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use, and the unflagging interest with which your scholars follow your Chinese explanations of the English text. Again I noticed with pleasure the ability which many of you displayed in teaching mathematics and geography when you happened to be prepared or well up in the lesson. But, on the other hand, I must tell you frankly that, as teachers of English reading, dictation, history and particularly of English composition, you are in a false and mischievous position.
Your position in these cases is false, because you are manifestly incompetent for this kind of work and mischievous because you persistently commit and propagate very serious errors. I do not blame you for everything English or for speaking English only when on duty! I only say that a man to whom English is a foreign and irksome tongue, is unfit to teach it. Most of you have impressed me with the conviction that you are not only radically pro-Chinese but anti-foreign in all your tastes and mental proclivities. There is nothing English about you. You do not love the English language for its own sake, nor have you ever made a genuine study of it. Then how can you effectively teach it?