Mankind in the Making by H. G. Wells

Author:H. G. Wells [Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social problems, Social sciences
Published: 2004-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

6. Just as much of mathematics as one can get in.

7. Drawing and painting, not as "art," but to train and develop the appreciation of form and colour, and as a collateral means of expression.

8. Music [perhaps] to the same end.

B. To speak the ordinary speech, read with fair intelligence, and write in a passably intelligible manner the foreign language or languages, the social, political, and intellectual necessities of the time require.

And C. A division arising out of A and expanding in the later stages of the school course to continue and replace A: the acquisition of the knowledge (and of the art of acquiring further knowledge from books and facts) necessary to participate in contemporary thought and life.

Now this project is at once more modest in form and more ambitious in substance than almost any school scheme or prospectus the reader is likely to encounter. Let us (on the assumption of our opening paragraph) inquire what is needed to carry it into execution. So far as 1 and 2 in this table go, we have to recognize that since the development of elementary schools in England introduced a spirit of endeavour into teaching, there has been a steady progress in the art of education. Reading and writing are taught somehow or other to most people nowadays, they are frequently taught quickly and well, especially well, I think, in view of the raw material, in many urban Board Schools in England, and there is nothing to do here but to inquire if anything can be done to make this teaching, which is so exceptional in attaining its goal, still quicker and easier, and in bringing the average up to the level of the present best. We have already suggested as the work of an imaginary English Language Society, how much might be done in providing everywhere, cheaply and unavoidably, the best possible reading-books, and it is manifest that the standard of copy-books for writing might also be pressed upward by similar methods. In addition, we have to consider—what is to me a most uncongenial subject—the possible rationalization of English spelling. I will frankly confess I know English as much by sight as by sound, and that any extensive or striking alteration, indeed that almost any alteration, in the printed appearance of English, worries me extremely. Even such little things as Mr. Bernard Shaw's weakness for printing "I've" as "Ive," and the American "favor," "thro," and "catalog" catch at my attention as it travels along the lane of meaning, like trailing briars. But I have to admit this habit of the old spelling, which I am sure most people over four-and-twenty share with me, will trouble neither me nor any one else who reads books now, in the year 1990. I have to admit that the thing is an accident of my circumstances. I have learnt to read and write in a certain way, and I am concerned with the thing said and not with the vehicle, and so it is

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