Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/17



In days like these, when the necessity of Education, technical or otherwise, is strenuously insisted upon by all the learned, worshipful, governmental and dictatorial personages who "sit" on County Councils, or talk the precious time recklessly away in Parliament without apparently arriving at any decision of definite workable good for the nation, it will not perhaps be considered obtrusive or intrusive if a suggestion be put forward as to the importance of one point,—

This essential of education is sadly lacking among the general majority of "educated" persons in Great Britain, and I think I may say America. Especially among those of the "upper" classes, in both countries. When we speak of these "upper" classes, we mean of course those, who by chance or fortune have been born either to such rank or to such sufficient wealth as to be lifted above the toiling million, and who may be presumed to have had all the physical, mental and social advantages that tuition, training and general surroundings can give them. Yet it is precisely among these that we find the ones who cannot read, who frequently cannot spell, and whose handwriting is so bad as to be well-nigh illegible. When it is said