Teaching of this universal and undifferentiated sort, provided for all in common, should be continued up to the age at which pupils begin to show their tastes and aptitudes, in general about 16, after which stage such latitude of choice should be given as the resources of the school can provide.

Of what should the undifferentiated teaching consist?  Coming from a cultivated home a boy of 10 may be expected to have learned the rudiments of Latin, and at least one modern language, preferably French, colloquially, arithmetic, outlines of geography, tales from Plutarch and from other histories.  Going to a preparatory school he will read easy Latin texts with translations and notes; French books, geography including the elements of astronomy, beginning also algebra and geometry.  At 12 dropping French except perhaps a reading once a week, he will begin Greek, by means of easy passages again with the translations beside him, continuing the rest as before.  Transferred at 14-1/2 to a public school he will go on with Latin, starting Latin prose, Greek texts, again read fast with translations.  He will now have his first formal introduction to science in the guise of biology, leading up to lessons and demonstrations in chemistry and physics.  At about 16-1/2 he may drop classics or mathematics according as his tastes have declared themselves, adding modern languages instead, continuing science in all cases, greater or less in amount according to his proclivities.

Boys with special mathematical ability will of course need special treatment.  Moreover provision of German for all has avowedly not been made.  For all it is desirable and for many indispensable.  But as the number who read it for pleasure, never very large, seems likely to diminish, German may perhaps be reserved as a tool, the use of which must be acquired when necessary.

Such a scheme, I submit, makes no impossible demand on the time-table, allowing indeed many spare hours for accessory subjects such as readings in English or history.  Note the main features of this programme.  The time for things worth learning is found by dropping 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.