AMONG the many murmurs of dissatisfaction that arise today concerning the results of the teaching of English in our secondary schools is a constantly recurring one of the lack of power of young people to use words with any effectiveness. The complaint is urged with growing frequency that the increased effort of the last ten or fifteen years along the line of language work has not produced results commensurate with the time expended, and that our students have only a thin and meager vocabulary

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... th which to express their thoughts. Even in the high-school period there is a lamentable want of interest in exact, forceful expression. Curiosity with reference to wordusage is so rare as practically to be non-existent. There is no effort at experimentation with language, but rather a ready acceptance of the old and familiar, and an apparent desire to say the thing in mind as easily and quickly as possible and be done with it. Even in the widely prevalent and constantly increasing use of slang the same carelessness and indifference to wordvalues are perceptible, the meaningless, pointless phrase passing muster quite as rapidly as that which from its terse vividness deserves acceptance. If these criticisms are well founded-and there seems to be little room for doubt-they call for serious consideration, for the failure to acquire a fairly large working vocabulary, or, what is more serious still, the failure to desire such a vocabulary, is a graver charge against our teaching of English than appears on the surface. There can be no question that one of the chief aims of education is to develop the power of clear, definite thought. It is the function of language to assist in this process. This being so, there can be no justification for such emphasis as for years has been laid upon language work, unless its results are to show in thought-power. Given any real expansion of thought and expansion of speech will necessarily follow, for so closely connected are language and thought that no separation is possible. The development 240 This content downloaded from 187.038.167.