Baltimore Evening Sun (18 July 1911): 6.

The new School Board, having bounced Mr. Van Sickle with neatness and dispatch, is now free to turn its attention to the reform of the curriculum. Let us hope that it will give early attention to a matter first brought into notice, I believe, by this Hon. George Konig—the matter, that is, of improving the present method of teaching English. Time was, of course, when that method was even worse than it is today: in the very face and teeth of Van Sickleism improvements have been made. But there is still room for a further advance, and the great masses of the plain people, of whom I have the honor to be one, look for it to be made.

The trouble is that under the existing system an extremely difficult, and, to most pupils, entirely foreign language is taught in the schools, to the exclusion of the more fluent vulgate which they hear at home and which they speak themselves all the days of their lives. In other words, a deliberate but unsuccessful effort is made to change their mother tongue, and much valuable time is thereby wasted. If it were actually possible, during the all years that the average pupil is in school, to make that change an accomplished fact, there might be justification for the effort, but, as everyone knows, it is not possible at all, for the plain people do not speak English and do not want to speak it, and it outrages and enrages them every time they hear it spoken by their children.

The pundits of the Madison avenue seminary, in the past, have overlooked this fact. Educated and multilingual men themselves, speaking English even more fluently than American, they have forgotten that the plain people harbor a deep-seated and ineradicable distrust of English. And so forgetting, they have been barbarously cruel to many a helpless child, for it is barbarously cruel, and no mistake, to teach a child that “I should have gone” is better than “I ought to have went” and “I saw” better than “I seen,” and then sond it home to provoke the passionate walloping of a parent who holds, as a first principle of patriotic criminology, that “I should have gone” and “I saw” are affected, effeminate and preposterous, and the sure symbols of an obnoxious pride.

If you want to attain to a degree of unpopularity comparable to that of a child-stealer say “bawth” in These States. Even more than the thing itself the English word for it is unspeakably offensive to 99 per cent. of all Americans. And the broad “a” has hundreds of brothers. At all places where the English and American languages diverge the plain people cling ardently to the American forms, and every person who uses the corresponding English forms must be prepared to bear a burden of odium, opprobrium and obloquy. Is it fair to put that burden upon innocent children? Is it fair to encourage them to do things that are intolerably insulting and offensive to their parents and certain to bring down upon their own heads a condign punishment? To be sure it is not.

The teaching of English, as it is now practiced, is no mere crime of inadvertence or ignorance. It is done deliberately and with malice aforethought, and there are pedagogues who defend it eloquently. The English language, argue these fellows, is infinitely more exact and logical and beautiful than American, and even though few Americans speak it today, it would be a good thing if they could be induced to speak it. Rubbish! The same defense was once made for Latin—and yet Latin has vanished from the curriculum. The error lies in the pedagogues’ assumption that their own personal preference is to be consulted. Let them rid their minds of that notion. Let them understand that they are not public critics, but public servants, and that their one duty is to carry out the mandates of the plain people.

The plain people, it is obvious, want their children to learn the language that they themselves employ for communication. It is all well enough to tell them that “I ought to have went” is bad English. Bad English it may be, and bad Sanskrit, too, not to say bad Arabic and bad Choctaw, but it is undoubtedly good American, and they know it perfectly well, and they also know perfectly well that any man who denies it is a buffoon and a rascal, and that any child who presumes to air its new-found knowledge by saying “I should have gone” is getting altogether too fresh and unfilial to be sufferable, and needs a cowhiding for the good of its soul.

Let the new School Board give attention to this serious matter. As Mr. Konig has heretofore maintained with such good sense, the aim of the public schools is to fit children for the actual business of life and not to convert them into prigs and upstarts and so make them discontented and miserable. A practical education is what is demanded, and in a practical education the grammatical subtleties and flamboyances of a foreign and detested tongue can have no legitimate place.

The English language as she is murdered in the boomiferous literature of the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association:

It is perhaps the most satisfactory and lowest price market for the merchant than any in the country. The average monthly clearings of the Clearing House banks is over $140,000,000. This covers everys possible commodity of merchandise. * * * The area of its trade territory is much larger than any other city of its class.

Let us now claw these astonishing remarks of the honorary pallbearers into more orthodox and comprehenstble English:

It is, perhaps, the most satisfactory, and cheapest market for the merchant in the country. The average monthly clearings of the Clearing House banks are more than $140,000.000. This covers every possible commodity of commerce. * * * The area of its trade territory to much larger than that of any other city of its class.

A few lines of space for what seems to be a serious and well-considered complaint:

Why doesn’t the State of Maryland examine and license bartenders, as it already examines and licenses doctors, lawyers, plumbers, barbers and embalmers? A lot of cheap quacks are practicing the profession in Baltimore. I went into a downtown barroom the other day and ordered a whisky smash and the soulless ignoramus behind the bar dished up a whisky sour. Is it fair to torture and swindle the drinking public in that manner? And is it fair to honest and accomplished bartenders to permit such competition?

These questions are altogether too important to be answered offhand. But they deserve honest answers, and after a thorough investigation of the matter I hope to answer them.

Contributions to the new thesaurus of synonyms for intoxicated:

Dished, Derailed, Boiled, Funelled.{?}