ABSTRACT
In discussions about the teaching of grammar at school, as it was in former times and is still, to a great extent, the adjectives that are most often put in requisition are dull, uninteresting, too difficulty abstract, useless; and to this the student of historical grammar and of the modern science of language will feel inclined to add the complaint that grammar as usually taught has not kept abreast with recent research and is thus unscientific. On the whole, not a bad budget of complaints, especially as we are bound to admit that they are not wholly devoid of truth, and that the teaching of grammar really leaves much to be desired. If now we want to find out what would be the ideal of such teaching, we have only to apply the opposite adjectives and to say that the teaching of grammar should be made as interesting and stimulating as possible, as easy and simple as possible, concrete instead of abstract, useful and at the same time scientifically sound. The question before us is how to attain that ideal, or rather, as we must allow for human imperfection, how to approach that ideal.
