The ignorance of some people, even native-born Americans, about American history, shows that a few basic facts taught them would be a blessed act of enlightenment. An illiterate old man speaking at a patriotic meeting was heard to say, “Uncle Sam, our President of the United States, is a grand old man.” Another during the early stages of the World War declared, “The United States ought to go over and help France. He helped us when we needed it and now we ought to help him.” The drills in history attempted nothing more ambitious in the beginning session than to clear up such wrong impressions, to open up the subject to the students, and to give them a few essential facts that would stand out or, if further advancement were possible, might be the skeleton on which a thorough course could be hung. Drills in such facts as by whom America was discovered, by whom it was inhabited and by whom settled; the story of how our independence was won; the name and nature of our first President, may have been history in homeopathic doses, but was eagerly swallowed and was wholesome knowledge for people who knew nothing of the subject. Such cluttering-up facts as the battles we have fought, the number we have killed and mutilated, the traitors we have had, the mistakes we have made in passing and then repealing bad laws, the long struggle to overcome certain glaring evils and to secure certain needed reforms, may well be omitted from a course which requires the utmost condensation. The drills were elective. Besides history they included civics, English, health and sanitation, geography, home economics, agriculture, horticulture and good roads. Four were to be chosen from these, the four most suitable to the district’s needs. [Illustration: Arithmetic was a popular study.] English was one of the most popular drills, as well as one most needed. The letter “g,” so often ignored by illiterates, in “ing” was reinstated to its proper dignity and use through drills on such words as “reading,” “writing,” “spelling,” “talking,” “singing,” “cooking,” “sewing” and others with a similar ending. Words commonly mispronounced in the community were made the subject of a drill. Such words as “seed,” “crick,” “kiver,” “git,” “hit,” “hyeard,” “tuk,” “fust,” “haint” and “skeered,” were pronounced repeatedly until the right habit was formed, and the most glaring monstrosities of pronunciation were weeded out. A language conscience was created where none had existed before, and a beginning was thus made toward improving bad English--a beginning which, though but a pathway blazed, was expected to lead out into the broad highway of better, if not perfect, speech. This was long before the crusade for better speech in America was inaugurated with its “National Better Speech Week.”