[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] .
SIR,—A protest is called for in the face of the unwarrantable imputations of a perversion of facts brought by Mr. G. F. Bridge against Mr. H. G. Wells in regard to the outspoken and just criticism of our educational system made by Mr. Wells in his address to the British Association. Mr. Bridge is himself guilty of misrepresenting facts in implying that there is little truth in the point which Mr. Wells was driving home, namely, that in the teaching of history in our schools today there is a lamentable lack of proper perspective.
This is perhaps less apparent in England than in Scotland, where—in my own experience, at least—the first history lessons given in school have concerned themselves largely with the glorification of the exploits of Wallace and Bruce and the inculcation at a very impressionable age of a patriotism that tends to exalt the combative spirit of nationalism.
Is this the aim of instruction in history in elementary schools ? It is at least one of the effects. Mr. Wells said : " I believe that the crazy combative patriotism that plainly threatens to destroy civilisation today is very largely begotten by the schoolmaster and the schoolmistress in their history lessons." It is noteworthy that the " good " English Kings of the earlier period of history were those who most clearly displayed the fighting. spirit.
Even if there were time for instruction in elementary schools in the old order of history, ought jingoism to continue to be instilled into the minds of the youth'of a nation that has pledged its faith in collective security through the League of Nations ?
—Yours faithfully, D. J. BONE. 8o Cartvale Road, Glasgow, S.2.
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