Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/104

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86
A THOUSAND YEARS HENCE.

tional ways. Thus grammar was taught last instead of first. Then, instead of Greek and Latin, there was a general grounding in science, and an after special grounding in technical education. The dead languages, in fact, were not taught at all, except for special pursuits and capacities; but, instead, there was thorough proficiency in the leading modern languages—in two or three such as the rule, and in more according to taste or capacity, or the final bent or business of life. One important and far-reaching change consisted in learning to read always as though naturally speaking. The old drawl was insufferable, and this dramatic method alone was sufficient to send the vigour of life, as compared with the languor of death, through a great and varied section of education. Again, the increasing multiplicities of study demanded all the possible economies of simplicity in charging the minds and memories of youth; and thus varying forms of the same letter or cypher were done away with, while writing and printing were brought as nearly as might be into one and the same aspect. A special feature of the new system was the general medical supervision, which was throughout of the most careful and discriminative character. With all these changes, facilities, and safeguards, capped by those of the decimal and metric system, education was deprived of half its difficulties, or rather, as was the happier result, the pupil was passed, with the same time and exertion as of old, through a double curriculum.

Education was "compulsory," if we must use that ugly term in such a cause; as though we described the hospital as for compulsory curing, and the parental