a vein of exalted self-
sacrifice) it will probably not be worth any one's while to do so for
many years unless some New Republicans conspire to make it so. The
teaching of English requires its Sturm, its energetic modern renascence
schoolmasters, its set of school books, its branches and grades, before
it can become a discipline, even to compare with the only subject
taught with any shadow of orderly progressive thoroughness in secondary
schools, namely, Latin. At present our method in English is a foolish