Posted by Pam Adams on January 06, 2010 at 17:29:45 user PamAdams.
In Reply to: Re: Ages in GN posted by Adam Quinan on January 06, 2010 at 14:00:48:
Apparently, your father's is an old complaint. From Rudyard Kipling's story REGULUS (part of the Stalky and Co. series):
'To go back to what we were discussing,' said King quickly, 'do youpretend that your modern system of inculcating unrelated facts about chlorine, for instance, all of which may be proved fallacies by the time the boys grow up, can have any real bearing on education--even the low type of it that examiners expect?'
'I maintain nothing. But is it any worse than your Chinese reiteration of uncomprehended syllables in a dead tongue?'
'Dead, forsooth!' King fairly danced. 'The only living tongue on earth!Chinese! On my word, Hartopp!'
'And at the end of seven years--how often have I said it?' Hartopp went on,--'seven years of two hundred and twenty days of six hours each, your victims go away with nothing, absolutely nothing, except, perhaps, if they've been very attentive, a dozen--no, I'll grant you twenty--one score of totally unrelated Latin tags which any child of twelve could have absorbed in two terms.'