But if the languages constitute so valuable a part of a just system of
education, the next question is, in what manner they are to be taught.
Indeed, I believe, if the persons employed in the business of education
had taken half the pains to smooth the access to this department of
literature, that they have employed to plant it round with briars and
thorns, its utility and propriety, in the view we are now considering
it, would scarcely have been questioned.
There is something necessarily disgusting in the forms of grammar.
Grammar therefore is made in our public schools the business of a
twelvemonth. Rules are heaped upon rules with laborious stupidity. To
render them the more formidable, they are presented to our youth in the
very language, the first principles of which they are designed to teach.
For my own part, I am persuaded the whole business of grammar may be
dispatched in a fortnight. I would only teach the declensions of nouns,
and the inflexions of verbs. For the rest, nothing is so easily
demonstrated, as that the auxiliary sciences are best communicated in
connection with their principals. Chronology, geography, are never so
thoroughly understood, as by him that treats them literally as the
handmaids of history. He, who is instructed in Latin with clearness and
accuracy, will never be at a loss for the rules of grammar.
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