Louis P. Bénézet

The book was based on a series of talks he had given about how European history had led to the creation of unstable nation-states.

"[2] In the late 1920s he became a pioneer of new teaching techniques, when he initiated pilot schemes in selected schools, the results of which he published 1935/36.

These schemes aimed at eliminating "meaningless drills" and abolished the ritualized formal mathematics instruction to seventh grade students.

He intentionally chose schools with a high number of immigrants, without good English language skills, arguing that in the absence of rigid mathematics teaching, the students could concentrate on developing language skills and thus assimilate more easily into the new country, promoting both integration and more rapid learning at higher levels of schooling.

[5] He also devised the "Bénézet test" of conjoining lines from Oxford's and Shakespeare's verse to see whether the difference was noticeable to the reader.