Professor Blackie's article is a warning to the teachers of classics, to
the effect that they must change their front; that, whereas the value of
the classics as a key to thought has diminished, and is diminishing,
they must by all means in the first place improve their drill. In fact,
unless something can be done to lessen the labour of the acquisition by
better teaching, and to secure the much-vaunted intellectual discipline
of the languages, the battle will soon be lost. Accordingly, the
professor goes minutely into what he conceives the best methods of
teaching. It is not my purpose to follow him in this sufficiently
interesting discussion. I simply remark that he is staking the case, for
the continuance of Latin and Greek in the schools, on the possibility of
something like an entire revolution in the teaching art. Revolution is
not too strong a word for what is proposed. The weak part of the new
position is that the value of the languages _as languages_ has declined,
and has to be made up by the incident of their value as _drill_. This
is, to say the least, a paradoxical position for a language teacher. If
it is mere drill that is wanted, a very small corner of one language
would suffice.
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