Mr. melluish's vigorous plea for the restoration of Latin to an honoured place in the school curriculum cuts through the mists of apologetic defeatism and loose thinking which have in recent years befogged discussion of pre-certificate Latin. The Four-Year Course was imposed on classical teachers by the fact that the majority of boys and girls in secondary schools left at the age of sixteen, or at any rate dropped Latin after taking the School Certificate Examination. What was really an evil to be fought against has been erected into a sort of permanent educational article of faith, and would-be reformers have been trying in various ways to put the quart of Latin (or substitutes and dilutions thereof) into the pint pot of the pre-certificate curriculum.

There were those (and the writer confesses he has been one of them) who would have tried to teach their pupils to run before they could walk. Less formal grammar and less English into Latin, it was argued, would leave more time for the reading of Latin authors, that is, for the enjoyment of Latin literature and an understanding of Roman culture. Herein lay two fallacies. In the first place, Latin authors cannot be read with any facility or, indeed, at all, until the pupil has mastered the elements of Latin accidence and syntax. This, in spite of modern methods, remains a formidable task for the average boy or girl, calling for a great deal of hard work. It is, therefore, misleading to suggest that up to the School Certificate stage much more is possible than the acquisition of the essential preliminaries.