We are promised by the Minister of Education new movement in the instruction of young people; revision of methods; rearrangement of subjects. One likes to think of the possibilities better payment of teachers, though that is unlikely; a general destruction of school manuals for the benefit of publishers; English and Spanish and Tamil to be taught in our Universities; Greek to be brought into the elementary schools in view of a possible strike from neurasthenia and the prevalence of the cinema; such a general advance, in fact, that after the war our young people will capture, by their knowledge of languages and their commercial fitness, the German trade in South America and East Africa.
I wish to enter a plea for one little neglected corner of this field of instruction, the teaching of history. I must define what is generally meant by history as it is taught in our schools. You may remember that Parson Thwackum, arguing with Philosopher Square that there was no honour antecedent to religion, undoubtedly a true proposition, was driven to admit that by religion he meant the Christian religion, by Christian the Protestant religion, and by Protestant the religion of the Church of England. In like manner, by "history as taught in our schools is intended British history, by British almost always English history, and by English Constitutional history, and by Constitutional the account of the changes in the course of development of one particular form of government peculiar to England alone, which have been found convenient or which have resulted from the struggle of opposed interests in past days. This study is enlivened by language culled from anonymous writers on kings, priests, and others whose actions do not