Now, if this can be done for some children it could be done for all children--provided we could find the nurses and governesses or some equivalent for the nurses and governesses, and if we can organize the business efficiently. That point I will defer. I note here simply that the thing is possible, if not practicable. Children, however, who have made this much start with languages are unable, in England and America at least, to go on properly with the learning of languages when they pass into a school. Our schools are so badly organized that it is rare to find even French well taught, and there is rarely any teaching at all of modern languages other than French or German. Often the two foreign languages are taught by different teachers employing different methods, and both employing a different grammatical nomenclature from that used in studying the mother tongue. The classes are encumbered with belated beginners. The child who has got languages from its governess, therefore, marks time--that is to say, wastes time in these subjects at school. The child well grounded in some foreign tongue is often a source of irritation to the teacher, and gets into trouble because it uses idiomatic expressions with which the teacher is unfamiliar, or seems to reflect upon the teacher's accent. These are the limitations of the school and not the limitations of the pupil. _Given facilities_, there is no reason why there should not be a rapid expansion of the language syllabus at thirteen or fourteen, and why language generally should not be studied. Some Slavonic language could be taken up--Russian or Czech--and a beginning made with some non-Aryan tongue--Arabic, for example. The object of language teaching in a civilized state is twofold: to give a thorough, intimate, usable knowledge of the mother tongue and of certain key languages. But if teaching were systematic and no time were wasted, if schooling joined on and were continuous instead of being catastrophically disconnected, there is another side of language teaching altogether--now entirely disregarded--and that is the acquisition _in skeleton_ of quite a number of languages clustering round the key languages. If at the end of his schooling a boy knows English, French and German very well and nothing more, he is still a helpless foreigner in relation to large parts of the world. But if, in addition, he has an outline knowledge of Russian and Arabic or Turkish or Hindustani--it need only be a quite bare outline--and if he has had a term or so of Spanish in relation to his French, or Swedish in relation to his German, then he has the key in his hands for almost any language he may want. If he has not the language in his head, he has it very conveniently on call--he needs but a sensible conversation dictionary and in a little while he can possess himself of it.