In a complicated society like ours, the means of intercourse in education cover practically everything that does not come under the head of “vocational training.” Men and women must know how to understand other people and how to make themselves understood. They must know how to count money, how to read and comprehend a letter or a book, and command such general information as will protect them from deception, from going astray, or from otherwise failing to hold their own among their fellow beings. Now it is precisely in this department that the State education of England really does pretend to accomplish all that is desired; and yet nowhere is the inadequacy of its achievement more conspicuous. We have seen that it does not even pretend to teach manners, and that it does not claim to inculcate sound views upon the masses whom it professes to educate; but it does claim to teach them the means of intercourse. Countless millions are spent upon this instruction annually. Hundreds of thousands of children are bored to stultification while they are supposed to be acquiring it, and the net result is that 99 out of 100 of them neither know how to understand other people, nor how to make themselves understood. They do not even know how to understand what they read. And nothing is done to equip them in this all-important branch of knowledge. [p132] Anybody would have thought that one of the first concerns of any educational body dealing with “national” education would have been to secure to all citizens of the same nation, irrespective of rank, at least a thorough knowledge of their native tongue. For what, indeed, could be more vital? It is the first pre-requisite of all satisfactory communication, whether from or to the subject; it is the first essential weapon of the rational faculties. A particular native language may have faults and shortcomings as compared with other native languages; it may be poorer in words, more complicated in syntax, less copiously supplied with racy idiom, etc., but surely any national scheme of education that fails to make the mastery of this native language--such as it is, perfect or imperfect--the foremost object on its programme, is guilty of a gross dereliction of duty. For whatever its faults may be, the masses, at least, have no other means of communication, and if they are going to be made articulate, they must be taught their native tongue.