A perfect unacquaintance with a language is respectable.

But putting aside comic journalists and lady novelists, for whom it is a business necessity, this smattering of French which we are so proud to possess only serves to render us ridiculous.
In the German school the method is somewhat different.

One hour every day is devoted to the same language.

The idea is not to give the lad time between each lesson to forget what he learned at the last; the idea is for him to get on.

There is no comic foreigner provided for his amusement.