Talk:Henry Newbolt

It is emphatically the business of the elementary school to teach all its pupils who either speak a definite dialect, or whose speech is disfigured with vulgarisms, to speak standard English, and to speak it clearly. The great difficulty of teachers in elementary schools in many districts is that they have to fight against evil habits of speech, contracted in home and street.

A quote from 1922, but I've no idea of the source. I use it in English lessons to prompt discussion about dialect. I found it in the handbook of the British GCSE exam board, AQA, so it's almost certainly genuine.


 * If they don't cite the source, it would seem the exam board itself has failed a basic academic litmus test. "If it ain't cited it ain't a quote."[You can quote me on that.] ~ Ningauble 15:26, 4 March 2010 (UTC)