In order to render the outlay worth while, in order to convert it into a profitable investment, which at one and the same time would produce desirable citizens and lay the foundations of order among them, the present writer suggests as a leading reform, to be placed at the head of every party’s programme, that the English language should be made the principal subject of study in our State schools. What subject is there that is not touched upon in the learning of the precise meaning of words? And what subject is of any [p138] value whatsoever if the precise meaning of words has been neglected in tuition? This may sound revolutionary enough; but on examination it will be found to guarantee a much more stable and orderly form of society than the present system. For if it be asked what a man, educated in our elementary schools, remembers in after life of all the information he has been given as a child, the answer is: a little arithmetic--enough to make the everyday reckonings involved in buying and selling--and the trick of converting signs into sounds. It is, however, precisely upon this trick of converting signs into sounds that his powers of subsequent self-education will chiefly depend. For, when once he has left his school career behind him, the working man who wishes to increase his knowledge and grasp of vital, human and social principles, will rely almost entirely upon the literature he can obtain and understand. If, therefore, he approaches this literature, not equipped to understand, criticise and test its soundness, as matter, or the care and accuracy of its form, but only practised in the trick of converting signs into sounds, his attempts at subsequent self-education will be a futile waste of time. For there is all the difference in the world between this acquired trick of deciphering, or converting signs into sounds, and true _reading_. What is precisely meant by this antithesis? By the “power of reading” most people understand not merely the power of deciphering signs, but also the ability to understand the meaning of the decipher once it is [p139] made. Reading in the ancient Anglo-Saxon sense of the word (_rædan_) “to discern,” is the only reading that can possibly be of any value, “discerning” therefore is the only valuable meaning that the word reading can have.[25] But reading in this, its true sense, implies an understanding of the language deciphered. Now can it be truly said of the children that leave our elementary schools that they have been taught reading in this sense? They have certainly been taught to decipher; they have certainly been given the mastery of converting signs into sounds; but have they been taught to “read”?