ALL my cards are on the table now. Now you know that I
have an ulterior motive in writing a book designed to help
people learn how to read. For years I have watched the
vicious circle which perpetuates things as they are and won-
dered how it could be broken. It has seemed hopeless.
Today's teachers were taught by yesterday's, and they teach
those of tomorrow. Today's public was educated in the
schools of yesterday and today; it cannot be expected to
demand that the schools change tomorrow. It cannot be
expected to make demands if it does not know intimately,
as a matter of its own experience, the difference between
real education and all the current impostures. That "if"
gave me the clue. Why couldn't it be made a matter of peo-
ple's experience, instead of their having to rely on hearsay
and all the crosscurrents of talk among disputing experts?

It could. If somehow out of school and after it, people
generally could get some of the education they did not get
in school, they might be motivated, as they are not now, to
blow up the school system. And they could get the educa-
tion they did not get, if they could read. Do you follow this
reasoning? The vicious circle would be broken if the gen-
eral public were better educated than the standard product
of the schools and colleges. It would break at the point
where they would really know themselves the kind of lit-

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