requires him to learn a certain letter written in two forms and another in three patterns; and the curricular book goes to the extreme of harshness when it sets out to impose vocabulary too large for the small head to grasp its meaning, or to find for it any material referent in his own world.

It may be right to say that most of these problems are not school problems so much as general linguistic questions, occupying the minds of that band anxious to simplify the Arabic language in respect of its form and the manner of writing the letter, so that it may be brought within the correct use of the common people,

and mastery of Arabic writing may not remain the preserve of the elite, as is now the case.

I do not wish in this talk to enter into technical details of which I may not speak as well as others; I have offered all this only by way of preface to a point my friend made in the course of her campaign against the Arabic schoolbook, when she said...

We cannot strip any subject of its educational task alongside its basic purpose. The author of a book must not aim at technique alone, dismissing every