SOURCE: Stewart, D. H. “Stalky and the Language of Education.” Children's Literature 20 (1992): 36-51.

In the following essay, Stewart asserts that Stalky & Co. “can be read as a celebration of language, boys' language—how they sift and assimilate both their cultural heritage and their immediate experiences through it, and how this prepares them to confront the challenges of adulthood.”

When he wrote Stalky & Co. (1899),¹ Rudyard Kipling had become a master stylist. The book retains its appeal nearly a century later but no longer as a manual for training administrators of the British Empire, which is how many early critics interpreted it. Rather, it can be read as a celebration of language, boys' language—how they sift and assimilate both their cultural heritage and their immediate experiences through it, and how this prepares them to confront the challenges of adulthood. The book is about education, and a reader's experience with...