SCHOOL-BOOKS AND POLITICS.
;To THE ED/TOR OP THE " SPECTATOR." j is a common device when unwelcome arguments are strong or facts inconvenient to assume a jocular attitude. "Schoolmaster"s" jocularity (Spectator, January 9th) has nob convinced me that it is wise to attempt to make a boy of eleven years understand what an "attribute of the subject " is or to drive the "duplicate ratio of the homologous sides" into his head. Neither has his playful treatment of the subject convinced me that geometry-books with wholly . different arrangements of propositions will assist the classes of a school to acquire a helpful idea of the dependence of one proved relationship of lines or spaces on another. I believe in boys being encouraged to wrestle with difficulties manfully, but I do not believe in creating difficulties for them by the employ. merit of needlessly abstruse terms. Let these come when the mind has grown. Lastly, "Schoolmaster's" banter is no reply to the charge I made that certain school-books, chiefly geography-books, are being used for the purpose of party propaganda. To put into a geography text-book a chapter whose sole purpose is to prove that the British dominions " could be, and ought to be, a self-supporting Empire, practically independent of the rest of the world, for every- thing which each separate part of the Empire needs can be supplied by the rest," is to turn the school into a caucus agency, commissioned to do the work of Tariff Reform "Con- federates." This, in my opinion, is teaching boys, not how to defend, but how to destroy the Empire.—I am, Sir, &c., PARENT.
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