_grammar_ as a subject of special study. There are to be no lessons in
grammar or accidence as such, nor of course any verse compositions
except for older boys specialising in classics. _Mathematics_ also is
treated as a subject which need not be carried beyond the rudiments
unless mathematical or physical ability is shown. For other boys it
leads literally nowhere, being a road impassable.

All the languages are to be taught as we learn them in later life,
when the desire or necessity arises, by means of easy passages with
the translation at our side. Our present practice not only fails to
teach languages but it succeeds in teaching how _not_ to learn a
language. Who thinks of beginning Russian by studying the "aspects" of
the verbs, or by committing to memory the 28 paradigms which German
grammarians have devised on the analogy of Latin declensions?
Auxiliary verbs are the pedagogue's delight, but who begins Spanish by
trying to discriminate between _tener_ and _haber_, or _ser_ and
_estar_, or who learns tables of exceptions to improve his French?
These things come by use or not at all.

If languages are treated not as lessons but as vehicles of speech, and
if the authors are read so that we may find out what they say and how
they say it, and at such a pace that we follow the train of thought or
the story, all who have any sense of language at all can attend and
with pleasure too. What chance has a boy of enjoying an author when he
knows him only as a task to be droned through, thirty lines at a time?
Small blame to the pupil who never discovers that the great authors
were men of like passions with ourselves, that the Homeric songs were
made to be shouted at feasts to heroes full of drink and glory, that
Herodotus is telling of wonders that his friends, and we too, want to
hear, that in the tragedies we hear the voice of Sophocles dictating,
choked with emotion and tears; that even Roman historians wrote
because they had something to tell, and Caesar, dull proser that he
is, composed the _Commentaries_ not to provide us with style or
grammatical curiosities, but as a record of extraordinary events. To
get into touch with any author he must be read at a good pace, and by
reading of that kind there is plenty of time for a boy before he
reaches 17 to make acquaintance with much of the best literature both
of Greek and Latin.

Education must be brought up to date; but if in accomplishing that, we
lose Greek, it will