English for the English : A Chapter on National Education.
By George Sampson. (Cambridge University Press. Ss. net.)— This is a spirited and thoughtful plea for the better teaching of English in the elementary schools. Mr. Sampson speaks from long and painful experience of the defects of the system and of the faulty training of the teachers. He insists that every teacher, whatever his special subject may be, should make it his first care to teach the children to speak and write their own language correctly; and, further to take an interest in books. It is per- fectly true that if all children leaving school at fourteen had been inspired with a love of good reading we should soon have an educated nation. The responsibility rests with the training colleges and to some extent with the universities. Mr. Sampson is unduly severe on the advocates of a classical education, most of whom would, we think, sympathize with his aims. But he Is not hostile to the classics, and goes so far as to recommend Plato's simpler dialogues (in English) for reading in the higher classes of elementary schools.
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