The English language is the great storehouse of the rich thought and the burning emotion of the English race, and all this, as it has issued out of character, works towards the development of character, when it is made operative in new generations.  There is no other language but Latin that has preserved so great a wealth of invaluable things, and English is taught in order that it all may be more available through that appreciation that comes from familiarity.  There is no nobler record in the world:  from Chaucer down to the moderns is one splendid sequence of character-revelations through a perfect but varied art, for literature is also a fine art, and one of the greatest of all.  Is it not fair to say that the chief duty of the teacher of English is to lead the student to like great literature, to find it and enjoy it for himself, and through it to come to the liking of great ideas?

In the old days there was an historical, or rather archaeological, method that was popular; also an analytical and grammarian method.  There was also the philological method which was quite the worst of all and had almost as devastating results as in the case of Latin.  It almost seems as though English were being taught for the production of a community of highly specialized teachers.  No one would now go back to any of those quaint and archaic ways digged up out of the dim and remote past of the XIXth century.  We should all agree, I think, that for general education, specialized technical knowledge is unimportant and scientific intensive methods unjustifiable.  For one student who will turn out a teacher there are five hundred that will be just simple voters, wage-earners, readers of the Saturday Evening Post and the New Republic, members of the Fourth Presbyterian Church or the Ethical Society, and respectable heads of families.  The School of Pedagogy has its own methods (I am given to understand), but under correction I submit they are not those of general education.  Shall I put the whole thing in a phrase and say that the object of teaching English is to get young people to like good things?

You may say this is English Literature, not English.  Are the two so very far apart?  English as a language is taught to make literature available.  “Example is better than precept.”  Reading good literature for the love of it will bring in the habit of grammatical speaking and writing far more effectively than what is known as “a thorough grounding in the principles of English grammar.”  I doubt if the knowledge of, and facility in, English can be built up on such a basis; rather the laws should be deduced from examples.  Philology, etymology, syntax are derivatives, not foundations.  “Practice makes perfect” is a saying that needs to be followed by the old scholastic defensive "distinguo." Practice in reading, rather than practice in writing, makes good English composition possible.  The “daily theme” may be overdone; it is of little use unless thought keeps ahead of the pen.