Abstract
AFTER the presidential address by Sir Napier Shaw the Section settled down to discuss a varied and interesting programme, which attracted, large and appreciative audiences throughout the week. It was a great disappointment that Sir A. Quiller Couch was unable to be present himself, but his paper on the teaching of English admirably expressed a need now widely felt by thoughtful teachers that English should be the root of all learning for, an English-speaking child; that until the age of fourteen or fifteen he should practise the language natural to his mind in addition to one other; that the plainest, most everyday speech should be clear, expressive, accurate, graceful whenever possible, and at any rate decent; that a child should learn to define and clarify in his mind the terms in which he thinks, to think in real English, not in jargon. Therefore, to attain this, teachers should aim through English in preference to any foreign language, alive or dead. English should not be treated as a special subject, but should be the basis of all others. He deprecated the inordinate amount of time given in the lower forms to linguistics and mathematics, since these are mainly ancillary, the former to literature and history, the latter to natural science; they are formal studies, studies in the abstract, and lacking the. content of the other three, employing processes alien to a child's thought.
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Education at the British Association . Nature 104, 521–522 (1920). https://doi.org/10.1038/104521a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/104521a0