THE

TEACHING OF ENGLISH
IN THE ELEMENTARY AND
THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

•The~.

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BY

PERCIVAL CHUBB
PRINCIPAL OF THE HI GH SCH<JOL DEPARTMENT OF TH&
ETHICAL CULTURE SCHOOI.:s, NEW YORK

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Nein

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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.

1916
All righl1 nurved

TO MY FIRST TEACHERS OF ENGLISH
CorvRtGHT, 1902 1

Bv THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

-J! ~otber anb ~J! ;Jfatber
THROUGH WHOSE ENDEARING LIPS I LEARNED TO KNOW

Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1902. Reprinted
!'darch. June, July, October, 1903 ; September, 1905: June, October,
1906; Febru ary, Octobe r, 190 7 : February, rqo8; June, 190Q; July,
December, 1910: June, 1912; January, September, 1913; January,
August, October, 1915; Jul y, t916.
Speci:tl crlition l'vlay, 1910.

THE SWEETNESS AND DIGNITY OF MY MOTHER-TONGUE
AND TO LOVE AND REVERE ITS NOBLEST UTTERANCE
IN THOSE FAMILIAR HOUSEHOLD VOLUMES

V!:bt lSiblt,

m:bt l!Jilgrlm's l!Jrogrcss, anl! m:bt JSook
of (![;ommon ll!ra!!tt

PREFACE

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A PREFACE is justifiable only when it is indispensable.
Here some explanation of the plan of this book becomes
necessary for the guidance of those who may consult it
for advice upon any special topic.
They must not
expect to find in any one chapter the author's views
upon the teaching either of composition or of literature
in any grade, or at any one point in the course; and
for this reason, - that the treatment of each topic is
progressive and cumulative.
The book is a plea for
unity and continuity in the English course from its
beginnings in the kindergarten up through the high
school. All the leading principles governing the study
of English are, in the author's view, present in the
earliest stages of English teaching, emerging into
greater definiteness as the pupil advances in intellectual
power and practical skill.
Hence, the high school
teacher, for example, will find that many of the basic
principles to be followed in his work have been enunciated in the early chapters dealing with the kindergarten and primary grades, and are not set forth anew
in the later chapters on the high school. On the other
hand, a teacher in the beginning grades will find it assumed that her work in those grades, to be competently
done, must be done in the light of the later phases
of development treated in subsequent chapters.
This method of presentation is the consequence of
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PREFACE

PREFACE

the writer's conviction that nothing is so much needed
at the present time as the unification of English work
from the earliest to the latest stages of progression. It
should be controlled by unity of purpose and programme,
and animated by unity of spirit. Each step should be
taken with a clear know ledge both of the steps that
have preceded and of those that are to follow it, and
with a clear recogniti on of the all-important fact that the
powers which are being trained are, at the beginning,
the same powers that in th eir riper stages of growth
are still being trained by the high school teacher and
college professor. The child is busy from the beginning to the end, appreciatively, with the same great
types of literature, and, expressively, with the same
four kinds of writin g , - narrative, descriptive, expository, and argumentative. What is essential to success
is agreement as to th e stages and methods by which
the work is to be carried forward.
"Ah," said a practical grammar grade teacher, leaving a lecture by Professor Skyward on English Teaching, "if these learn ed professors would only descend to
the level of practical talk, and instead of outlining
Utopia to us, would suggest definite aims and definite
ways of achieving th em, time would not be wasted in
listening to their lectures." The writer hopes he is not
open to this reproach.
He has aimed to be definite
enough without being too prescriptive; to be practical
without sacrificing suggestiveness. What is set down
here is the outcome of his own efforts in the class room
and in the work of supervision in the Ethical Culture
School of New York. He may be permitted to say
that his more audacious experiments were first put to

trial in the Manual Training High School of Brooklyn,
and to record here his appreciation of the opportunities
generously afforded him in that institution by the PrinSince then, he has
cipal, Mr. Charles D. Larkins.
reaped the benefit of working in what is generally regard ed as one of the experim ent sta tions in education,
- the Ethical Culture S chools founded by Dr. Felix
Adler. H ere, in fortunate association with Mr. J. F.
Reigart and Mr. Frank A. Manny, successively its
Superintendents, - not omitting Dr. Adler himself, who
takes the keenest personal interest in the English work,
- he has had a chance of getting into vital touch with
a school that covers the whole field of elementary and
secondary education. He owes much in opportunities
and friendly aid to the school and its teachers, and
would make especial acknowledgment of criticism and
suggestions received from Mr. Manny, and, among the
teachers, Miss Katharine C. Burnett, who have been
kind enough to read the book throughout.
If a word may be added to intimate the point of view
assumed in the writer's outlook upon his task, it may
be this: he has conceived of the duty and the privilege of
the teacher of English to be that of teaching it not onl y
for its linguistic values, for the making of intelligent
readers and capable writers and speakers ; but for its
large culture values, and, above all, for its character
values, - for the spiritual enlargement, clarification, and
discipline of young hearts and minds and wills, which
are to be touched to finer issues by its potent ministry.
P. C.

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CONTENTS

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PART I
THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY :

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THE MOVEMENT FOR THE REFORM OF

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ENGLISH STUDIES

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PAGR

The Literary Movement and the Contemporaneous Scientific
and Practical One --The Emergence of a New Type of
Modern Culture -The New Role of the English Classics .

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CHAPTER II
THE LIMITATIONS OF THE SCHOOL IN DEALING WITH
ILLITERACY

The School versus the Social Environment -The Double
Standard of Linguistic Manners - Home Factors and Aids
-The Duties and Opportunities of Parents
CHAPTER III
EARLY FORMATIVE PHASES, AND INFLUENCES AND
HABITS IN THE KINDERGARTEN

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Significance of Beginnings in Relation to the Later Stages The Unity of the Process -The "Mother" Tongue - -The
Child's Outfit on entering School -Typical Steps Forward in the Kindergarten - Present Deficienci es -Guidxi

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xiii

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

PAGB

PA.GB

Interpreter - The Importance of First Impressions Dangers and th eir Avoidance - Illustrati ve Treatment of
Wordsworth's " Lucy Gray" - Some First Principles
Summarized

ing Principles - Education as Nurture - Self-activity Imitation and its Wider Meanings -The Encyclopedic
Development of the Child
CHAPTER IV
THE KINDERGARTEN

(continued)

CHAPTER VIII

AND THE PRIMARY GRADES

What is required of the T eacher as to Voice, Manner, Diction
- Story-telling - Conversation and Story-reproduction Correction of Faults - Materi al for Memorizing and Declamation - First Rate and Second R ate - Standards of
Selection, Literary and Ethical -The Child's World and
the Real World

COMPOSITION, ORAL AND WRITTE N, IN THE PRIMARY
GRA D ES

Present Shortcomings and th eir Causes -Too Much Written
Work- Undue Exactions as to Penmanship- Need of
More Oral Work - First Steps : F rom th e Short Sentence
to the Short Pa.r · J raph - Restricted Use of the Outline

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CHAPTE R IX

CHAPTER V

READING IN THE GRAMM AR G RADE S:

LEARNING TO R E AD AND TO WRITE

The Modern Reaction against Bookishness - The Divorce
between Words and Things - Pos tponing th e R ead -Write
Process - Professor D ewey's P osition - Methods ; the
Two Schools -The Word-method and the Sentencemethod - A True Adjustment .
CHAPTER VI
READING IN THE PRIMARY GRADES:

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WHAT TO READ

Criteria of Suitability - Correlation and its Conditions - The
Tastes and Interests of the Child - Order of Development
-Historical and Absolute Values -The Field of Choice
- Possibilities .
CHAPTER VII
READING IN THE PRIMARY G RA D ES:

II. How

TO READ

Methods of Treatment as Factors in determining Suitability
- Conditi ons of Successful Treatment - Differences necessitated Ly Different T ypes of Poems - The Teacher as

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I. WHAT TO READ

School Reading and Home Reading- Dangers of Too Much
Prescription - To Wh at E xtent a Child's Interest shall
Sway - The Epic Phase of Developme nt - History and
Adventure - H eroes, Lege ndary and Actual - Ballads Bible Stories - Classic a nd Celtic Material - Literary
Opportunities in Connection with Commemorati o ns and
Festivals - Patriotic Selections- Advance from Short to
Long Masterpieces - Selections and Literary Wholes Thoroughness as a Pitfall - Classification of Material Varieties of Methods
CHAPTER

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READING IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES:

II.

METHODS OF

TREATMENT

Determining Considerations - Clews found in Characteristics
of the Works Chosen-The Need of Flexibility- Indispensableness of Plans - How to Introduce a Work Professor H ales' T welve Ways of Studying a Poem - Suggested Treatm ent of Scott's "Lay of th e Last Minstrel" Counsels of Perfection - Overworking the Dictionary D ange rs of the Laboratory Method .

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CONTENTS
CHAPTER

CONTENTS

XI

xv

PART II

COMPOSITION IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES
PAGB

Expression Natural to the C hild - Composition as a Means
and Test of Mental Organization - The Dependence of
Expression upon Impression - Composition not to be set
apart as a Separate Study - The Four Kinds of Composition involved in th e Ordinary School Work - Narration in
History and Geography; the Various Types - Exposition
in Math ematics - The Need of Personal Expression The Letter - Invention - The Story - Versification Translation-Paraphrasing-The Reproduction and Summary - Writing for Class Hearing and (" ·iticism - Cultivating the Sense of Literary Form - Importance of
Arrangement and the Mechanics of Writing- Difficulties,
and How to Meet Them : (1) The Child's Lack of Matter,
(2) The Tendency to Ramble, (3) Diffuseness- Pressing
for Clearness: Cautions - Correction -The Use of the
Model
173
CHAPTER

XII

GRAMMAR AND LANGUAGE WORK IN THE GRAMMAR
GRADES

Where and How Formal Grammar should be Begun - The
Language Lesson as a Substitute - Grammatical Distinctions and Nomenclature necessarily involved in the Teaching of English - The Overthrow of an Unscientific Latinity
- The Child perforce a Grammarian when he deals with
Language Refl ectively - His Knowl edge to be enlarged
as there is Need in his Reading and Writing - Growth of
an Interest in Words - The Proper Type of Language
Lesson - The Need of Definite Steps - Guiding Principles - Formal Grammar in the Higher Grammar Grades
- The Inducti ve Method - Use of Text-book - Plan of
Development
Outline Plan of Language Work and Grammar, showing
Interconn ections with the \Vork in Composition

THE HIGH SCHOOL
CHAPTER

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GENERAL AIMS: CHARACTERISTICS AND NEEDS OF THE
ADOLESCENT PERIOD
PAGB

The Golden Age - The Service of Literature - Character
Needs-Culture Needs -Vocational Needs - The Importance of Liberal Aims - Peculiar Difficulties and Conflicts of the Storm and Stress Period-The Different Kinds
of Literature and their Use
CHAPTER

XIV

LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL: PLANS AND
MATERIALS

The Sense of a Fresh Start- Beginning with Typical Lessons
to announce Spirit and Purpose of High School StudiesEager yet Tranquil Activity - Arrangement of Material -Points of Rest- First Year: Narrative Literature; Ballad,
~pie, Short Story, Novel, etc . - Course in Public Speak1~g ba~ed on Study of Orations - Second Year : Descriptive Literature - Course in Shakespeare - Third Year:
Expository Literature - Eighteenth Century - Th e Essay
-Fourth Year: The Great Classics - Historical Survey
- Comparative Work in Drama - The Bible as Literature
- The Class Room and its Equipment
CHAPTER

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LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL: METHODS OP'
TREATMENT j BEGINNINGS
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Clews to Method : Development of Poe tic Sense and Feeling
for Style - The Sensuous Element -- R eading Aloud Treatment of the Short Story - Note-taking -Th~ Diagram, its Kinds and its Us es - Handling the Epic Poem

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CONTENTS

CONTENT5

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PAGiB

- The Novel - Biography of Authors Shakespeare Studies .

CHAPTER XIX

First Stages in

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CHAPTER XVI
LITERATURE : M ETH ODS OF TREATMENT

Need of Higher Literary Training for Tea h
c ers - What to
T each verms How to T
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Lines of Planning - F all:;yc :-;~,mportahnce of a Plan Met!10 d
10roug ness
0 Iogy - Counsels of Perfection .
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(co11ti1111ed)

Passing from Problems of Structu re to th ose of Color and De·
tail - Beginning Milton - Character-problems in Fiction
- " Id yll s of th e King" - The Celti c Element in Literature - "Sir Roge r de Cove rl ey "-The Essay (Macaulay)
and its Treatment - Th e Orati on : Burke on Conciliation
- Final \ Vork in Shakespeare -The Treatment of "Mac·
beth" - Milton's Greater Works

THE QUESTION OF FORMALISM IN METHOD

CHAPTER XX
SUMMARY: IDEALS AND AIMS IN THE STUDY AND TEACH·
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ING OF ENGLISH, WITH SOME CRITICISM OF
PRACTICES
PREVAILING

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CHAPTER XVII
Outline
ofh Sugge
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. s t ed ffig h S chool Course in English Lit
ure, s owmg how the Work may be Massed to
eraboth Co.herence. and Progression
secure

C O MPOSITION IN TH E HIGH SCHOOL

E ssentials nf Success - Incentives to E ffort - The Higher
Austerit y - Linguisti c Good Manners - N eed of Literary
Atmosph ere - Th e Teacher resposible for, First, a Character, and onl y Secondly an Aptitude - Writing with a Class
Audience in View - Criti cis m - Securing Good Work in
All Subjects - Uniform Standards - How to Accomplish
- Intensive \Vork in One Kind of Composition, with Gen·
era! Work in All Kinds -Theory and Practice and their
Relati on - Steps of Advance - Formal Rh etoric - Dealing with Points as they Arise -Narration and its Problems
- Descripti on - Exposition - Argument- Characteristics
of Each Kind - Comparative W ork - Models - Keeping
the W ork Si mpl e - T eacher's Correction of Papers- Form
in the Work - Sincerity •
CHAPTER XVIII
V E R SIFICATION IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

The Right Point of View for th e Undertaking - Scansion as
a First Step - Trne Principles - From Blank Verse to
Rh ymed - Co nquest of Verse Forms : From Triolet to
Sonnet - Imitative W ork .

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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
FROM one point of view the significance of th e development of modern education can best be estimated by
the progress of the mother-tongue toward the central
place in formal instruction.
When the study of the
mother-tongue and its literature is mad e the core of the
curriculum, education is something quite different from
that training in which a foreign, perhaps an ancient,
tongue holds the chief place. No people is intel\cctua1\y
independent until it has a language and a literature, all
its own, worthy to be an educational instrument and an
educational end. We English-speakers have been independent in the eyes of all the world at least since
Chaucer's day, but our education has been sadly slow
in catching up with our needs. The Latin tradition,
French as the speech of the cultivated and the polite,
and the dream of a universal language have all h elped
keep in the background the systematic study of English
by those who use it. We have been told by one school
of critics that the mother-tongue need not be taught,
for it will be picked up somehow; by another, th at it
cannot be taught, for there is nothing to teach . Both
fallacies have had their day, and we are now in the
presence of a sane and healthy movement for th e more
careful and devoted study of the English language and

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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

its literature. This movement has found its way into
the elementary school, the secondary school, and the
college. The present volume is, in a sense, an exposition and a criticism of it.
The first effect of this movement, if wholly successful,
ought to be a new care for the purity and the precision
of our speech and a new love for its literary masterpieces. Familiarity with them will not breed contempt,
but rather respect and affection.
A chief obstacle to an early acquaintance with correct English and a use of it is the elaborate pains taken
to approach it by a highly developed method. The
matter is very largely one of imitation, and the child
invariably uses the sort of English he is accustomed to
hear, not the sort of English he is taught. He knows
no distinction between the vernacular and literary English, and if he hears both he will use both indifferently.
All the painstaking effort to raise him from the one
plane to the other is time wasted. The one ruling
maxim of English teaching ought to be : The child will
speak and write the sort of English that he hears and
reads.
The mother-tongue differs in one respect from all
other subjects of study. It is not only an end, but the
vehicle, of instruction. For this reason all teaching is
English teaching, and every school exercise may be
made, and should be made, an English lesson. English
is a living language, not a dead one. Therefore it is
that its modern masters vary it and add to it in ways
that mark their genius. Pedantic English is not the
same thing as correct English School-taught English
usually errs in the direction of pedantry; it lacks life
and virility. The corrective is to be found by bringing

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

xxi

the child early and late into contact with literature that
has character and distinction. Teach him to love this
to return to it often, and his own spoken and writte~
English will be worthy.
·
NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

October 4, 1goa.

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THE

TEACHING

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ENGLISH

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY:

THE MOVEMENT FOR THE REFORM OF

ENGLISH STUDIES AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE

Tms book is written toward the close of a stubborn
agitation directed against the inefficiency of the English
training given in our schools and colleges. The outcome of this agitation i~ that a new and revolutionizing
importance attaches to the study of our English speech
and its literature. To use that speech proficiently has
now become the first requirement of our educational systems; to know and appreciate that literature, their chief
test of culture. Hence it is that, for the first time in
the history of education, the work of teac hin g English
is being organized with something like scientific foresight
and method. An unprecedented activity and enthusiasm in the pursuit of this aim are strikingly manifrst.
There is a bewildering output of educational textbooks, - Language Lessons, Readers, and Spellers ;
Grammars and Rhetorics; special school editions without end of the classics, old and new. Our educational
journals are full of reports of new methods and experiB

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

REFORM OF ENGLISH STUDIES - ITS SIGNIFICANCE

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ments. The literary interests of childhood are being
studied and catered for, as they never have before, by
our writers of prose and verse, by our psychologists and
compilers and adapters, and by the multiplying libraries
that are so rapidly establishing children's departments
for the satisfaction and stimulation of young appetites.
This literary movement in education is the more
remarkable because it is contemporaneous with a seemingly countervailing movement for the furtherance of
scientific and practical education, to meet the more and
more exacting demands of our expanding industrialism
and commerce for high skill, intelligence, and scientific
attainments. This dominating scientific and practical
spirit of the age is expressing. itself in the swift introduction of manual training, nature study, and commercial courses into our schools; in the rapid multiplication
of our technical, professional, and business institutes;
and in the elaborate equipment of laboratory and shop
in the Grammar School, High School, and College.
And yet this scientific and practical tendency has by
no means thwarted the synchronous literary movement,
with its demands upon our schools for much greater
proficiency in the use of the English language and for
a wider and more thorough literary culture. What is
the significance of this?
Under one aspect it is itself an outcome of these very
practical, utilitarian demands of the age. Of late it has
become increasingly evident that the linguistic resources

of the average public schoolboy are conspicuously unequal to the needs of modern life-even of business life.
The expressional power of the school or college graduate lags behind his knowledge and his thought power.
Harvard College has declared that its Freshmen do not
know how to use those tools of speech which, more
than any others, are needed daily in college work.
They can express themselves neither correctly nor effectively. So Harvard has taken heroic measures through
its famed Freshman course in "daily themes" to repair
the disability. Doubtless this illiteracy is due partly to
the deterioration of our linguistic manners, the depression of linguistic standards, by the influence of foreign
immigrants - a fact that explains why it is that this new
strenuous movement for the improvement of our national
tongue has its origin in America rather than in England
or her colonies.
Other factors mu~t, however, be taken into account in
explaining the situation. Despite the fact that the main
tide of our life flows in the channels of commerce and
trade, and waters chiefly the fields of invention and
science, the tributary streams of art and literature are
large and fertilizing. The standard of culture is rising
among us. The masses must be fed daily or weekly with
a liberal meal of literary gossip. They buy new dollar
books by the half-million; and expect a literary bargain
counter in their mammoth stores. They erect libraries
by the score. In fact, America feels the challenge of

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REFORM OF ENGLISH STUDIES- ITS SIGNIFICANCE

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Europe in the field of culture as in all other fields of
activity; she is as ambitious (e.g. at the Paris Exposition) of artistic as of scientific laurels; of her educational as of her mechanical achievements.
As a
consequence of this ambitious rivalry, her culture at
its best tends to assume a new and more original
type. This is the main factor in the case : the rise
of a new type of national culture. Our American literary culture owes less and less directly to antiquity, and
is moving farther and farther away from the ideals of
the Renascence. More and more we draw from modern, and especially from ancestral British sources.
There will no doubt be a new amalgam of this element, as the main constituent, with other elements and
tendencies, German and (happily) Celtic, French, Norse,
etc., which are powerfully represented in our population;
but it is clear that the old native basis will remain.
This literary movement in our schools means, we
think, the conscious, systematic, and more liberal
use of our English studies as the chief instrument of
culture. A native culture, modern in spirit, and a new
discipline, conscience, and pride in th e use of our
native tongue, are to become the touchstones of our
intellectual life. We have a prophecy in the field of
letters of this new American culture, in the bold American spirit of Emerson's 1 and Whitma n's 2 work on

the one hand, and in Lowell's 1 more scholarly, academic work on the other. We have its exemplars in
the broader fi elds of public life and personality in such
types of simple, indigenous manhood as Lincoln and
Grant.
We cannot develop this thesis here, important as it
is in giving a proper orientation to the new English
movement in our schools. We will only add this enlargement: that as we have in Emerson and Whitman
a frank recognition that our life is too full of new resources and opportunities, new tasks and inspirations,
and is too bare of reminders of a long, classic past for
us to busy ourselves, as the European nations do, with
historic background and survivals; so in Lowell (for
that matter in Emerson too) we have a surviving pride
of language, a pious recognition of the glory of our
national speech, which will serve as the needed literary
and scholarly element in our culture. Lowell, surely,
was a sufficiently jealous American ; yet it was true of
him, as Mr. Henry James puts it, that "the thing he
loved most in the world after his country was the English tongue, of which he was an infallible master, and
his devotion to which was, in fact, a sort of agent in
his patriotism." It is this linguistic form of patriotism
-- by which we rejoice that we

·
Th e key-n ote is struck in the ope ning
paragrap h o f h'is " N a t ure. "
!Tis cnnvi cti on to this effect is ex pressed in his "Democratic Vistas"

l Note especially expressions of his Americanism in some of the Essays
in "My Study Windows" (e.g. On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners;
and the "Commemoration Ode."

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

REFORM OF ENGLISH STUDIES - ITS SIGNIFICANCE

" speak the tongue
That Shakspere spake ; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held " -

that is to be the main spring of scholarly conscience in
our literary culture, - a culture that need not be less
fine, and may be much more vital, because it is nourished upon Shakespeare and Milton; upon the Bible and
the "Pilgrim's Progress"; upon Addison and Irving,
Burke and Webster, Scott and Hawthorne, Tennyson
and Longfellow, Browning and Emerson, Whitman
and Thoreau much more than upon the masters of
antiquity, although th ese masters are gaining a wider
curre n1.:y by means o f rnasterly transiations, of '.vhich
the latest example is Norton's noble version of Dante.
Herc i'.' the c;plcnrlirl ;rnimating and e levati ng impulse

7

learn to honor and to gain the strength which so few
of us now draw from Chaucer and Spenser, Burton
and Hooker, Marlowe and Jonson, Browne and Bacon,
and other great minds who have so much to give us
in our own tongue.

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It is with such general convictions and from such a
point of view that we approach our task of attempting
to focus some of the light that has been shed upon the
new tasks and problems of the teacher of English by
the discussions, the complaints and arraignments, the
experiments and reforms, which have stirred the educational world during the past decade or so. That
scattered light has not yet settled to a steady glow by
any means; we must not expect that it will just yet.
\Ve shall remain fnr "omc time in the e\'pei-imental

that may well be the conscious inspiration of this new

stage oI the New Lea rning.

lium:mist ic

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are :1 t \u irk i11 ~l rniq of u11;.;ctt le d qucstirrns which is

tc:1clicrs nf

E11 g li~h

in Amcril''.ln c duca tiun.

Uur

ar c czil lc d up()n to use 01ir unsur-

vc rv slowly lifting.

At present most of us

Nc,·ert h clcss . it may serve rtt such

passed English litcr:iture, as it has never Leen used

a time to make zi. tentzi.tivc effo rt to formulate some

before, toward the fo rm ation o f character, the enrich-

gene ral co nclusions.

ment of life , :rnd the refinement of manners.

useful pmpose of being starting-points of debate for
further advance .

Let

them sec tu it t kit ollr boy s and girls , while they 111;-iy
know less th:rn the educated few of earlier ce n turies
knew of I l omcr and I kmosthcnes,

Viq:~il

;i.m\ C icero

(we bel ieve th ey \\il l kno w mo re in large ways throug h
trzi.nshtiun ), lc ~n11 !fl dr:tw \· cry much more succulence

thzin the cl:issi(·;1]]\· tr:1i11l·cl \·nuth drew from the grc:tt
lite r:ny frnit:tgc nf the l·:n.c::lis h rn;-istcrs ; a n d at length

These at leas t may serve the

THE LIMITATIONS OF THE SCHOOL

CHAPTER II
THE LIMITATIONS OF THE SCHOOL

IN DEALING WITH

ILLITERACY

of the swarming illiterate outside.
The teacher of
English, at least in the great majority of our city
public schools, is involved in unceasing warfare with
these retarding forces. In Arithmetic or Science or
Geography the teacher may sow on virgin soil; the
English teacher must sow on soil choked with the
weeds of bad habit, and must ceaselessly ply the hoe
against untiring enemies.
In the discussion of the problem of illiteracy not
enough allowance is made for this fact. It is one of
fundamental importance; and our discussion must start
with it because it has very practical bearings. The

So much attention has been drawn by wide discussion in the press to the battle against illiteracy, which
the movement for the reform of English studies signalizes, that we think it necessary to consider carefully
what the responsibilities of the school are in the matter of illiteracy. This will enable us to indicate our
general conception of the scope and aims of English
study, and to review the limitations that thwart and
excuse the school. It is as important for the teacher
as for the public to recognize these limitations at the

schools are held responsible by the public and by the
colleges for linguistic faults that have their roots and
their favoring soil in the illiteracy of the community.
The standards of the community are more potent than
those of the school; and against the illiteracy of the
playground, the street, and the home, the literacy of

outset.
In no subject do the forces of the social environment
against which the school has to strive make themselves
so continually felt as they do in English. In literary
studies the higher ideals and sentiments of the race
expressed by its poets and seers clash with the average
commercialized ambitions and soiled ideals in whose
atmosphere the child is reared; while in language
work the higher usages of literary English exacted in
the school are in perpetual conflict with the barbarisms

the schoolroom has a weak chance. Undoubtedly the
school may do more than it is doing - by heroic effort
it may do much more-·to beat back the tide of
slovenly, slangy, ni11mbled speech that is poured out
on street and mart. But first of all let the difficulties
that face the school be known and appreciated. Let
it not bear the full burden of blame.
The discouraging fact that meets the teacher is that,
although she may secure passably good speech, written
and oral, in the class room, there is during recess and

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THE LIMITATIONS OF THE SCHOOL

on the playground and the street a barbaric reversion,
with a sense of a relief, to the patois of "real life."
It is this provokin g J ekyll and Hyde dualism, this
double standard of linguistic manners, with which we
have to reckon. Too often the boy or girl will sin in
society against his school conscience because to speak
fair - to say "isn't" instead of "ain't," "coffee" instead of "cawfee" - is to put on airs in the eyes of
their companions. No teacher will credit herself with
full success unless she has overcome this dualism. She
will measure her efforts, not merely by results obtained
in the schoolroom, but by those which tell in the world
outside it. Nevertheless, this wider success is more
than can reasonably be expected of her; and our plea
is for a recognition of her difficult task.
The fundamental fact to be borne in mind in this
connection is that good speech is a habit, a point of
social manners. It is, we urge, too much to expect
that the habits enforced for a few hours daily in the
schoolroom (Saturdays and Sundays and holidays and
long vacations excepted) shall prevail against contrary
influences affecting the child during the greater part
of his daily life. Why is it that the average English
or German or French child speaks and writes his native
tongue more correctly and pleasantly than the average
American child? The principal (though not the only)
reason is to be found, not in the better and more
laborious teaching of the schools, but in· the higher

standard of social manners. We lack linguistic conscience and linguistic pride in this country. We do
not attach to illiteracy the stigma that attaches to it
abroad - a stigma that money, dress, ostentation, cannot
atone for.
Until with us also to be a gentleman is,
as a first essential, to use gentle speech, we shall not
cure, we shall but cauterize, illiteracy. Hence it is that,
viewed in its large aspects, the problem of illiteracy
is not so much a school problem as a problem of
American civilization.
The teacher who takes this wider social view of the
situation feels ever called upon to reckon with those
adverse soci al forces which discount her efforts; she
becomes indeed a missionary of that higher civilization,
one of who se requisites and instrumentalities is good
speaking manners. We would make no fetich of fine
manners - not even of correct grammar and spelling.
We would not rank illiteracy with the seven deadly
sins. We know that culture is not synonymous with
character, nor refinement with virtue. And yet we are
convinced that the work of promoting good speaking
and writing, and the vital appreciation of great literature, may be made, and oug ht aimfully to be made,
work for character, for virtue, for social perfection. It
is so made when it becomes a discipline in that scrupulousness which strives for fine accuracy and unflawed truthfulness in the expression of thought and
fact, and for a noble, restrained, and kindly command

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

of all the stops of feeling. It is so when it becomes a
schooling in that considerateness which would spare
in conversation the puzzled " What? " that greets indistinct and negligent utteran ce. It is so when it
fosters the humane desire to enliven, dignify, and enrich social intercourse by the stimulating give and take
of the riches of personal life and thought, or when it
ennobles, by either appreciation or performance, the arts
of the teacher and orator, the preacher or publicist.
The practical outcome of such a recognition of the
interdependence of the school and the social environment of the child as we have pressed for, will be the
endeavor of the school and of the teacher to counteract in all becoming ways the home influences that are
thwarting the child's development and trainin g in
language, and to enlist the parents' sympathetic support of the efforts made by the school. We know
that in many cases this may be done. We know that
in a general way the school has often been indirectly
a great civilizer of the home; that irregularity, disorder, uncleanliness, and other bad habits have disappeared. May not the school hopefully voice a new
demand for circumspection in habits of speech? Various schemes have been tried, with more or less success, to secure a larger and more effective cooperation
between the two institutions : the parents' meeting,
the parents' visiting day or consultation hours, the
mothers' meeting in connection with the Kindergar·

THE LIMITATIONS OF THE SCHOOL

13

ten and Primary Grades, the periodical report, the
use of the school physicial\ as an unobjectionable
connecting link ; and, with distinct reference to the
English work, the card informing the parent of those
bad habits of speech against which the efforts of the
teacher are for the time being directed. Whatever the
means employed, the first essential is to bring home
to parents a sense of their responsibilities and opportunities as educators, and to convince them that the
supreme influence in forming character and habit, and
especially habits of speech, is the home and the social
life of the child. The school, they must see, is the
annex of the home, and not the other way about.
It would be aside from the definite purpose of this
book to dilate upon the great wrong that is done to
. the child, and the priceless opportunity that is lost,
when parents mistakenly discharge their responsibilities for the "education" of their children upon the
free public institution. that is supposed to have education exclusively in its charge. But stress may properly be put upon the unique opportunities which the
home has for the cultivation of the child's linguistic
powers and literary tastes. It is in the genial atmosphere of the home that the child may be the free,
spontaneous little artist in words that he finds it difficult to be in school, under the taskmaster's eye. It
is there, in the garrulous family circle, that the sympathies and sensibilities, the wit and imagination,

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

THE LIMITATIONS OF THE SCHOOL

which are the keys to literature, the soul and savor
of good talking and writing, are best nursed and

The teacher who has the large missionary spirit of
which we have spoken will use tactfully any chance

quickened.
It is there that a large and generous
attitude toward life and literature may be established,
and that a healthy tone of heart and mind, a temper
at once fine and robust, may best be given. It is
through the child's voluntary, eager home reading,
through the family story-circle and reading-circle round
the hearth, that he draws the nourishment that is
strengthening because it is seasoned with pleasure.
Not only Ruskin, but many a person whose solace
and inspiration are in books, looks back to the source
of his literary pleasures and powers to the home
reading of the Bible or "Pilgrim's Progress" or the
Church Collects and Prayers - books which have
done more to preserve the dignity and saliency of
common speech among the people than any Grammar
or Reader or Text-book can do. The teacher who
seeks the causes of this or that pupil's apt power
of expression, or lively interest in story or poem, will
generally find it in the home where the conversation
around the table is wholesome and breezy; where
the graphic word is appreciated, the hackneyed or
slipshod one is frowned upon; where confused and
inaccurate speech is driven to its lair in confused
and slovenly thinking and observation ; where the
practice of reciting the favorite poem is encouraged;

she may get to promote these home aids, if only because
they further in such powerful fashion the ends for
which she is striving in the schoolroom . Nor need
such efforts imply - and this caution it may be desirable to make - that she is working for the rule of
literary purism and priggishness, for the early tyranny
of the dictionary, for the sort of linguistic nagging that
goes on in some "correct" homes. No; what she is
working for is wholesome, hearty, and more expressive
human intercourse in the household - intercourse that,
while not bookish, draws upon books and the personages who live in books for its felicitous enrichment.
The poverty of family intercourse is due partly to our
impoverished exchequer of words, partly to our slender
resources of allusion. Most of us, as Stevenson has
suggested in insisting upon the importance of l'art de
bt"en dire, go unexpressed; our best thoughts and feelings never get into currency for lack of the bullion of
words out of which they must be minted. Life in its
sources is abundantly rich and flowing; but it easily
stagnates in the material pools of gossip and the newspaper rubbish heap. This need not be while there is
the rich, vicarious life of books to share in - books that
while they are, as our beloved craftsman Stevenson
says, "a mighty poor substitute for life," are yet indispensable as opening up to us fields of common exped

14

where the library tempts and waylays.

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

ence, common circles of friends a nd acquaintances.
One of the happy privileges of parenthood, if only
parents would realize it, is to reinhabit with their children the literary world of childhood : to follow with
them once more Alice's tracks through Wonderland,
and the world behind the Looking Glass; to set sail.
with Jason, and coast with Ulysses; to strive with fleet
Atalanta; to quail before the genii with Aladdin ; to
soar on the roe's back with Sinbad; to fare forth on
heroic errand with brave Jack or peerless King Arthur.
These imaginative presences exert their greatest influence, not in the discounting form ality of the schoolroom reading or di scussion, but in the h ome circle.
Cut them out of the real life of the home, and th ey will
seldom gain fuln ess of bein g in the schoolroom; ansf
without them as household presence~, the real world
can never be for the child the rich world of wonder,
surprise, and sweet mystery, the world of heroic possibility and beckoning romance, that it might have been.
We have dwelt at the outset upon the importance of
recognizing- by the parent and public, as well as by
the teacher- the ne cessity of an intimate relation between the school and the home in achieving the best
results in English trainin g ; and have indicated the
kind of influences whi ch the hom e may exert, because
we are convinced that here is the beginning of wisdom .
Like all good things, good manners, and especially good
speaking manners, begin at home.

CHAPTER III
So ME

FrnsT PRINCIPLES OF EoucA TION IN THEIR
LITERARY APPLICATION

"Now, you know," says Socrates, when discussing
the problem of education with Adeimantus in the
" Republic," "now you know that in every enterprise
the beginning is the main thing, especially in dealing
with a young and tender nature. For at that time it is
most plastic, and into it the stamp which it is desired
to impress sinks deepest." This principle is gaining
way among us; but we do not apply it vigorously in
attempting to reform our English studies. Under the
pressure of the College, reform in this instance is
being wrought out slowly from the top downward,
which is not the true method . The point of attack
in the recent war upon illiteracy has been the High
School; but we are beginning to see that it is absurd
to place the emphasis there. Much more vital, as
making or marring the child's literary tastes and aptitud es, are th e sensitive years spent in the Primary
and Gramm a r Grades. In time, perhaps, heeding at
last old M ulcaster's advice, we shall select our most
gifted teach ers for this early work.
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The tendency to give effect alike to Plato's view
and Mulcaster's counsel, has received its main impetus
from the Kindergarten.
But the Kindergarten has
not affected the linguistic and literary interests with
which we are now concerned so much as those of
handicraft and nature study. Rather has it, with its
insistence upon "things before words" and its banishment of reading and writing, confronted the old
"literary" type of education with a new motor type
of learning through doing - through play, the gifts,
and the occupations. True, it has made much of
story-telling and of songs, but mainly from the ethical point of view, and som etimes with a woful neglect of literary considerations - a neglect that in turn
has discounted ethical values. However, this indifference is not a consequence of the theories of Froebe!,
although his literary and artistic insensitiveness may
have had something to answer for. These th eories
support the contention which we shall try to make
good, that the linguistic and literary education of the
child begins in infancy, and is well under way before
the child reaches the Kindergarten. The office of the
Kindergarten is to take stock of the child's varied
powers and acquisitions, and to continue wisely the
development of them. It is readily admitted by the
Froebelians that among th ese powers and acquisitions
none is more important and significant, and none will
more powerfully control the child's destiny, than that

SOME FIRST PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION APPLIED

19

of speech. Seeing, then, that system atic E ng lish training and literary culture, the methodical education of
ear and tongue, has its beginnings in the Kindergarten,
we must start out by considering, from the specialist's
point of view, what these first steps should be: how
they stand related both to the pre-scholastic education received through the mother and the home, and
to the subsequent stages of the Primary, Grammar,
and High Schools.
Our basic conception, be it remembered, is tha t the
process of learning to use one's moth er-tongue to
good effect in speaking and writing it, and to appreciate
and catch inspiration from its master-products, ought
to be regarded as a single organic process, each stage
of which must be seen in relation to those that precede and follow. The Kindergarten teach er, therefore, must take account of the considerable prog ress
already made by the child of four or five in its
"mother-tongue," must know the extent and kind of
its accomplishments, must understand the ways in
which it has come by them, and so continue with
greater skill and economy the methods by which these
remarkable results have been achieved. This survey
of the years preceding the Kindergarten has not been
neglected in Kindergarten training; but the forward
look into what is to come after assuredly h as, - in
fact, this neglect, we venture to interpolate, h as been
the bane of modern child-study generally. The work

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THE TEACH I NG OF ENGLISH

of the beginning, to be done well, must be done in the
light of the end, and of the stages of advance toward
it; must be controlled, not mere ly by a knowledge of
what the child has become, but of what we want to
make of it, and how we intend to proceed with our
business.
We will n ote briefly, therefore, the few
facts we need as a foreground for our sketch of the
work to be done in the Kindergarten and the first
stages of th e Primary Grades.
We recall at this point a professor of literature who
professes, among other thin gs, to be able to discriminate by certain delicate superiorities those students
of his who have been brou ght up on Moth er Goose
from those who have not. At least he is pedagogically
plausible. If literary education, as part of the "encyclopredic " education of childhood which Comenius
outlined, begins with infancy, th en its first agencies are
the cradle-song and the Moth er Goose melody; and we
must believe, in the spirit of our clever professor's
remark, that it will make a difference whether or no
the infant ear has been attuned to the rhythms and
rhymes of these ditties, and the groping infant imagination filled with the dim fi gures of their h eroes and
rogues.
The d ar k y " mammy " who c1·oons her
delightfully quaint "Hush-a-by, baby, by," the Indian
mother or the white mother who chants her "Hush·
a-by, baby, on the tree-top," any mother who either
lulls her babe with the beautiful " Sleep, baby, sleep,"

SOME FIRST PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION APPLIED

2I

or stirs it with the "Ride a cock-horse" or " Ride, ride
to Boston," - the mother who calls these classics to
her aid, is laying the first foundations of literary appreciation, and is developing a sense for the simple
rhythm ic movem ents and the word-music of these
baby lyrics, which will remain as undertones for a lifetim e. And as poetry preceded prose in the literary
history of the race, so too has the mother instinctively
tended, Orpheus-like, to woo her child to activity, to
sport, and to play, by means of verse and music, - in
the "This little piggy went to market," "This is the
church, and this the steeple," and, perhaps, if she is :>
modern Froebelian mother, some (not all, we hope) 01
the mother-play songs of the master. And this is the
basic type of all true literary education - the education
of the ear by "concourse of sweet sounds," the only
acceptable cult of the Muses. Alas! tha t an education
so auspiciously begun, rooted in folk-lore so simple and
sound, should not be as effectively continued, but
should degenerate among the people to the gutterlyric, the music-hall trifle, or the mawkish drawingroom . ballad.
As the child grows, to this simplest lyrical verse will
be added a weightier balladry, stories in prose, and the
singing games and pantomime plays of which a good
and accessible supply now exists for the mother. The
child becomes an active participant- minstrel, mimic,
reciter, improviser - with the mother. He is, by imi-

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tation, becoming proficient m that dear "mother·
tongue" ; he has been brought up on excellent literary
models (and let us hope the good gift of a sweet-voiced
mother); and these are stimulating him to rhyme and
invent for himself. He may show some faults, doubtless; bad habits caught from the nurse (that untutored
nurse whose influence has been bewailed from the
time of Quintilian) or from barbarian playmates on the
street. "Never mind," we would say to the shamed
parent [for we, too, have been put to the blush]. These
things are not serious; better the hearty street life with
them than the cloistered, padded life of the home withGood home influences, if the child has
. out them.
enough of them, will triumph; and the child, aided by
the school, will slough off linguistic ailments as he
lives down other nursery maladies.
Such then, very roughly, is the literary outfit of the
toddling scholar received into the Kindergarten : by no
means a bad equipment. He has already begun to
enter upon his literary inheritance, the rich legacy of
the centuries; for he has a good stock of classic
rhymes and songs, and stories and plays, which are
leading factors in the form ation of good habits of speech.
This must not be overlooked.
Dr. William T . Harris has said that," On entrance into
school, at the age of six or seven years, the child knows
only the words and forms of the colloquial vocabulary."
We venture, in the support of our theorem of unity

SOME FIRST PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION APPLIED

23

and continuity, to contradict this. Not only is he familiarized with rhyme and rhythm, but with the conventions of literary diction.
Does he not sing, "Curly
locks, Curly locks, wilt tlzou be mine?" "The North
wind doth blow," "Mistress Mary, quite contrary,"
of the man in his town who was "wondrous wise"?
His rhymes are replete with" quoth," "whither," "pray
tell me," etc.; and in "Mother Hubbard" and "Who
killed Cock Robin " and other rhymes, he uses such
antique or poetic diction as "joiner's," "hosier's,"
"showl," "shroud," "pall," etc. No; his school training does not mark any new or sudden beginning of
literary culture.
He is already a promising literary
pupil. What provision shall we make for his more
systematic school training ?
We may at once disarm apprehension by saying
that we are not going to propose that the Kindergarten shall undertake new literary labors ; it has
ambitions enough and to spare. The burden of our
advice is that its work in linguistics shall be better
and more circumspectly done.
We shall begin by
noting its shortcomings. Then, taking our cue from
these, we shall state, in rather general terms, some
fundamental principles by which all early work should
be guided. Then we shall make some practical suggestions as to the details of work.
The Kindergarten has not, we have 5aid, taken
much account of the child as a linguistic and literary

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personage; and this in spite of the fact that the
large training schools have expected and encouraged a
liberal literary culture. In some respects this indifference has been salutary; it has paved the way to a
broader conception of humane education. It has helped,
for example, to kill the old superstitious regard for the
three R's, propped as it was by the fallacy that educa·
tion begins with learning to read and write. It has
convinced us that the young child has a t first much
more important matters than these to attend to;
and, moreover, that it is not dependent upon these
(any more than were those "illiterates," the early
Greeks, let us say) for the attainment even of a high
kind of literary culture. It is the ear and not the
script or print that is the first, as it is the final,
arbiter and nurse of all lovely speech an.cl ··song. On
the other hand, despite these important theoretical
affirmations, its actual practice, so far as it has
involved linguistic training, has been (we are bound
to say) singularly defective. Its standards in poetry,
language, and music - the three cannot well be considered apart - have not been high, scarcely higher
than the d epressed standards of the Elementary
Grades. It has fed its little people upon doggerel
for poetry, and upon mere tum-tumminess for music.
This has been of a piece with the distressing colorschemes that used to glare at one from its walls,
and the irritating, unattractive, and quite unsuitable

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pictures of the mother-songs.
Especially was the
poetry sad, dyspeptic word-stuff, as unfit for the
town-child by its subject-matter of rural themes of
which he knew nothing, as it was unattractive and
innutritious by reason of its lack of poetic quality.
Fortunately the weakening dietary has been improved
of late; and a distinct, if halting, advance is registered by Miss Blow's new collection of mother-songs.
The stories have been less objectionable, and much
adventurous mining in the old mythologies and folklore has been done. Still, too little attention has
been paid to the form of the stories, to the devices
of suspense, surprise, climax, and contrast; and
description has been overworked.
Then, as evidence of the absence of true canons of
literary judgment, some of the old stories have become
much emaciated and crippled by the mistaken
extermination of all those challenging, terrifying
villains and cutthroats, giants and ogres, dragons and
witches, against whom some of us used in nursery
days to try to screw up a Herculean courage to
match that of brave Jack o' the Beanstalk, St. George,
and other valiant deliverers.
Or the shadows of
tragedy and pathos have been dispelled, and a
world of vulgar high lights substituted: Red Riding
Hood has been surgically res cued from the wolf's
stomach, the Children in the Wood have been saved
and respectably married, and, in short, ethical and

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artistic violence done to much legend and myth that
has embodied the higher instinctive wisdom of the
race. To such an inane, gingerbread world has the
child who knows cut fingers and stubbed toes, the fire
and tempest of his own and grown-up people's experience, been introduced.
Because he quails before
the darkness, we turn on the lights and always keep
them burning.
We would not let loose our critical instincts too
savagely (although the self-satisfied aplomb one sometimes meets in high places provokes plainness), but
we cannot pass by the linguistic insufficiencies that
too frequ ently mar the work of the Kindergarten
teach er. The exactions have been too light. Good
grammar has been expected, but not always obtained;
ease in story-telling, but not constructive skill; pleas..
ant address, but not always musical intonation, clear
enunciation, refined pronunciation.
How often one
hears story-telling that is clumsy in the choice of words,
labored in style, bungling in structure, and disagree-

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able or inexpressive in vocal effects.
Taking our d eparture from these general criticisms,
we will proceed to develop some of the principles
that should govern right practice in these and other
matters.
These principles apply, not alone in the
Kindergarten, but throug hout the English course. It
stands to reason that, if we believe in the unity and
continuity of English work, we shall proceed from

SOME FIRST PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION APPLIED

27

the outset to observe certain counsels of perfection
that must be continuously observed in every grade.
Our purpose is to state these, as they come into view,
for general guidance of the teachers of all grades, and
to develop them at those junctures where they have
their greatest significance.
The first point, the one to which we have been led
by our consideration of the Kindergarten, is the importance of feeding the child upon the very best of
digestive literary food - the very best of its kind, we
mean, and the very best measured by true literary
standards. A weighty reason for insisting upon this
requirement here is that it is especially difficult to
discern excellence in the simpler forms of art. To
be simple without being bald is the 7rowning achievement of art. And that it is a rare attainment to distinguish between real poetry and pretty rhyme,
between the song and the jingle, is proved by our
collections of poems, songs, and stories for little folks.
These are packed with verses and stories that have
no artistic merit, -which amounts almost to saying
that they have no other kind of merit, certainly no
other compensating merit, - for good intention can
hardly be regarded as such.
We would urge this point with som e warmth. It
is not a super-refinem ent. It must be the prime article of pedagogic faith, in the first as in the last
teacher of English, that there is a great, an incalcu-

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SOME FIRST PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION APPLIED

lably great, difference in the formative power of good
and of poor poetry; a difference that is akin to that
between a vulgar or coarse nature and a noble or
fine one. Let us recall the fe elings and convictions
of the Greeks in this matter. Plato shall speakfrom the " Republic" again - through the mouth of
Socrates : " Is it, then, Glaucon, on these accounts
that we attach such supreme importance to a musical
education [music =poetry, as well as song], because
rhythm and harmony sink most deeply into the
recesses of the soul, and take most powerful hold
of it, bringing gracefulness in their train, and making
a man graceful if he be rightly nurtured, but if not,
the reverse? " (The whole passage should be read:
See p. 97 in the Golden Treasury translation.) The
basis of this conviction is that "good style" in a composition, that is, good rhythm and harmony, is the
fruit of a good nature in the composer: "good language, then, and good harmony and grace and good
rhythm all depend upon a good nature, by which I
do not mean that silliness which by courtesy we call
good-nature, but a mind that is really well and nobly

t~e dangers connected with the inadequate concep-

constituted in its moral character."
We shall do full justice to these pregnant sentiments of Plato only if we carry to our English work
his initial conception of education as nourishment,
feeding, - a conception that is especially applicable to
the young child, who lives so largely by imitation,

tion of education as a "drawing-out" so likely to
s.how themselves as in English work. This conceptlon has in its day done valiant service, as against
the earlier conception of education as stuffing-in.
But, in relation at least to the humanities, we have
overdone the virtue. Some of the things put into

who so obviously becomes subdued to what he feeds
upon. Instruction in English - as it consists so large!
in the communication of those musical and imaginativ:
:roducts which lodge more memorably and fatally
m the heart and mind of the child than anything
else'. and determine hi~ life-long habits of seeing and
~eelmg - must be conceived of as a feeding process :
it must feed into vigorous life the child's powers of
"admiration, hope, and love," to quote Wordsworth's
quite Platonic way of putting the matter; those
powers of higher admiration, sympathy, sensibility,
love, and reverence which, more than his power
of thought and knowledge, control his being. We
must tern pt the eager and undiscriminating appetite
of .th~ child only by such pure food as will be readily
assumlated by the healthier demands of his nature.
Like the climbing plants of the wayside which grasp,
now a: a weak _grass blade, now at a sturdy sapling,
the child, too, will snatch at what comes first to hand
indeed . seems to prefer the indigestible and gaud;
confect10n to the wholesome diet.
Now here are

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the soil of childhood are not to be drawn out at all;
they must blossom of themselves. Others are to
be drawn out slowly and cautiously; they must be
allowed time and quiet, sun and rain, to grow. We

child and of the spare meals we have allowed him,
the very last ounce of result they have had it in
them to yield.
But of this we shall have more to
say later.

are continually disturbing the seeds we sow; continually fingering the first tender shoots that spring
from them, instead of nursing them into strong and
expansive growth in the roots below as in the stems
above ground.
What we need so much now is a
new faith in the slow harvest that will follow the
leisurely, quiet, unconscious absorption of all the
virtues that are in good literary food. Our later psychology teaches us, as Plato taught so long ago,
that the greater results of our education are immeasurable. We must see to it first of all that we
feed aright that great subconscious self of instinctive tastes, of swaying loves and hates, desires and
aspirations, which is the central self in man.
To this insistence upon the need, first, of selecting
the best food for the spiritual sustenance of the child,
and, secondly, of not unwisely interfering with the
slow digestive processes whereby this food becomes
assimilated and converted into power, we may add
a caution not to stint its supply.
Overfeeding is
just as bad as underfeeding ; but it has not been
our fault under the " drawing-out" regime.
Our
diet has been too lean; we have starved by monotonous reiteration, and have tried to get out of the

Now, we shall be less prone to exhaust the child
by this effort to "draw him out," and get him to
overhaul and dissect and play the showman to his
possessions, if we bear in mind more constantly the
nature of the assimilative process; so that we may
assist rather than retard it. The prehensile power of
the child is not so much rational and analytic, as
imaginative and imitative. The way to get him to
appropriate a fact or idea is not to labor with him
until he knows that he knows, but to insure some
sort of unconscious imitative reaction. He must unconsciously do something about it. Froebe! brought into
convincing clearness the fact that the process of
assimilation is by no means a passive or receptive
process. Self-activity in some form or other is the
means whereby the child affirms his possession of new
knowledge and idea. He learns by doing, said Froebe! ; and this may pass muster if we do not press
it too literally and too far.
He learns to sing by
singing, of course; he learns to see by drawing or
modelling ; to touch and measure by cutting, etc.,
and he learns to know this persoiiage, story-hero,
fairy, animal, flower, tree, by being it, living with
its life, imitating it. We conclude that everything

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

he sees and hears evokes a motor responsiveness
in him; it com es loaded with motor suggestion and
starts a process of motor reaction, a process th at
education may eith er inhibit or encourage. It is not
necessary, however, th a t he sh ould actually re enact
the story he has heard , that h e should plzy sz'cal!y do
som ething about it ; he may react imaginatively. As
he recalls in th e da rkn ess the story of Red Riding
Hood, he becomes in dramatic imagination, i.e. in the
form of imag inative self-activity, both the horrible
wolf and the unfortunate little maid, "the slayer and
the sl ain."
His is the self-obliterating imaginativ:e
sympathy of the poet: -

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'' This pri ce th e gods exact for song, That we become what we sing."

Children are poets in this sense: they, too, become what
they see and hear; a nd, with a still greater intensity,
what they admire a nd love. They might remain at
bottom poets, they might bring to life the divine sympathies, the quick, deep fellow-f ee ling of the p oets, if
we would only deal tend erly with their marvellous gift.
It is because this imitative tendency and power,
rooted in imaginative sympathy, plays or ought to play
such an important part in our literary work, that at the
cost of seeming irrelevancy, something more must be
said about it. It is, whether sh e rea lizes it or not, the
supreme instrument in the teacher's power. Under·
stood in its broader sense, it alone explains the forma·

SOME FIRST PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION APPLIED

33

tive influence of literature and all the arts - an influence
exercised so fatally for good or ill over the young, that
Plato proposed to institute in his new Republic the
severest sort of censorship over poets and artists solely
in the interests of the young. Thig fatal power the
teacher has at her command both through her personality, and throu g h the characters and actions which
are brought, by picture and song , before the mind's eye
of the child. Through it, more than any reasoning
or other power, the child learns to lisp and speak,
learns the higher uses of language, learns to write well,
to form a style, to borrow, to take fire, to admire and
fathom and interpret the work of the masters.
No apology is needed for another reference to Plato,
but the writer may preface it with the explanation that
he has found no book more profoundly suggestive in
his own practical work than the "Republic," and especially those chapters which are now so conveniently
edited by Dr. Bosanquet under the title "The Education of the Young Jn the Republic of Plato." It is
here that we have a treatment of the subject of imita·
tion that cannot fail to be helpful and stimulating in
the teaching of English. Let us take Walter Pater's
convenient summary of it: "Imitation: it enters into the very fastnesses of
character ; and we, our souls, ourselves, are for ever
imitating what we see and hear, the forms, the sounds
which haunt our memories, our imagination. We imi·
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tate not only if we play a part on the stage, but when
we sit as spectators, while our thoughts follow the
acting of another, when we read Homer and put ourselves lightly, fluently, into the place of those he
describes : we imitate unconsciously the line and
colour of the walls around us, the trees by the wayside, the animals we pet or make use of, the very
dress we wear. Men, children are susceptible beings,
in great measure conditioned by the mere look of their
'medium.'
Like those insects, we might fancy, of
which naturalists tell us, taking colour from the plants
they lodge on, they will come to match with much
servility the aspects of the world about them." ("Plato

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and Platonism," pp. 245-6.)
This is a much deeper and more fruitful conception
than the one we commonly meet with- such, for example, as this, taken from a well-known work: "Imitation
has to do with actions, external things that can be
seen." Plato's doctrine illuminatingly explains to us
that it is by virtue of the imitative tendency in us, and
especially in children, that environment counts for so
much in our lives. It is provoking us to subtle forms
of imitation. Through our work in English, then, we
are creating the spiritual environment of the child, not the external environment of things and scenes,
but the internal environment, the atmosphere shed
about him by the presences with which he holds
daily converse, - among them, those ideal imagined

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presences, their thoughts and sayings and deeds, which
literature brings into his field of intercourse.
This doctrine of imitation, which we must regard at
the outset as such a supreme factor in our literary work,
might receive suggestive illustration: we will cite only
two examples. The first is from Walt Whitman: "There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he looked upon, that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part
of the day,
Or for years or stretching cycles cf years.
,,
The early lilacs became part of this child.

The second, the most exquisite and most subtile expression in our literature, is in Wordsworth's familiar verses,
beginning, "Three years she grew in sun and shower "
(sometimes called "The Education of Nature"), wherein he sings how the great educator, Nature, by her
companionship of the child, Lucy, will make of her a
lady of her own: "And hers shall be the breathing balm,
And hers the silence and the calm
Of mute insensate things.
The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place,
Where rivulets dance their wayward round ;
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face."

Kindergarten theory and practice have recognized
the: importance of the imitative instinct, and of giving

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it scope in the responsive activities of the games and
occupations. We do not allow it half enough exercise
in the subsequent grades, and we weaken it and replace
it too early by appealing to reason.
Nor has the
teacher treated seriously enough her own influence the influence of her habits of speech; her power to
affect the child through suggestion, her tone of mind,
the expressive, magnetic quality of her voice. The
last is the most important of all - the sympathetic
touch of the voice on the nature of the child. We
hope we shall not tire by our reiteration of this fact;
but it is the beginning of wisdom to recognize that the
ear is the pathway, not only to the heart, ::i.s the French
say, but to the mind. Speech comes before writing in
the history of the child's, as of the race's, development;
and it remains supreme in its power to reach the soul,
to arouse and to charm, to convince and to inspire.
One further point, and we shall have reviewed the
considerations which especially concern the beginnings of
our work in the Kindergarten and the Primary Grades.
We are indebted to Locke for many valuable ideas
about education, but it is he who must bear the blame
for that misleading simile which likens the child's
mind to the blank sheet of paper or waxen tablet
which awaits that scrawler, experience, and particularly
the early random or bungling chirography of parent
and tutor. If, instead of his image, we had laid hold
of Comenius' simile of the seed that grows into shrub

SOME FIRST PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION APPLIED

37

and tree according to the laws of its own nature and
the kind and quality of soil and elements which feed it,
we should scarcely have blundered as we have in our
treatment of the child. We should have followed then
the Platonic conception of nurture. We should have
regarded the child as a unit of simultaneously developing powers - stem, branch, bud, leaf, flower, fruit;
feeling, sense, reason, will, imagination, - all expressing heterogeneously, in their turn and season, the
multiform life of the being. We should have bee n
observant of the seasonable morn en l s 10r pr uni ug
and lopping, grafting and fertilizing; propping the
overtaxed boughs, culling the windfalls, a waiting the
moment of maturity before picking the fruit, as we do
in tending our apple trees. But we have been too
greedy for the early yield: we have dwarfed and
damaged the trees. We have been chiefly blind to
the fact, about which our modern genetic psychology
is setting us right, that there are at work in the
child, from the very first, all the interdependent powers
that show themselves in well-articulated operation in
the man. They are commingled and obscure, like the
petals and pistils in the bud, bu~ they have a certain ·
separateness nevertheless.
We apply this view of the child to our task of English teaching by recognizing that the child is from the
start using the powers - in their weak beginnings to be
sure - which he will exercise in their strength in his

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adult years. Thoug ht, feeling, and will; fancy and
imagination ; wit and humor, - these are all in process of growth in the child, although some come more
conspicuously and assertively into play than others, and
are interwoven with them. Thus, thought cannot be
vigorous until it has ample and proper materials to
work with,- a body of sense impressions, percepts,
and concepts; but there it is in its essence, in the
first gropings of curiosity, the first efforts of memory.
Similarly, we must recognize the child as being, from
the beginning of our dealings with him, a workman
in all the ways in which he will continue to work until
he completes his course. He is already in the nursery
engaged in composition ; reproducing, inventing,
describing what he has seen, narrating what has
happened to him; arguing in his own against his
sister's favor; persuading and coaxing mother or
nurse to give him his way. He has begun to glean
from the literature of the world ; he will even discuss
his texts, and ask for explanatory notes ; he is memorizing, declaiming, dramatizing; he is guilty of talking
"big" sometimes, - striving after style, we may say;
he is helped to correct faulty grammar and syntax like
any college freshm an - all, of course, with the delightful unconsciousnes s of childhood. By and by we shall
attend to these endeavors and capacities of his, one
or more at a time, according to the order (if we can
discover it) in which they show their maximum ot

SOME FIRST PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION APPLIED

39

energy. But, we may observe, there never is a moment
when any one of them is in total eclipse; it cannot be,
because each is integrated with the rest. There is a
certain order or logic of interdependence, as of that
between the senses and the intellect before mentioned,
and - most important to be ob~erved in language
work - that between knowledge and its expression.
It is a commonplace of modern psychology that a
child's power of speech lags far behind his power of
thought, and is never quite commensurate with it probably never is, in the oldest of us. "Mental
power," as Professor Hinsdale puts it, "is in excess of
linguistic power."
We must be careful, accordingly,
not to expect too much of the child in the way of
expression; and must not be misled by the parrot-like
attainments to which he is helped by his imitative
capacity.
But the fact of which we must take special note in
the first years of the child's development 2 a fact
which the Kindergarten so wisely recognizes - is that
language is only one, and, as yet, only a partially
articulated and discriminated form of expression. His
expressional means are complex, and in som e ways
he employs them much more artistically and naturally
than we adults do. He does not so often attempt to
express by language what can be better expressed in
other ways. The Kindergarten recognizes the fact
that he has many languages, words being only one

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

of these, and the most difficult for him to manage.
For many of his sense impressions he has no verbal
equivalent : very well, he will express or reproduce
them by the sign-language of form and color. Gesture,
pantomime, the representations possible in pencil, colored chalk, block, stick, slips of paper, and the other
varied materials that are used in the Kindergarten, these, because their function and province are better
defined for the child, can be used with greater ease
and sureness than language can. The bird on the
tree is so much more readily presented to his_ satisfaction by a few adequately symbolic lines; its flight so
much more readily described by the mimicry of armmovement; its song and cry by the rough vocal imitation, than they can be told of by language.
In
other words, the child is naturally poly-lingual or polyexpressional.
In the first place, then, we must not
be too eager for verbal expression or mastery ; and
must not aim directly at it. Language training must
be incidental, and it must be cautious, as tending to
outrun the child's knowledge and powers of thought.
The time-honored pedagogical formula, "things before
words," "words through things," may be pedantically
followed, to be sure ; but it applies in its broad signification. Verbal precocity, and the glibness which generally goes with it, are as deplorable as they often
are funny.
The child will hunt for big game in
words as in other things ; and as a diversion the

SOME FIRST PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION APPLIED

41

chase is harmless enough ; but if encouraged by
teacher or parent, it will often work harm to the
child. The safe attitude is one of seeming indifference to linguistic prowess. The glib child is often
the parrot child, whose words have shallow content,
and run away with him. "The most hopelessly dull,"
as Miss Wiltse says, "are the scatterbrain ed ones
who catch and toss words, and facts even, from
tongue-tips without turning them over in their own
minds." It is the child of reserved, meditative ha bit,
who deliberates before he speaks, and grips the matter
of his thought, that is the more hopeful type.

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THE KINDERGARTEN AND THE PRIMARY GRADES

CHAPTER IV
THE KINDERGARTEN (continued) AND THE PRIMARY
GRADES
PASSING now to details, the leading points to be
treated of will be the standards, habits, and devices
of the teacher; the language of the child, and the
methods of correction ; memorizing and declamation ;
story-telling and the selection of stories.
As the child in the Kindergarten (and sometimes in
the First Primary Grade) does not read or use books,
the teache r is his text, his sole model and resource.
Her vocabulary, idioms, constructions, ways of enunciation, the very tones of her voice, tend to become
his without the corrective or complementary influence
of books. She ought therefore to be especially careful to use correct, appropriate, and effective speech.
We need not insist that it shall be co::-rect speech ;
but there is some reason for insisting that it shall
be appropriate. This does not mean that it shall be
monosyllabic; but that it shall be ideal child's speech,
tending always toward the graphic, concrete, imaginative. Let it be suggestive, as primitive speech is, by
trope and figure. The child is a symbolist in language
as in other things. His world is a picture-world; and,

43

to reach him, language must start pictures, just as
Homer's epithets start the pictures of his gods and
heroes: Apollo the Far-darter, fleet-footed Achilles,
ox-eyed Hera, horse-taming Diomedes, Hector of the
glancing helm.
Indeed, the Kindergarten and the Primary teacher
have much to gain from Homer, as from the Norse
epics and the literature of the early world generally,
not only in the way of substance and story, but in
the noble simplicity of their language, the language
of the childhood of the world. For the childhood of
to-day, also, things must be sketched in their large
and salient features.
It is not necessary to reduce
expression to the colloquial level. The language may

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be here, as it should be throughout the course, a little
in advance of the child's resources, and (in the more
formal work, like story-telling) should be lifted by a
certain dignity above the plane of ordinary talk when
the subject calls for it, as would be the case e.g. in
many of the myths. This practice will help to enlarge
the child's vocabulary, will give a touch of novelty
and importance to the work, and will gradually accustom him to literary English.
As story-teller, wherein her greatest strength must
lie, the teacher ought to aim to embody certain characteristic virtues of the classic story-teller, - the sagaman, rhapsodist, dervish, minstrel. Of course the story
must be skilfully and impressively put together, ::i.chiev-

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

ing unity of tone, consistent perspective, variety,
suspense, climax, surprise, as these are called for.
But there must also be the mastery of moods, the
command of change of atmosphere and tone. The
teacher, without the aid of lute or lyre, chant or interlude (although song may be introduced, effectively
sometimes), must be a magician of all childish moods,
in the compass from grave to gay; able to touch
lightly the minor chords that are needed to bring out
the triumphant major passages. And this last and
very important art she must likewise possess: the
art of skilful repetition, of the refrain-like effects,
the "leading motives," which recall central facts and
effects. Of the obvious way in which repetition may
be used, even to the verge of monotony and absurdity
sometimes, - the Arabella and Araminta stories are
samples.
As for the manner in which all this is to be done,
there should be no discounting by husky, rasping
voice. The teacher ought to know how to "beautify
the spoken word " by clear, rich intonation ; by delicate
variations of expression; by faultless pronunciation and
clear-cut enunciation. There may even allowably be
a little exaggeration in these matters, inasmuch as
children grasp at general effects, and so often get
their vowel values wrong and their consonant endings
clipped. Again, as little people are naturally dramatic
and are given to gesturing, some appropriate, graceful

THE KINDERGARTEN AND THE PRIMARY GRADES

45

gesturing may be introduced.
To do these things
naturally, with composure and without the visible strain
or effort to which children are so sensitive, is difficult,
we know; but it must be striven for.
The children
will be natural and spontaneous only if the teacher is;
and unless she is, she will find it difficult to tempt
them into easy, artless self-expression. And here we
pass naturally to the topic of the children's language
and its correction.
The chief means available for developing the child's
power of expression are the conversation and the
reproduction. The free and easy conversation (with
gentle repression of the voluble) is most important,
and may be made to yield admirable results. Following the morning talk or the story, or growing out
of some nature-work, it may be made the means of
leading the child to record personal experiences and
notions, to invent and embroider, until he gains
fluency and confidence. He may be skilfully pressed
to keep to the point, and trained in consecutiveness
and relevancy.
Reproduction of the teacher's story
is more difficult; but if the right stories, carefully
graded, are chosen, good results may be obtained.
Not every story told to the child is suitable for
reproduction. The story with well-defined beginning,
middle, and end is obviously the best to begin with.
If the parts are logically connected, one part will
call for and suggest the next.
Different types of

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story will call for different treatment. Jack o' the Bean.
stalk, for instance, is a series of episodes, with no
inevitable sequence: and therefore the teacher may
well help freely in recalling the order. In Cinderella,
on the other hand, the events must happen in a certain
order, and that th e child will discover for himself, if
he has grasped the story in its unity. The story of
Cinderella suggests also another line of development,
the filling-in process. As the child's powers expand,
descriptive touches may be added in the interest of
dramatic realization - added by the teacher, as she
repeats the story, to keep pace with the child's
Detail is a weariness to the
growing capabilities.
child at first; and upon no score are book stories to
be so frequently criticised as upon this, - that they
halt too much over uneventful detail.
We are too
literal; not suggestive enough. All the great masters
are tersely suggestive. The child is rightly bored by
a great deal of our "fine" writing and talking.
It is strange, considering the prominent part that
story-telling plays in the Kindergarten (and the important part which it ought to continue to play in the Elementary School), that so little is done to train the
teacher in the science and art of story-telling. How
much does the graduate from the training college know
about the principles of construction? How closely has
she studied the art of the great masters of the short
story ? Very little, we believe ; and the story books, the

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reproductions of myths and folk stories, show the lack
plainly. They often violate all the fund a mental laws
of unity, coherence, proportion, etc. This deficiency
ought to be made good. Surely, there should be a solid
course consisting of an appreciative and critical study
of such masters as Addison and Irving, H awthorne and
Poe, Harte and Stockton and .Stevenson, Wilkins and
Kipling, Maupassant, Daudet, Coppee, and Tolstoi;
and with this should go a study of drama and dramatic
construction, which has such pertinence in relation to
the short story.
How shall the child's faults of language be corrected? Needless to say that at first we must not be
too exacting. The child must not be nagged. As a
rule, it is well in elementary work to confine one's
attention to certain selected faults, to attack a few bad
habits unweariedly, and let the rest go, to be dealt with
later on. But this cannot be systematically done in the
Kindergarten . It must suffice for the teacher to bear
in mind that the great aim is to develop a linguistic
conscience in the child ; - that is, a recognition of the
fact that there is a right and a wrong, a proper or
polite, an improper or impolite, usuage in language;
but this must be gradually and delicately done, so as to
put off as long as possible the day when language shall
become an object of thought for the child. At first the
teacher will try to correct by example, finding unsuspected openings for substituting the correct for the in.

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correct expression which the child has used; insensibly
winning the child's ear to it and getting him unconsciously to employ it. In later grades she may unceremoniously correct the mistake, and get the child to
substitute the correct expression. "People don't say
'ain't'; they say 'isn't.'" "It isn't proper to say
'sawr' and 'noo'; can't you say 'saw/ 'new'?" etc. In
this, as in other similar matters, numerous devices will
occur to the resourceful teacher. But, after all, it is by
her own exemplary, winning ways of speech that she
will do most to cultivate right habits in her children.
Her prime duty is to make beautiful speech attractive:
to send echoing through the life of the child, speech
tones and forms, strong and fine, and colored with noble
feeling, which shall awaken memories of early days.
Gradually the boorishness and vulgarity, the indistinctness and clumsiness, the throatiness and nosiness,
against which she has been struggling, will improve by
mere operation of the imitative instinct, by the inherent power of the more excellent way.

and pure enough to out-sing all baser and cruder songs,
and to set the pitch of character. Readers of Matthew
Arnold's suggestive essay on "The Study of Poetry"
will recall his advice to them to carry in the memory,
and to apply as touchstones in the valuation of poetry,
great lines and passages drawn from th e works of the
masters. Insensibly and fumblin g ly we all do that:
our standard is fi xed by what we like best and re ca ll
oftenest. On this account we can perform no worthier
office for the child than to set singing in its mind, in
order to fashion the norm of his taste, poems and
pieces selected with a fine scrupulousness. This does
not mean that we are to be exclusive or rigorous in making our repertoire. On the contrary, we must be eclectic: we must draw upon the humorous and whimsical
as well as upon the serious and pathetic (a limited supply of that); upon the nonsensical and the doggerel as
well as upon the heroic and stately. And we shall err
if we do not sound high above all minor tones the note
of joy, gladness, exuberance.

The work in memorizing, and the declamation that
goes with it, has much value also as a means of confirming the child in correct ways of speaking. But its
greatest service is in storing the mind with the priceless treasure of th e noblest thoughts and feelings that
have been uttered by the race. Especially important is
it to make the first impressions and memories, which are
to impart a tone to one's spiritual system for life, rich

In making our selection for memorizing, we may
conveniently observe a broad distinction, commonly
drawn in German schools, between those first-rate
pieces which have upon them the stamp of p ermanence, that classic qua lity which fits them to be
the "core" of the work, and those less important,
quite passable pieces, which we touch on lightly and
make use of to serve subsidiary ends. The pieces that
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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

form our " core" are those that are to be carried
forward from grade to grade, to be recalled and reused
in new connections, and for comparative purposes, time
and time again. To endear by repetition; to accumulate a common stock of old familiar songs that graft
themselves deep in the affections and reveal gradually,
as the child grows, their music and meaning, - this is
We need
a desideratum of every English course.
to generate these feelings of welcome to old favorites in
order, for one thing, to offset the precocious aversion
in so many of our city-bred children to what is "stale "
and "kiddish," and the hankering after what is novel
and "grown-up." Besides, such a plan of selection is
a boon to every teacher in the Grades. She will be
glad to know definitely by what literary landmarks
she can steer; upon what acquisitions she can rely
in her own work. She will deftly make use of the
old to aid in mastering the new.
Much effective
comparative work will be possible to her in the middle
and higher grades.
A child comes to her familiar
with Tennyson 's "Brook," let us say; she can turn
his acquaintance to excellent account in combination
with Lanier's "Song of the Chattahoochee."
The
result will be a deeper appreciation by the child of
the old poem, which he will now see in new lights
and a fresh perspective ; and a more vivid and significant seizure of the new than would have been
pos::~ble without the comparison.

THE KINDERGARTEN AND THE PRIMARY GRADES

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As we have criticised the low standards which
have governed the selection of poems and pieces in
the Kindergarten and Elementary Grades, we must
try to indicate what sort of standard should prevail.
Let us begin by doing justice to the advance made
in recent years; an advance that was first evident
in such school or text-book collections as those of Mr.
Horace Scudder(" Prose and Verse for Beginners"), and
the " Heart of Oak" series edited by Professor Charles
Eliot Norton. During the past three or four years
several collections have come from the press which show
an extension of this finer taste ; and the collecting,
thrashing, and winnowing that is now going on promise
still better results in the near future.
Whereas our
Readers and Kindergarten collections have been composed of the sweepings of our educational journals, the
preposterous "poetry" of the moralizing pedagogue, we
are now using materials by Blake and Wordsworth,
Tennyson and Browning, Stevenson and Field, even
Shakespeare (his delightful "swallow-flights of song")
and the Bible.
Even in the Kindergarten a few of
these may be used - some of the simpler numbers
from Stevenson, Tennyson, Sherman, are so used. The
stock of such first-rate verse for the Kindergarten and
even the first Primary Grade is, we know, limited;
but not a great deal of it is wanted if we avail ourselves of the store of Mother Goose Melodies and
traditional Nursery Rhymes and Singing Games-

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

which we think are, on nearly every p edagogical score.
preferable to the "made-to-order" songs that pad our
Kindergarten collections. What we plead for is recognition of a distinction between such poetry and the
"specially prepared " rhymes. The one is worthy of
b ein g part of the permanent memorial store which
the child should carry forward; the other is light
baggage for the day 's more trivial needs. \Ve ought
to be able to distinguish between such trifles as
Oh, look at the moon;
She is shining up there;
Oh, mother, ~he look~
Like a lamp in the air •• •

and such products of the Muse as
Who has see n the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing thro' I
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.

These lines are by Christina Rossetti, and the in.
creasing appreciation of her simple verse - not all
of it flawless, by any means; too rough and broken,
often - is full of good augury. It is the inevitable,
spontaneous, birdlike quality of her verse, something
like the sweet simplicity of Blake at his best in the
" Songs of Innocence," of Shakespeare in such drifts

THE KINDERGARTEN AND THE PRIMARY GRADES

53

of thistle-down fancy as "Where th e bee sucks," it is this we want to know and feel when we see i~
and fill the birdlike mouths of children with.
Not
a few of such strains might be garnered from the
Celtic poets who are singing so blithely to-day the
narve fairy faith of Irish and Gaelic peasantry.
As to declamation by both teachers and pupils, the
chief desiderata are clearness, slowness, and simplicity.
It is desirable, where a poem or piece t;i.kes the ni;i.logue form, to distribute the parts. Some of th e Moth er
Goose verses-" Who killed Cock Robin?"- may be
dealt with in this way; so, too, poems like " Who
stole the Bird's Nest?" and" Over in the meadows where
the clear pools shine." And, in passing, the temperate
encouragement of the dramatizing instinct of the children may be commended, as tending to develop the
imagination, the inventiveness, and the language of the
child . Children love to act their fairy stories; to represent the town mouse and the country mouse, the Three
Little Pigs, etc. These are the first attempts to convert indirect to direct quotation. It is needless to add
that games, especially the old singing games, afford
another indirect means of developing the linguistic, and
especially the dramatic and mimetic, sense.
And now we come again full-circle to the difficult
subject of story-telling, which we cannot treat in minute
detail, but only in those larger aspects which have
significance, not merely in the Kindergarte n, but in the

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Primary Grades generally. As to the kinds of stories
to be selected, it must be borne in mind that the child
is a denizen of two worlds, - the so-called real world of
his prosaic elders, and the more vitally real world of
fairy land, wonderl and, make-believe, through-the-looking-glass, or what you will. He is trying to find himself, and must be helped to find himself, in these two
worlds; the imperious, unyielding, law-ridden, yet fascinating and wonderful world of fact; the ideal, playworld of art. He has both something of the curiosity
and scepticism of the scientist, and the creative, imaginative impulse of the artist. He makes his own world of
fairy; and although he recognizes more and more that
it is not a real, but a make-believe palace of pleasure,
he remains in it because it allows him scope for his
powers. These two worlds stand apart at first. As
illustrating this, the writer recalls a telling story of
Mr. Brander Matthews. A little boy, playing horse
in the parlor, became convinced that his steed was
thirsty.
His amiable mother, who was by, thought
to be the good fairy, and proffered a glass of water
within her reach. Whereupon she received the wellmerited rebuke : " Mamma, don't you know that a pertending horse must have pertending water?"
The
teacher must not lay herself open to this rebuke. In
the end these two worlds of science and poetry, of fact
and imagination, must be reconciled; but at first they
stand wide apart.
In one sense the world of make-

THE KINDERGARTEN AND THE PRIMARY GRADES

55

believe is as real, indeed more real, than its sister-world.
The world peopled by Jack, Crusoe, Alice, Mowgli, is as
real as is the world peopled for us grown-ups by Romeo
and Juliet, Rosalind, Prospero, Miranda, Colombe.
It
must be used so as to develop the ethical and cesthetic
content implied in the relations establisheo between
the people who inhabit it.
It is a mistake, often made, to press one world upon
the child at the expense of the other. The realists
spend their energies almost exclusively upon the attempt
to relate the child to the actual world about him. Undoubtedly, as already stated, he is greatly interested in
that world. Nevertheless, it is, to begin with, a shadowworld that pales before the dramatic reality of his world
of make-believe.
His heart is not in it, his imagination
is not in it, as they are in his world apart ; he generally
concerns himself with it as the home of fairy powers,
investing its objects, its animals, and living things with
the humanized, fairy life of his creative, idealizing
fancy.1 We may the better do justice to this world of
make-believe if we recognize it as the art world of his
elders, that world of" feigned history," to use Bacon's
words, wherein his mind finds "some shadow of satisfaction in those points wherein the nature of things
doth deny it;" a world that "doth raise and erect the
1 The reader may be reminded of the fascinating way in which Steven·
son bears testimony to this in his" Lantern-bearers," as K en net h Graham
also does in his " Golden Age."

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mind by submitting the shows of things to the desires
of the mind; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the
mind unto the nature of things." Not therefore to
cancel this real world of poetry, but to establish it in
right and consistent relation to the other real world of
science, must be our educational aim.
A helpful clew to this child's world of disentangled
fact and fiction is primitive man, whose value is recognized in the culture-epoch conception which has been
carried into experimental effect in a few schools. Only,
here we have the other extreme: no allowance is made
for the fact that the child is living in the twentieth
century, and is forced to relate himself to the phenomena of the modern world. True, he is a myth-maker,
an animist, a polytheist, with early Aryan and Persian,
Greek and Roman; but he has to become, and is
gradually becoming, a citizen of this scientific age. He
approaches his problem of interpreting the life of his
time from two ends, advancing with rapid, sevenleagued strides from the early world to the latter age,
and working backward from his own age to the
luminous dawn of history, - from appearances to their
historic explanation.
Our stories must be selected accordingly. We shall
try to do rough justice to these two worlds, or, as we
prefer to put it, to the two alternating tempers and outlooks of childhood; to the embryo poet and embryo
scientist; to the realist and the romanticist; to the

THE KINDERGARTEN AND THE PRIMARY GRADES

57

Platonist and the Aristotelian. On this account we
shall feed him on stories of heroes, both mythical and
historical; on the adventures of a Columbus, a Captain
John Smith, and a Nansen, as well as of a Ulysses,
a Crusoe, and a Sinbad . We shall weave for him
"true stories " of the transactions of bee and bird, dog
and horse; as well as the unverifiable life of the
creatures of Alice's Wonderland, Uncle Remus's wood
side, Mowgli's jungle. Folk-lore and fable, myth and
legend, -Indian, Negro, Greek, Norse, Teutonic, and
Celtic, -we need; but we also need history, biography,
nature-narrative, - the story of the heroisms and wonders of the human and animal worlds.

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LEARNING TO READ AND TO WRITE

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CHAPTER V
LEARNING

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AND

TO

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THE problem of instruction in reading and writing is
still the arena where the most vigorous encounters of
the pedagogues of primary education take place. A
decade or more ago it was chiefly the question of how
to teach these that was fought out; a dispute admirably
summed up in 1889 by President G. Stanley Hall in his
monograph, "How to teach Reading" (Heath). Nowadays it is the more fundamental question of when to
teach that is being debated, - the question raised in
militant mood by Professor John Dewey in his article
in the Forum of May, 1899. This is no new question,
to be sure; but it is one that has assumed new aspects.
It resolves itself into the general question of the educational value and fitness, under the altered conditions of
modern life, of reading and writing in the earliest years
of school life. A marked tendency has recently shown
itself to discount the high value generally put upon
reading and writing heretofore, and as a consequence
to alter radically the course of study in the Primary
Grades. It will have been gathered from preceding
pages that the writer is sympathetic toward this new
58

59

realistic tendency in modern education, but he believes
that it may easily be pushed to harmful extremes. It
may be well, therefore, to review the discussion.
"What sense is there," asks Dr. Mary Putnam
Jacobi in her interesting volume on " Primary Education" (Putnams), published in 1889 - "what sense is
there, then, in beginning education with instruction in
the arts of reading and writing? " (p 3). The emphasis
of her objection, however, does not fall where Professor
Dewey's does: it is psychological, whereas his is mainly
sociological. She holds that early attention to reading
and writing, to book-work, is wrong, because "the first
intellectual iaculties to be trained are perception and
memory," and that, therefore, the child's first studies
should be those which aid the development of these
faculties; - the seasonable unfolding of faculties being,
in her view, the proper aim of modern education.
To be brief in comment upon a familiar contention,
this criticism reveals a danger of overlooking the very
important part which language may play in the training
of these very faculties of perception and memory.
Clear expression is a mark of clear perception, and the
effort to attain it involves the clarification of confused
percepts. To remember is to reexpress. Perception
and memory are not only developed in learning to read
a:nd write, but they soon find in reading and writing indispensable aids and tests. However, to press on to
more important points, - Dr. Jacobi adds another time·

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honored objection : "To study words before things
tends to impress the mind with a fatal belief in their
superior importance; and to study expression before
subjects of thought have been accumulated, is to cultivate the habit always prevalent in civilized life of talking fluently without having anything to say. To direct
attention to sets of arbitrary signs before attention has
been trained by contemplation of real objects, teaches
the mind to place conventional and contingent facts on
the same level with necessary truths. We thus weaken
in advance the power of belief in necessity an<l reality."
These last words strike deep into the ethics of the subject; but concerning the argument in general, we have
only to point to the development of the Kindergarten
and , under Kindergarten influences, of observational and
manual work in the Elementary School, to show that
these objections have lost a good deal of their old force.
It is no longer sweepingly true - if we look at the work
done in our best school systems - that modern education begins with the study of words. But, more than
that, "instruction in th e arts of reading and writing"
does not imply, and never could imply, that the study of
words (as if words were a system of hieroglyphics)
could precede, or could be wholly separated from, the
study pf the things th ey symbolize; nor can it involve
anything like exclusive preoccupation with expression
before subjects of thought have been accumulated. The
study of words must be, to no small extent, at least by

LEARNING TO READ AND TO WRITE

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implication, the study of things, and the clarification
and enrichment of the pupil's ideas abo ut things. We
may agree, then, with Dr. Jacobi, that undue emphasis
has been and still is put upon words, and that t hin gs
still suffer undue neglect. This, however, does not involve her extreme reaction against reading and writing;,
which in our opinion shuts its eyes to the deeper import
of language and language-work. 1
Coming now to Professor Dewey's position, we would
at once express our sympathy with the spirit of his protest against the undue prominence given to reading and
writing in the early years of school life. We agree that
too much time is devoted to it; that it is begun and
pressed too exclusively at too early a date; that there arc
other important matters - manual training, science,
nature-study, art, history- to be attended to; that
reading, as it is generally taught, is t oo mech:rnical a
method of getting intellectual satisfaction ; that th ere
are physiological reasons against the common method of
learning and practising it; that it is too isolated from
other interests, etc. And yet we cannot follow Professor Dewey in some of his reasonings ; cannot see the
wisdom of the extreme positions which his reaction
against existing evils leads him to occupy.
If, despite agreement with Dr. Dewey in essentials,
1 On this suhject see Laurie's defence of the formal side of language study in his." Language and Linguistic Method," pp. 12-13, an•l L ectures
II and VI.

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

LEARNING TO READ AND TO WRITE

we record here some dissents, it is because we believe
that the subject needs further clarification. We should

does not accord with our expe rience. There is nothing
arbitrary to the child in being taught to master what he
recognizes as indispensable factors in the life arou nd
him. He can go nowhere on his ow n account without
them . His urban surroundings are full of irritetting
secrets and baffling hieroglyphics until the abc's arc
conquered. He is a nxious to master these signs.
He will not wait to b e taught: if the sc hool clocs not
teach him, he will learn of himself. We are not now
considering whether this is a fortun:i.tc :i.mbition, or
whether modern civilization, which depends so 111uch
upon print and script, is educa tionall y advantageous to

say, first of all, that we cannot see why he should so
minimize the importance of reading and writing in modern life. The changed conditions of modern life which
lessen, for him, their importance are: "the advent of
quick and cheap mails, of easy and continuous travel and
transportation. of the teleg-raph and telephone, the establishment of librari es, art galleries, literary clubs, the
universal diffusion of cheap reJ.ding matter, newspapers
and ma gazines of all kinds and grades." 'vVe can only
wonder whether we are missin g the point he intends to
m:-tkc , when we question how it is that these developments - the much larger part playc<l in our lives by
letter-writing and communication by telegram and telephon e, the library, literary club, newspaper, and magazine - lessen the importance of reading and writing?
And yet we go on to read: " The significance attaching
to reading and writing, as primary and f uu<lame11tal instrl!meuls of culture, has shrunk proportionately as the
immanent intellectual life of society has quickened and
multiplied. The result is that th ese studies lose their
motive and motor force." To us it would seem, on the
contrary, that reading and writing are more and more
indispensable agencies in modern civilization. And so,
to say that they are regarded by the child "as more or
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less arbitrary tasks which must be submitted to because
one is going to that mysterious thing called a school,"

the c hilll : that is another question .
Upon this further question we recoguize the force of
the attitude taken by Professor D e\Yey :-tnd those ''' ho
think with him. It is d11hitahle ·whether the chilcl 011 g ht
not to lie protected a gai nst a one -sid ed book ishn ess,
against the tyranny of print and script, in the interests
of a broader and more sci en ti lie culture. The modern
child, says Dr. Dewey, is not gelling the practical
training which the child got upon the farm (in the
old days when "life was in the main rural") through
the contact with nature, the care of domestic animals,
the cultivation of the soil, the spinning, weaving,
etc. The school must make good this serious loss by
manual work of various kinds. Very good; but the
child in the good old days did both ; and we can do
both.

The upshot of the argument is, however, not

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that reading and writing should be excluded altogether from the first two or three years of school
life, but should not monopolize the time, being combined with other studies, manual, naturalistic, etc. The
child will advance more rapidly when there is more
variety in his school work. It is easy to stupefy him
with monotonous grind. The fault of the past has been
that reading and writing have been both overtaught
and mistaught. We shall gain time by losing some.
But the way is still barred, D r . Dewey protests,
by physiological considerations: "While there are undoubted exceptions, present physiological knowledge
points to the age of about eight yea rs as early enough
for anything more than an incidental attention to
visual and written language form," which means that
in the first two years of school no sustained attention
should be given to reading and writing. Experienced
teachers testify, however, that the initial mechanical
work should come earlier: that children of five, six,
and seven take to it naturally; and that it becomes
more and more distasteful as the child ages. Dr. Stanley Hall's testimony is to the same effect: "Most
children sho~ the culmination of interest in learning to
read and write between five and eight." The physiological obj ections may be largely overcome by the use of
large types in reading ; and by large, free writing on the
blackboard, and with large pencils on unlined paper. 1
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The fact is that we have to beware of being too
fussy over this matter. We incline to make too much
pother over what is, to an ordinarily bright child, a
comparatively simple business. Children take naturally to reading and writing: it is our blundering and
pedantry and routine teaching that have disgusted
them. The moral of which is, not to postpone learning these things, but to teach them more naturally.
"It is a common saying," Professor Dewey remarks,
"among intelligent educators that they can go into a
schoolroom and select the children who picked up
reading at home: they read so much more naturally
and intelligently." Exactly: they were not mistaught,
- not thwarted and worried by incompetent teaching.
Professor Dewey's ideal is a high one, and commands a general assent: "The child should have a
personal interest in what is read, a personal hunger
for it, a personal power of satisfying the appetite;" and
there is no great difficulty in meeting this requirement.
Yet we feel the need of caution here. Ought the child
to be held always to such high levels? Shall we
never allow him the pleasure of mechanical conquest,
without much care for the content of what he reads
and writes? Shall we never indulge the common
delight which children take in just random, routine
effort ? There is a danger of over-rationalizing early
Shaw's volume on "School Hygiene," in this series.
Handwriting will be found very helpful.
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LEARNING TO READ AND TO WRITE

education. And we feel this danger menacing when
Professor Dewey gncs on t0 SilY thitt the adequate
realizalion of his id eal "is impossible until the child
comes to the reading trni.terbl [ cle3.rly this is impossible at the outset, when mechanical difficulties demand so much attention J with a certain background
of experience which makes him appreciate the difference between the trivial, the merely amusing and
exciting, and that which has permanent and serious
meaning." Alas! for the ped'lgop;ic child, sagely pondering " the difference between the merely amusing
and that which has permanent meaning." He is
already too much with us, this imp of precocity; and
makes us long for the old-fashioned child who was
not ashamed of being innocently trivial, and athirst
for amusement and excitement- not too old for his
years, not too grave and spectacled for frolic and
nonsense. May he long be spared to us despite our
anxious, ambitious pedagogues!
So one may reasonably sympathize with Professor
Dewey's reaction against the old, strait-laced curriculum of reading, writing, and arithmetic in the interest
of a broader and more realistic education, without
going so far as he in postponing the conquest of them.
By giving less time to them, by varying the work of
the Primary Grades, by adopting better, less wasteful,
and less injurious methods of teaching them, better results may be obtained, even in reading and writing them·

selves, and certainly in general education.
What
methods should be followed, we may now proceed to
consider.
II

Any discussion of th e subject of methods must take ·
its start from President G. Stanley Hall's Monograph,
before alluded to. Indeed, not much can be added to
that; but a brief restatement of the case in the light of
recent discussion is desirable for the sake of completeness.
Broadly speaking, there are two competing conceptions of the problem: one lays stress upon its mechanical aspect, the other upon its educational and cultnre
significance. To the upholders of the first, learning
to read is a prerequisite, technical accomplishment; it
means mastering a scheme of notation or a set of tools;
the gaining of a working command of an instrument
which is afterward to be used to some educational purpose. It is comparable to getting to know the colors
of the palette before beginning to paint: the notes of
the violin before beginning to play. That this may be
done, it is best to concentrate somewhat exclusively
upon the mechanics of the work, so that the process
(which calls mainly upon the memory) should be
mastered as speedily as possible by all the ingenuities
of the cram method. Then the real work of education,
which can be done only by the aid of reading and writ·
ing, need be no longer delayed.

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LEARNING TO READ AND TO WRITE

For the upholders of the second point of view (to
speak broadly again) th e process of learning to read
is one from whic h valu able educational results may be
obtained ; it is in fact equally important with the
result. The work may be done to some extent inductively, to afford scope to the child's observing, synthesizin g , and generalizing powers. The training of the
mind to g rasp a thou ght as a whole, of the ear to make
accurate distinctions of sounds, of the eye to rapid
synthesis of impressions, of th e tong ue t o correct
articul ation , of the motor activities of the hand to
accuracy of movement, - all these aims may be made
to converge in securing the one result. Learning to
read, far from being the mere me morizing of certain
symbols, is learning to appropriate and develop thought;
it is thought-getting, as the phrase goes. The one
thing to avoid is making the process merely mechanical. The mech a nics of the process must be conquered

1s mech anized, the soone r ca n th e child atte nd to the
subj ect-matter.
L et him render th e symbols first ;
utilize a nd interpret them afte rward ."
"This is unna tural," comes the rejoinder, "and it is
abh orrent to t he c hild . It is unn a tura l, because he ca nn ot silence th e reasoning powers if he would ; it is
abh orrent, b ecause h e ha tes to be a mere memorymachin e. Th e unperverted child read s fo r th oug ht ;
h e will n ot res t in th e mech ani cs, but will proceed to
turn his mech a nical acco mplishm ent to imm ed ia te
account."
"But yo u fo rget," interposes th e oth er side, "that he
is all th e time b eing trippe d u p by hi s lack of mec han ical skill." And in such wise the pros a nd cons mi g ht
be furth er arg ued .
Sta tin g th e differen ce bet ween the two in tec hni cal
terms, we may say th at, for one side, the vital requirement is th at a mastery of th e mech a ni sm and t he
acquiring of technical facility should precede th e attempt to read in the se nse of thought-gettin g , beca use
the atte mpt to get th e thought is ham pered by the
technica l insufficiency; while for th e other sid e the
desire to master the thought is regarded as the motive dominating the attempt to deciph er the thoughtsymbols. To one, reading and writing are the first
indispensable means to and prerequisites of training
and culture ; to the oth er they are first ste ps a nd in
tegral parts of such training and culture.

by the way, gradually, yet all the more effectually.
The objections urged by the representatives of the
first point of view to th ese arguments of the seconrl
party, would take something like this form: "You are
asking too much of the child. One thing at a time,
please. When you are urging the child to surmount
one kind of obstacle, which taxes his sight-memory
chiefly, don't ask him to cope also with the greater
difficulties of learning to think and reason ; don't tax
his hi gher intellectual powers. The sooner the proces1

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LEARNING TO READ AND TO WRITE

There is an informing juxtaposition of the argu
ments of these two schools in the Language Number
of the N ew York Teaclzers' Monographs. Superintendent Charles W. Dean writes on "Reading by
Phonetics," arguing for the phonetic mastery of the
printed and written symbol as the secret of reading.
"The process is first mechanical, second intellectual.
Our printed language is conventional. The transferal
of the printed symbol to the mind is a mechanical
process, depending upon the laws of optics. The interpretation of these symbols by which thought is
obtained, is the intellectual part of the process. The
child has made considerable advancement in thought-

more natural and expeditious method. The special
advantage claimed for the thought-method of teaching reading is the fact that it enables us to direct
attention to the sense or thought of what is to be
read at the very outset, and before the words are
presented as individuals. The thought or sentence is
the unit of language, and this unit should be the first
to claim attention. It is painful to hear children, in
their early attempts at reading, begin to pronounce
the words as individuals, one after another, before
they have any appreciation of the sense. "

interpretation through the spoken language which has
been addressed to him. He must now be trained to
see the language just the same as he is already able
to hear it. . . . The word is the unit of the visual
grasp; the sentence . is the unit of thought. A mastery of words is a first requisite. "
Now hear, on the other side, Superintendent Eben
H. Davis, as if in comment upon this: "If the main
object be to cultivate skill and proficiency in pronouncing words individually at sight, regardless of
their meaning, then the grouping of words according
to sounds may be a very good method. If, on the
other hand, the main object be to lead to thoughtgetting, naturalness of expression, and to a knowledge
of the meaning and use of words, then there is a

71

One has only to consider these two views together
to recognize the limitations of each, and to see that
the one does not necessarily exclude the other. For
instance, the sentence is the thought-unit, says Superintendent Davis; very true, we admit, but that
admission will not prevent our saying, with Superintendent Dean, that a mastery of the whole sentence
or thought-unit necessarily implies a mastery of all
the parts ; and that if the child is baffled by any one
word in the sentence, the thought-result is unobtainable. On the other hand, as experience amply proves,
a too close attention to the word, a too close dealing
with it out of its sentence relations and without insistence upon the synthetic process of grasping the
meaning of the whole, develops into mere parrotry.
To the child, sentences are easier than isolated words,
because they have meaning; that is to say, words are

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

LEARNING TO READ AND TO WRITE

more easily grasped in a context than when they
stand alone, for the child is helped hy ( and naturally

ness, that it may be especially comm ended to the
teacher's attention.

seeks ) the associations that bind words together.
That is how the child acquires a vocabulary before

As fnr learning to write, in its intimate connection
with lea rning to read, while much may be said in favor

he goes to school.

of postponing it on physiolog ical and otl1er grouncls,
and using instead the letter-cards for word and se ntence building, the fact to be weighcrl is th :it most
children will le a rn u[ Lh c msch·c s, and \1 ill prohably
get into bad lrnbits, if they a rc not t:< u ght by the
teacher. Writing is a fasrin:ition to many children;
and it is a wasted nppnrt11nity not to en list their
interest in it in cunuediull w ilh the task of teaching
them to rc:trl.
It represents the important motorside of the "reading-writing" process. So, too, does
work with th e letter-cards, of course; and we think
it wise that a certain amount of such work should
be done from the outset. But th e peculiar advantage

The end to be so ught is clear ly

that stated by Superintendent Davis; the means
must be, to some extent. those advocated hy Superinten<lc11t Dean. \Ve must say, wilh qu;ilificaliun, "lo
some extent," because we do not think he keeps all
th e mean s in view.
\Vithont traversing ground already covered hy President Hall in his pamphlet, we must condu<le willi him
that the teacher must combine, or ;it least be ready
in emergency to fall back upon, any methods suited
to the needs of any type of child. We must provide
for the eye-minded as well as for the ear-minded
and the motor-minded child, and must call into concerted action the activities of mouth, ear, eye, and
hand.

We must agree that learning to read may

be made a means to the training and refinement of
all these powers, as well as of the reasoning powers,
comparison, distinction, and generalization.
This
eclecticism introduces helpful variety into the work,
stimulates interest, and, by multiplying the associations
attached to words, embeds them more securely in the
mind. It is because the late Superintendent Ward's
method, with its skilful combination of the phonic
and sentence method, has much of this many-sided·

of

making

an early start with writi ng

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is, that it

becomes an intimate and organic part of the process
of expression, makes blackboard work possible and
easy, and is an aid to eye and tong ue.

It brings

words closer to the child, and awakens his interes t m
their make-up.
One warning to the teacher, however: that is, to
be content with rough results in penmanship at first.
Learning to write is a difficult process, and may easily
be bungled and made injurious to the child. 1
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We have already referrer! to th e chapt er on Handwriting in Professoi
Shaw's volume on "School H yg iene " in this series.

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LEARNING TO READ AND TO WRITE

The practical conclusion of the whole matter is
that it is desirable that the teacher should treat
reading and writing as far as possible - that is, as
early as possible without injuri ously forcing the process of handwriting -as inter-connected processes;
should at least be able to utilize all forms of mental
connection, - name, form , and sound of word and
letters, and the simple and associative memory; and
should be able to employ at need all kinds of devices
to these ends, - the use of obj ects and pictures, t he
chalk talk, sentence frame, word-building with letters
and cards (in both script and print), writing, and even
printing. She should be familiar with all the wellformulated methods, - Riverside, Ward's, McMurry's
and the others alluded to in Dr. Stanley Hall's
little book, - a knowledge of which is indispensable.
Out of the study of these, and with a year or two of
practice, will emerge her own individual method; that
combination which she finds she can manage best, only provided always that she is eclectic enough to
reach all the leading types of mental organization.
One neglected point that may be briefly touched
upon in conclusion, is the learning of the Alphabet.
It is a mistake to omit this, as is sometimes done. It
must be learned sometime, and most children will
pick it up without effort. The easiest way is to
learn it as a song, - not, however, to the neglect of
the abc rhyme and picture book. The writer learned

it by means of a song, and has found that the catchy
lay stuck at once in his own children's memory.
We have already expressed our conviction that
quite too mu ch of a fos s may b e made over t his
comparatively simple matter - as it ought to be
treated - of learning to read and write.
But even
in so simple and elementary and seemingly formal a
task, the spirit in which the teaching- is done is of
fi rst- ra te imp orta nce. The te ac her's th oughts must
be on the process as we ll as on the results aimed at.
She must remember that the processes to which
children are submitted are always vitally important,
because they affect the child 's own mental p rocedure,
and wh at Mr. Thurbe r has hap pily sty led " th e
aggregate of mental habit and impression gathered
by the way. " We may so easily underrate the importance, for the future development of the child,
of the associations that have clustered about the
class exercise, the class room, and the teacher. It is
well, in reviewing our efforts for a given period, to
ask ourselves: Has the work depressed or braced
the mind and character of our pupils? Has it developed power? In what attitude toward the subject have the pupils been left? There are no more
important test questions than these; and by the
answers to them must the ultimate success or failure of our efforts be judged, be the efforts with the
beginner of five or the high school pupil of fifteen.

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READING IN THE PRIM ARY GRAD ES

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CHAPTER VI
READING IN THE PRIMARY GRADES
I.

WHAT TO READ

IN this chapter we shall consider in general terms
what to read .
First of all, then, upon what principles shall the literature we use be selected?
We may answer briefly that we must take into
account the tastes and interests of the child; his
powers of comprehension and appreciation; the needs
of his emotional nature, as they determine the
growth of character ; and the scope, purpose, and
structure of the course of study, by which the relation of English work to the other subjects of study
is determined.
Let us dispose of the last point, correlation, first.
Clearly, the nature and the extent of the correlation
attempted will depend upon the general conception
of education that underlies the course. In one case
the correlating centre is geography, in another history, and so on. 'vVe shall not discuss here the claims
of competing theories and schemes, Herbartian,
Froebelian, and other. Our aim here is to consider,
from the English teacher's point of view, what those
76

conditions are upon which any correlation of English
with other studies ought to be carried out. We have
especially in mind the danger which threaten s literature when it falls into the benevole nt hands of the
system-m aker and correlator, - the d anger, namely,
of losing sight of the fact that this study has claims
of its own, which must be satisfied before th e question of correlation is broached, and must be included
in the curriculum with full recognition of these claims.
Too often literature is reduced to the role of mere
maid-in-waiting upon any and every usurper who commands her good offices.
Here is the danger; in this very fact that literature
can be so accommodating. She has all kinds of wares
(including even dry goods), in that eclectic pack of
hers which is so easily rifled by the crotchet-monger.
There is no large interest of life, - n ature, science,
man, -that is not the subject of her glorification and
imaginative interpretation. She presses her claims in
the interests of a complete, many-sided humanity. Her
inexorable demand, however, is that everything she
offers shall be seen from her own proper point of view,
under the transfiguring aspect of beauty. The hobbyrider should dismount in her presence. Too often, however, he forgets his manners. The naturalist will lay
violent hands upon her Bryants and Whittiers and
Wordsworths to give a fillip to his nature-work. The
historian will divert the historical plays of Shakespeare.

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the historical romances of Scott and Kingsley, to bald
historical uses, treating them as so many documents to
give interest and concrete detail to his work. Once
hand over Literature to any of these amiable devotees,
intent only upon subject-matter and its illustrative uses,
and she will soon be perverted from her true office to
that of a mere huckster of knowledge. Once let the
touchstone of choice be, not literary and poetic, but
utilitarian and scientific, and your school readers will be
a welter of trash (from the literary point of view), designed to subserve the minor purposes of miscellaneous
information. We speak from observation: "Hiawatha,"
for example, will become a treatise on Indian civilization,
or (more imposingly) the Indian culture-epoch; and
good old Robinson Crusoe transformed (as we have
often found him of late in the primary school) to a
practising pedagogue who teaches little boys and girls
how to count and weigh and measure, while his companionable Friday is reduced to a museum specimen of
primitive man. This is an outrage. There is no reason,
of course, why the general interests appealed to in reading "Hiawatha" or "Robinson Crusoe" should not be
utilized in a secondary way in connection with work in
other departments; but what we protest against is the
practice of using these romances as pegs for all sorts
of pedagogical livery. Thus, in using a poem like
Tennyson's "Brook," our aim will be, instead of developing the geographical interest and knowledge of

READING IN THE PRIMARY GRADES

79

the child, to help him to love brooks, to feel their
manifold beauty and their life as a manifestation of the
wonderful life that "rolls through all things. " These
works, when they are used at all for literary purposes,
must make their appeal primarily and mainly to the
child's imagination and sympathies, to his idealizing
instinct, to his epic and dramatic tendencies. Nothing
should be done to weaken or destroy these effects.
Wise correlation will not do so; - correlation that is not
forced, but is almost insensibly achieved; correlation
that allows literature to be treated primarily as such,
and only secondarily as aiding other studies.
Inevitably, also, that other unfortunate tendency
gains headway when the effort to correlate is vigorous,
- that is, the tendency to select second-rate literature
because it lends itself to the scheme of correlation'.
We have already criticised this failing, however; so we
will now pass on to consider the other criteria by which
our selection of reading matter should be guided.
As to the tastes and interests of the child, which
are the best gauges of his comprehension, Comenius
pointed out long ago that the child begins by being
sweepingly encyclopedic in its interests. This must be
recognized in our choice of literature, particularly
in the early years. It must be varied, with gentle emphasis upon those interests which are found to be dominant in each period of growth. Always, however, these
interests must be regarded as means or opportunities

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READING IN THE PRIMARY GRADES

whereby we may quicken and nourish those faculties
of "admiration, hope and love," of courage and loyalty,
which are the roots of worthy character and the sources
of noble delight.
It is the larger things that are with a child from
the first.
There is great Nature everywhere around
him. Even in the city he is vaguely conscious of the
majestic march and the panoramic changes of her
seasons, - those great primitive facts which are the
background of the myths fashioned in the childhood
of th e race. Demeter, mother earth, with her dower
of life and her gifts of day and night, the vast sky and
the restless sea and the immovable hills, - let us
strive to preserve in the child some awed, poetic sense
of the presence of these familiar things.
But nearer to him than Nature is the human drama.
Its simplest forms are found in the family, with its
birthdays and festival occasions, its stories of ancestral
experience and prowess, its cherished memories of
parent and grandparent. Here are the foundations
of historic and epic appreciation. This elementary
interest in history is furthered by the anniversary celebrations of great national and world-significant events,
- Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Fourth of July,
Christmas, New Year, Easter, etc.; by the public commemoration of the great figures and heroes of history
and legend, - Washington, Lincoln, and Columbus;
the host who give names to our streets and buildings;

the shadowy presences that haunt childhood, - Santa
Claus, St. Patrick, St. George; and those dim gods and
demigods recalled by the names of the days of the
week, -Thor and Woden and Freya: all the great
company who multiply as the child grows, until they
include those eminent writers and thinkers, scientists,
explorers, martyrs, saints, who have made the world
the marvellous home it is for us. A course of study
which does not provide for turning all these occasions
and interests to advantage in literary studies which
secure their imaginative treatment, would be missing
its most vital and impressive opportunities.
We shall seek, then, in the first instance for literature, - poetry more particularly, - that interprets to
the child the simpler and more impressive facts of his
own life, and those great abiding facts of nature and
human life which come within the range of his notice
and understanding. As to ethical characteristics, we
must have literature that celebrates the duties and privileges of early childhood: love and compassion for all
gentle things - for "the meanest flower that blows,"
and for the weakest creature that breathes; the domestic virtues, filial love and obedience, brotherly and
sisterly love; respect for elders and teachers, good-will
and justice toward playmates and equals ; veneration for
the great and for the common weal; and courage, grit.
But because, as we have already insisted, the child
can live only partially in the complex, modernized
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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

READING IN THE PRIMARY GRADES

world about him, and must rise to an understanding
of its difficult phenomena by retracing the main steps
of the race's growth, - valuable and legitimate opportunities for correlation will present themselves in connection with the work in history, and the study of
occupations (with the manual work connected therewith) which goes along with it. It is the knowledge
derived from these studies that makes not a little
literary work possible. That is to say, Literature, not
being an information study, must follow the child's conquests of information through his information studies
and his experience, largely. Now it is because the child
finds much to match his own narve conceptions of
things, and his own attempts to relate himself to the
world around him, in the rude life and customs of
Pueblo or Forest Indian or Esquimo, that he can get
many a key to the meanings of his own environment
by following the beginnings of civilization in these and
other types of primitive life. This history work provides the knowledge necessary to a comprehension
of certain poems and stories dealing with primitive
life, enabling the child to live imaginatively in the
world of which he reads in his literature - the world
of" Hiawatha," the "Kalevala," and the "Ramayana" i
the world of Hercules, Ulysses, and Jason; of Abraham,
Joseph, and David; of the Irish and Welsh and Norse
heroes.
Soon the child will pass on from this world to the

early history of his own country, which offers just
the kind of epitome of the leading phases of social
development that is needed, - the early voyagers and
explorers (paralleling Ulysses and Jason), with Columbus for the heroic figure ; early American colonization and settlement, which he can approach from a
point of view more germane to the modern child than
that involved in following the early, uncertain movements of ancient peoples; the pioneer and frontiersman, beginning with rude log cabin, axe, and cattleranch, - and so on, until the child gradually gains a
first vague sense of the century-long march of th(}
human race, and the rapid fore-shorte ned march ol
the equipped modern man in our own ne wly settled
country. T hus embarked upon a study of modern
American history and civilization, he is ready for the
literature of native writers who have celebrated its
heroes and achievements, "Paul Revere," "Miles Standish," etc.
Various plans have been suggested for the accomplishment of the general purpose we have outlined.
We are concerned with them here only so far as they
help to determine the fields from which we may cull
our literary selections. When history and other information studies have done their work on the information side, poetry may do its on the imaginative and
emotional side. Not that the two can be kept entirely
distinct, especially in the first years of school life.

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But we must remember that the child is at heart a
poet in his mode of apprehension, and that poetry, as
Aristotle said so significantly, is more earnest and
more philosophical than history. Moreover, in the
literary evolution of the race, verse has preceded
prose.
Therefore, not only by reason of its substance, but also by its form, poetry must be the
stapie of literary diet in the Primary Grades.
But we must never forget th at the historical point
of view and historical interest of which we have been
speaking is, after all, partial and subsidiary. Great
literature is self-sufficient. One n eeds no course in
history to enjoy Shakespeare's historical plays. These
deal largely with the abiding facts of human nature
and experience.
What have Jack the Giant-Killer,
Cinderella, John Gilpin, Robinson Crusoe, Alice, BoPeep, Lucy Gray, Casabianca, Sinbad, to do with
time and history? No more than have Rosalind and
Miranda, Christian and Greatheart, Lorna Doone or
Adam Bede, Raphael's Madonna, Millet's Sower, the
Venus of Milo, or the Hermes of Praxiteles. These
live in the Eternal Now of art.
The great difficulty we have to meet is to select
literary expressions of the interests of childhood simple enough on the whole for the child's comprehension.
We need not be too rigorous.
It is not
necessary that the child should comprehend every
detail of what he reads or recites. The writer is

•amiliar with the case of a boy who, without knowing
the meaning of many of the words used, received
from certain parts of the liturgy of the Episcopal
Church general impressions of awe and mystery and
beauty which have dyed a life with their rich colors.
There may well be something of such an unexplained
yet affecting residuum of significance in the school
experiences of the child. The condition, however, of
such lasting and nourishing impressions is, as we
have already insisted, tha t the works chosen for th e
child shall be first rate. For practice purposes, for mere
touch-and-go acquaintance, for convenient filling-in, one
may put up with inferior material. What is important
is, as we have before insisted (see ante, pp. 49-52), that
we shall not deceive ourselves as to quality.
Th e
teacher must know the first-rate, staple food from the
second-rate, or the mere confections of the course.
As to the test of suitability, th at must be chiefly
experience and experiment.
The suitable thing is
p reeminently the interesting thing, which grips and
holds the child's attention and kindles his feelings;
not th e sensational, but the really affecting and impressive thing. Interest is, therefore, the first touchstone.
Facility, the easy-word test, is misleading. The child
will leap many a forbidding word-fence, if he is genuinely interested in the subject-matter.
He scents
something artificial and condescending in the easyword version. It may be said in passing, indeed, that

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READING IN THE PRIMARY GRADES

the easy-word transliteralist has much to answer for
in his alterations of classic story into one and two
syllabled absurdities for the tender digestion of the
child.
Stories th at have reached a classic version
had better be left alone. Occasionally a teacher with
a touch of genius manages simplification well enough,
but the usual result is deplorable. If a book- Hawthorne's "Wonder Book" is a case in point-is difficult reading for the child of the Third or even the
Fourth Grade, let it wait, or let it be wisely used by
the teacher to read to her class. It is the work as a
whole, - subject-matter and form together, - the total
impression, that counts; a nd only careful experiment
can fully settl e the question as to what piece makes
a sufficiently deep impression to warrant one's usin g
it in a given grade. Experience, then, must guide, the experience of the wise teach er who aims to hit
the golden mean, neither undertaxing the child's growing powers, nor yet ~training a-tiptoe to overtrain
them, which is by no means impossible. It remains
to be added that for Primary children the interesting
thing cannot be the long thing. The long story or
poem, peddled out in small instalments, is an artistic
and pedagogical absurdity.
Surveying available material, it is not likely that
any of the many existing Primary Readers will be
entirely satisfactory to the teacher who is trying to live
up to a high standard. Sometimes the spread is too

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thin; sometimes the good and bad are hopeless ly
jumbled; sometimes the pieces are not properly
graded; sometimes there is a bat-like blindness to the
long-accepted classics of child-literature, or, more frequently still, to the recent prolific contribution s made
to the child's book-shelf by writers whose genius li es
in a new power of interpreting and en li sting the sympathies of childhood. We shall not get th e satisfactory
Reader until it is compiled by persons who combine
two qualifications, - pedagogical insight to control the
grading of the selections, and broad and fine literary
culture. It is the last th at is so conspicuously lacking
in our Readers. The good teach er has still to glean
for herself in the rich fields whose liberti es are open ed
by collections such as those of Patmore, Palgrave,
Lucas, the Lambs, Lang, H en ley, Repplier, 'Whittier, and Scudder; and in the works of Stevenson,
Riley, Field, Sherman, Christina Rossetti (whose poetry
often soars unexpectedly into the hig h heaven of childhood), Celia Thaxter (whose instinct sometimes fails
her), Edith Thomas, Kipling.
As for prose, - the
story, myth, legend and fable, - there has been such a
recent harvesting of the lore of the ages and peoples as
to embarrass us, - Lang's Fairy Books (Blue, White,
and otherwise); Jacob's series of Fairy Stories (English, Celtic, Scandinavian, etc.); Scuclder's selections in
the excellent Riverside series; the Children's Library
of Irish, Scotch, Finnish legend; numero us volumes

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of Slavic, Celtic, Indian, and Negro lore (with Uncle
Remus as master-narrator); Norse mythology in volumes like the "Heroes of Asgard" and adaptations by
Mabie, Guerber, and others; Frost's adaptations of
Scandinavian, Wagnerian, and Arthurian legend, etc.
Then Kipling has added a new classic in the " Jungle
Books"; while Stockton, Howells, Thompson-Seton (for
children above ten), Macdonald, and others have made
contributions of high quality; and the supply of
humor and fun in Carroll, Lear, Herford, etc., runneth
over. To these should be added some good collections
of animal stories (Lang's for example), and short lives
of famous men. The supply is more than ample.
Finally, it is under the heading of reading material
that we must include the stories that are to be told and
retold in the class. Story-telling should, as we have
already urged, be an important part of the literary
work in the Primary Grades. It is especially valuable
(and our librarians are rapidly realizing this) 1 as a
means' of introdu cing children to good books, arousing
interests, and awakening curiosities. The teacher may
tell a story from the "Arabian Nights," and lead the
children to read others in some volume of well-selected
stories. It is an art to be cultivated both for its own
sake, and because ·it opens an enticing path into the
El Dorado of Letters.
1 The admirable work being done under Mr. Anderson at the Carnegie
Library in Pittsburg may be especially referre<1 to. The re5ult• here ~ ·· e
very encouraging, we are told.

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CHAPTER VII

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READING IN THE PRIMARY GRADES

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(contt"nued)

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II.

HOW TO READ

IN making our selections for reading material for the
several grades, we find certain difficult questions arising at the outset of our undertaking. For example,
shall "Hiawatha," or parts of it, be read in the Second
Grade, or the Fourth, or even later? The Second
Grade child will relish parts of the poem, and do a
certain amount of justice to them; but the Fourth
Grade will get a much firmer grip on the whole of it,
and will er1joy it even more. Or it may be a moot
point as to where "Sir Launfal" should be taken,~
in the Fifth Grade or the Seventh ? or shall it be left
for the High School, where it may have to be studied
in any case to meet the college entrance requirements?
The general answer to such questions is: The choice
depends partly upon the treatment proposed.
The
question of selection cannot be considered apart from
the question of treatment. Let us make this clear.
Many of the great classics are meant for readers of
all ages. They have, like a great picture (Raphael's
Madonna, e.g.), a word for every one, because they ap-

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TH E T E ACHING OF ENGLISH

READING IN THE PRIMARY GRAD ES

peal primarily to the e motions; and the emotions, a~
Professor S ta nley H all h as remar ked, "are far more
independent of a ge or culture th an the intelligence. "

know "what God and ma u :;:;."
Wordsw orth a lso
illustrate s freq uently in his ver se t his un limited emotional appeal which th e comm; nest thin gs, loved a like

Certain b rie f strains of lyric rapture -

such as Shake-

by old and young, make to the common heart of

speare' s "Where the bee sucks," T ennyson's "Owl " exercise th eir spell upon the child of seven as upon

man.
So that when a teacher asks her principa l wh eth er
such an d such a p oem is fit fo r a ccrt:.iin g rad e, the

the chil d of threescore and ten. The truth of \Vordsworth ' s "We are S even," or of E merson 's "Fable"
("The M ountain a nd the Squirrel"), holds and spreads

1·

with e ver widenin g circles of meaning from the mornin g to th e eve of life. Why ? Because , we repeat,
th ey are pdm arily e motional in th eir appeal, and deal
su ggesti vel y with ve ry simple the mes. Truth is" embodied in a tal e, " t o use T ennyson's expression, which
may th e n " enter in at lowly door s." It is because the
poet speak s to th e h eart, wi se with unlearned wisdom,

from the character of its r eception by the cl ass.

stands him .
H en ce, th e first secret of a successful treatment of

that it is the summe r song of a d ainty fairy-spirit,

of the subj ect-matter.
"The littl e flower in the
crannied wall" h a s one sin gle word of cheer for the
child 's eye ; but for th e philosopher-poet it holds in
its simpl e life the m eanin g of the mystery of things,
knowing which - fl ower and root and all - he would

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the case e.g-. of " 'vVh ere the bee sucks, " what more
could be brought home even to an advanced class than

appeal within th e ran ge of the child's underst anding

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principal, if it is jwt"ma fa cie a p ossibl e poe m, may
properly put as his first question, " What are you
going to do with it? Its fitn ess for that g rade or
another depends largely upon your treatm ent of it ; upon wha t p oints or aspects of it you will press and
emphasize; what slig ht and slur." Some poems, more
es peci a lly lyrics, such a s those already cited, ca ll for
little comment, - how much, the teacher must divine

b eca use a ll beauty so speaks ( " s peaks all lan g uages the
rose" ) th at the child-heart of all ages and clime s under-

any g r eat-little thin g in art is to know how to present
it so th a t it will m a ke the rig ht kind of emotion al

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91

Ariel, who, with Titania and Oberon for masters,
inhabits the mysterious underworld of the grass and
flowers? This understood, and the right atmosph ere
and mood being given by the teacher's reading and
handling, the song will carry its own inexha ustible
meaning, the music-teacher alone being able to g ive
any additiona l aid of the right sort (e.g. Bishop's
charming musical setting of it might h elp). T o the

little people, good pictures may give a suggesti on of

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

tlEADING IN fHE PRIMARY GRADES

the fairy creatures Titania and Oberon and Heartsease,
_pictures of such quality as those to be found in the
attractive volume "To tell the King the Sky is
Falling" (John Lane). Poor pictures are worse than

shy creatures like herself.
The children must be
helped in this way to seize effectually upon the setting
of the scene ; must hear the chime of the minster-clock,
look up at the moon sailing through the cloud-wrack
in the stormy sky. Above all the teacher would like
to have them respond to the magical touch at the end,
completing the eerie suggestion, lightly made at the
beginning, of the haunting presence of a child that
only half belongs to our mortal world. Some of these
things the teacher may, perhaps, get the child to
perceive and feel, but only by most tactful and indirect
methods.
The story, the picture, must be made
affectingly clear, and yet must not be stripped of its
air of mystery and suggestion. How shall it be dealt
with? Let us advance toward a solution of this
question.
Let us put our question first in general terms : How
shall we introduce a poem to a class? What room for
diversity of opinion here!
Shall the teacher read it
first? Or the class? Or shall it be read anp prepared
at home? Or read silently in the class ? Shall its
introduction to the class be preceded by explanations
and comment? Such are some of the questions to be
answered. There is no rule of thumb here; no Jaw,
as of the Medes and Persians, which alters not. Everything depends upon the poem, upon the aim of the
teacher for the time being, and upon the attainments
of her scholars. Some poems are so direct and simple

none: few are b etter than many.
But other kinds of poems, by their very nature, need
very different treatment. Take, for instance, narrative
poems or ballads; let it be Wordsworth's "Lucy
Gray." It has difficulties, which, although the story
is easy and touching, make it inexpedient for the
teacher to try it earlier than in the Fourth or Fifth
Grade. The abrupt transitions in the poem (after
stanzas 3, 5, 8, 14), due to its quick and unexpected
dramatic changes of scer..e ; the unfamiliar English
landscape, - "the wild," "the wide moor," "the
minster-clock," "hawthorn hedge"; and the strange
words like "faggot-band," "wanton," "blither,"
"mountain-roe," - how shall these things be dealt
with? In the simplest possible manner. The teacher
must rely in her attempts to make the poem tell, not
upon comment and explanation, upon much talking
and sentimental elaboration, but primarily upon vocal
suggestion as she interprets the poem in her reading
of it. She has herself felt, and would fain bring home
to them, the beautiful suggestion of the introduction, the solitary, elusive figure of the child seen only once
at break of day upon that wide expanse of moor,
companioned only by the fawn and hare and other

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

READING IN THE PRIMARY GRADES

in meaning and appeal, that they will survive, little
injured, an offhand, clumsy attack by the pupils.
Other poems will probably be ruined by any such

of, has been, with the little people of the Primary
Grades. To them a poem ought not to mean, first of
all, something to be puzzled out step by step; it ought
not to figure before the mind as so many strips of
difficult printed matter. Th e attempt to puzzle out
the printed words must be prompted by an interest
already aroused in the piece, evoking the desire to
master it, to appropriate and render it.
But, comes the objection, this is to make the children
too dependent upon the teacher, whose glib imitators
they will be. It will mean running the risk of a facile
vocal mimicry without thought or feeling behind it; and
the children will be deprived of any opportunity to make
an original effort. True, the teacher does "create" the
poem ; and the pupil must always see it somewhat
through the lens of her personality. We realize certain dangers here that must be offset; but we must not
make a bugbear of imitation. The flexible, circumspect
teacher will have no difficulty in counteracting these
possible effects.
For example, sometimes choosing
easy and suitable pieces, she will require th e pupils "to
create" the piece. She will also be careful, where she
reads the poem, to minimize th e tendency to mechanical
mimicry or slavish imitation of her manner, by good
work in developing the thoughts of the children. She
will see to it that her pupils understand that her way of
doing it is only one way, - hers, - and th at theirs must
necessarily be different. She will encourage genuine

94

treatment.
The great importance of the first impression, the
desirableness of making it strong, unified, memorable,
has already been insisted upon; and we can only repeat,
in this connection, that the key to the situation is in
this requirement. It is obvious that in the Primary
Grades, especially the First, Second, and Third, where
the children's reading is stumbling, it is nearly always
a great mistake to allow the first auditory impression
of any piece to be made by any of the children themselves. The writer has known of cases where pieces
have so been forever ruined, discolored, and disenchanted.
On the other hand, equally well he knows
of cases - even in the High School - where an indifferent student has been awakened, as from a stupor,
by an impressive first reading by his teacher of, say,
one of Shakespeare's plays, or one of Milton's shorter
poems. The oral rendering has reached his emotional
vitals for the first time in the boy's life.
Hitherto,
for that lad, literature, poetry, has meant the cold
printed page, or the class exercise in reading and
declamation; but now that he has been drawn close
to Shakespeare, it means passion and power, the
master-strokes of character, the thrill of situation and
climax. So should it be, and in some cases we know

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

READING IN THE PRIMARY GRADES

original renderings. Then again she will be careful, as
a rule, to read the piece which she introduces only once
at the beginning (with perhaps a second reading to
close the study of the piece); and she will allow time
to elapse between her own readings and the attempts
of the children. The purpose of her introductory reading has been to leave upon the child's mind a general
total impression of the piece, - its spirit, its tone, its
atmosphere, - and no more; and generally it will accomplish no more. She will immediately pass on to
work with her class upon the content of the piece, to
insure a mastery of the thought, - the web of the
whole first, then the relation of the parts.
As nothing is more common than this indifference
to securing a proper conception of a piece of literature
as a whole, we may venture at this point, at the risk of
repetition, to consider the matter more definitely and
concretely. The writer recalls more than one popular
- ay, so-called "standard" - Reader, in which fairly
long poems and prose selections are cut up into slices
to be carefully swallowed one at a time by the bewildered and meekly-expectant student. Imagine - and
it is easy enough to do so with so many examples
before one - imagine " Lucy Gray" so sliced and
served! No conspectus of the story, no intimation of
what is coming ; nothing but the daily dole of slices.
It is all plain to the mind's eye, - the anxious, cautious,
monotonous reading, re-reading, and reading again of

the first stanza. Mary halts, or trips at "solitude."
J oho will try to avoid the pitfall, but it takes Jennie to
manage the verse. Then books are shut and the inquisition follows: What is the title? Spell "solitude."
What does it mean? Look it up in the dictionary.
Who has often been heard of? Had she ever been
seen? Where? When? By whom? Where was she
when he saw her? What kind of child was she? And
so the pupil's examination of the parts at close range
proceeds. The flower is grossly handled, and, petal by
petal, torn to pieces before it has been seen and loved
by the class. How mend all this? Well, let u~ try to
suggest a better way. For convenience we print the
µoem here.
LUCY GRAY
Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray :
And, when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see at break of day
The solitary child.
No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor,
- The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door !
You yet may spy the fawn at play,
The hare upon the green ;
But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen .
H

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

READING IN THE PRIMARY GRADES

"To-night will be a stormy nighty ou to the town must go ;
And take a lantern, child, to light
Your mother through the snow."

They wept - and turning homeward, cried,
" In heaven we all shall meet; "
- When in the snow the mother spied
The print of Lucy's feet.

"That, father! will I gladly do :
'Tis scarcely afternoon The minster-clock has just struck two,
And yonder is the n1oon ! "

Then downwards from the steep hill's edge
They tracked the footmarks small ;
And th rough the broken hawthorn hedge,
And by the long stone-wall.

At this the father raised his hook,
And snapped a faggot-band;
He plied his work ; - and Lucy took
The lantern in her hand.

And then an open field they crossed:
The marks were still the same;
They tracked them on, nor eve r lost;
And to the bridge they came.

Not blither is the mountain roe:
With many a wanton stroke
Her feet disperse the powdery snow,
That rises up like smoke.
The storm came on before its time:
She wandered up and down;
And many a hill did Lucy climb:
But never reached the town.
The wretched parents all that night
W ent shouting far and wide;
But there was neither sound nor sight
To serve them for a guide.
At daybreak on a hill they stood
That overlooked the moor;
And thence they saw the bridge of wood,
A furlong from their door.

99

They followed from the snowy bank
Those footmarks, one by one,
Into the middle of the plank:
And further there were none !
- Yet some maintain that to this dav
She is a Ii ving child ;
That you may see sweet Lucy Gray
Upon the lonesome wild.
O'er rough and smooth she trips along,
And never looks behind;
And sings a solitary song
That whistles in the wind.

The teacher decides that she will first read the
chosen piece to her class, in order to secure the total
epic or dramatic impression. She had better know the
piece "by heart," and be independent of the text. She

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

READING IN THE PRIMARY GRADES

will talk a little about it, by way (I) of removing any
easily removable difficulties, and of (2) inducing the
right attitude and mood i.n the children. The story,
she may explain, is about a little English child, Lucy
Gray (the name is rapidly and informally written on the
blackboard). She lived a lonely life, a solitary life
on a moor. [Does any one know what a moor is?]
Yet not so far away from the town but that she could
hear the faint, distant chiming of the church-clockthe minster-clock. And so on, if further explanation
is really necessary. That will depend upon the children. We must not overdo; better leave some things

change, ominous of coming disaster - " The storm
came on before its time;" and the retarded, weighty last
line - " But never reached the town." Then a rather
longer pause as the scene shifts to the parents. Their
desponding story is told, until the sudden change of
discovery -Ah, joy! She will be found ! Th e n the
exciting tracking of the footsteps - stage by stage to the middle of the plank .. . "And further there
were none." - A pause - that is the whole story, alas I
And then the beautiful epilogue in a changed, brighter
manner - most difficult of all is this major strain after
the minor, - the "Lucy Gray" motif, as the musicians
would say, recalling for final picture the living child
in all her sweetness and gayety, an abiding vision of
beauty upon that lon esome wild.
So much for the reading, aiming at bringing the
little drama in three acts, with its prologue and
epilogue, vividly before the minds of the children.
The impression, the bold outline, the tone, the
atmosphere, are surely strong now, and secure. A
few questions may follow, with the object of clearil:~
up any difficulties and queries in the child's mind;
and then the necessary development work.
The
teacher, again, will first make sure that the story is
clearly apprehended in all its stages : I. Prologue :
The child in her lonely hom e; II. The errand; III.
The storm and the missing child ; IV. The search and
its result; V. Epilogue: her memory.

100

unexplained.
Then will come the teacher's reading ; slow and
simple to begin with, with just a little of the minor
tone in it. Then a pause before the transition to the
father's talk, -gravely hesitating,-with a suggestion of his glance at the sky, - "to-night will be a
stormy night;" and Lucy's ready, glad reply (not
sentimentalized!), as she too follows the father's glance
at the sky: "And yonder is the moon."
Again a
change to a quiet manner, in keeping with the father's
quick resumption of his work, which is onomatopoeti·
cally suggested by "snapped a faggot-band " ; and
then Lucy's instant, quiet obedience. Again a change
to the blithesomeness of Lucy's happy movement
(with care for the right relation of the first line to
the remaining lines); and, yet once again, a quick

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Then the children are called upon to read the
stanzas in their natural grouping; and as the reading
proceeds, necessary questions are put to clear up such
words and constructions as cause difficulty - no
others.
Following this, Lucy's character may be
talked about.
"What kind of girl was she ? Let
us see what is to be gathered from the verses." The
poem may now be memorized; and a good, feeling,
simple, yet firm interpretation secured.
This work
may always be lightened, and the poem kept fresh,
by means of new questions and suggestions from the
teacher. To supplement this work the children may
learn, as freely and informally as may be, and with
a minimum of explanation, some more of Wordsworth's
exquisite poems on that other Lucy so early lost to him.
This foremost care for the fundamental properties
of all great art-the whole and the organic interrelation
of its parts; unity, and variety in unity - must be
taken in every case.
The child ought to have a
complete and connected grasp of every literary whole,
be it prose or verse, - be it Robinson Crusoe or the
adventures of Jason and Ulysses. This indeed is
what is meant by "comprehension," the power to
hold a whole of numerous parts in the mind. It is a
priceless conquest of intellectual and resthetic training.
It may have its time-honored beginnings with the
nursery child in such interlocked verses as "The
House that Jack Built," "The Old vVoman and the

Stubborn Pig," and "The Egg in the Nest." But not
every poem has the same vital, inevitable kind of unity
that "Lucy Gray" has. Some poems possess a unity
too obvious and insistent to call for any development at
the teacher's hands; and therefore the foregoing
method of treatment, or one following broadly the
same lines, will not always apply. It will s.e rve in all
narrative prose and verse, - in the ballad, for example
("The Wreck of the Hesperus," "Casabianca," etc.).
There is, to be concrete again, an irresistible unity
through simplest similitude, in Mr. Sherman's little
poem "A Dew Drop," and again on a large scale
(the day and night idea) in his "Daisies"; and again
a time-sequence unity in Stevenson's "The Sun's
Travels" and "My bed is a boat"; also in Tennyson's "Owl" (Winter and Summer). The child will
But take Stevenson's "Windy Nights."
feel that.
There we have a piece of impressionism; and any
structural significance is lost in the two rapid gallopings of the mystical horsemen and the moaning of
the wind in the trees.
For the reason that so much depends upon the
vocal effect in the last-named piece - the well
accented rhythm of the galloping, the onomatopoetic
suggestiveness of the wind and · its music, the lowtoned weird effect of the haunted darkn ess - a
first reading of this poem by the teacher is more
obviously called for than is the reading of the others

102

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READING IN THE PRIMARY GRADES

we have mentioned.
The same is true of such a
poem as "Who stole the bird's nest?" with its suggestive mimicry that must not be overdone. Clearly,
too, little or nothing is demanded in the way of
explanation or comment. Contrast again with this a
poem like Tennyson's "Brook," that calls for a little
preliminary comment. Here we must secure rich and
varying onomatopoetic effects, and must broaden our
style of delivery as the little brook grows to a stream,
a river, and at last widens into the sea.
For the rest, the following points, made some of
them en passant, may be kept steadily in mind: 1. The reading lesson is not- no, not even incidentally - a language lesson ; and it is not a knowledge lesson. The refore,
2. Do not burden it with grammatical work, or
make a corpus vile of it for dissection. Clear up only
those difficulties which stand in the way of an under.
standing of essential meanings, - sentence-structure
(inversions, etc.) and difficult words.
Do this in as
clear-cut, thorough a way as the case allows - only
remembering that in Literature words are used, not
with scientific precision, but with literary suggestive.

so as to show that they are for the sake of the poem,
that is, mere incidents in the development of the
thought and emotion.

104

ness.
3. Do not make the work studied a peg for mii::cellaneous dissertations. Do not wander far afield,
:)Ut of near touch with the work. Explain allusions
in such a way as to give them due subordination, and

105

4. Do not overwork the dictionary. Dictionary meanings do not always hold in Literature; and, besides,
we grow to meanings of words through familiarity,
and do not master them at a single effort.

5. Let the discussion be on the plane of the style
of the work studied.
Keep the poetic tone and
outlook in discussing poetry. Beware of vulgarizing
and prosing.
6. This means using freely the language employed
in the piece.
Put questions involving answers in
terms of this language, or vary it without lowering the
tone. This familiarizes the children with it, helps
to increase their working vocabulary, and at the same
time involves a free, offhand paraphrasing of the poem.
7. Keep the parts of the lesson distinct. If you are
working for construction, keep to that, and do not
diverge into illustrative comment; if you are working
for good reading, keep to that, and do not run into
Grammar, or the explanation of allusions.
I ,

COMPOSITION IN THE PRIMARY GRADES

CHAPTER VIII
COMPOSITION, ORAL

AND

WRITTEN,

IN

THE

PRIMARY

GRADES

IN the complaints drawn up by the Colleges against
the High Schools, it is the inability to write passably
correct English that is most severely complained of.
Where does the trouble begin? We have already indicated our opinion that it is in the Elementary Schools.
Most assuredly it is anterior to the High School; for.
the difficulty the High School teacher has to cope with
is the positive loathing with which the majority of the
Freshman boys and girls regard "composition." What
a burden is upon him! How difficult he finds it to
overcome a long-standing antagonism, and to convert
this bugbear into an angel of grace.
We must, of course, distribute the blame for this
crippling condition of affairs over the Primary and
Grammar Grades. We attribute it largely to the
following general causes : (I) too much written work is
asked for; (2) it is too labored, because we press for
an excellence in form that is not to be expected from
the young; (3) the compositions are often too long;
(4) wrong topics are chosen, depriving the work of
reality and interest for the child.
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We have already spoken of the mistake, as we
regard it, of replacing oral work by written, of educating the eye at the expense of the ear. We make these
heavy demands upon children for written work because
it presents comforting evidence that we are doing something, and that the children are producing w~rk that
shows a kind of progress. Results: we must have
results of a finished, certifiable, measurable character.
Parents demand them; officials demand them. In
the neat copy-book, exercise-book, composition-book,
are these outward and visible signs of proficiency
marshalled.
Oral work being so intangible and
unmeasurable goes for little; although it is in fact the
crucial, fundamental matter. What boots it that the
child has gentler ways of speaking and address, and is
taking to browsing in books ? There must be something more visibly, tangibly, marketably conclusive that
the child is being educated. And so we hurry the
stripling into producing much misleading work, - the
labored, mechanical outcome of painful drill, - uniform,
squad-like, much supervised and tinkered by the anxious
teacher.
This is all wrong. These prim products are unnatural
to young children. We should expect from them
rough, free, hearty work in writing. This does not
mean slovenly, careless work ; but it does mean sincere,
childlike work. Good handwriting will come later; it is
a monstrosity at this period ; and we scarcely avoid

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

COMPOSITION IN TH E PR IMARY GRADES

injuring the child when we press for it. In the child's
art-work we are content with approximate excellence;
there the rude, groping since rity of the child's
efforts in chalk or clay is th e only thing th at is
resthetically tolerable; the only sign of life. The painfully drawn type-form is an abnormality, - and much
else besides. Then why demand the laboriously even,
uniform piece of written work, which is obtained often

possible unhampered by any respo nsibilities oth er than
those toward his topic; let him do justice to that; for
that is his task, and not to produce a maste rpiece of
penmanship.

108

by copying and recopying ?
We must not be misunderstood as protesting against
any sort of mechanical exercise in handwriting, pure
and simple. Our special problem here is the relation
of handwriting to composition; and the point to which
we advance now is that in any composition work the
child must, as far as possible, be untrammelled by
anxiety as to his handwriting. Let his energies flow as
unimpeded as may be into the work of saying flu ently,
in as passably good form as he can under the circumstances (instead of as he must, with copy-book standards before him), what he has in his mind. Just as he
must not be worriedly groping after something to say,
but trying to express what he holds in easy possession,
- so must he not be too much troubled about his
penmanship.
Otherwise composition work becomes
the drudgery it is. We inhibit the child's inventiveness and spontaneity, and we double and redouble
toil because we prescribe ridiculous standards of
mechanical facility. We must leave the child as far as

109

It is the difficulty of the mere mec hanics of writing,
in these early years, that should lead to our bein g c;ireful, (1) not to ask for much written composition work
in the first three years, and (2) to make each composition brief - from a short sentence at the very end of
the first or in the second year, to a short paragraph or
pair of paragraphs at the end of the third.
We are speaking only of written composition. Of
oral composition there sh ould be much more t han
is ordinarily done in our schools; and it should be
more systematically and delibe rately done. W e can
be much more careful than we usually are about the
form of the sentences in which the child returns
answer to our questions; about the form of his oral
reproductions of stories told him ; and about the
coherency of his contributions to the con versations
and class discussions. Vv' e can begin to train him
to be connected and direct in his statements ; we can
check rambling and irrelevancy somewhat ; and, we
can partially correct ill-usage. It is because we have
not taken this oral work seriously as composition
work, and, more than that, have not realized that
as are a child's habits of oral expression, so will his
habits of written expression tend to become, - or in

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

COMPOSITION IN THE PRIMARY GRADES

other words that his written language and the struc·
ture of his written work will be predetermined by his
previously acquired oral habit and practice, - that we
have slighted oral composition in the first three or

observation or sentiment about the wind's pranks that
morning.
Perhaps, if the class has done well in its
memorizing, they may be able to copy the first two
lines of Stevenson's song from memory: -

four years of school life.
The beginning of the written work in either the First
or Second Grade will necessarily be very simple, and
will consist of short sentences, following the model of
sentences copied from the blackboard, and others reproduced from memory ; the classic type of self-sufficient

"I saw you toss the kites on high
And blow the birds about the sky."

110

sentence being of course the easy proverb and adage.
The handwriting may be large and bold, with pencil
and (later on) pen, upon unlined paper. We must, we
repeat, expect it to be uneven and crooked : it will
come right in time, and meanwhile the child's nerves
and finer muscles are being spared. Plenty of writing on the blackboard in a large and free way will
be done; the children enjoy it. Most teachers find,
we think, that when their children are not overtaxed,
they write a good deal for play at home, and bring
their work to school for approval.
The first original sentenceg may conveniently grow
out of the reading lesson or the memorizing. For
instance, we recall that at the end of the first year,
in windy March, a class that had learned Robert
Louis Stevenson's "Wind Song" proceeded, after a
little stimulating conversation about the antics of the
wind, to write a short sentence recording some one

11 I

The words are short and easy. Along with the moderate practice in script will go, it must be remembered, much more work- including sentence-building
with letter-cards: the children will build up the
easier rhymes they have learned, and reproduce statements of fact drawn from their object lessons, history, etc. In general, it is for freedom rath er than
accuracy that we must aim.
Of written composition there will, in the second
year, be much that is dictated by the class and by
individual members of the class to the teacher, to be
written by her upon the blackboard. This will be
chiefly class work, cooperative work; for that, as
Mrs. Spalding has well remarked in her valuable
little book, "The Problem of Elementary Composition" (Heath), breaks the ice of shyness, hesitancy,
and self-consciousness, gives confidence, and makes
work richer and more worth while. The bright teach
the dull, and there is an atmosphere of stimulation
and suggestion thrown about the work. Nevertheless,
individual work may occasionally be done.
In connection with their reading work the children

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

COMPOSITION IN THE PRIMARY GRADES

will learn incidentally and empirically the use of the
capital at the beginning and the period at the end
of the sentence.1 They may easily be brought to see
that these are needed conveniences to keep us from
running sentence into sentence. By and by the comma
will be called into requisition for equally obvious
reasons. The enlargement of the vocabulary will
come without spending effort; but it must be a constant
aim on the t eacher's part to familiarize the child with
the book language that is so different from his own colloquialism. It is a mistake, we think, to meet the child
always on his own colloquial level. The teacher must
therefore make opportunities for the use by the children
of the literary la nguage met with in the stories and poems.
In the Second and Third Grades a greater fluency,
ease, and spontaneity will be aimed at. The children will have more to say, and will say it more
readily; so that the units (the masses) will grow
inevitably from the sentence to the sentence-group,
and the paragraph idea will emerge; for their reading
matter will be in paragraph form, and the stanzadivisions of verse will further illustrate the paragraph
idea. Ideas of order, of connection, sequence, grouping
of certain units, may now be pressed and elaborated.
We cannot, it may be pointed out to the children,
tell a story just anyhow; we cannot tell about a flower

or an animal all at once, but one thing at a time and
m its proper turn. If we are going to tell about a
ryicnic, we shall not begin with the luncheon, because
chat did not come first in time, although first in our
thoughts; if about a squirrel, we shall not begin with
his tail, because he generally comes toward us head
foremost ; nor shall we skip from his head to his
tail and then back to his head. The science work
offers, in its dema nd for classification , the best, because
the most .natural and easy, method of beginning.
"Come, children," says the teacher, chalk in hand,
"let us see what we know about the squirrel, and
how we should tell what we know if a little friend
were to ask us, or if we are going to tell mother and
father when we get home." And the class proceeds
to contribute its knowledge, 'vhich is written down
as it is given. "Now let us sc '.if we have told things
in their right order. What things belong together?"
And so the facts are grouped, and the groups are in
turn put into the best order suggested by the children.
This, it must be most carefully noted, is not what is
ordinarily or rhetorically called descriptive writing;
it is natural history, the story of a creature's life,
not of the looks and ways by which he may be distinguished from other creatures. Descriptive work is
difficult for the small child, and is by no means the
right work to begin with. Narration, the sequence
of events in time-order, should come first. Description

112

t

These points are enumerat ed in the Outline of Language Work to

be found at the close of Part I ; see PP·

225-232.

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

COMPOSITION IN T H E PRIMARY GRADES

should be merely an incident in narration. The nar.
rative calls for similar treatment in order to get the

the outline is that it weakens th e child' s power to do
what is one of its most valuable and difficult tasks,
that is, to hold together in the mind, as a wh ole, the
parts that compose a subject. How difficult, but how
valuable, to be able to hold one's thou ghts about a subject steadily before one, to see them in their totality, as
a unit. This power of attention, of sustained thinking
and contemplation of a thought-scheme taking shape in
the mind, should be cultivated as far as possible from
the first. The outline must not be used so continually
as to give no chance to develop this power; let it rather
serve as an aid to such development; be a temporary
crutch, not a permanent support. The teacher may employ suggestion, hints in the form of leading questions,
and models to give such aid ; but let her rather show
the child what he ought to be doing on his own account,
- to think before he speaks: to think, not in scraps,
but in masses; think his subject, not his words.
This is one of the commonest forms of incapacity
in the High School and College student. He thinks
and he writes in scraps and spasms.
Solvitur
scribendo: he positively cannot write on the basis
of a plan ; it fetters his - genius. He will scintillate,
not glow; will ramble routeless and goalless until he
finds himself at some lucky "there ! "
Ramble,
saunter, dare, by all means, and occasionally set out
to do nothing else; but invariably to trust to luck, is
to catch an ignominious fall ; for it is to fail in that

114

proper arra ngement of the facts .
Some teachers hold that the outline should be called
into use from the outset. Professor Bain pushes this
demand to its extreme, because of his conviction that
language work should be entirely isolated from knowledge work; that the pupil should be asked to do only
one thing at a time, and should be freed from concern about what he is going to say. He goes so
far as to advise the teacher always to give the matter,
give it in outline. This, we may venture to say, is
bad psychology, because it too arbitrarily separates
the thought-process from the expressional-process, matter from form, invention (or the substance of what we
think and know about a thing) from the telling of it.
Thought and form are twin-born, or at any rate we
ought to try to have them so; and indubitably they
ought to be so with children. To compose, means
to express in well-ordered form our thoughts about
a given subject ; and when the child sets out to
write a letter to a friend, he will have to provide
the substance as well as to give it literary form.
Professor Bain is unduly magnifying a precaution
which the teacher must always take, that the subject
upon which her pupils are asked to write is one upon
which they h ave so methin g, and enough, to say.
The obj ection to th e early and wholesale use of

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constructive, previsionary power which is required in
all the higher activities of the human mind. One may
alter one's plan, one may not even provide for details;
but the teacher must aim at the beginning to make
of the child something more than a happy-go-lucky
improvisor; must begin to make him see and feel
that discourse must be orderly, must have arrangement; and that order and arrangement imply some
scheme as a whole. And yet this, like everything
else attempted in these uncertain early years, must
be done with caution and tact.
It is so easy by
much drill and routine to stiffen the gait of a child's
mind. It is better to err in the other direction.
To write but little original composition during the
first three, or even four years, when the child is fettered
by the mechanical difficulties of writing (which may
be better coped with through work in copying and
dictation); to lay foundations of good habit in oral
work - conversation and reproduction and answers to
questions in the recitation; to be content with rough
though careful results; to ask for only short productions, simple in form, and (in the third and fourth
grades) with the occasional use of the outline; and to
exercise good sense in the choice of subjects, - this is
the sum of our advice on the topic of this chapter. 1
For the treatment of more specific points we must refer to the Outline
on pp. 225- 232. These details explain themselves, and we have thought
it unn ecc ·sary to enumerate them here.
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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

CHAPTER IX
READING IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

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WHAT TO READ

WHAT shall our children of Grammar School age
(roughly, from ten to thirteen years old) read? This
question subdivides itself into several . that are less
general : What shall they be required to read in
school?
What have opportunity to read, or be
encouraged to read, out of school at their pleasure ?
What is to be the relation of this free home reading
to required school reading? Shall they read much
or little? A few good books, or many books as they
come to hand ? Shall they taste and sample for
themselves in the large liberties of the public library,
or be restricted to the narrow but indubitably wholesome diet of well-selected school or home library ?
Such are the initial questions that wait to be
answered by both teacher and parent. Here we are
concerned with the answers which the teacher may
make; for the teacher is bound to face these problems
as involved in her school task.
It were to be wished, for. the sake of simplicity
and security, that decisive, categorical answers might
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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

READING IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

be returned to these questions.
But, we reiterate,
there is no rule of thumb to fall back upon here.
On the contrary, the experienced and well-read
teacher (especially a parent-teacher) will be likely to
answer to all these questions: "It doesn't matter
very much : you may as well take your chances; it
won't do to be too prescriptive and meddlesome ; " or
more cautiously, "There is no general answer, but
only an answer relative to this or that particular
child, and the average needs of this or that specific
type of child-nature. This insensitive, narrow, hard,
flighty child needs more than anything else the ministry
of books; that voracious little reader, becoming more
neurotic and unsociable over books in the chimney-corner, needs to be weaned from books." Yes, and we
may add that lives of great men all remind us of this
variableness. Sometimes we point rashly to Whittier,
and cite his words thanking his stars that he was limited
in his childish reading to a few good books ; and so
fortified we press on to an absolute conclusion favoring
a similar parsimony. But when we recall other great
writers who fed at richer tables, - Tennyson, Longfellow, Stevenson, and a host of others, - we realize
that our conclusion cannot be made absolute.
On the whole, looking to certain modern tendencies, one inclines to lean toward Whittier's precedent,
not so much because one believes in a paucity of
good books, as because one fears the multitude of poor

ones, and the dangers of juvenile precocity in using
books under the pressure of a one-sided literary ideal
and ambition in education. - Our reading lists are
becoming so long; we are so anxious to control the
home reading of our children, as well as their school
reading; we are hedging them about by so many ·
libraries, - school, class room, public libraries closely
affiliated with the school, - that one is prompted to

119

cry a halt.
We can be too ambitious (as several
of our recent cou; ses of study show that we are);
we can overfeed; we can overtrain and overstimulate.
The only reliable safeguard is a sense of character
values.
The teacher must be governed by an imperious sense of her task as that of developing character in the broadest sense, and of using Literature
as she uses all other studies, - only more powerfully
because of its greater emotional appeal, - to illuminate and enhance the worth and glory of life and
living, while training the pupil to the correct and
effective use of language as a medium of communication. As a rule, the more magnetic and masterful a
teacher is, especially as a wielder of words, the more
careful must she be to keep her hands off her pupils;
not to use bo0ks too tyrannically; not to assert her own
literary preferences, or to work her own literary vein
too dominatingly ; above all, never to misunderstand
her office so seriously - even if she is a special teacher
of English - as to aim to produce writers or actors or

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

READING IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

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librarians, instead of contributing an important element
to the making of cultivated manhood and womanhood,
and that many-sided interest that ought to be maintained during childhood.
But this caveat will apply to only a small (though
powerful) constituency, either of teachers or taught.
Despite the temporary and localized violence of the
notion of certain library enthusiasts, that men, women,
and children are to be saved by cultivating the
library habit, there is little danger of a general
plague of literary decadents. We must expect to
swing to an extreme reaction against the old rt!gime,
- the sterile leanness and monotony of old-time
literary diet of our Grammar Schools ; but we are
already settling down to a wise moderation, and a
flexibility of adaptation to the variable needs of child-

part it is to play. It is natural, too, that the child's
scho~l reading should suggest certain home reading;
but It should do no more than suggest; it should not
~res_cribe.
The home should be expected to play
Its m_d ependent part, to develop independent literary
appetites. The intellectual life of the child must not
if we can help it, be confined to school interests'.
Nor should it be a life of prescription merely. Some
independence, - how much, the watchful pa;ent must
decide, - even to perverse wilfulness of choice, must be
Short of
allowed, and at times even encouraged.
courting obvious danger, the child should have a
chance to select its literary pasturage, unconscious of
the peeping parental eye; browse at will, explore and
taste, try and judge for itself. The best that can be
done is to put the child by one means or another in the

hood that promises well.
So we shall be voicing the best opinion of the
educational expert when we say generally, in reply to
the questions with which we set out that, while we
ought to read with our pupils in the Grammar School
a good deal more than we used to read, we shall not
attempt to take sole charge of the literary education
of the child. The teacher or the librarian may well
act as advisers and, within limits, as wardens of the
child's literary destiny.
In some cases, where there
are no home influences or opportunities, the teacher
cannot help standing £n loco parent£s; and a delicate

way. of the best books; to give him a sense of being
(subject to parental veto in extraordinary cases) a free
agent in the selection of them; to open up suggestively
new realms to him ; talk over his reading with him;
and enable him to possess those books he likes, among
the really good ones, to re-read and read again, until he
accumulates a select library of his own that has just the
distin ctive character of reflecting his deeper and more
stable interests.

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And now, these limitations on the scope of school
reading being defined, let us ask what kinds of books
and literary masterpieces we shall select for this com-

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

READING IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

pulsory school reading and study ? The answer generally comes fast enough : books and pieces that are
likely to interest. The reading should follow the line of
the children's interests. Very well; only we should add
to interests, "needs." But we go on to ask, what are
those interes ts ? Who shall say? Very little of guiding value emerges from the studies reported by specialists and statisticians in our educational reviews and
monographs. We note in the first place that interests
change greatly with locality and the circumstances of
children's lives. Next,- what is more important educationally, - that children are so imitative and impressionable, so open to suggestion and personal influence,
that a clever teacher can direct her children's interests
into almost any channel. In fact a child is the most

must lead. Not the child's whimsies and longings, but
the educator's ideals, and his conception of the ends
toward which the child should move step by step as his
powers develop, must control our educational policy.
The factors that must mainly condition the educator's
work are certain broad limitations of the child's powers
of comprehension, and of his range of experience; and
even these are not absolutely dictatorial. The powers
of comprehension may be and often are abused or
forced; while the child, like the adult, through his
powers of imagination, - which is not chained to fact
and may bring forth the forms of things unknown, passes beyond the realm of actual experience into that
of vicarious experience: he scales heaven, and descends
into hell; he visits the unknown stars, and penetrates
the untrodden jungle. A little experience goes a good

122

abusable of creatures: nothing can be so easily bent
and twisted and broken as its marvellously accommodating nature. A child is largely educated by its surroundings, human and natural; and chiefly by the
interests and leadings of those whom it loves most,
respects most, or, negatively, hates and fears most.
It is for these reasons that such broken lights as to
how to treat the child come, or can come, from those
educators of the naturalistic or empirical school, whose
motto is "follow the child ; let the child lead; " those
who assume a "fixed order of development," a progression from interest to interest. The child is rather a
follower; it is the educator who, with wise forethought,

123

way with him; and it is one of the supreme functions
of literature to supplant this little by a large vicarious
experience of a wholesome kind that shall gradually
help to make him a citizen of the world instead of the
little village of Y okelthorpe. Nevertheless, the child
must not be asked to travel too far and too often from
his familiar world; and when he does so, it must be with
the aid of sufficient data - through picture, map, etc. to enable him to find his way.
In selecting literature, then, for the child in the
Grammar Grades, it must suffice to have regard to
certain large facts about his development. His world

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READING IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

of men and things is growing wider and more populous ; his mental grasp is increasing; his memory
is more tenacious ; he can hold more and more in his
mind ; he is probing more thoroughly into the causai
connections of things; he is growing in power of
obse rvation and discrimination. He still sees things
largely and objectively. His world is still the habitation of the great mythical and shadowy personages
of the world's childhood ; but it is also becoming peopled with modern heroes of industry and commerce,
of th e professions and the arts. He is still in what
we may call his e pic phase; and, as already remarked,

nobility; we shall give him the companionship of the
great, and the friendship of the true and tried, to win
him to their likeness.

124

the longer he remains in it the better.
It is this literature of the distinctively epic type that
will interest him more than any other, and be good for
him. This is our best clew. Adventure and romance,
heroism and daring, the wonders and excitement of
travel and exploration, of march and siege,-upon these
we may feed him; and upon these, as sure foundations
of the superstructure to be raised in later years, we
may build . So we sh all broaden his world and enlarge
his sympathies, and give him a many-sided interest in all
sorts and conditions of men and women, and in various
callings and points of view, before he begins that
adolescent work of introspection and self-analysis
which tends to contract for a time his interests and
sympathies. Above all, we shall surround him with
a cloud of witnesses to the glory of courage and

125

Not that this central epic interest should be exclusively cultivated. The interest in Nature will
remain and grow apace, and the interest in the conquests and developments of civilization will be increasingly active. The lyric impulse, too, will persist and
deepen; and it is through lyric poetry that we shall
work for the chastening idealization of those primitive
passions of anger, hate, devotion, and love into their
high er forms of courage, loyalty, obedience, reverence.
Nor must we forget, in our general conspectus of
the needs of the young, to include humor.
Let the
tonic breeze of genuine mirth sweep across our
solemnity at times. Besides, our boys and girls need
educating in humor; failing it, they feed upon cheap
"smartness" or questionable jest, and their sense of
fun narrows to horse-play and the practical joking
that disgraces our college life, - disfigurement of public
monuments and the like. So let us admit some of
Mark Twain and Holmes and Saxe, Hood, Stockton,
and Kipling. Then we may hope for fewer youths
who, in the High School, vote down Sir Roger as a
bore, Don Quixote as insufferable, and Lamb as always
out of season.
It will be gathered from what we have just said, that

our term "epic interest" is to be interpreted generously.

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

READING IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

It is an interest that finds satisfaction through the

In his geography work also he will continually be
brought into contact with the great discoverers, explorers, and voyagers; with great colonists, seamen, and merchants; with great figures of history who have lent their
fame and given their names to the places of the globe.
It is upon the combined cooperative influence of these
three studies (to which, as in the Ethical Culture
Schools, we may add the instruction in Ethics,) that we
must rely to build up in the mind of the student such
an impressiv:e outlook upon the great highway of human
progress and the epic march of man through the ages,
such a reverent appreciation of the legacy of the centuries and the heroic efforts that have amassed it for
our benefit, as shall inspire him to grateful and worthy
efforts.
We shall make our heaviest draft, then, upon the
literary masterpieces that present ideal types of the
heroic, - men and women both, and great actions seen
in heroic proportion. The literature of action, of character manifested through action, of virtue attested
through deed, is what we want; and to get it, touched
with something of elementary and simple grandeur, we
must go to the grand epic ages of history, -to the epic
of early Hebrew history, of Greek and Roman valor, of
the age of Charlemagne and Roland, of Arthur and his

126

pupil's studies in History and Geography, even more
extensively than through Literature pure and simple.
At this stage the two have not become differentiated.
Columbus, like Ulysses, is a figure of epic proportions;
his voyages take th eir place with those of the much
enduring Greek. The little Mayflower with her daring
souls, Miles Standish and those years of strife against
the Indian, are analogues of that sea-quest of Jason and
those long years of strife before Troy. What epic
quality they have! And rightly.
History, at this
stage, will answer to Carlyle's conception-the essence
of innumerable biographies. It is half poetry; and
the poetic glorification of it in commemorative poems
should be a significant part of the history work. Similarly, in the wholesomest fiction, - Cooper, Scott, Kingsley, Dumas, - literature is the handmaiden of history,
and oftentimes of history that is truer to ultimate reality
than the heavily annotated page of the scientific historian. Plutarch again - to be used generously at this
age of the child - and the "Book of Golden Deeds,"
belong to both realms; and the same may be said,
from the more definitely historical approach, of certain
parts of Parkman and Green, Irving and Motley, which
we shall do well to use, either in the leaflet or other
available form, 1 or, more often, by reading to the class.
1 Such lea flets are published by Houghton, Miffiin & Co.
Maynard's
English Cl assic Series includ es Motley's "Peter the Great," Prescott's

127

"Conquest of Mexico," and their Historical Classical Readings parts of
Parkman, Irving, Parton, etc. Some of the Old South Leaflets will serve,
and so will volumes of Macmillan's Historical Readings for Schools.

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Knights, of Richard and his Crusaders, of Joan of Arc,
of Puritan and Pilgrim, of Washington and the brave
men who won American freedom. These we should
like to make dominant in our course, so far as we can
get them in appropriate literary form. Along with
them will go the lesser epics of minor races and periods
that have an indispensable function to play in our
course. Without considering what may be ultimately
possible in the coming time when the fast accumulating
stories of epic legend from sources Oriental, Scandinavian, Finnish, Russian, Irish, Welsh, and what not, may
be unlocked for our use- l~t us see, in a general way
of course, what may be elaborated so far as this epic
interest is concerned. The other factors we can con-

Inchcape Rock," "Casabianca," "Lucy Gray," "The
Wreck of the Hesperus," - he will have broken the
bounds of historic succession and the fences that separate ancient and modern, past and present, real and
imaginary, and will be ready in the Grammar Grades
for shorter epics like " Miles Standish," and some of
Longfellow's "Tales of a Wayside Inn," "The Lays of
Ancient Rome," and, later on, the great ballad-epics
of our modern Homer, Sir Walter Scott, Arnold's
"Sohrab and Rustum," parts of Homer (in translation);
while in prose he will advance to Hawthorne's stories,
("The Gray Champion" and stories of the simpler,
sunnier, objective kind) to Washington Irving, Cooper,
Scott, Kingsley, Dana, Dumas, and so on. Some courses
of study include the King Arthur stories in the form of
selections from Tennyson's "Idylls of the King." We
should not go so far. The story might be read in
Lanier's "Boys' King Arthur," or some other version;
but "The Idylls of the King" should be one of the
most impressive and fruitful studies in the High School
course; and we would not break the force of the
impression by an early study of some parts of the
poem in the Elementary School. As developed by
Tennyson, the story is especially suitable for the adoles-

128

sider later.
We may remind ourselves that already, in the Primary
Grades, the child will probably have become acquainted
with the epic cycles of Jack o' the Beanstalk and other
nursery heroes, and with the stories of Hercules, Jason
and Ulysses, Hiawatha, Siegfried, Baldur, and other
heroes of classic, Indian, Teutonic, and Norse legend.
He will, in the Fourth Grade or Fifth Grade, perhaps, have
read of these and other classic heroes in such books as
commonly find place there : Kingsley's " Greek Heroes,"
Hawthorne's "Wonder Book," Lamb's" Adventures of
Ulysses," Keary's "Heroes of Asgard," etc. At the
same time, in stories like Ruskin's "King of the Golden
River," and in short poems of the ballad order, - "The

129

cent period.
And here we may interpose that we would rule out
these three classes of works : ( 1) Whatever is touched
with the more conscious, reflective sentiment of adult
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;ove (e.g. in "Enoch Arden" and in "Idylls of the
King"); (2) whatever is bathed in an atmosphere
of settled gloom - many of Hawthorne's stories; and
(3) whatever leads into the more solemn and darker
mysteries of life. We have our doubts, for example,
about Dickens' "Christmas Carol," unless read lightly,
with some omissions, and with emphasis upon the jovial
Christmas episodes. If the work is to be studied carefully as a whole, with its interplay of high sunlight and
deep shadows, we should defer it to the second or third
year of the High School. We are not concerned here
with what children may be interested in, but what they
ought, for their health's sake, to be interested in. The
proper question, concerning each work of possible fitness, is: At what age will children get most out of the
whole of it? - not, When will they get something out
of parts of it ?
It is quite unnecessary to use any dubious material. The higher we advance, the more perplexing is
the wealth of available masterpieces. We ought to
draw more freely than we do on ballad literature and
the great stores of the world's epics. Not only do we
fail to draw upon plentiful modern balladry, but we
make all too little use of the anonymous folk-balladry
that has been available since Child and others mined
in this rich quarry. From Allingham's "Book of Ballads " (Golden Treasury Series), and from Professor
Gummere's selections in his Volume of Ballad Litera·

READING IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

131

hire (Athenreum Press Series), from the collections of
Border Ballads and Jacobite Ballads in the " Canterbury
Poets" and other accessible sources, many pieces might
be gleaned, - pieces akin to the ballads of " Sir Patrick
Spens " and "Kinmont Willie" and "Adam o' Gordon "
'
which happily have begun to appear in our school
collections along with some of the Robin Hood ballads
and modern poems like Rossetti's "White Ship." Here
the "Boys' Percy " will be of some service; and so, in
this connection, be it said, will such monuments of
heroic narrative in prose as the "Boys' Froissart" and
"Boys' Mabinogion" in the same series (Scribners').
There is now a "Children's Froissart" (Appleton), of
which some use might be made in the higher grades.
Gradually, it is to be hoped, we shall accumulate a
recognized body of ballads which every schoolboy
ought to know. There is such a thing in the "old
countries." In England e.g. there is such a commort
stock-in-trade, - poems, recited over and over again
on "speech days" and other public occasions, which
most lads have learned before they leave Grammar
School,-" The Burial of Sir John Moore" (first
among these great short poems), "Hohenlinden," "Loss
of the Royal George," "Alexander Selkirk," "The
Destruction of Sennacherib," "The Mariners of England," "The Armada," "Lord Ullin's Daughter," "The
Pleasant Isle of Aves," "The Revenge," and such like.
Our own American poets have, of course, given us

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

READING IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

many that will enlarge the English list. What we
need is a standard collection of them all, - something rather more catholic and inclusive than either
Henley's "Lyra Heroica" or Miss Repplier's "Book
of Famous Verse," Allingham's "Ballad Book," or
Montgomery's "Heroic Ballads"; some collection less
scattered than the "Heart of Oak" and other good

of the greater portion of the Psalms and Proverbs of
the Old Testament.

132

series of Readers provide.
As for the abounding and increasing wealth of epic
material to which we have alluded, we would add another word or two. The time is coming, we hope,
when parts of the Bible will be used freely; when
the child will know by first-hand reading the stories
of Abraham and Isaac, Joseph and Pharaoh, David and
Goliath, and many others. Of many, many thousands of our public school children it is true that if
they do not come to know these parts of the Bible in
school, they will never know them. 1 An influence of
incalculable worth in the formation of our speech disappears with the decline of the old-time familiarity
with the Bible. The present writer can speak feelingly of the value of the practice that obtained in the
schools of his childhood, of opening and closing each
school session with the reading, a verse by each pupil,
1 Every teacher should know Matthew Arnold's plea for such literary
study of the Bible in his Preface to his Bible Reading for Schools, "The
Prophecy of Israel's Restorati on," as well as Professor Moulton's books
on the Literarv Study of the Bible.

133

Much might be said in relation to the better appropriation through English literature of that second
factor in the American child's spiritual heritage, the
treasures of Greek and Roman story and song, thought
and imagination. There is better work to be done
here with a view to making the High School student
feel more at home in the classic-romantic world of
Chaucer and Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare, Tennyson,
Longfellow, when he reaches it. A careful perusal of
G~yley's "Classic · Myths in English Literature" will
show what measureless riches we may dra\v upon in
order to repossess the young of that ancient world
that must be known before one can use freely the
works of the great writers we have named. Professor
Gayley's admirable book covers Norse and Teutonic
as well as classic mythology, - those other main sources
to which English and German speaking people are
carried back by mythological and legendary survivals
in our days of the week, festivals like Yuletide, names
of places, etc. We can do no more than cast a
glance at a field which the narrative poems and the
stories of William Morris and others have opened up.
We do feel impelled, however, by considerations ethical as well as cesthetic, to suggest- especially with
so considerable an Irish element in our population that we shall be more alert to weave into our web

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of legend a strand of Celtic mythology and lore. We
are only beginning to realize how heavily we are
indebted to Celtdom (not only through Arthurian
romance, but also through medireval romance and fairylore generally); 1 and, as Arnold showed us in his
"Study of Celtic Literature," what a saving grace of
style comes from Celtic sources. Of how much of
charm and force, in its lofty ideals of womanhood and
knightly valor this Celtic world is full, Renan's enthusiastic essay on "The Poetry of the Celtic Races"
(to be found in English in the volume of Renan's
shorter writings in Scott's " Camelot Classics") will
bring home to us. It is difficult . at present to obtain
materials that are at all popularly available. The
Mabinogion, in which we have the truest expression
of Celtic genius, is to be drawn upon with some difficulty ; but in the " Boys' Mabinogion," before mentioned, we have a valuable compilation from it that
stands handy for the teacher's use. Joyce's Celtic
Romances, S. C. Hall's Irish Legends, and Curtin's
volumes, especially his "Hero Tales of Ireland," and,
for fairy-lore, Croker's "Fairy Legends," will be found
valuable ; also a certain number of poems, such as
Arnold's "St. Brandan" and Tennyson's "Voyage of
Mreldune," which enshrine some of the legends. A few
poems from Sharp's "Lyra Celtica" will also be found
appropriate for school use.
1 "The

Europe."

source," Renan says, "of nearly all the romantic creations of

READING IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

135

We will not force this plea for the use of Celtic
material at the risk of ranging ourselves with certain
faddists of the so-called " Celtic Renascence." Our
own enthusiasm is tempered by the knowledge that very
little of the store of accessible Celtic story and legend
can be used in its original form. Too many of the
stories are singularly weak in construction - fail in
unity, climax, coherence; ramble on and on, with many
digressions and irrelevancies. However, the fineness,
distinction, and charm of the Celtic spirit we need so
much of, to season our Saxon and Teutonic bluffness
'
that we cannot help wishing that Ireland and Wales,
Brittany and Gaelic Scotland, should have a little part
with Hellas and the North in our world of legend. I
To some teachers we may seem to be indulging in
a too ambitious scheme, and may bring down upon us a
charge of inconsistency, after what we have said against
1 Here are a few sentences from Renan to stimulate interest in Celtic literature on the score of its ethical quality: "There are none of
those frightful vengeances which fill th e 'Edda ' and the 'Niebelungen.'
Compare the Teutonic with the Gaelic hero, - Beowulf with Peredur, for
example, -what a difference there is! In one all the horror of disgusting and blood-imbrued barbarism, the drunkenness of carnage, the disinterested taste, if I may say so, for destruction and death; in the other a ·
profound sense of justice, a great height of personal pride, it is true, but
also a great capacity for devotion, an exquisite loyalty. The Cymric hero,
even in his wildest flights, seems possessed by habits of kindn ess and a
warm sympathy with the weak. . . . Compare Guinevere or Ise ult with
those Scandinavian furies Gudrun and Chrimhilde, and you will avow that
woman, su ch as chivalry conceived her, is a creation neither classical nor
Christian nor Teutonic, but in reality Celtic."

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

vaulting ambitions in literary work. It is not nearly so
ambitious as many schemes actua1ly followed in some
of our school systems. L et us rem embE:r that we are
to provide four years' work. Let us remember, too,
that not a little literature, biographical, historical,
commemorative, is learned or becomes familiar in
connection with school celebrations and festivals, and
the work in music, and history, science, and geography.
It is proper that the poems and prose eulogies and
elegies which recall the fame of our great national
heroes, leaders, and martyrs, and of great pa tron saints
like St. George, St. Patrick, St. Valentine, and St. Crispin, should cluster naturally around their names in association with anniversary exercises; that poems and
sketches celebrating the seasons, and their birds and
flowers, should link themselves with seasonal work in
science, and with the celebrations and nature-festivals
of Easter, Lady D ay, May Day, Midsummer, Thanksgiving and H arvest Home (we might add the English
Michaelmas and St. Martin's Day), Christmas and Yuletide, Candlem as, and others. Where there is daily
assembly, there is no reason why all these beautiful old
moribund feast days, still printed in our calendars,
should not receive some recognition. When the work
of preparation for them is distributed among the
classes, the demand on time and energy is slight.
In fact , the more we can connect Literature with life
in this way, the more we can make Literature seem a

READING IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

natural outgrowth of experience and history and aspira~ion ; the more we can get children to feel that the
great festal days of the race are the outg rowth of such
feelings of gladness and sorrow and regret, as they
themselves may be supposed to experience at such
times - whether recalling th e great dead who toiled for
their benefit, or Nature's wonderful changes, -why, the
more potent and natural and significant a thing will Literature become, and the more inevitably also will the
poems and pieces intertwined with popular celebrations
and festivals, become thin g s of familiar lyric beauty. Literature must be less posingly Literature than it is, less
bookish and task-given than it is, before it can become
a vital force in the lives of people, and of young people
especially. We do not think of the na ti onal anth em as
literary (which is fortunate, because it will not stand a
literary test), nor "Marchin g thro' Georgia," and other
popular national songs; nor do we so think even of
well-known hymns that have su ch pa triotic and commemorative value as Eme rson's noble" Concord Hymn ."
And all such productions th at voice the mass-fee lin g s,
the communal instincts of penpl es, - Scott's "Breath es
there a Man;'' Burns's "A l\1 an 's a Man," L owell's
"Fatherland" and "Present Crisis," - preserve their
vitality as expressions of emotions th at sway the common h eart of man lettered an d unl ettered.
W e have passed in our last pa ragraph, it will be
observed, from the question of the kind of Literature

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to be studied to the question of how much. Upon
our answer to that, the nature of our selections will
partly depend. The first factors to be considered are
the length of the masterpieces selected, and the rate of
speed at which we shall read them. The principle of
progression that has been governing our course, let us
remember, is from the simple to the complex, from the
shorter to the longer whole or unit of comprehension.
In Literature, therefore, while the short poem and prose
unit - the fable, story, speech - will have permanent
place beside the large literary wholes, we shall be working to develop the power of steady and sustained interest in the lengthier forms of Literature, passing from
shorter epic to longer, from short story to novel ; from
short dramatic ballad to the Shakespearean play.
There is no higher discipline for the character, and no
more effective literary training than this one of getting
the mind to grip, with concentrated attention and with
one synthesizing act of mastery, the many parts of
a multiform whole of imagination, exposition, or
argument.
But even here it is so easy to go astray. An illustration will serve.
Acting on the sound principle
that literary wholes of increasing length should be
studied in the Grammar Grades, Scott's "Lady of the
Lake" was assigned in a certain instance, we remember,
to the highest grade. Graduation and subsequent
admission to the High School were to depend upon

READING IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

139

passing a successful examination upon the poem. So
it had to be thoroughly ·studied; the whole term was
to be devoted to it, with the prod of that fateful
examination at the end. What sort of examination
was it? One that assumed an almost word for word
acquaintance with the poem, - its difficult words, allusions, constructions, and all ; an examination that was
almost exclusively a grammatical test and had no
literary quality. What could be more mistaken and
deadening? What could be more carefully devised to
generate disgust - life-long disgust - with Literature?
. No wonder that, in view of the results required, the
recommendations made to the poor teachers (whose
inevitable first duty is to "pass" a high percentage
of pupils) ,should run thus: The first reading is to be
accomplished in ten lessons, and if not completed then,
to be finished at home ; the second more careful
reading is to be for plot, character, analysis, etc., and
is to take twenty lessons ; the third is to occupy
the rest of the term (fifty lessons or more), and is
to deal with " minutire," and to cover the memorizing
of selected passages, and a biography of the author.
We know by experience what to expect from the
victims of this purgatory, this worrying and reworrying, this mangling and remangling of a poem written
by the innocent "Wizard of the North " to delight
the souls of young and old. We recall the story of
the boy who, to the question, "What do you know

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

READING IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

of Julius Cresar ? " answered, " He wrote a difficult and
boresome book for teaching Latin; " and we should
forgive any of the aforesaid victims for entertaining
of Scott the conception of a misguided rhymester who
wrote poems to be used for public school examina-

allusions, etc. (those precious "minutire ") is needed
in order that a work may be understood, then it
is mischosen for the grade. If it is used (save in the
most incidental way) to help the pupils with their gram- ·
mar, spelling, geography, it is misused, outraged. We
would not exclude altogether laborious surgery upon
selections; but for decency's sake we would have it conducted upon the more bloodless things, or in those cases
in which the· wounds will heal quickly and leave little
scar. We must not "murder to dissect," nor must
<Ne vivisect to paltry purpose.
We should be less likely to offend in these ways
if only we would bear in mind the distinctions drawn
.by Bacon in the familiar passage : " Some books are
to be tasted, others to be · swallowed, and some few to
be chewed and digested : that is, some books are to
be read only in parts; others to be read, but not
curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with
diligence and attention." We must make these discriminations more and more carefully as we advance
in our school course. We must include these various
kinds of books in our course, and call for the exercise of these different capacities in our pupils: the
power to taste of some books, swallow others, and
chew and digest others ; the power either to dip and
skim, or to read straight ahe4d; or, at need, to
wrestle, delve, toil indefatigably. So we shall read
sometimes (a)· tasteable books, like "Alice in Wonder-

tions.
Surely, all this is too patently absurd and outrageous to need any commentary of condemnation.
We are back in the dark days when "Paradise
Lost " was put through the parsing mill in canto
strips. We cite this quite recent case to point a
warning against acting on the principle that the time
to be spent on a work is to be proportioned to the
length of the work ; or that the longer works, toward
which we advance in the upper Grammar Grades,
are to be studied on the same microscopic terms
as shorter ones. Deferring our remarks on method to
our next chapter, and keeping in view now only
one point as to how much we shall read, as it depends upon the time consumed by the lengthier
works, we insist that it is better to avoid these
lengthy works altogether than to spend so much time
on them - even supposin1 it were wisely spent instead
of foolishly, as in the case we have cited. There must
be variety in the work of a term; and the different
masterpieces must be read with a sole view to their distinctly literary values, and to promote literary insight
and delight. If much labor on words, constructions,

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

land," - unless that book is to be reserved for the
ingle nook, as we are disposed to reserve it; or
Irving's "Sketch Book," or "Alhambra," or "Knickerbocker's New York," or the "Boys' King Arthur";
and ( b) read-to-the-finish books like " Ivanhoe " or
"The Talisman" or "Westward Ho I" or "The Pied
Piper" or "Lady of the Lake"; and (c) read-carefully-every-word books, like some of the Wayside Inn
Stories ("King Robert of Sicily," e.g.), "Snowbound,"
"The Great Stone Face," Gray's "Elegy," "Deserted
Village." If we think rather of the length of the
works, we shall, speaking in a rough general way,
read (a) our long novels and poems rapidly for plot and
character and historical bearing; (b) certain weightier
short stories and shorter epics, essays, and nature
sketches more carefully for structure and form, and
closer character study; (c) certain short poems and
sketches and speeches still more vigilantly for word
values and imagery, for finer rhythms and word-music,
as well as for severer discipline of the mind, - difficult
thought-conquests, and the development of scholarly
habits of reflection and patient, dogged exploration. In
short, the higher we go, the more shall we observe the
proper distinction drawn in the college entrance requirements between books to be studied and books to be read.
So that, along the line of these considerations, a
way of classifyin g our reading material for the
t Grammar Grades will be this : -

READING IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

143

A. Material m Reader -of which there should
be one or more sets kept for class use, and distributed
for such purpose only - for sight reading, to cultivate
agility of mind, rapid seizure of thought, and clear, intelligent rendering. These will be pieces of minor importance, yet worth knowing ; a single reading of
which, a "touch-and-go " acquaintance with which, will
suffice.
B . Other more difficult selections from the Reader
to be read aloud, as a test of power of comprehension
and emotional responsiveness, after a preliminary silent
reading and careful consideration . These will be pieces
to which more importance attaches.
C. Short poems or pieces to be read at home, silently
or aloud (practice-reading aloud at home should sometimes be asked for), which have called for some research and annotation, or have had to be memorized.
These will be the easier ballads and short narrative
poems and pieces used for comparative purposes.
For example, the class has in its hands "The Tales
of a Wayside Inn." It has been studying carefully
and (relatively to its own capacities for such work)
exhaustively "King Robert of Sicily." The teacher
will assign for more cursory, but still adequate, mastery with some definite aim, "The Bell of Atri," or
"The Birds of Killingworth." Or, suppose that thorough work has been done on "Paul R evere's Ride."
The teacher hands to the class for rapid comparative

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

study a copy of Browning's "Ride from Ghent to Aix."
These pieces become part of a recognized school repertoire, for frequent reference and recall.
D . A few longer works - novels, or some of Scott's
narrative poems (one each term, perhaps), that are to
be read at home in a given time, and then discussed
in class.
E . The works, short and moderately long, that
form the "core" of the course, and receive careful
treatment or thorough "study" in the class.
We have not included here the works read to the
class by the teacher, which may be a little above the
average reach of the class, the teacher aiding the interpretation. These may include selections from current
literature, and pieces whkh the pupils are not likely to
read themselves.
We close this long chapter by trying once again
to counteract any impression which its necessarily
concentrated treatment of a large subject may tend
to produce, that, asseverations to the contrary notwithstanding, we are expecting too much. To begin
with, we lay it down that ( 1) interest and delight
must accompany all the work done in literature; and
(2) that it shall be done with an air of happy and
dignified leisure. We simply ask that opportunities
for literary culture in the broadest sense, which we
now fritter away, shall be wisely and economically
utilized. For example, a great deal o{ the purely lyric

1

poetry with which the child should be familiarized,
should come to him through song, - songs sung by
the school in daily assembly; songs sung in his
class room (related more specially to the work of
the class) once or twice a day. A lyric impulse
proper to childhood should overflow all the school
work, and should be continually bursting into expres·
sion with something of spontaneous power.
It
should be as natural to take two or three minutes
between recitations for a hearty song, as for recess
and calisthenics. These songs will divide broadly into
the Patriotic and the Humanitarian; (I) songs selected
for the numerous commemorations of great men
and events already alluded to; and (2) the nature
songs used especially for nature festivals and, ordinarily, to keep march with the seasons (some of these
to be sung by each class to the rest of the school).
Then there will be, besides this body of school and
class songs, poems and prose selections recited at the
commemorations and daily assemblies (contributions
that are systematically provided by the classes in
rotation). And for each class there will be the daily
motto or proverb, couplet or question, class-song and
play-song (singing games), recited in c horns.
What a life-abiding repertoire of songs and noble
declamatory memorial verse our children might accumulate in this way alone! But we shall have to be much
more careful in making our selections.
vVe must
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scrupulously stand by the best, and resolve to repeat
these year by year. We are often very slack in our
choosing, and we are corrupted by a passion for changing our materials and programmes continually. The
"novel" programmes of unmitigated trash for Washington's Birthday and .other occasions published in our
educational journals tell a depressing story. We ought
gradually to get together a permanent collection for
every school, and depose an old favorite from this
collection only when we find a new one that is indubitably better. 1
For the rest, supposing that in our leisurely way we
read one classic novel a year (sometimes with a good
class we might manage one a term - two a year), two
moderately long narrative poems or epics, four short
stories, four good ballads, six short prose selections
(naturc"skctchcs by Burroughs, Warner, etc., and parts
of speeches), we shall graduate pupils who have
accumulated in their four (or, counting the Primary
Grade, eight) years, a precious treasure of no mean
extent. And if our course is a unit, if every teacher
knows definitely the heritage that each pupil brings
with him, keeps reviving and recalling the masterpieces already studied for comparative and illustrative
purposes, then these accumulations will last, and will
root themselves deeper and deeper in the soil of

The price to be paid for these results is a proper
systematization of the course of study, -which means
chiefly, close cooperation and frequent consultation
among the teachers of a school, the accomplishment of
certain definite results in each grade, and the perpetual
revitalization of these results as the course proceeds.
We seem to hear a swelling murmur of demands
from the teachers, who want very definite points and
recommendations, for answers to all sorts of questions
untouched here, especially as to the works to be
selected for each grade. We must refer to what we
said in Chapter VII on this head. The grading of many
selections must depend - we said there - upon the
method of treatment. "The Ancient Mariner," e.g.,
may be taken at any point between the fifth and
the twelfth school year. It may be taken early and
be repeated with advantage in the High School, to the
delight of the maturer students, by whom its deeper
meanings and richer music may now be appreciated.
Weight should be given first of all to ethical considerations, - the ethical needs of the child. So far as purely
literary considerations are concerned, the place of a
masterpiece may be largely determined by the exigencies of the course of study. Purely historical considerations may control the introduction of poems like
Longfellow's "Dutch Puritan," or Stedman's "Peter
Stuyvesant," Tennyson's "Revenge" (which may take
along with it Browning's " H erve Riel," for compara:

character.
1

On this head, see a nte, pp. 4g--50.

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tive values), or "Paul Revere's Ride." While many
varying circumstances, at which we have glanced,
quality of class, etc., must decide as to pieces that will
not "correlate" - Gray's " Elegy," to cite a case.
Where shall we put that? Our answer would be,
Generally in the High School (where, as a matter of
fact, it has proved a great favorite), because its grave,
sombre elegiac note should not sound for the young
child.
We have only to add that it is American writers and
American themes that should predominate in the
Grammar Grades, - love of country, love of its great
men and women, love of its landscapes, its creatures
and birds and flowers; love intense for its freedom and
broad humanity. And yet not the Americanism that
is vaunting and short-sighted - "a narrow and parochial Americanism."
The phrase is Mr. Horace
Scudder's, whose sentiments we echo. He very finely
says that if we select "the inspiriting, noble, luminous,
and large-hearted American literature " - which should
have the place of honor in our schools - it will
check "a vulgar pride in country, and help the young
to see humanity from the heights on which the masters
of song have dwelt." We must not forget, as he goes
on to remind us, that while "in the order of nature, the
youth must be a citizen of his own country before he
can become naturalized in the world, . . . yet in the
same order there is an incipient, prophetic humanism

before there is a conscious nationalism, and this earlier
stage of the mind requires food of its own." 1 We
should say that this earlier stage of the mind should be
continued, and that we must see to it, therefore, that our
children draw unceasingly upon that larger worldliterature that will help to make their large-hearted
nationalism consonant with a still larger-hearted human·

149

ism.
1 "Literature in School," pp. 2g-30.

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CHAPTER X
READING IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

II.

(Continued)

METHODS OF TREATMENT

less important than what we read-to reecho
a point already enforced- is how we read it. We
would say to the teacher, chafing under official prescription as to reading books, "Unless your methods
of treatment arc seriously crippled (as they were by
the results required in the aforesaid study of the
'Lady of the Lake'), don't worry and fret. It is
hard lines, we admit, if your Superintendent or Principal should misclassify as literature a book like
'Black Beauty,' or 'Ten Boys,' that has its serviceable place in another field; but short of such
galling misfortunes, there need be no discomfiture."
To make our point here, we shall have recourse once
more to illustration. We take as text a recently published article in our leading educational review that
protests against the mechanism of prescription in High
School work. We have only a partial sympathy, we
confess, with this protest. The really deadly and deadening factor in our work is less here than in the
teacher's methods of treatment, - the lack of vitality,
FAR

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sincerity, and sanity in her work. "The teachers of
English," says the article, "should be allowed great
liberty of programme, not pestered by any principle (!)
or principal saying, 'This book shalt thou begin on
such a day, for all others are doing the same,' and
'thus far shalt thou go, for so saith the Superintendent and the Committee of Ten.'"
Unless one can
look upon such restrictions as secondary matters, and
give the first, commanding place in one's thoughts to
the major consideration, - how best to redeem the
time, little or much, now or then, allotted for the
reading of this or that book (asking only that it shall
be good literature), - one is still in the 'prentice stage
of the craft. The article is a warning on this head.
What grievance is voiced in it? This : that the teacher,
forced to read four books of Pope's "Iliad" or two
of "Paradise Lost," and no more, is made to sin
against common sense.
Why? Why not be glad
of the chance to read so much ? There need be
no difficulty in sketching in a sufficient outline of the
whole of which these are parts, to give them their setting, and in leaving an appetite for the missing parts.
It is the sentences that follow, however, that carry us
to the climax and point our moral : "Pupils should
sweep on to enjoy, not only the sublimity of style
and the grandeur of thought, but also the unconscious humor in which solemn John Milton deals.
Consider Eve's domestic solicitude in preparing a

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

READING IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

good lunch for the angel Gabriel ! When Milton
remarks as an entrle, 'No fear lest dinner cool,' the
pupil looks forward to the patent dinner pail and the
modern cook stove." Fortunate restriction, after all,
we say, that stood in the way of this "funny," flippant
treatment of the great epic, and of John Milton as a
purveyor of humor, served up as an entree at a
meal. No restrictions could work so great a misfortune as such sins against sound judgment and good
taste in aim and method. We have, most of us, to
work under restrictions of one kind or another; and
happily so ; for the master in the art of teaching, no
less than in other arts, is he who sees in limitations a condition of success, and knows how to convert them into gain. But limitations must be rightly
apprehended ; it is no real limitation to be compelled
to eschew levity in dealing with "Paradise Lost," to
refrain from associa ting with the angel Gabriel and that
repast in Eden thoughts of the modern dinner pail
and cook stove. Good taste, not official requirement,
imposes that.

business is to treat the work so as to enable the student to feel and appreciate the elevation, the sublimity, the high seriousness of the poem, the magnificent
pomp, the classic, "grand style" of the verse. For
humor and the serio-comic, better seek a work of a
different geni1s.
First of all, therefore, she must
study carefully the nature and characteristics of the

From this instance we see emerging a foremost
principle that should guide the teacher m deciding
what her method of treatment of any given work
should be. What, let her ask, is the particular kind
of effect the work is evidently fitted to produce, the
kind of pleasure it is to communicate? In the case
of Milton's epic, to keep to our examples, the teacher's

153

work.
Her next consideration will be the limits within
which these peculiar excellenc es of the work can
be communicated to her pupils, the actual pupils of
her present grade.
How broad or how restricted
must the treatment be?
What shall be pressed,
what touched lightly, what ignored altogether ?
So, also, looking at her class, and to the special
qualities - positive virtues and negative incapacities relative culture, ignorance, prosiness, fineness, etc.,
she must decide upon the best mode of attack, and
the lines of the presentation. Some teachers have
one settled method of treatment for every kind of
work, looking to a settled type of student. We think
there should be a more delicate discrimination. The
teacher should be sensitive to the mass-individuality
Her first work with a class will be
of her class.
tentative, with the view of getting " the feel " of that
individuality - the governing proclivities, tastes, ambitions, points of view, and responsiveness of the students.
Again and again we have had to make a complete

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tactical change in our plans - sometimes a sudden
change, as certain weaknesses or excellences came un-

English work, the parent of confusion and superficiality. But let us be sure what we mean by definiteness
and indefiniteness. An aim may be definitely indefinite;
that is, the teacher may well and safely determine to
read to or with her class a certain short story or poem
for the sake of an untroubled enjoyment of the situation or of the dramatic or humorous dialogue or what
not, trusting, may be, to a little informal conversation
after the reading to bring out any salient point. Her
definitely indefinite purpose, steadily and swiftly pursued, has been, we will suppose, to enrich her pupils'
repertoire with one or more beautifully conceived characters or episodes that shall work in silent influence
upon the character, and render ear and imagination
more sensitive to further impressions. By and by there
may be a reference to the story for comparative purposes; a knowledge of it may be assumed ; its characters are henceforth familiar to the class, where the
memory of them will be kept alive.
Let us suppose, e.g., that the poem is Browning's
"Incident of the French Camp." The poem is one for
dramatic imagination and presentation. The treatment
aims at vividness ; it will be brief. A good vocal rendering by the teacher will clear up all difficulties. It
matters little where Ratisbon is; attention is focussed
on the speaker, and the two figures, Napoleon and the
boy; Ratisbon is smoke-covered in the distance.
"You know we French stormed Ratisbon " - the

expectedly into view.
So that our methods will have to be fixed and yet
flexible. We must have general plans of treatment;
and yet these must always be regarded as subject to
revision and as needing adaptation according to the
class we are teaching. There are to be six lessons on
this work; ten on that.
Let the scope of these
and of each of them be definitely marked out.
There is no mechanism in this precision and planning. It is a condition of the highest kind of success.
It is all in the interest of the spirit that giveth life.
"Ah ! " we heard a young painter exclaim in the presence of a lovely piece of work by an elder, "have you
ever seen him at it? See! he just daubs a thumbful of
paint on the canvas and works with it, plays with it, until
it just sings." And that is what we are after in our craft
too: to take just a few lines or many of a master, and
thumb them and lip them until they" sing," and sing
on, and recurringly sing. But to make either a great
canvas or a great poem so sing, involves much dainty,
bold, deliberative, patient work. We must plan, and yet
the fire of feeling and admiration must survive and
burn through our planning.
But we insist on the
definiteness of plan; on the elaboration that is itself
true artistry.
Indefiniteness of aim is one of the worst pitfalls in

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

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lines indicate the general character and position of
the speaker: a veteran officer of Napoleon's Guard is
telling the story to some fellow campaigners, perhaps
conning old times at a convivial gathering. He stands
before the fireplace where he can suggest the figure of
le pet£t Glm!ral,- "with neck out-thrust," etc. There
will be no trouble about the ellipses - "Just as perhaps
he mused, my plans that soar, " and others that
follow. All such difficulties vanish in the teacher's
reading, - her voice and gesture. A picture of N apoleon-Orchardson's "On Board the Bellerophon"-will
aid.
Five minutes' preparatory reading and conversation:
the poem is memorized, and next day recited ; and
henceforth it is one of the stock pieces of the class.
So with the same poet's " How they brought the
Good News from Ghent to Aix," a poem of the same
genre j where, however, the music of the galloping movement needs due emphasis. The scene once vividly
gripped by the dramatic imagination, the details will
take care of themselves. The poem sinks into the
memory as a little drama.
The class, once in touch with either of these, will
delight in and easily master others of the same kind.
Bret Harte's "Chiquita" will go with the first; Scott's
" Lochinvar " with the second.
From the most indefinite of definite aims to the most
complexly definite, we pass through many possible

grades of detailed treatment. How detailed we should
be, will depend on several considerations : the principal
of these we have already stated, and we now go on to
enforce by illustration. We must be careful, we have
said, not to do any violence to a work by asking it to
yield a different sort of pleasure, or illustrate a different
kind of excellence from that dominant one which it was
designed by its author to yield; nor must we try to use a
work for any and every kind of exercise. Tennyson's
poems on the "Sleeping Beauty," for instance, have a
certain story interest which might be utilized; but they
are principally and essentially descriptive and pictorial;
and for such excellence will be used by the good
teacher when her aims lie in that direction. Hawthorne's " Great Stone Face" or "Great Carbuncle"
will not be taken for the plot interest, but rather as
character studies, in which a certain idea is worked out
as in a parable or allegory. Or again, we should not
think, in studying Tennyson's "Revenge," of using it
as an example of versification or for word-study: it is
too difficult. Our attention concentrates on its dramatic interest and scenic background.
In showing the possibilities of treatment of Scott's
"Lay of Rosabelle," in his admirable Introduction to
his "Longer English Poems" Professor Hales enumerates no less than twelve ways in which the poem may
be considered and handled; it may be I, Memorized;
2, Recited; 3, Studied as a story in regard to structure;

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

READING IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

4, Paraphrased or outlined; 5, Its historical setting and

cause the story is so condensed, it is not easy to master.

allusions (manners and customs) mastered; 6, Prosody
mastered ; 7, Its author, or signs of his character and

The writer has tried it, as a first test in the power of

connections, considered ; 8, Grammar (accidence and
syntax) cleared up; 9, Words studied as to derivation
and history; 10, Figures grasped (metaphors expanded,
etc.) ; 1 1, Poem criticised as to literary qualities (contrasts, speed, etc.); and, I 2, After review of it, recitation in improved fashion, showing the gains in
comprehension and appreciation that have accrued by

classes and an adult evening class. He read it twice,
wrote the proper names and difficult words on the blackboard, and made a few necessary explanations. He
found that few of the class had been able either to tell

reproduction of narrative, on entering High School

the study.
Now such elaborate treatment might be justified

or to grasp the story. But then these students had never
had any training in this direction in the Grammar
School! Again, the diction is difficult, and so are some
of the allusions. The versification is irregular, and can
profitably be studied only by a class that is at ease in

in a High School class, although as a rule it is undesirable to maul short poems so unmercifully. Few

regular measures. These considerations will mark it
out as unsuitable for any grarle lowe r than the Seventh,

poe ms so s h ort as th is, a rc so ric h in oppo rtunities. It
is ric h en ou g h to lend itself to all th ese ends, if our class

or perhaps t he Eighth , ancl then only ''hen there h as
b een prelimin:iry tr:iining in story -telling ;iml Ycrsifica-

is equal to the work. But how foolish it would be to
make this a uniform method of treatment. In the first

tion . Of course something may be made out of it in
the lower grades ; but the labor of explanation will be
too great, tending to mar the beauty and deaden the
appeal of the poem. Professor Hales' treatment, therefore, will be much too exhaustive for Grammar Grade

place, as Professor Hales warns us, exhaustive treatment is not our ideal: appropriate emphasis is what
we must get. Better poems may be found to bring
into prominence some of the points enumerated. For
example, the poem is not rich in figures; and it is
too slight to hang a story of Scott's life upon. It commends itself chiefly as a masterpiece of condensed
narrative - a little drama in three acts. We shall
choose it, therefore, and use it, if we are required to do
so, as a study in story-structure and movement.

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purposes.
We have been speaking of the poem as a separate
work, taken out of its setting in th e " Lay of t he Last
Minstrel." Here we are aga in involved in a distinction .
If we take it as it comes in its place in the poem, it has
an incidental character, a certain indefiniteness of func-

tion to fulfil, that will lead us to treat it in its more

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general effect. It is a passing strain of music, intended to please largely by its musical character. The
teacher will aim to compass this effect by doing justice
to the sensuous charm of the poem, and by being as
sparing as possible of dissection.
And here, with the mention of the" Lay of the Last
Minstrel," comes the prompting to use it to illustrate
the manner in which we would have a long poem handled . We hold that one of Scott's long poems - this
one or the "Lady of the L ake," or "Marmion" should have an honored place in every Grammar
School course, and that the Seventh or Eighth Grade is
the grade for it. To our thinking, backed up by experience, the "Lay " has advantages over the other two
that outweigh the disadvantage of a less entertaining
plot. It is shorter, and has high literary qualities not
found in the other poems. We have never found it
"drag" ; and it interests girls.
Let us say that we should time the introduction of
th e poem for the psychological moment (which must
fluctuate with the quality of our classes) when the
boys and girls are ready for Scott, for a Scott enthusiasm - perhaps after wild oats have been sowed
with Optic, Alger, and ot her story-tellers. It is a
misfortune for a boy or girl not to have come under
Scott's whol esome spell , e ~ recb ll y :is most boys will ,
at som e moment, have been ready to obey his summons, -

u Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife;

160

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To all the sensual world proclaim
One crowded hour of glorious strife
Is worth an age without a name."

And so, when we have tried to work up to this desirable experience, we have taken one of the poems
and one of the novels ("Quentin Durward," chosen
also because of its comparative brevity) to accompany
or follow it, and have used them so as to subserve this
general purpose and lead our pupils into Scott-land,
there to dwell for a while. This aim will have a bearing upon our method of treatment. 1
We have now a Seventh or Eighth Grade in mind.
Let us assume that its members have already in the
Fourth, Fifth, or Sixth Grades learned to read with zest
and comprehension some long poems, - "The Bell of
Atri," "Hiawatha," "Paul Revere's Ride, " "Miles
Standish," "Sohrab and Rustum," and parts of
Homer. The teacher, approaching her task with all
· these data in mind, announces that to-morrow they will
begin a new poem by Sir Walter Scott ( Did they ever
1 E xp eriences with Scott's p oems and novels ev i de nt~ y differ.
In some
courses th e p oems an d novels are int rod uced early int o th e Grammar
Gra d es, e.g. se Icc t .ions f r 0 m th e " Lady of th e Lake" int o th e fou rth sch ool

year, as a t th e H orac e Mann ·Sch ool·, " Ivan hoe" and,, t. h e " T al isma n"
into the fifth year · whil e the same poem or th e " Lay 1s recn mm enrlerl
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• t h " ·<.; erhy Gayley and Brarll
ev in th eir valu able lit tl e honk , " 1•.n
g r• ~ h rn

ond ary Schools," for fi rst year, H igh School. We have tn erl, where ':'e
h ave found Scott virtu all y unkn own hy H igh Sch ool fr l";;hmrn, to give
him place ; but t he boy or girl of t welve ough t to be ripe for him .
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hear of him?), called the "Lay of the Last Minstrel.'
Then the significance of the title is explained ; and is
followed by an appetizing talk on Minstrelsy, connecting itself with what the children know about balladry
and balladists, the ancient bards, the Homeric rhapsodists; the story-tellers in verse and prose of all times
down to old "Uncle Remus," with his folk-lore and
legend. Such episodes as those about King Arthur
and Richard Cceur de Lion, given in the Introduction
to Percy's " Reliques," may be woven in, and of co~rse
there will be especial attention to the Border ballads
collected by Scott and others. The class is now expectantly ready for the reading by the teacher of the Introduction. This gives the opportunity for explanations as
to time and place of the action, and the circumstances
of knightly life in those days of love and war. The
locality will be rapidly studied on the map, and the
class made to feel at home with the most important of
the unfamiliar place-names.
Every teacher with an ear for the stirring martial
music of the first Canto, will be anxious to give it
its due weight and swing; and so she will plan for the
reading by herself, for the second lesson, of the best
part of Canto I. Meantime, the class may be asked
either to memorize the opening eighteen lines of the
Introduction; or to look up some of the difficult words
therein ; or to read the story of the poem in the prose
outlines prefixed to the Cantos.

The first five, or at most ten, minutes of th e second
recitation will be given to disposing of the task-work;
and then the class will follow the teacher (well for her
if she can draw all eyes from the books to herself)
through the ringing, tramping measures of the Canto.
What brave music!
What clinking of armor and
champing of steeds resound through it all! -

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"Nine and twenty knights of fame
Hung their shields in Branksome Hall."

Alack for the boy or girl whose heart does not beat
time to the tramp and tread of the numbers !
And then come the crucial stanzas which outline the
theme of the story, - vengeance and love ; with which
the teacher will h ave to deal skilfully. The lines are
so musical, so fluid (as in the dialogue between the
spirits) where they are not spirited, that progress ought
to be easy.
And then, for the third recitation, perhaps, we have
Deloraine's ride.
Or perhaps, better still, the students may be asked to read of this at home and to
follow the course of the journey on the map prefixed
to their text-book.
In the fourth recitation, after making sure that the
home task has been mastered, the teacher will continue
with the reading of Canto II, - the famous description
of Melrose Abbey (of which there may be a good picture, of course).
Let the description be lightly but
suggestively worked: it will not do to linger in it. Let

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care be taken also that there is a clear conception
of the story of Michael Scott, and of Deloraine's
errand to him, and - what is a little perplexing-the
meeting of Margaret and Henry of Cranstoun, with
the subsequent ill-fated encounter (in Canto III) of Deloraine and Cranstoun, and the capture of the magic
book by the dwarf. Nor should we fail to effect the
proper marking off of those stanzas (II, 29-30 and 35,
III, i-2) which recall the harper and his audience in

the spirit, and the changeful moods of the poem, -as
e.g. in Canto II, the uncanny greeting of Deloraine in
the priest's cell, the momentary change from it to th e
beauties of the cloister and the star-lit, dewy night ;
the monk's eerie story of the death of the wizard
Michael, when (as the line, so full of poetic quality,
has it) -

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the lady's bower.
The reading should go rapidly forward, - some of it
being done at home, the rest, for the present, by the
teacher. It is essentially a poem to be read, full of
music, of plentiful alliteration and onomatopreia, of
rich rhyme, and a rhythm that varies greatly as to
speed and resonance. The teacher must indeed know
how to invest it with something of a minstrel's musical
grace and strength. Meanwhile the class can be proceeding with the memorizing, or working upon allusions ; and, above all, the teacher must make sure, and
doubly sure, by asking for a summary of the story so
far as it has been developed, that the class firmly holds
the thread of the tale. But these things must be done
rapidly, so as to delay as little as possible the swift
first reading of the poem by the teacher (helped out
by some home reading of the parts that may be
slurred).
The teacher's best art will be required to communicate

" The banners waved without a blast ; "

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and the sudden shock of the death-like knell of the
bell; and then the change from the darkness to the
streaming light of the dawn on Cheviot's side, and
finally, - demanding a marked difference in manner, the early meeting of the lovers under the hawthorn
tree.
Canto I II also is full of variety, and there is in it
one striking contrast, - the little nocturne that follows
the bustle of the day's adventure (st. xxiv), full of
peace ; but a peace that is soon broken by the summoning blast of the warder's trumpet, which fills the courtyard with the hum of preparing warriors and the flash
of swinging torches and shaken spears.
Canto IV moves rapidly, interrupted, however, by
the story of how the Scots won Eskdale (which must be
treated parenthetically, and may even be skipped because it is so obviously a digression). So also does the
panoramic picture in the succeeding Canto (V) of
the gathering of the forces, and the threatening con·
flict, the challenge, the single combat, and the result

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Much of this may be read by the students at home.
Canto VI, with its famous opening, " Breath~s there
a man," - which will, of course, be memorized, - may
be read in parts; but the greater part of it likewise may

in the way of comprehension - will be cleared up. To
attempt to clear them all up would be a folly. Let
the teacher select those that are worth while, and do
not involve difficulties beyond the reach of the scholars.
The key-note of this part of the work must be interpretation; everything attempted is to be fo.r the sake of
mastering and enjoying the poem. The poem is on no
account to be used as an opportunity for drill in Grammar or Spelling or History.
The characters may be enumerated, briefly touched
off with a sort of play-bill conciseness thus: I. Lady Scott, of Buccleuch, who swears vengeance
upon the Kerrs for the murder of her husband,
Lord Walter.
2 . Margaret, her daughte r, in love with L ord Cranstoun, who had fought against her father's clan .
3. Her son and heir, captured and held as hostage by

166

be assigned for home reading.
The poem has now been read once, - eagerly, feelingly read, let us hope, - and has made its impression as
a whole. A good deal of the memorizing has been done
in th e course of the nine or ten recitations, or more.
This is a good half of the work. Now for some more
detailed work on ( 1) the story, ( 2) the characters, and (3)
the language. The story may be boldly outlined by the
pupils. It should be broken up in the light of the
leading idea of the poem; first, into its large divisions
and episodes, which in turn should be broken up into
sub-episodes. The outline should, by its form, show
clearly this subordination of the minor to the major
episodes. This will give opportunities for good oral
reproduction ; and it will be well to work in one or two
helpful written exercises, -e.g. on the character and
fortunes of the minstrel, bringing together the scattered
. portions which have reference to him.
Then will come the second reading by the pupils. It
will not be necessa ry to read every word. Select only
the important passages, filling in the gaps by summarizing and reproduction ; and as the poem is thus reviewed and re-read, many of the difficulties - those
constructions, allusions, and strange words that stand

the English, etc.
and then they may be discussed.
As for the study of the language and poetics of the
poem, attention may be drawn - always with a view
to the better enjoyment of the music of the verse - to
the variable effects in the triple and quadruple rhyme
and the medial rhyme, as quickening the speed of the
poem; to the pleasantly varying length of the lines; to
the effective use (in the best instan ces only) of alliteration and onomatopceia; and to the notable descriptive,
picture-making passages (let the students express their

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

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preferences: they may be asked which scene remains

of the longer works to be read in th e Grammar Grades,
they will be : I. Devise a good mode of approach ; arouse expectation; create the right mood; and by sketching in an interesting background, relate to the child's existing stock
of knowledge and ideas.
2. Get an outlook upon the poem as a whole as rapidly as possible.

168

most vividly in the mind).
The poem offers some admirable opportunities for
comparison. Deloraine's ride may be compared,' as to
its leading characteristics, with "Paul Revere's Ride,"
and Browning's "How they Brought the Good News"
(there may even be a glance backward to childhood's
favorite, "John Gilpin"). Which is most dramatic?
Which most suggestive of the horse's galloping? Which
concerns itself most with the scenery through which the
riders pass ? If the class has read " I van hoe " (and it
is desirable that they should), many comparisons may
be made, many parallelisms noted. Then the ballad
of "Rosabelle" may be compared with "Lord Ullin's
Daughter," and the lines "Breathes there a man," with
Lowell's "Fatherland," or some other poem expressing

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3. Let the children get the spirit of the thing, - the
atmosphere, the beauty, and music. Try to make them
feel their way. Enlist and quick en the imagination.
4. Yet, because clearness of compre he nsion and the
sense of intellectual mastery is a condition and a source
of pleasure, let the work be, step by step, clean and
effective, but kept within assigned limits. Do not try to
be thorough, in the sense of being ex haustive. Th ere is
a tact of abstinence. Children cannot learn everything
at once. Decide what it is worth while to attempt, and
do it well. Select only what is typical a nd salient in
the work. Children should be habituated more and
more, and come to see the importance more and more,

love of country.
Finally, if the interest is sustained, there may be a
glance at the life of Sir Walter Scott. We come upon
his footsteps so often in the poem, his ancestry, his
patriotism, the scenes of his life and exploration, that
it is scarcely possible to avoid saying something
about him. At least a lantern talk should be given.
N 0 set of slides is more easily procurable than
those which relate to the scenes of Scott's life and

of serious, sustained, and definite effort. To which we
may add these general counsels : Beware of the dictionary : let it be a last resort. Use
it as little as possible; there is no mag ical virtue in it.

poems.
If we summarize briefly the points that have been insisted upon in the treatment of this poem, as an example

Encourage the habit of getting at the meaning of a
word through the context, which is far more important
than a habit of facile dictionary hunting. Few words

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have fixed values, anyhow; they take complexion from
the company th ey are in. Discountenance a hasty,
irresponsible questioning either of the teacher or the
reference books; encourage pupils to seek for explanations in facts they already possess, - to con th eir stock
and reflect upon it. To familiarize pupil s with the
meaning of a strange word, use it; bring it into your
talk; bandy it with the pupils.
As for spelling, do not be fussy about it in this connection . Good readin g, clear enunciation, and the ear
training that goes with it, will do more for spelling than
the routine of the spelling exercise. 'Write un the blackb oard words which are being generally misspelt, and let
th em be listed in the note-book, by way of providing for
the eye-minded or motor-minded child, as well as for the

have wasted much valuable time thereby, and inflicted much profitless drudgery upon the inn ocent.
Of course we should help our sc holars to find out things
for themselves, and to know how to help themselves
when no one is by; and sometimes we should insist
upon th eir taking pains in research (for special reasons,
always). But often the labor is not worth the p ains.
It retards the work needlessly, and leads to vexatious
interruptions. We have known this sort of thing to
happen : a reference to an unknown person occurred
in a work being read, - Themistocles, let us say.
" Ah," says the laboratory faddist, "stop here, class :
you must all look up Themistocles to-night, a nd bring
me a report upon him t o-morrow. The biograph ica l
dictionary won't give you enough ; you had better look
up Plutarch's account." This sort of thing is a new
pedantry. The student n eeds just so mu ch information
on tlie spot as will e nable him to gras p the significance
of the allusion; and the teacher is the most convenient
referee. General, vague, indefinite references are bad ;
specific facts should be marked out. Some editors of
our school texts are becoming very parsimonious of footnote explanations, and deal mainly in references to original sources; this requires from the student an amount
of research and exploration tha t is outrageously out of
proportion to any value to b e gained by it; for Literature, we repeat, - or, at least, poetry, - is not an information study; and works that call for a well-stored

ear-minded.
To many, what we have said above about the dictionary will be flat heresy; we therefore take occasion to
enlarge our id eas about the general subject of reference
hunting. There is a dogma of the new education that
loves to celebrate the "laboratory method." Its first
principle is that the child should never be told anything
he can find out for himself. This principle, so fruitful
in scientific work, may easily be abused in its application
to Literature. In Science the pupil is thrown back upon
observation and reasoning : in Literature, upon an encyclopredia recording other people's knowledge and
thought. W e, too, have tried the laboratory method,

171

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THE

days.
Concerning correction and explanation, we have
only to repeat that these should be made quickly, and
as incidentally and suggestively as possible, so as not to
interrupt the flow of the thought along the main line
of advance, nor to check the momentum of the

to meaning, is to re-read the passage well.

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mind ("Paradise Lost") are well deferred to adult

feeling.
The teacher's questions should be illuminating and
suggestive, aiding interpretation, stirring the thought
and imagination, and relating the subject-matter to the
sense-experience and the knowledge of the child. The
questions should preclude any guessing on the child's
part. Trivial and superficial inquiries should be discouraged. The best way often to answer questions as

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CHAPTER XI
COMPOSITION

IN

THE GRAMMAR GRADES

ExPRESSTON is natural and necessary to the child;
and wherever there is expression, be the medium
what it may, there is composition. If the medium is
words, oral or written, the child is engaged in the
process of literary composition. The task of the
teacher is to help the child to refine this natural process, and to raise speaking and writing to the dignity of an art that shall make that converse agreeable
and effective. Why, - since expression is thus natural
and necessary, - why is the work of composition in
school so frequently distasteful? Clearly, because we
have gone about our business somehow in the wrong
way; - too laboriously, too artificially, and with too
little regard to the powers and inclinations of the child.
It has been over-emphasized and mis-emphasized. It is
one of the child's bogeys.
As a point of pure theory, we teachers are bound
to admit that composition ought to grow naturally
out of the child's school life, -out of the stimulus of
his environment and experience, out of his reading
173

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

COMPOSITION IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

and learning, - more inevitably indeed than language
or grammar work grows out of it.
For to the pure eye of pedagogy the child is normally a self-active, self-expressive being; the motor
::ir impulsive side of its nature dominates it.
The
child likes to tell what he knows, fancies, dreams,
speculates about; likes to speak it, shout it, sing it I
Expression is in itself pleasurable; it is the completion of a process of reception and discharge, of
stimulation and response, of self-mastery and selfknowledge through self-activity, which is akin to that
of inspiration and expiration, or the systole and
diastole of the heart. The aim of the teacher is to
utilize this tendency as involving and promoting
mental organization. To compose is to organize: you
cannot get a well-organized product from a disorganized mind. This we would keep as the root idea of

in view. This prescribed end (which must always be
clearly apµrehenJed and held) is lhe organizing principle in the light of which the child's ideas or
knowledge about a g iven subject should be massed.
The final result, therefore, of our work in composition ought to be that a child's mental possessions,
instead of hanging loose and scrappy in his mind,
are so grouped and intcrrelate<l, so available for
orderly use, that he finds comparatively little difficulty in expressing them. He is not embarrassed by
what he knows. His knowledge is not what we
have called " cold storage " in his mind ; it is alive
with all sorts of orderly sociable relations; it is inclined
to be communicative.
This, let us interpose, is subject to one very important proviso: that by no means every impression
or idea received by the child is to be called forth.
Some seeds implanted in the mind's soil must lie
undisturbed to germinate later. 1
It stands to reason that this expressive work is
dependent largely upon the way in which the materials
of knowledge and thought have been presented to the
child.
If they have been disconnectedly presented,
and lie disorderly in his mind, the more difficult will
it be for him to express them in an orderly fashion.
He does not know where to find what he knows.
His knowledge is not power; it is an incumbrance,

174

composition in the Grammar Grades.
The teaching
should be motived by the desire to develop gradually in the child the power effectually to organize
his knowledge and thought, his ideas and impressions ; for this means that he will try tc utter them,
to project them. Standing ready for expr ession, they
will seek expression.
Well-possessed knowledge differs from ill-possessed by its being a generator of
power that seeks an outlet.
To compose, as the derivation of the word implies,
is to put one's thoughts together with a definite end

1 On this head, see ante, pp. 2g-30.

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a source of intellectual awkwardness. Hence he
fumbles and falters when he attempts to express it.
Good representation, effective expression, is dependent largely upon good presentation and effective
impression.
We say "largely," because some allowance should be made for the discursive, rambling
tendencies of the child's mind. The child may desert at
times the garden path for the trackless thicket; may
be let loose from his hitching-post of method, and
go untethered.
In general, however, the constant
aim of our teaching should be to cultivate a power
and habit of orderly mental procedure. Hence the
importance of relating intimately reception and expression, - the work in Literature with the work in
Com position.
Order, then, or form, is to be the governing conception in our work. Good composition is fundamentally a matter of good form ; and this sense of
form may be developed, synthetically, through the reading and discussion of poems and stories that have a
very obvious formal excellence, and, analytically, through
work in outlining, and in reduction through the synopsis
and the paraphrase.
The teacher in the Grammar Grades will be wise,
we have said, to use the word Composition as seldom
as possible, because it is important that Composition
should not be set apart as a separate study. The
student should be made to feel that all oral and

COMPOSITION IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

177

written work is composition. Everything he tries to
say should be well said, that is, well composed: if it
is not well said, it is not well known. So far as the
word composition is used, let it be understood that
the pupil is composing his thoughts and feelings and
knowledge, and not mere words, sentences, and paragraphs.
These are but the counters and moulds of
thought. Then, as every subject necessitates both
oral and written expression, the pupil should be
expected, as a first attainment, to express himself
clearly, concisely, correctly, and, if possible, aptly in
all. His linguistic conscience must at all times be
kept sensitive. Faulty oral work -- th e clumsy, incomplete sentence, bad grammar, the inappropriate
word - is every whit as serious a defect in oral as
in written work ; and the excuse for dealing less
deliberately and emphatically with it is that the cor-·
rection of some errors is more difficult in the oral
recitation than in the written ; more dangerous too as
interfering with the thought-process, while it unduly
delays progress.
The teacher, it may be said in
passing, will find it necessary to leave certain kinds
of errors uncorrected, and when she does correct, to
do so swiftly and incidentally. If we say little more
in this chapter concerning the importance of oral
composition, it is because we have already exp ressed
our convictions on the matter. The Grammar School
teacher, no less than th e Prima ry S chool teacher,
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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

COMPOSITION IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

should set store on the well-told and well-reproduced
'btory, exposition, and argument.
Now as to the kinds of composition. It will be found
that the ordinary class-work calls for every kind, Narration, Description, Exposition, and even Argument.
For instance, Narration is called for preeminently in
History work; Description, in Geography and Science;
Exposition and Argument, in Arithmetic and History,
and often in Geography. All these kinds must therefore find place in our plans. Like Monsieur Jourdain,
the child will be a workman in each kind without

iarly its own, which must govern the method of teaching it. A course in manual training, for example, must
be determined largely by the tool-using capacities of
the child; there is a proper sequence of tasks that
takes account of a line of development in mastering
the handling of the tools. The same principle will hold
in regard to the work in English Composition. But
there ought to be less liability to go astray there. If a
subject like History is being properly presented to the
child, simply and clearly and connectedly, then the corresponding expressional or re-presentative work required
of the child will fall within the scope of its powers.
Let us make this clear in a concrete way. Narration
is a genus of many species, varying from simple to very
complex. The simplest form is that of pure timesequence, the single linear type, as in the relation of
events in a given period of time, or the passage of a
procession, with its simple Beginning, Middle, and End
construction. Introduce the idea of a thread of connection between the incidents, involving a climax or
conclusion, - as in a ceremony like the Inauguration
of the President, - and we have a step forward in
complexity. Introduce, further, a still more absolute
logic of connection, as in a statement of events leading
up to a declaration of war, or, still more complex, the
reasoned movements of a battalion in a great fight,
and we make still heavier demands upon the mental
powers.

178

knowing it.
We shall start from this consideration, and be guided
in our plans of work, first of all, by the natural expressional demands of the school life. It is a mistake, we
think, in the Grammar Grades to attempt a too consciously systematic differentiation of the several kinds
of composition, or to be troubled by the old hard and
fast systems of progressive classification. Let us not
limit ourselves to Description and Narration, seeing
that Exposition and Argument also must be sometimes the forms employed by the child in his work.
The emphasis will naturally fall on the two easier
kinds ; the bulk of our labors will be in them; but we
must make provision for the other two.
In thus recogni zing that composition 1s integrated
with so many subj ects, we have not lost sight of the
fact that every art has a logic of technique pecul·

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

Now, of course, the teac her must k eep in view the
logic of t echnique, with its increasing difficulties, along
with the expressional demands of the subject she is
t eaching; but she must be led into the first by way
of the second. In our treatment here, therefore, we
shall lead off with a consideration of the kinds of expressional activity proper to the child in his school
environment; and then, cross-sectioning the subject,
we shall outline what we may call perhaps the morphology of the different kinds of composition which we find
th e child practising.
First, then, as to the kinds of composition that grow
out of his studies. Let us begin with History, already
touched upon. History especially necessitates prac·
ticc in Narration of all kinds : first of the simpler type
governed by time-sequence, as in accounts of exploration and discovery, e.g. Champlain's; then (in higher
grades) of the type governed by causal sequence, as in
the mov ements of a campaign, -the first battles of the
Revolution in New England; or, as is often called for, a
combination of the two, as in the movements of the

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French and Indian Wars.
History, in fact, will supply topics which will involve
the organization of knowledge for all sorts of purposes:
for simple enumeration, calling for parallel or uniform
construction (e.g. of the thirteen original states and
their forms of government); for the comparison of two
or more things, - as, e.g ., of the differences between

COMPOSITION IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

181

(a) the English Cavalier Colonists of Virginia, and th e

Puritan Colon ists of New England, or, better still, a
more spec ific and restricted comparison of some traits of
these; or between (b) the varying motives which led
to English, Spanish, Dutch, and French colonization.
Again, comparative description may often be called
for, as in the difference between the life of the Southern
planter and of the North ern merchant and farmer.
We shall also call for short but well-articulated and
clearly organized biography, - "The Youth of Washington," "The Varied Life of Captain John Smith,"
"The Last Years of Columbus"; and we may proceed
from the biography of incident to that of character.
Nor need the work in this subject be restrained
within the field of actual fact. Imagination and fancy
may be exercised, where the pupil's fund of knowledge
is adequate. He may give pictures of past life in New
York or Boston or Chicago, on the basis of definite
data that have been carefully marshalled or reviewed.
Sometimes he may venture imaginary conversations
between great personages at critical or notable moments, or imaginary interviews with the great. How
important it is to restrict the topic always, we shall
insist upon presently. We know of few things more
absurd than asking a child to write a Life of Washington in one hundred words. Wise limitations must be
set always.
We have laid this stress on the work in History as

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calling for almost all the leading varieties of composi.
tion. Let it be understood that in the Elementary
School these compositions are required primarily in the
interest of progress in History; - the orderly and accurate and graphic reproduction of events, the deepening
and enlivening of the historic sense and imagination,
the interpretation of human motive and action. Composition here is not something apart; it is the expressional side of the History work. The first of queries
for the history teacher is - are the materials presented
rightly "composed" in the pupil's mind? The answer
must be the pupil's attempt to give them properly
composed form in speech - oral and written. Needless to say, the outline, summary or epitome, will be
found invaluable and indispensable in this connection.
The demands of other subjects might also be considered. There is Geography, for example, that, like
History, needs vitalizing by the exercise of imagination. The emphasis alters here; it falls upon the
descriptive rather than narrative order of composition.
Here we have the scenic romance of travel and exploration, while the pupil is held closely to the scientific data of the subject. Journeys by mule-track,
trail, and sledge ; by rail, coach, and caravan ; bicycle
tours and walking tramps; cruises and coasting trips,
and surveys; sojourns with strange people in faroff lands, -what tempting pasturages for the childish
mind and fancy ! The fact is that we are in danger in

both History and Geography work of being swamped
by plenty. Our safety lies in the proper systematization and grading of our work, and in keeping it well
under control by setting up clear objective points in
the progressive mastery of the problems of · expression.
This topic must not be left without a strong plea
for greater vigilance and more productive effort in
connection with the expressional side of the work
in Mathematics. As achieving clearness, conciseness,
and connectedness in expression, this work stands
first in effectiveness. To be sure, there is no call
for literary quality, feeling or fancy, trope or turn ;
but what a peremptory call there is for exact, succinct language, and for neat, clear-cut, well-rounded,
unified form l We have here the skeleton form and
sinewy strength of bare, orderly, close-knit, tightjointed speech, as nowhere else.
Yet enter the
dass room when a recitation in Arithmetic or Algebra or Geometry is being held; what labored, halting, fumbling, and slovenly (not to say ungrammatical)
language one not infrequently hears. The teacher is
bent too exclusively upon results on paper; as if the
training in the power to express in words mathematical problems, processes, and results were of little
account l
We urge that in the Elementary and
Secondary Schools much more attention should be
paid to this aspect of Mathematical study, for the
sake of the high value of the power to express exact

182

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COMPOSITION IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

ideas m exact and ready terms, and in agreeable
manner.
While such written and oral exercises, in connection
with the various subjects of the curriculum, will form
a considerable part - the staple, indeed - of the work
in composition, there must also be periodical work of
a more personal and independent kind, allowing large
scope for the individuality of the pupil. It is a great
mistake, we think, to recommend as the be-all of
work in composition, that "children should write
about what they have learned, so that composition
shall be the completion of the recitation." Let us,
from time to time, and increasingly as the child
advances, get him to try to organize personal material
which has never been organized for him in book or
talk : let him select and reject, recast and proportion,
details of purely personal significance.
This work
means such a schooling of spontaneity and individuality, and such a call upon creative activity, as cannot
be achieved when the material upon which the child
draws (as in History or Geography) has already passed
through another mind, has been sorted and sifted,
arranged and interpreted before it reaches him. We
must be sure, of course, that the child has material,
and above all, that we avoid leading him on into anything that approaches adult introspection. He must
be objective. He must write about things seen, rather
th <m felt. He must be a child, and talk as a child.

Then the letter, as we have already suggested, is
an excellent form to use continuously, in order to call
out naturally and easily the personal qualities of the
writer. The young child, looking to its probable
future, may well be excused for asking sometimes,
"What's the use of learning to write a theme or
essay ? " B u t th e I et t er 1s
· gomg,
·
he knows, to play
a part in his life. It is an indispensable agency of
civilization.
The letter, then, in all its forms, discharging all the purposes which it discharges in social
life, he feels prompted to learn to write, - formal
letters of invitation and acceptance; of appointment
and response ; of congratulation and sympathy; of
challenge and reply; of official communication with
Post Office, Department of Health, etc. ; letters he
may write for his mother to tradesmen and stores
ordering and countermanding orders, - all these a~
well as informal, friendly letters to parent and
teacher, to friends near and distant, to relatives, and '
associates in all kinds of undertakings, he may be
encouraged to write. Let him have plenty of good,
savory models. Develop, if possible, a pride of neatness and attractive form (eschewing the modish puzzle
arrangement of matter so common among us); an
ambition to make his more familiar letters so pleasant to see, and so interesting and individual, that
the recipient shall wish to re-read them and keep
them.
Let them show the bold, legible hand, the

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even and ample margin, the symmetrical arrange.

The beginnings may be simple enough. It may be
a short - brevity is a sine qud non - variant upon
some pithy story read, say, "What the Moon saw in
our street- or in the park - last night." Or it may
be the treatment of a situation - pathetic or humorous
or (once in a while) tragic - announced by the teacher:
with the specific purpose of illustrating some one
feature of story-telling, say suspense or surprise, disentanglement, or reversal. A random title or two will

186

ment.
But besides the work that grows out of the various
studies, an<l letter-writing as a means of personal expression, the re is yet another kind of composition
that is equally important; that, namely, which grows
out of literary study, and calls upon the more purely
literary and poetic inventiveness and constructiveness
of the child. This is the counterpart of the work that
is being done in the reading, especially of the ballad
and short story. The attempt made, in the interests
of appreciation, to bring home to the child a feeling
for the convincing and felicitous progression, climax,
surprise, and unity of the masterpieces of balladry
and fiction, and gradually to give him an insight into
the simpler principles of construction, - beginning,
middle, and end ; introduction, development, and conclusion; setting and character-grouping; the plotweaving, in short, that has such fascination for children,
- this must have its outcome in the child's own effort
to invent and create, and to master the joinery of the
story-teller's craft. There must be moderation here; no
getting on the tiptoe of false and fussy ambition; but
an enveloping atmosphere of simplicity and modesty.
Too often we have seen teacher and class run away with
into the tangles and briers of long-windedness, inflation,
and sentimentality. Any affectation will be a blight upon
such work, - as indeed it will be upon any kind of work.

illustrate: "Maggie receives a strange-looking package
on Christmas Eve" ; "What lazy Annie found in her
stocking on Christmas morning " ;
"Johnny gets
adrift in a boat on the Sound without any oars" (invent the explaining circumstances; effect an unexpected rescue) ; " Eric gets locked in the pantry " ;
" A party of boys and girls are lost in an Adirondack
forest." Or the teacher may ask for th e completion
of an anecdote beyond the point at which she stops
short in reading it - such anecdotes as are copiously
sprinkled through the newspapers and weekly and
monthly serials. (The writer would emphasize the importance of the newspaper as part of the English
teacher's equipment.)
Not infrequently children, should they happen to
number among them any with a decided literary gift,
will carry further this inventive work on their own
account. The short play w1'll be wr1.tten and ace
t d;
the little magazine will even be attempted.
The

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

teacher may often wisely and delicately guide such
efforts, or at least safeguard them.
And then there is versification as the outgrowth of
the study of poetry. Any impulse toward verse-making
set in motion in the lower Grammar Grades by the
study and recitation of poetry, may be judiciously encouraged and developed as circumstances favor. There
are pitfalls. The teacher is the main factor in the
situation. If she is weak on her feet, let her not try
a measure with her children.
If she lacks humor,
and if she cannot sense the distinction between doggerel and sing-song, sentiment and sentimentality, again
let her keep off the grass of Parnassus. In the upper
Grammar Grades verse-making might, we think, be
systematically undertaken; and it has in some cases, we
believe, been so undertaken. 'Ne speak cautiously,
because we have but little experience upon which to
draw, - our own work having been done in the Hi gh
School, as to which we shall speak in detail later on.
But if the right point of view be taken, and the proper
craftsman like spirit envelop the work, nothing but
good should come out of an attempt to find expression
in metre and rhyme. It develops ingenuity in the
handling of words, sets on a quest for synonyms,
sharpens the ear to sounds, and kindles the feeling
for word-color and word-tone. The tendency to singsong is natural to many children; and that it may
issue in interesting results when taken in time, the work

COMPOSITION IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

189

done by Professor Farnsworth of the Teachers College,
as an adjunct of work in musical composition, may be
cited to show. The composition of a class-song and
of a few (yes, a few only) simple memorial verses
for special occasions, - school festivals and class celebrations, - and, as individual, voluntary work, rhymes
for birthday cards and Christmas cards for parents
and friends; - here are the natural beginnings. The
outline of our High School course, where we have had
to proceed ab initio, may suggest other systematic
beginnings in the Elementary School. We must again
refer forward to that.
We must allude also to another kind of exercise
in written work that may be of signal value in the
Grammar Grades ; that is, translation from a foreign
tongue.
So great may be the service of the study
of a foreign tongue as an aid to English work (in
the Grammar Grades, - not earlier, we think), that we
are advocates of including it in our course of study on
this ground alone. However, a foreign language is so
seldom introduced into our public Elementary Schools,
at any rate introduced early enough to yield results
in translation that will be available for treatment as
part of the systematic work in composition, that we
leave this topic also to be dealt with in connection with
the High School course.
And now we have almost concluded this division
of our topic - kinds of composition work growing

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COMPOSITION IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

191

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out of school studies and interests. It remains only
to speak of the miscellaneous drill work that must
accompany the writing we have suggested.
First,
there is the paraphrase, which may be required in
moderation, chieAy to test an understanding of a passage. Exact reproduction, except in answers to questions, where the pupil is asked to satisfy us as to
his knowledge, will seldom be called for; but there
is much value in condensation or reduction, - the
condensed narrative and argument, - in amplification, in
the summary, and in the exercise in synonyms and obversions recomm ended by Professor Bain. The practical uses of the summary and of condensation in various
degrees, beginning with the abbreviated headline, may
b e e nforced by using the newspaper freely, and the
summaries (often so excellent) given in weeklies like the
Outlook a nd the Independent, from which sets of working models may be gathered. The children should
sometimes be asked to glean them; and should sometimes be given suitable clippings to r~duce both by making cuts and by genuine condensativ1. The preparation
of the telegram, reduced from the letter, or otherwise, is

Composition, and to make it socially serviceable, we
should continue to keep in view that it is in most
cases to be undertaken with the idea of being used in
helpful and interesting ways in the class or in the school.
It has been written with the prospect of its b eing heard
and enjoyed, eith<!r in class room or general assembly
or else where, or is offered as a p ersonal contribution to a
class symposium. In the case of certain kinds of composition that should have literary quality, the class is for
the time being a literary society, met to derive profit
and pleasure from the best efforts of its members:
efforts that ought, therefore, to be as personal and
distinctive as possible, - now a scene or place visited,
a person met, a celebration attended, a procession
viewed, an article (a boat or bookcase or workbasket) made, a ramble of observation, an experiment tried, a boating or fishing excursion, a game
played, a match won; - something which tempts the
child to tell spiritedly, as he might excitedly narrate
it to parent or friend, things seen a nd heard and done
-yes, and by h £m or her, with a particular pair of
eyes and ears.

another way of practising verbal economy.
Amplification may take the form o( an enlargement
or illustration of proverb and fable, or of a topic sentence, newspaper caption, telegram, or (with caution) a

The debate, too, must have place in the higher
Grammar Grades. As debatable questions arise, arguments must be thought out, outlines made, and briefs
prepared.
Of course not all the written work can
be read aloud; but some of it will be; and all of it
will be read by the teacher. The child must feel

metaphor.
To give reality and immediacy to the work in

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COMPOSITION IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

that it has not been written in vain; it has been
appraised by th e teach er at any rate.
And the
teacher's commendation is, perhaps, the chief prize
to be won. The children must appreciate that; it
must be the greatest inducement to take pains.
And let us, before summing up what we have said
and passing on to points of method, revert to the
question of form. The sense of literary form ought,
we have urged, to be assiduously cultivated, and may
be re enforced by the cultivation of significant form
in the arrangement of the page. We do not mean so
much the writing, neat erasure, and the like; and we
have not in mind a profusion of red ruling and flamboyant decoration. These defeat the end we have in view,
- a clear, diagrammatic appeal to the eye. We refer
to the spacing and arrangement of matter. Let headings be bold and well isolated. Let indentations be

This is an excellent mental exercise, and it makes
the student realize the exact nature of his task. We
should disallow such vague headings as merely " English," "Literature," "Composition," or the title of the
book or poem to which the work relates. These, if
used, should be supplemented by such sub-headings
as will give to an outsider a fair idea of the nature
of the task upon which the pupil is engaged.I Sometimes it is well, in longer compositions or exercises,
to call for sectional or paragraph headings, corresponding with the outlines, to indicate the chief sub-topics
dealt with; and it may pleasantly vary procedure if the
pupils employ sometimes the side or marginal heading,
perhaps writing it in red ink for emphasis' sake.
By all this we may seem to be making much of the
mere mechanics of writing.
We have learned that
these matters amount to more than mechanism. We

obvious. Let margins be carefully kept, - a small
quarter-inch margin on the right of the page, and the
inch margin on the left, as well as a good half-inch at
the foot. Children are often lax about this bottom margin, which is essential to comeliness.
And, speaking of the headings, the teacher is
advised to insist, as part of this aim of aiding the
reader by making the page as telltale as possible of
its contents, that every piece of written work, every
separate exercise, outline, and note-book entry, shall
have its concise yet accurately descriptive heading.

have been able now and again to enlist a pupil's
artistic sense of outward form in the interests of a
deeper mental formalism; and his pride in the attractive appearance of his work, in behalf of a desire
to make the work itself in its substance worthy of
equal approval.
Correlations of the English work
with the Art work may be made with great profit
to both subjects, especially in the High School course.
In this, as in other circumstances, the wise teacher

193

1 We have ourselves introduced into our List of Signg used in cor·
rection, a large ' H," meaning "insufficient or faulty heading."
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COMPOSITION IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

will use the elect of her class to educate the rest. On
an indispensable burlap-covered board, upon which
notices, models , and diagrams for reference, etc., are
pinned, he will display and refer commendingly to
exemplary pieces of work handed in to him. Such
little daily exhibits, the writer has found, enlist widespread interest, and are a stimulus to the class.
And now for a summary of all these matters. Our
leading points are these: (I) Composition - which we shall refer to as such
only rarely- is to be regarded as the expressional side
of the child 's work in the commonest medium of
daily use, language.
The child should be regarded
as "composing," or putting his thoughts into the
form in which they may most readily be grasped,
whenever he says or writes anything, whether it be
in short spoken sentences, or in the lengthy written
essay.
It is, therefore, a process involved in every
study he is engaged upon, not a thing apart.
(2) The highest purpose that can be served m the
attempt to master the means of verbal expression, is
effective self-command through self-objectification and
self-communication ; by which we mean such a command of one's impulses and ideas and stock of knowledge as is evidenced by one's power to give them
rational form in language.
(3) From the intellectual point of view this power
of "composed" utterance is at once a means and a test

of mental organization ; and the task of the teacher
in teaching "composition" is best described as that
of aiding the student to organize, through and for
ready communication, the content of his own knowledge and thought, feeling and imagination.

194

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(4) The child from the first is called upon to organize
these materials, according to the different kinds of
work done in his class, in all the varieties of form
which Rhetoric recognizes; in the narrative (as in
History), in description (as in Geography, etc.), in exposition and explanation (History, Arithmetic, etc.), in
argument (in the same), and in persuasion (the debate).
The simplest and most interesting form, and that
which reveals best the root principles of organization,
is Narration.
Earliest emphasis falls therefore on
Narration.

(5) Hence, to teach Composition means to lead the
child gradually from the intuitive and unconscious
practice of the simplest forms of discourse, to the
conscious, ingenious mastery of the most elaborate
and difficult forms; which he may be called upon either
to use himself, or to apprehend and appreciate when
used by others, especially the great masterpieces of
literature.
(6) The means that further this end are (a) the
orderly or well-organized presentation of all knowledge in all studies of the curriculum in the first in·
stance, (b) the promotion of a habit of orderly ex·

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COMPOSITION IN TIIE GRAMMAR GRADES

pression of what has been impressed, and the cultivation
of a sense of form, which will be helped by (c) the
sympathetic, vital study of literary models, especially
those that are structurally flawless; short stories and
ballads, which exhibit plot most obviously, being partic-

and Reduction ; the Summary and Outli ne; Exercises
in Synonyms and Obversions; Amplification and
Illustration.

ularly helpful to the beginner.
(7) But, besides the varied written and oral work
called for in connection with the subjects of study,
opportunity must be found for
(a) Expressions of the more personal side of the
child's nature (the letter being freely written with
this encl in view), and the organization of the materials
of personal experience that, unlike the matter of his
studies, have not passed through the alembic of another's mind, either in book or by talk; and
(b) Expressions of the child's inventiveness and constructiveness in story-telling, as an outcome of the reading and studying of the masterpieces of narrative
literature, - the short story and ballad and shorter
epic.

(c) Versification (in the upper Grammar Grades, at
any rate), class songs and memorial songs being the
most common forms of practice.
( d) Translations from a foreign tongue, where the
student has advanced far enough.
(e) Miscellaneous drill exercises in connection with
the fore-mentioned kinds of work : Paraphrase and
Reproduction (of certain kinds only); Condensation

197

(8) Composition work should be made to seem to
the child as worth while; as having, th erefore, a definite, immediate object: it is either to test (in the
written as in the oral recitation) his knowledge, his understanding and appreciation, his power to repeat an
experience or to meet a predicted emergency ; to
give pleasure to others, to defend himself, to support
and enforce his views, to persuade alike fri end and
foe. Yet sometimes the pupil must simply do what
he is told, without knowing why.

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And now as to some of the details of method.
What particular difficulties are met with by the
teacher? They are chiefly, (I) the child's lack of matter, (2) his tendency to ramble, (3) his involved, confused, wordy way of saying things.

(I) It is common not to ask the child to write
upon any topic upon which he has nothing to say.
But we must be careful to distinguish between ignorance and unreadiness. The only cure for ignorance is information. The cure for unreadiness is
discussion, - the gentle pre be or stimulating suggestion, to stir the mind, to start the process of selfexploration, to quicken the memory. In the lower
grades a certain amount of preparatory work wil~

II

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

as a rule, be necessary ; not often in the written
recitation, if the questions are skilfully put, but very
frequently in original, inventive, imaginative work.
It will be well, after announcing the topic or the
group of topics from which one is to be chosen, to
talk it over ; sometimes to strike a key-note ; to suggest,
or to get the pupils to suggest, the sources in experience
or reality upon which they may draw; to throw up the
subject in two or three possible ways of regarding it;
to put the proper atmosphere about it. If well done,
this will serve to whet the ambition, and evoke an eagerness to write about it; for the pupils have delightedly
discovered that there is a good deal that might be
said ; that they have something personal and peculiar
to communicate, or some unsuspected way of treatment.
(2) But the more there is to say, the greater the
tendency to ramble. Sometimes (as we have already
advised) the child should be allowed to ramble; better
that than standing still. But it often happens that
the discursive habit is actually encouraged by asking
the child to write upon a topic which allows of little
else, - the vague, general topic, such as that Life of
Washington we have asked to have told in two
hundred words. We must. be careful first, then, about
our subject. It must be framed in such a way as
to aid the child to set limits to its excursion. It is
only recently that the importance of a wise delimi-

COMPOSITION IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

199

tation of the topic has had our attention. The treatment of the subject in Scott and Denny's "Paragraph
Writing," or Lewis's "First Lessons in Writing
English," is a comparatively new thing. The matter is one which should be most carefully studied by
the teacher; it is even more important in Elementary
than in Secondary school work. Children should be
~ncouraged to limit their own topics.
The teacher
may announce a general subject, and ask the class to
write upon some special aspect of it, after submitting
the special limited title for the teacher's approval. It
must be added, by way of caution, that a generous
interpretation of relevancy must be allowed. Narrow
a topic too rigorously, and the child will not have anything to say about it.
To this first condition of checking rambling, we must
also add a second, about which a good deal has
already been said here, - the use of an outline to control the writer. We need add nothing to what we said
in Chapter VIII, except to advise the teacher to get her
pupils to form, before beginning to write, and to hold
in the mind while writing, a simple outline or scheme
of treatment. Here, too, a word of caution; we must
beware of over-emphasizing the mechanism of the work.
On no account must we endanger spontaneity. Better
a discursive fluency, a flood of chatter, than timid sterility, or a paralyzing caution and hesitancy. Very tenderly must the voluble child be dealt with . Fluency

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COMPOSITION IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

is a good thing to start with: it may be gradually con·
trolled; but if there is nothing to control, the case is

ology, is "thrown out" at an object or idea, that is often
literary in the best sense, because suggestive. There are
times, of course, when such language is out of keeping;
but where this gift of literary expressiveness is found, it
must be tenderly dealt with. We know that teachers
are only too prone, for "clearness'" sake, to change into
a flat, commonplace, a nd narrow accuracy the free language that ha_s a generous literary sweep. The speech
of childhood is full of literary surprises, which, while
they may not pass muster under text-book rule, are to ·
be more than tolerated on the score of their fresh and
savory quality of rich connotation. Teachers must
bring to the literary work of children a breath of tolerance, a tact that is bred of sympathy with their vague
strivings and subtle intentions; which alone can tell
them when to insist on precision, and when to admit a
reaching-out after the bolder effects of suggestive
speech, - speech that is to be gauged not by scientific,
but by poetic standards.

200

indeed a more difficult one.
(3) So too with wordiness, diffuseness; it must gradually clear itself.
Just as we err in demanding too
insistently that a child shall keep to the point, we err
also in pressing insistently for brevity and for precision
in the use of words. To be clear, is as gradual and as
difficult an accomplishment as to be p ertinent. Many
of us full-grown folk never attain to either. For this
reason we warn against the danger of too strict a demand
for clearness. To be clear - that, say some, is the one
thing that can be safely exacted and attained. "Habitual clearness can be taught," says Professor Barrett
Wendell; "individual traits of force and elegance can
only be sympathetically encouraged." "Hence," he
continues, " the natural limits of the intelligent teaching
of English Composition begin to appear. Those teachers work best who aim to direct their pupils towards
habit\Jal clearness in the choice of words, and in the use
of the principles of Composition." ("Monograph," p.
74.) Yes, only we must be cautious. Clearness emerges
very gradually out of the mist of the vague, general conceptions of childhood. Moreover, it is important to distinguish the occasions when clearness may legitimately
be striven for. We must remember that the child is given
to the use of poetic, figurative, alliterative, onomatopoetic language; language that, using Arnold's phrase-

201

We have already passed, by natural transition, to the
subject of correction. Again let it be urged, as the
principle of prime importance, that not every mistake is
to be corrected. We must correct first those mistakes
with which we are systematically coping in our language work, and those with which the children have
systematically grappled in their earlier work, - this on
the supposition that the course of study provides for
a progressive treatment of specific difficulties in each

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

grade. It is a good practice, when a new difficulty is
attacked, to ask the children to go over some of their
old work correcting mistakes of the kind now being
considered. This puts them in the proper attitude
toward the work of correction, and makes for that habit
of self-correction which we must foster by every means
at our command.
One way of doing this is to take for class discussion
certain typical mistakes running through a batch of
papers ; to give a few special exercises on this common
error ; and then to hand round the papers of the batch
for class correction, expecting that the class will discuss
the errors, and correct them neatly in the margin as the
teacher would do.
The duty of wise and impartial correction must not
hide from us the duty and efficacy of commendation.
The good things, the happy hits, the felicitous word or
phrase (the use of a new word as an addition to the
working vocabulary of the class), the taking conceit,
the rhythmical sentence, the ingenious plan, the
expressive effect in alliteration or onomatopreia, - these
should be brought casually before the class and noted i
with only a silent but meaningful recognition of the
little workman whose work is being published. Occasionally the class may be asked to choose from a batch
of selected compositions read by the teacher, the one
that is the most interesting, that it may be read at the
morning exercise of the school.
The readiness to

COMPOSITION IN THE GRAMMAR GRADES

203

appreciate, unselfishly and disinterestedly, the good work
of classmates and cooperators can scarcely be too assiduously cultivated.
Finally, as we advance in the grades we must make
the model play a greater and greater part. Sometimes
before and sometimes after a task is assigned, the
teacher may say, "Now, let us see how a great master
does the sort of thing we are trying to do in our 'prentice
way." Or she 'may take a model of her own workmanship, - a model (it may sometimes be) which she has
elaborated on the basis of the best examples handed in
to her; a model, that is, which embodies her divination
of the sort of ideal that the young, baffled craftsmen
she is training had vaguely in their minds, and were
trying to approximate.

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GRAMMAR AND LANGUAGE WORK

be as far as possible inculcated, and should be brought
into close relation with the pupil 's work in reading and
com position."

CHAPTER XII
GRAMMAR AND

LANGUAGE WoRK IN
GRAU ES

THE

GRAMMAR

AMONG the greater unsettled questions connected
with the study of English, none is more unsettl ed th an
the Grammar question . Wh at pl ace shall th e study of
. I um .?
formal English Gramm a r have in our curncu
Shall it come into the Grammar Grades, or await the
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High School? What emphasis shall be put upon it.
How far shall it be carried? What language lessons
shall precede it? - and so on. In the recent reaction
against the old-fashioned grammar grind, opinion has
swerved to the extreme of excluding formal Grammar
altogether from the Elementary School, and of ranking
it as a High School study. This view still widely obtains; it is that, e.g., of Professor Carpenter, expressed
in his recent "Principles of English Grammar." It is
also that of the Committee of Ten, who hold that formal
Grammar should not be taken up earlier than the thirteenth year; and that eve-~ then it should " not be pursued as a separate study longer than is necessary to
familiarize the pupil with the main principles. Probably
a sin gle year (not more than three hours a week) will
be sufficient." Moreover, the teaching of it "should
204

20)

On the whole, however, the present later trend of
opinion rather favors the study of it in some form or
other in the upper Grammar Grades. The tendency
toward a recognition of the necessity of Grammar in
the Elementary Grades is indirectly born e out by the
elaboration of a substitute fo r th e Grammar text-boo k
in the form of th e la ng uage lesson , wh ic h tends more
and more to assum e th e character of nothin g less th an
a new type of formal Grammar itself, - developed, it is
true, in conn ection with the th eory and practice of
composition, but none the less Gramm a r on that
account. On the completion of a ny of the typical
series of la nguage lessons recently published, the child
is already in possession of all the leading principles of
formal Grammar.
Reviewing briefly the salient arguments of the discussion, which will explain the present status of the subject,
let us firs~ ask, What was the meaning of th e reaction
against the study of formal Grammar of the Lindley
Murray type? The main count against it was that it
failed of practical results; failed as a communicable
" art of speaking and writing the English language
with propriety," -to quote the Murray de finition . The
endless formalities of rule and precept were found to be
wasteful burdens of knowledge unrelated to practice.

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Valueless as an aid to the art of writing, what could
be said of it as a science revealing the structure and
growth of language and the logic of speech? Sir
Joshua Fitch, to whose paragraphs in his " Lectures
on Teaching" we might refer as summarizing the main
points of the discussion, puts the points thus : "In Latin
forms you find this [logic of language], in so far only as
it finds expression in the inflections and forms of words,
expressed with some fitness and scientific accuracy. In
English it is expressed in an unscientific and very
incomplete way;" -in short, "of pure grammar there
is very little in the English language." 1
And Mrs. Jacobi puts it still more emphatically:
"English Gramm ar is atrophied, and as unsuitable as
a field wherein to learn the principles of Grammar, as
the hoof of a horse would be as a model for the
study of the feet." 2 Such a view has gained in pertinence through the growing recognition by modern
scholarship of the unscientific character of the English Grammars in use heretofore, based as they were
on the model of the Latin Grammars of the Renascence type, and, from the outlook of modern philology, false to the facts of the English language. It
is now obvious enough that, understanding the word
"grammar" somewhat narrowly, as implying such a
logical and consistent inflectional and syntactical sys1
2

"Lectures on T eaching," pp. 241-242
"Primary Ed uca ti on," p. 96.

GRAMMAR AND LANGUAGE WORK

207

tern as Latin presents, the English language is a very
poor language ind eed for teac hing gram mar.
And yet it is so easy to prove too much against
the old views and practices. With all its follies, the
discredited Grammar drill did accomplish some good
results, even though at a ridiculously high cost. At
least it burned indelibly into the student's mind the
fact that there is a right and wrong in the use of
one's native tongue; and that it is a vital and fundamental part of good manners to be canonical in grammatical usage. It did he lp the formation of a sort of
linguistic conscience and linguistic pride; a punctiliousness - ay, sometimes a pedantry - of grammatical observance. Who has not known many an oldfashioned purist - a vanishing type -who delighted
in the fine distinctions of the grammarians and in a
scrupulous etiquette of speech that had its worth and
charm? And all the weary, dreary parsing - to the
murdering of many a dissected classic - did do something toward the promotion of a sense of the logic
of speech and of a strict habit of mental analysis. To
analyze and parse was in some degree to think, to
judge, to reason.

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Again, soberer second thought says that because
English is a comparatively grammarless tongue, it by
no means follows that the formal study of it is so
much less worth while than that of Latin or German
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and may not yield very good results. Its very anom-

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alies and its composite character give it compensating
advantages as a subject of study, - advantages vigorously championed by Professor F. C. Woodward in
his monograph on "English in the Schools" (Heath),
wherein he takes the stand that " English asks no
odds of the classics, even in a comparison of respective disciplinary values." Meagre as is its acciden ce,
- so, in brief, his argument runs, - it has nevertheless enough inflection, enforcing distinctions of
case, number, person, tense, and mood, to illustrate
and apply the use of forms and to carry home general principles, while it is not overloaded with them.
This meagreness is a positive advantage, as the
mind is not bewildered nor the memory burdened
with a great diversity of forms. All the vital grammatical principles are exemplified on a small scale;
and at the same time a somewhat rude inflectional
method of establishing relations between words is
replaced by a much more thought-evoki1ig method of
establishing logical rel ations by phrasal combinations
and by the order of words. In other terms, the mind
is freed from attention to the linguistic detail and
machinery which is such a clog upon the student's
progress : it is forced to grapple with the genuine
logic of speech. Reason replaces memory; thought- ,
evidence, the sense-evidence of inflection.
In fine,
the construction and comprehension of the English
sentence does not throw the mind back on concords

GRAMMAR AND LANGUAGE WORK

and rules, on endless paradigms and exceptions, but
on genuine thought-relations. Hence its sup erior disciplinary value, save in the matter of mere memorizing. Hence, too, its greater flexibility and variety,
adaptability and resourcefulness, as compared with
highly inflected tongues. There is much force in all
this; and the arguments strengthen our contention that
the teaching of English Grammar must necessarily be
a vital factor in the teaching of English as a whole.
Although much more than we can say here is to
be said pro and con in the debate, we shall cut a
long matter short by stating summarily the main conclusions to which, seemingly, most of us are being
led:( r) We have finally abandoned the old view, which
regarded Grammar as the art of correct speaking
and writing, in favor of the view that Grammar is the
science underlying that art, - a knowledge of which
aids the art, and is involved in the conscious elaboration of its principles and technique. An art, however,
is taught by practice; and the main pedagogical factor
in it is imitation.
(2) We are freeing ourselves from the tyranny of
Latin models, and are substituting a Grammar that
deals simply with the actual facts of the English
tongue, and recognizes how widely it differs from a
highly inflected tongue like Latin.
(3) We have come to recognize the necessity of
p

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following a different method, for insuring a conscious
mastery of our native tongue, from that employed in
mastering a foreign tongue.
In the one case the
method must be mainly inductive and analytic; in
the other, mainly deductive and synthetic.
In the
one case we are systematizing and rationalizing the
data in our possession; in the other, using the rules
that are the outcome of systematization, as short cuts

He begins to be a grammarian just as soon as he begins
to deal with language in a reflective, analytical manner.
It is not when he is first ushered with uncouth ceremoniousness into this world of formal Grammar by such
solemnizing facts as that all Grammar, like all Gaul,
is divided into so many equal parts, and that Grammar deals with words, which in turn are made up of
letters, of which there are twenty-four in the English
language, and so on, - not when these august facts
are laid before him that he begins to grapple with
Grammar: it is when he comes to recognize and talk
about a sentence and the convenient artifice of beginning it with a capital and closing it with a period; when
he is learning to capitalize proper names or nouns, and
to divide a series of nouns by commas; when he tries
to clear up a puzzling passage in his reading by straightening out an inversion, or attaching a modifying phrase
or clause to the word of which it is the proper adjunct,
- it is then that he reaches it inductively.
This reflective, analytical knowledge of the mothertongue is being built up - not as a separate subject,
labelled Grammar, but as a factor in writing and reading, as the child proceeds to the use and knowledge
of the more complex forms of speech. It proceeds
part'passu with the development of more complex ways
of thinking. The child thinks first in short, simple
affirmations, expressed in short, simple sentences. Then
he begins to tuck away one short sentence into the cor-

210

to the facts.
We may now pass to a detailed statement of the
kind of grammar work that should be undertaken in
the school course. The major premises of our position are that the study of formal Grammar is from
the start a necessary part of the study of English,
because the work in Composition and Literature cannot properly be done without it. In connection with
that work, grammatical distinctions must very early
be made, and a grammatical nomenclature prove indispensable; while grammatical analysis, syntax, is involved in thought-analysis. These distinctions and
this terminology and analysis must be made and usec!
as they become necessary. And when the main facts
and principles of Grammar have in the course of time
been accumulated, the whole may be reviewed as a
separate matter, with amplifications by the aid of a
text-book of English Grammar.
There is no apocalyptic moment when the child
emerges into the sphere of grammatical consciousness.

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ner of another in the form of a modifier or a phrase.
As a stripling he will say: "The boy had no hat on his
head. He was running clown the street. He was a
red-headed boy ; " but in time will pack away his observations in a single sentence : "A red-headed boy ran
down the street without any hat on." Should he meet
such a sentiment in rhyme, say, No hat on his red head,
In haste the urchin sped
Down the street,

his comprehension of the lines would involve the grammatical fact that the hatless red head belonged to or
was an "adjunct" of the hasty urchin.
Much, then, as without a definite text-book study of
Physiography, the child's conception of the world about
him is being built up into an orderly whole; so, with the
gradual accumulation of grammatical facts and rules
in connection with his Composition and Literature, a
science of Grammar and its cousin, Logic, is elaborating
itself in his mind. By and by these facts will be detached from their surroundings and presented in separate systematized form, with new interesting lights
thrown on them from their history. They will be studied
then, not to meet practical needs, but as involving the
science of thought, - in short, as explicit logic ; as a
means of strengthening his modes of thinking; involving a habit of analyzing carefully the language he uses
through" the unconscious analysis of his own thinking."

GRAMMAR AND LANGUAGE WORK

213

Nor will th e wise teacher fail to kindle gradually an
jnterest in words, their life, their composition, their varying color of connotation, until the moment arrives when ,
with a sufficient store of such facts acc umulated, the
anatomy and physiology- or better, the natural history of words - becomes also a fascination. This will
qu icken in the student a sense of the life there is in
language, which will make of his reading of Shakespeare and the Bible and Bunyan and Malory, perhaps,
a double pleasure. Changing the figure to that employed by Emerson, language will become to him
"fossil poetry"; and he will find its stratifications more
interesting than those of the rocks, because they are
purple-veined with human passion, golden-gleaming with
the ore of human thou ght and fancy. To speak from
personal experience, if the interest in th e story of words
has been occasionally fed in earlier years (and how it
can be so fed is well suggested by Mrs. Spalding in
her chapter on Word-Collecting 1), th e moment will
come in the High School when such a book as Trench's
"Study of Words" (out of date, doubtless; but without
a modern substitute) will exercise a wonder-working
spell over the student. He has become an amateur of
words.
The view we have been advancing accords satisfactorily with that taken by Professor Earle in his "Simple
Grammar of English Now in Use" (Putnam's),-a
1

"The Problem of Eleme ntary Composition," p. 27.

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

book that makes a long stride toward the de-Latinizing
of the grammar of English. Here he says: "The leading of Nature teaches us that grammatical study should
begin at the point where the use of speech is consciously
apprehended by the young, . . . should begin with
language, not as a fabric, but as the representation
of thought " (Preface). As we have insisted in an
earlier chapter, the teacher must be careful not to force
this conscious apprehension. Her first care must be to
establish habits ; she must not embarrass the child by
breaking in upon these habits with reflection until they
have been firmly fixed. The moment will announce
itself unmistakably enough when the student will find
custom an insufficient guide in the use of speech and in
its interpretation. He will no longer be at the mercy
of a poor empiricism: he calls for reasons, and seeks
the support of rules. Why shall he not say, "He or I
are going," or " No one but she and I were present " ?
What will guide him toward correct practice ? So, too,
in his reading matter, he meets with difficulties, ~inver­
sions, tangled phrase and clause, - which he must solve
by no mere rule of thumb, but by rules which he can
apply again. He must have a terminology, in~olving
classification of types of construction and their parts,
and classification of words according to their functions.
Foreign plurals bother him, and what not. We have
no choice but to make a grammarian out of him.
But this grammatical work, done incidentally as a

GRAMMAR AND LANGUAGE WORK

215

condition of sure, masterful advance in speaking and
writing, which involves a conquest of many matters
besides formal grammar, must be done systematically
and thoroughly, if it is to be well done. The Language
Lesson book is an attempt to accomplish this; and
what it stands for, -namely, an orderly method of surmounting the difficulties of the English language, -we
must have, whether we use a text-book or no. Let
us consider what such a method should be.
We have already indicated some criticisms that must
be passed upon the common type of Language Lesson
books. The chief of these is that they attempt the
unnecessary, and insult the child's intelligence by trivial
and uninteresting exercises. This is due largely to the
fact that these language lessons are too much isolated
from other work, the form being wholly disengaged
from substance. Language is treated as a thing entirely apart, and not as a vehicle of expression called
into play in the effort to impart or reproduce information, thought, fancy.
Some - indeed not a little isolation and some routine practice work are unavoidable; but this should have its obvious relation, for the
child's mind, to the needs developed in the course of his
work. For example, the rule about capitalizing proper
names will grow out of the writing by the child of his
own name on his papers for the purpose of identification; and so with capitalizing and abbreviating dates,
places, titles, and other " proper names." The rules

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

as to capitalizing and indenting lines of poetry will
emerge when the child copies for preservation a verse
or two dictated by his teacher. The discrimination of
an adjective as a part of speech will come when, in the
course of attempts to describe an animal or flower that
is being studied, the teacher has to suggest that a
better modifying or characterizing word may be found.
These rules are not to stand in the child's mind as
book-created, book-enforced things; but as reasonable
conventions of ordinary practice, called for in orderly,
careful work. But let them be rules, - rules carefully
framed and thoroughly mastered; and let there be
enough routine practice upon them to drive them home.
This is where a text-book may be called in as a useful
adjunct, saving the teacher much work in setting exercises. For our part, we would use a text-book in no
other way. It will provide ( 1) practice work, and
(2) a reference book of rules, for the recollection and
observance of which the child is held responsible.
The main problem of the language lesson, thus
understood as connected with and growing out of the
child's work generally, is to formulate the steps by
which the child may be expected to advance along the
lines of study marked out for him. We regard this
as of first importance.
These steps should be so
clearly marked out that the teacher of each grade may
know by what stages the child has advanced, and what
definite new steps forward she is expected to take, as

GRAMMAR AND LANGUAGE WORK

217

also to what further advances in the higher grades
they are precursory. Her children come to her with
certain definite things learned, certain rules mastered
and habits formed; and she has in turn to send them
forward to the next grade with certain new conquests.
Let it here be added that in order that this
work may be thoroughly and cleanly done, there must
be frequent review and summary. Especially at the
beginning of the year should there be a review of the
field already covered, - never, however, in bald prefatory fashion, because it is important that the children
should get the sense, with each promotion, of a new
departure, an entrance upon a new unknown territory
that tempts to exploration. There are, indeed, few
powers that are so serviceable in a teacher as that of
knowing how to review deftly and tactfully, and sometimes disguisedly, by ringing new changes out of old
material, by turning new lights on familiar objects, by
aiding the child to discover how old acquisitions may
turn the key to the gates of new realms.
And lel us repeat here that this method also implies
that the teacher will allow to go uncorrected by any
systematic or delaying treatment (save by the force
of correct example through the rapid substitution of
the correct for the incorrect expression) any of the
faults that are to meet with such treatment later on in
the course.
To come now to suggestions as to the actual steps

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

to be taken, we do not shirk the responsibility of out
lining a scheme when we insist, to start with, that
there can be no one scheme to fit all cases; the reasons
being that there is no one fixed and classic type of the
child's mind, so far as linguistic power is concerned, no
uniform average of linguistic cultivation to be reckoned
upon. The linguistic aptitudes of children vary perplexingly, and local conditions - especially in those
Babels, our large American cities -are strikingly variable. More important still, the talents and leanings of
the teacher will vary unaccountably. We are obliged
to say, using and adapting Ruskin's words, that any
fairly good scheme, and sometimes even a positively
bad one, will fare well in the hands of a good teacher ;
while the best of schemes will be wrecked in the hands
of an incompetent one. The requirement is that there
shall be a scheme of some sort; and there are many to
choose from. The well-equipped teacher should be well
acquainted with the best; there is not one but has some
specially strong feature. 1
The following may be specifically mentioned : Arnold and Kittredge's "Mother T ongue," 2 Books (Ginn); De Garmo's "Language
Lesson Series" ('Verner Co.); Gow's "Method of English" (Macmillan);
Hyde's "Lessons in English," 2 Books (Heath); McMurry's "Course
of Study and Special Illethod in Reading and L iterature" (Publi c School
Publish ing Co.); Reed and Kellogg's "Com plete Course of Study in
Language" (Maynard, Merrill & Co.); Woodward's "English in the
Schools"; Various Courses of Study, - Horace Mann School, Public
Schools of New York, Brooklyn, Indianapolis, Chicago, Connecticut, etc.
Reports of the Co mmittees of Ten, Fifteen, and Twelve.
1

GRAMMAR AND LANGUAGE WORK

219

Nevertheless, as we are called upon here, we suppose, for something that should aspire to be a Counsel
of Perfection, we shall attempt a type scheme that may
serve as prolegomenon to future systems. It will be
found following this chapter, closing our treatment of
English in the Elementary Schools. It is based on cer- ·
tain fundamental principles. The first and foremost
of these is that which demands that we proceed from
the general to the particular; from the large, broad
outlines of things to their detail. The child's mind
grows in the main (though not entirely) from mass to
detail, from general impression to closer and narrowing
glimpse. The cursory glance, the wide, vague sweep
of vision, gives way to the more scrutinizing gaze upon
a more definitely limited field of vision. In English
work it is always the same wide territory, the same
varied landscape, that is stretched before us ; but we
scan and rescan it in selected sections with changing
purpose and altered focus. Always the same prominent features meet us as we survey it in its full expanse,
- Words, Punctuation Marks, Sentences, Paragraphs,
Chapters, Stanzas, - these are from first to last its
landmarks. We shall; therefore, condemn that method
which lingers long at the outset on one feature, which
tries to train the eye too nicely upon it. This is a frequent fault of the Language Lesson books. One gives
tiresomely minute treatment of the sentence in all its
kinds; or of the subject and predicate in their many

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GRAMMAR AND LANGUAGE WORK

varieties of form . Another begins with all the minuti::e of Nouns before the large facts are taken into
view. Yet another puts the study of prefixes and suffixes out of perspective. Worse still, some try to do
many things at once.

speare's English we would leave until our pupils know
something of Shakespeare.
If our study is to be for the most part inductive, this
principle must perforce be observed.
And that it
should be inductive, it is hardly necessary to prove.
Let the child understand that he has many of the data
of the science of Grammar from which the conclusions
of the grammarians are drawn. We shall not begin
with definitions - we shall evolve definitions. The
teacher's business will be to guard against hasty conclusions; to warn the pupil when he has not all the
facts material to a conclusion. The text-book will be
used chiefly for suggestion and verification.
For instance, if we are going to classify nouns,
we shall not begin with an enumeration of classes, Common and Proper ; Abstract and Concrete, Collective, etc. We shall take a passage that is rich in
nouns, sort them, and track down the different classes
of conception for which they stand; and by contrast
and comparison make our discriminations. The contraposition of such words as " snow " and "white " ;
" sugar " and " sweetness " ; " soldier " and " army "
will be our aids. The difference of attitude implied is
very important : in the one case the student becomes
an explorer and generalizer ; in the other his generalizing and too much of his exploring are done for him.
In the one case he is made to discriminate his own
mental processes ; in the other he is asked to recognize

220

If the language work we have suggested in our
scheme has been covered in the earlier grades, the
study of formal Grammar in the highest Grammar
Grade will not be very much more than the orderly,
systematized presentation of the facts and principles
already gathered. There will be some duplication; and
a fuller explanation of some facts in the light of the
history of English speech; while the finer logic implicit

in Grammar, will be made more explicit. But we must
follow, as the first principle that should govern the
study of Grammar, this : that it should deal only with
those phenomena of speech which are familiar to the
pupil. It is generally a mistake to drag in unfamiliar
words and idioms, literary conventions, poetic licenses,
survivals, etc., whose usage a child is not conversant
with, but must know before he can appreciate the purpose of their citation. "I bought me a hat;" "Did you
see that crew of excursionists ? " - such significant localisms and colloquialisms may be used to good effect in
our study; and we may draw many simple and interesting philological data from the earlier works read - old
ballads, dialect poems and pieces, and the Bible, if it
should have been read.
The peculiarities of Shake-

221

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

GRAMMAR AND LANGUAGE WORK

them after they have been discriminated for him. If
the expression "laboratory method" is in order anywhere in connection with language work, it is here.
In the invention of grammatical exercises there is
room for much ingenuity.
The work in Grammar
may nearly always be made incidental to work for
other ends, of which the pupil is unaware, and should
be kept unaware at the time. In the conversion of
concrete nouns into abstract, and nouns into adjectives,
and so on, he is at once clarifying his thought, and
increasing and strengthening his vocabulary. Or he is
asked to think of circumstances under which proper
names, like John and Mary, may be converted into common names; and the invention of a sentence such as
"There were six Marys and seven Johns present"
serves at once its grammatical end, and draws upon
the discriminative and the inventive resources of the

Taking as a foreground such a scheme of language
work as we have outlined, the following plan of development in the separate text-book treatment is suggested: I. Introductory: English Grammar as a study of
thougnt-relations expressed through speech by the following means : (a) By certain classes of words with certain specific
functions (Parts of Speech).
(b) Through the varying order and influence of these

222

student.
The text-book we shall use, then, is one that is
adapted to a child of twelve or thirteen, of average
intelligence and information. It will avoid the flat
superfluities of the books that will allow nothing to be
taken for granted. As regards those preliminary facts,
already known, which are needed as a basis for a further development of the subject, either it will frankly
state these facts in a convenient review or summary, or
it will give them new aspect and deeper significance in
the light of fresh distinctions and comparisons.

223

words in a sentence.
(c) By certain inflections, systematized under Declension, Conjugation, etc., which allow in some cases a
small amount of indifference to their order in the sentence (as in Latin, e.g.).
(d) To which must be added numerous idioms and
anomalies of the tongue, calling for explanations
through facts in the history of the language. Good
Usage will be explained.
II. The parts of speech: a more exhaustive treatment of each, giving the species of each genus, and the
convertible and phrasal kinds. This means considering
them in given contexts.
III. The organization of the sentence. The various
types. Departure from normal form (inversion) under
the exigencies of emphasis, rhythm, rhyme, etc., and
for the various rhetorical reasons. (Here Grammar
necessarily reaches out into Rhetoric.)

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IV. Rela tion through inflection (Accidence). Various kinds of inflection. Further treatment of Case
and Gender.
V . The elementary facts as to Formation and Derivation of the English language, giving a view of the
competing tongues that have gone to its formation.
Phonology touched on.
Just how thorough the treatment should be will
depend upon the point at which the study of formal
Grammar is introduced into the course. Also we must
take into consideration, as an important factor modifying our treatment of the whole subject, whether pupils
know or are studying a foreign tongue. In this case,
comparison and contrast will be one of the most telling
methods we can employ.
Finally, the place of Grammar in the High School
must, of course, depend upon what has been done in
the Elementary S chool. If the subject has not been
studied sepa rately in the latter, then it perforce belongs
in the first year of the High School; if it has, then
there may either be a review, with more advanced study,
in the first year of the High School, or (our own decided
preference) the study may be postponed to the second
or third year of the course.

OUTLINE PLAN OF LANGUAGE WORK AND GRAMMAR AND
CONNECTIONS WITH THE WORK IN COMPOSITION

The Central idea of the Plan is the development of the sentence as
thought-unit, and the treatment of words and the machinery of written expression as functional elements of the sentence. New parts of
speech, new sentence-forms, and new devices are considered as they
come into view with the development of mental faculty and with
the need of new symbols and modes of expression to keep pace with
it. The approach is always to be inductive: information, rules, etc.,
are to be given to meet actual developing needs arising in the process
of mastering reading and writing.

First Grade or Year.

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If Reading and Writing are begun, the mechanics of the

simplest forms will absorb attention. The only terms to be
used will be such simple ones as "spell," "word," "stop,"
" syllable," big and little A, B, C, etc.
Second Grade or Year.
The Sentence in its Simplest Form.
Marks of : capital and period to indicate beginning
and end of the sentence.
Other forms of capitalization as needed, viz. :
(a) Child's own name, and its substitute," I."
(b) Child's own address, and abbreviations
involved : initials.
(c) Other persons and places.
(d) Dates. Days of the week. Months.
Distinguish prose and poetry (what is singable) :
rhyme ; verse.
(e) Begin each line of poetry with a capital.
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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

Use as a model of the self-sufficient sentence, the
simple proverb and adage, and the verse of two
and four lines.
\Vrite, if progress warrants, the simplest form of letter
a few times. Address an envelope to parent.
Write dedication of Easter gift.
Third Grade or Year.

The Enlarged Sentence of the Simplex Class.
Comma, as a new need, chiefly to separate series of
nouns, and nouns of address : Proper and Common.
Apostrophe, discriminated and used; but no rule
given: chiefly as marking singular possessive noun.
Number: Singular and Plural. [? Defer if possible.]
Quotation Marks in dialogue, as a convenience to
indicate where each speaker begins and ends.
Broken quotations explained.
Distin guish in Reader paragraph (sentence-group),
Chapter, Section, Verse. Use terms freely in calling for copies in dictation and in original work.
Titles of books, poems, stores, railroads, etc.
Indentation is consequently called for in paragraphs,
lines of verses, addresses, and parts of letters.
Margins first observed. Capitalize titles, proper
names, etc.
The classic form of short composition (as the proverb
was for Grade II) will be the one-paragraph fable
or story (fr:sop, the model), -virtually, the expanded or illustrated proverb, - short, compact,
concrete. Dialogue, employing quotation marks,
may be introduced.
Advance a step in letter-writing. Use note-paper

GRAMMAR AND LANGUAGE WORK

sometimes.
tions.

Address envelopes.

227

New abbrevia-

Fourth Grade or Year.
Begin analytical Treatment of the Simplex Sentence, involv·
ing a Distinction of its Parts and Marks.
Compare a sentence with a book-title, and an exclamation, to bring out leading characteristic.
In this connection begin the use of exclamation
point and question mark. ·
Subject and Predicate distinguished in the course of
framing simple, connected assertions about things
and animals. The list of attributes tabulated in
the science lesson may be thrown into short sentences and grouped into a paragraph.
Verbs: number and tense distinguished.
Continue development of Number begun in III.
Give regular rule for plurals of nouns. Irregulars
distinguished.
Develop use of Apostrophe also, in connection with
possessive noun (first general idea of case), plurals; and the possessive with " of," in some cases.
Adjectives or Modifiers, employed and discussed in
descriptions attempted, and recognized as the simplest kind of enlargement of the subject or any
Noun.
A few contractions, using apostrophe in new way :
"o'clock," "'tis," "don't," etc. Give exercises in
writing these in full.
Begin to use the simplest kind of Dictionary, for
spelling, Syllabification, and meaning. Explain
and call for a few Synonyms.

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH
In Composition an advance will be made to the two·
paragraph form, to bring the paragraph idea into
greater clearness. Work out a simple contrast : the
park in winter and summer; town and country, etc.
Stricter attention to Margins, Indentation, and other
formalities.

GRAMMAR AND LANGUAGE WORK

229

ence for one of two things compared, or including
::. third member of comparison.
Develop the letter ; begin more formal type.
Draw more generously on good models.
Sixth Grade or Year.
Tlze Enlarged Sentence: Compound Type.

Fifth Grade or Year.
The Enlarged Sentence in Complex Form.
Expand the conception of modifier to include phrase
and clause. Compare with simplest adjective
modifiers.
Add the adverb as modifying the verb and, later,
the adjective.
New use of Comma to mark off clause and phrase.
The Object of the verb distinguished. Government.
Objective case recognized (in pronouns) and its
use with prepositions: "to me " "for you and
me." (Develop idea of case.)
Pronouns distinguished, growing out of their use in
the relative clause.
Comparison of adjectives and adverbs.
Compound nouns and adjectives, with hyphen : use in
descriptions; "sky-blue," "coal-black," etc.
Metaphor and Personification recognized.
Exercises in placing of modifiers, and rule as to proper
order of words in a sentence.
Treatment of Inversions.
In Composition continue two·paragraph form, running into a third paragraph expressing a prefer·

Explain the Compound Sentence (a.) in contrasts or
antitheses, introduced by "but " and "yet" ; and
(b) in double or linked affirmations of coordinate
values.
The chief aid will be exercises in expanding, condensing, and transforming sentences: putting two
or more sentences into one; transforming a sentence into a modifying clause or phrase in another.
Ring the changes on complex and compound.
This will mean developing the power to think
two things or ideas in relation, and to make combinations, contrasts, and comparisons.
Verb developed: Voice; Auxiliaries; Conjugation;
Principal Parts.
Conjunctions distinguished : kinds according to kinds
of sentence.
Semicolons in Compound Sentence. Colon before
enumerations and quotations. Metaphors continued, and Similes.
Develop Use of Dictionary : Easier diacritical marks.
In Composition continue development of three-paragraph form, with the idea of a Beginning, Middle,
and End construction.
Use a developing outline with one or two subheads,
with an eye to indentation and capitalization.

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Seventh Grade or Year.
Tiu Classification o.f Sentences.
Survey of the three kinds : Simple, Complex, and
Compound ; Dependent and Independent ; Subordinate and Coordinate.
Review and develop Case (in connection chiefly with
Pronouns), and Prepositions, with their government. Use of prepositional Genitive and Dative.
The Verb : transitive and intransitive; object and
complement.
(a) To be, developing idea of inflection already
involved in the treatment of case. The concept of Person. Explanation of Nominative
following the Verb. Adjective and adverbial
complement: "He is tall," "It is well," "He
behaves well."
(b) Transitive verbs : Double object. Dative, first
in pronominal form: " I gave him an apple."
Declension of Nouns in full.
Weak and Strong Nouns. Irregular plurals
and plurals in compounds (brothers-in-law).
Declension of pronouns.
Exercises in Concord (double subject, etc.) and in
the conversion of sentences - complex and compound.
Strengthen and develop the Outline by means of the
ideas of dependence and subordination in thought
processes.
Letter-writing advanced ; letters to be longer and
more varied in character - formal and informal in
several degrees. Use models.

GRAMMAR AND LANGUAGE WORK

231

Eighth Grade or Year.
The Classification and Analysis o.f Sentences (continued),
and Review.
New distinctions: declarative, imperative, and interrogative.
Conjugation in full. Mood.
[Here it must be borne in mind that if the pupil t"s
studying a foreign language, the treatment will be
.briefer, and the comparative method will be called
into play.]
Use of other auxiliaries: can, may, might, etc.
Exercises in the conversion of tense, voice, and of
sentence-type.
Exercises in varying the arrangement of words in
sentences.
Synonyms, Homonyms, and Antonyms. (See Bain's
suggestions in his "Education as a Science.")
This development becomes desirable in connection
with the increasing demand for finer discrimination
in the use of words. It may lead into the closer
study of words and their composition and derivation.
The question - Why have we two words for the same
or nearly the same idea? - will lead to a first study
of derivation and word-formation, - Saxon, Classical, and Romance elements; prefixes and suffixes:
roots, stems, and foreign plurals.
Growing out of this recognition of differences in origin
and history, we may go more fully into the conjugation of verbs, strong and weak forms.
Fuller comprehension of the larger Dictionary ; its
signs, etc.

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Exercises in converting direct into indirect quotation,
and vice versa, may be introduced here.
Complete Analysis

ef Sentences.

Parts of speech left over : article, interjection.
Irregular and convertible parts of speech.
Verbal-nouns, adjective nouns, etc. Noun clauses, etc.
Exercises in different uses of same word.
Gender.
Ellipse (exercises in reducing to and in expanding).

If time allows, follow up beginnings of word-study.
The growth of language. Sources of English in
relation to history.
Shakespeare's English (if
Shakespeare has been read at all). Dialect,
Changes
Slang. Spelling and its anomalies.
going on. New words for new things. More
synonyms : pai rs, contrasts.
Exercises in obversions (as recommended by Bain)
(e .g. Heat favors vegetation ; cold retards it).
Review according to time at disposal.

PART II
THE HIGH SCHOOL COURSE

If this sketch-plan raises as many questions as it suggests solutions (which is to be expected), it must
be borne in mind that its purpose here is roughly to
illustrate, and to justify provisionally, the conception
of a possible organic development of langm1ge and
grammar work by the inductive method. The
plan is being experimented with, and many of its
features are under trial. Improvements will come
only after much more testing and, above all, much
discussion and comparison between teachers and
systems.
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CHAPTER

XIII

GENERAL AIMS: CHARACTERISTICS AND NEEDS OF THE
ADOLESCENT PERIOD

"IN healthy natures it is the golden age of life," says
Dr. Stanley Hall of the period of adolescence ; and this
conviction may well inspire the work of the High
School teacher. This golden age does undoubtedly
offer rare and peculiar opportunities to the educator.
The young nature, crossing the threshold of adult years,
expands with almost sudden access of life. It is an age
of new birth, of quick changes and swift maturing; the
age for the taking of vows and assuming of responsibilities; the age of confirmation and self-dedication. In
the course of a few years the slim, frocked girl becomes
the gowned and dignified woman; the boy's piping
treble turns to a manly bass. Features take a firmer
cast; the limbs a settled pose and gait. And this outward change of life, as we significantly phrase it, is
accompanied by inward mutations no less marked. The
nature vibrates with new longings and resolves, deeper
admirations and hopes, strange curiosities and doubts.
The tumult and trouble of the springtide are in the
brain and heart no less.
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As a rule these four years of High School life are
to count for more in determining the set of the character than any other four years of life. When at this
time the throng of new interests, tastes, and desires
declare themselves; when, one after another, literature
and music and the arts - nature, solitude, religion,
humanitarian enterprise; adventure-make appeal to
the sensitive nature, it becomes a matter of chief moment whether what are often mere transiencies of
impulse and liking, mere shy, fleeting visitants asking
food and shelter, are to receive a hearty and hospitable
welcome, or are to be excluded (forever, as it often
proves) from a home in the soul. Are they to grow
from more to more under generous hospitality, or to ,
die of inanition and neglect? The High School teacher
may be a large - sometimes the largest - factor in deciding the answers to these vital questions.
During such a ger~inant period Literature may exercise its maximum of humanizing influence; and how it
may be used to this end should, to our mind, be the leading concern of the teacher. The statements which one
commonly meets of the aims that should control the
teaching of English in the High School are, we hold,
not only inadequate, but misleading. For example :
the teacher of English, we are told by an accredited
authority, is "to introduce his pupils to English literature; to awaken the dormant language sense, the linguistic consciousness, with reference to the mother-

GENERAL AIMS

237

tongue; to stimulate and direct the ambition for neat
and comely expression." So far, so good; but not far
enough. And to the same effect is this statement by
another concerning literary aims : the reading done
"will have for its main purpose the cultivation of a
taste for the best books, and the inculcation of the
habit of always having a good book to read." Again,
good, but. not good enough, - there is not enough red
blood in it. We must get behind this hooky view to
the large human view, and hold steadily to it; the view
that finds expression in the great masters and critics
of letters. Let us take one instance of it from an
impressive source, the master-critic of modern times,
Sainte-Beuve. "I hold very little to literary opinions.
Literary opinions occupy very little place in my life
and in my thoughts. What does occupy me seriously
is life itself and the object of it." This is cited by a
disciple, Matthew Arnold, who takes the same attitude,
holding that poetry, Literature generally, is to be appraised according to its soundness as a criticism of life.
And these two men are above suspicion on literary
grounds ; both had an exquisite sense of the beauty of
literary art and of the excellences of style. Let us
too, then, use Literature in this spirit to aid our young,
men and women to i_Dterpret life, to see life, to respond
to the spectacle and drama of life.
If the teacher of English is to conceive of his office
as being less that of instructing the young how to read

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GENERAL AIMS

with understanding and to speak and write correctly,
than that of developing the higher emotional and
rational nature, - its sympathies and vision, its loves
and hates, its ideals and aspirations, and its powers
of self-command, self-organization, and self-expression
through its use of language, - then he has a very heavy
responsibility put upon him. For no teacher is it more
importa nt than it is for him to be conversant with the
psychological phenomena of adolescence. He should
know his every chance to catch incipient tendencies;
and out of the new instincts and emotions, as they arise,
he should try to establish permane nt intellectual interests.
In this period it is especially obvious that the
emotions lead, and that it is out of the seething emotional life of the youth that the ethical and intellectual
interests and proclivities are to be kindled. Among

tin Durward discounted in the hands of a maudlin or
crabbed teacher! How easily may the womanly charm
and healthy strength of a Portia or a Rosalind suffer
detraction at the hands of a sleek sentimentalism or

all the subjects of study it is by art, and chiefly by
literary art, that this emotional life is to be nurtured,
clarified, and illumined. We say "among the subjects
of study," because more potent than any other influence should be that of the teacher himself. It behooves
the teacher to remember that unless the radiant ideals
of manhood and woman hood prefigured in Literature
receive support and countenance in the manliness
and womanliness of the teacher, they lose much of
their effect. The teacher must make all types of excellence seem possible. How much is the vital force
and example of a Brutus, or a King Arthur, or a Quen-

239

Puritan primness! 1
In prescribing the literature that is to be read during the High School period, we must allow several
factors to count. These may be ranged under two
main divisions : first, the characteristics, the needs, and
the interests of the adolescent period; and secondly,
the vocational and social demands made upon High
School education. The two requirements must be kept
in mind : general culture, or education for a typical,
ideal manhood and womanhood; and preparation to
meet the actual demands of life and a specific kind of
social environment. Education cannot be simply for
power and for general culture ; it must likewise be a
novitiate for life, and , must clear an opening into the

t \

1 We cannot forbear to register h ere, for its intimate bearing on this
subject, our conviction of the importance of securing a much larger proportion of men teachers in our schools, - more particularly in the upper
grades of the Grammar School and throughout the High School. Both
our girls and boys show the lack of virile influences. Many of our boys
leave school without having come into close contact with men teachers,
with a strong yet gracious manliness. As a consequence the virtues are
forever associated with something of feminine delicacy and concession..
In the adolescent stage, and in relation t o · English teaching especially, a
judicious combination of men and women teachers is essential; men to
predominate with the boys, and women with the girls. Surely, this only

is consistent co-education.

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GENERAL AIMS

vocations. The very important facts must be faced that
the overwhelming majority of High School graduates
conclude their academic education when they graduate;
and yet that large numbers pass from the High
School into the professional and technical schools,
omitting college training.
Most of them go forth
into the workshop of the world to labor severally
according to their gifts and opportunities; som e into
a technical institute to serve an apprenticeship in
a selected calling; others, into college. The High
School should therefore have enabled them to discover
th eir gifts, and should have emphasized their cultivation with an outlook toward the vocation for which
they fit. The public expects as much; and from the
American point of view, rightly so. A vast amount of
time is being wasted in collegiate education upon unpropitious material that needs other methods of treatment.

should make on themselves, - namely, that the work
they undertake to do shall be well done. Of these
two general purposes, that of general culture must be
the controlling one. We have many types of character
to keep in mind and to develop. All we can do is to
allow a free play of these considerations upon the
problem of selection, and let now one end and now
another determine our preferences and k eep us sufficiently catholic. There must be variety in our work,
and yet we must not be led into scrappiness and miscellaneousness.

The High School course in English, therefore, must
be framed to subserve this double preparation: it must
aid in the preparation for social and personal life, - that
is, for manhood and womanhood and citizenship; it must
also aid in the choice of, and advance toward, a vocation. Incidentally it must dovetail into the higher institutions of learning and craftsmanship, academic and
professional. Incidentally, we say, because these institutions have no peculiar demands to make on the
High School other than those which these schools

It is at this point that there will be a clash - felt
nowhere so much as in the English work - between
the old ideal which emphasizes formal discipline and
thoroughness in a few things, and the new which
emphasizes culture-content and many-sided development in the interest not only of broad-based character,
but of the discovery of all forms of aptitude. We say
that this conflict of ideals perplexes no one so much as
tlie English teacher.
The teacher of languages, of
Mathematics, and even of Science (though less here) is
troubled little by it: he has a comparatively clear piece
of work cut out for him. He must be thorough in
the old-fashioned sense.
With him culture-content
must be for some time a secondary consideration: he
must work for a mastery of the tools first. But for the
larger purposes of literary study and of dealing with the
native tongue, the tools are approximately mastered for
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the purpose in hand. What we shall read for the large
ends of character and culture, is the question. Shall we
read much or little? intensively or extensively? We
say unhesitatingly that the ideal must be one of
breadth; the aim being that of evoking, disciplining,
and nurturing all types of character and endowment.
Now, deep-rooted as may be our desire for thoroughness, and a few things very well done rather than many
things fairly done (and we believe that we must and can
achieve both these), a brief survey of the characteristics
of the adolescent period will convince us that there are
strong reasons for liberality in the direction of variety.
For while it is true that this phase of growth is characterized by a development of the power of concentrated
and sustained attention, which will lead us to provide
some intensive work of a severer kind for the adolescent, it is also true that in healthy natures this concentration is directed in waves of changing interest
upon many objects. The quickly budding instincts
(which will unfortunately bring with them, at times, a
sequence of enthusiasms, adorations, fads) must get
a chance to deploy themselves and reveal their significance. We can never be sure which of them will but
flash into momentary blaze, and which will burn with
steady and brightening flame. Better let them kindle
than smoulder; burn out rather than receive a damper
from the teacher. After we have smiled away not a
little folderol and discounted heavily a crop of un-

proven generalities and statistical caprices of recent
essays on adolescence, we may at least recognize that in
our choice of literature we must accommodate ourselves
to certain marked changes that overtake the boy and
girl during the four years of High School life. For
instance, it ought to meet and form and exalt the
nascent sex-consciousness by literature that touches
nobly and simply the theme of romantic love, and presents healthy and formative types of manhood and
womanhood. It ought to provide food and outlet for the
religious and ethical instincts that mature during what
is preeminently the period of "conversions," as the
psychologists tell us. It ought to feed that feeling for
Nature which one statistician records as the most universal of the emotions of youth. And it ought to
cater mildly to those sudden, and also generally shortlived, "crazes" for different forms of art, music,
acting, etc., which are manifestations of a quickened
sensitiveness to beauty. And these instinctive tendencies seem to develop contemporaneously, to sweep on
to a maximum of energy, and then either to decline or
to survive, weakly or vigorously, as the case may be.
We can do no more than aim to lengthen out the stage
of fruition, to catch and carry forward the really dominating, deeper instincts and interests peculiar to each
nature, and to preserve a certain residuum of lingering,
sympathetic interest in those matters that awaken only
short-lived interest.

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These considerations alone give great weight to the
contention that we must aim largely at general culture.
This need not mean, however, a superficial and sweeping eclecticism that would ignore the importance of
a certain thoroughness, or a regard for the intensive
quality we alluded to a moment ago; but it means a
generous and, for the time being, lively and concentrated concern with literature that shall meet these
varied and fluctuating needs of the adolescent nature.
It means that this period must not be regarded as one
for the refinements of exact scholarship; for a contraction of interests; for an exclusion of the so-called
diversions, cutting off the side-glances at the varied
vocati ons and avocations that tempt the e xperimental
lcn g in g s of youth. This would be wrong in a period
of dilation and experimentation, of testing and trying, of laying broad and firm foundations.
There remains for special mention one other aspect
of the interests of the adolescent that has to be taken
account of in our selection of literature. The period is
often thought of as being a period of" storm and stress" :
the youth is the subject of all sorts of clashings and
contradictions. So, indeed, it often is; and the perplexing fact in the situation is that each of the contending powers has a modicum of right on its side. For
example, it is a time when the senses and the passions
are powerfully stirred; and yet it is a time also when
latent idealism asserts itself, and the sharpened intel·

lect refuses to be blinded by sense-allurements. It is
a time when the "ego" has its birth, and may push
on toward the brink of self-absorption and morbid introspection; a time of self-scrutiny and self-discovery,
when the youth asks, What am I fit for? Where do
I belong? - a time when the thirst for ind ependence
is keen. Yet it is also the time when the social nature,
the sense of solidarity, the spirit of loyalty, the love
of man and a headlong devotion to causes and to
persons, even to the extent of heroic self-sacrifice,
gains headway; in fine, when the claims of society
and the supremacy of social considerations are recognized.
It is likewise a time when, as it has been
phrased, the youth delights in "team-work," in selfsubordination, or unselfish leadership in the service of
the team; when the more individualistic sports and recreations of earlier years give place to cooperative, social
games. And yet it is a time when the spirit of selfish
ambition, rivalry, and jealousy may become fierce and
bitter. It is a time when the youth or the maid finds
a deepening pleasure in the company of the other
~,e x, and yet draws further and further away in interests
and cccupations from it.
The duty of the teacher of Literature is to work
for the higher harmony of these contending powers
by purging them of their baser and morbid elements.
Not, let us hasten to say, by making the youth keenly
aware of the conflict.
He will become aware of it

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soon enough. We must not precipitate it. We must
meet it and use it when it emerges; but as a general
rule we must work, when we can, to develop the
higher powers to unconscious supremacy. It is safe to
lean, in this period of dawning introspection, in the
direction of a healthy objectivity. With this precaution, we shall strive, not to suppress, but to purify
a nd exalt alike the legitimate self-regarding and selfdenying instincts ; egoistic, individualistic tendencies,
and social and devotional ones; the pure pleasures of
sense and the lofty pleasures of mind; the capacity for
happy, untroubled enjoyment, and yet the duty of
austere self-refusal, and the willingness to bear pain
and discomfort.

and the " Childe Harold" of the latter, influences for
good; why the lovely, unsullied sensuousness of Keats
should be familiarized through the "Eve of St. Agnes,"
and the Odes ; why we should in our senior classes use
"Comus," with its high debate upon chastity; why the
darker tragic contest between good and evil in the heart
should (if not fin gered too curiously) lead us into the
study of "Macbeth," "Richard III," or another of
Shakespeare's tragic masterpieces. Yes, and let us not
forget the tonic ministry of humor, to save sentimentally
inclined young people from the posing solemnities and
conceits of self-important youthfulness; so that Touchstone and Bottom, and Sir Roger and mine host of the
" Rainbow" and his rustic patrons, shall help to preserve a healthy balance of the emotions, and a due
sense of intellectual proportion.
So much, then, in regard to the character-needs and
culture-needs of the adolescent. We would add only
this brief word of summary: The English course must
be fashioned with an eye to all the leading types of
character and proclivity, - the intellectual or scientific
type, the humanitarian, the artistic, and the practical.
It must correct the exclusiveness and threatening narrowness of any one of them, and yet minister at times
to each in its legitimate and peculiar needs.
We have now to consider the second set of considerations that are to guide us in our choice of literature, - those of the more practical order that look

The literature we select for study must be eclectic
enough to cover this wide fi eld of contradictory tendencies. And, first, in dealing with the literature of
passion, it will be wise to keep in mind the truth
that passion to be pure must be strong, and that
it is not intensity but impurity that must be shunned.
(The teacher must not be a Laodicean.) That is why
a novel of romantic love like "Lorna Doone" may
well find place in our reading list ; why the story of
Arthur's regal love, marred though it is by guilty
Guinevere's di sloyalty, may be used ; why the nobler
subjectivity and egoism of Shelley and Byron will
make of the best of the former's lyrics (the "Skylark,"
the "Ode to the West Wind," and parts of "Alastor ")

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specifically toward social needs and vocational ends.
There is in the public mind an expectation that, as
the result of the High School work, our youth shall
be so much at home in the world of books as to be
able to draw upon them with facility to meet the
emergencies of daily life, - draw upon them for professional or business purposes, for models and aid~
in the letter-writing, the speech-making, the storytelling, the reciting, and other forms of entertaining
that fall to the lot of most of us. This is a natural
and proper expectation. The student should have
learned in a general way what sources of information
a good library affords, should know how to consult it
for a variety of purposes, and how expeditiously to
run down any reference that occurs in his daily reading. There ought to be a good reference library in
the school, to which the student should resort continually; and our tasks should take him from time to
time to the large public library for research and
verification.

the public speaker, the lawyer, and even the author.
A foremost aim of all education must be that of
helping the youth to ignite at that point of interest
which a special aptitude in him creates; and why
not literary aptitudes as well as others ? the aptitudes
that draw toward the newspaper office, the pulpit, the
library, the stage, the court room, or the school, no
less the aptitudes that draw toward the mine, the
foundry, the shop, the architect's office, or the artist's

More than this, our work must serve the useful
end of discovering aptitudes and opening up certain
vocations.
The teacher of Literature (more cautiously than other teachers, because of the literary
illusion that so easily haunts youth) must have a
thought for those vocations in which distinctively
literary gifts find employment, - those of the journalist, the librarian, the actor, the preacher, the teacher,

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studio?
Admitting the validity of such practical demands,
along with the general educational and cultural demands made upon us, our selected reading matter
must be varied 'enough to include examples of all
the leading types of literature. For instance, journalism and the journalist is inevitably suggested by our
study of Addison and Steele and the "Spectator," as
well as by various series of sketches, such e.g. as
Irving's "Sketch Book" ; the lawyer and the man of
affairs are before us in the study of Webster's or
Burke's speeches and orations; the book-lover, suggestive of the ideal librarian, is before us when we
read Lamb (notably his "Detached Thoughts on
Books and Reading"), Emerson's or Carlyle's essays
on books, or Ruskin's "Sesame and Lilies "; the
actor inevitably comes to mind with the study and
recitation of Shakespeare; while in Carlyle's "Heroes
and Hero-worship," with which we become acquainted

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in connection with the "Essay on Burns," required for
college entrance, we have the career of the man of
letters ar,d the poet invested with great attractiveness.
The study of these masterpieces involves systematic
work in public speaking and debate and in dramatic
representation. It will be well also to provide for the
organization and management, und er the care of the
students, of a select school or class library, and the encouragement of a school paper which shall have its
intimate connection with the class-room work. Thus
doors may be opened invitingly to the curious, tempting
the talented to enter and linger. Thus the predestined
Aladdin may find, as he explores a fascinating region,
the lamp that is to shed light on his path through life.

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CHAPTER XIV

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LITERATURE IN , THE HIGH SCHOOL: PLAN AND
MATERIALS

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WE pass now, after our rapid survey of general

literary aims, ethical and practical, during the four
years of the High School, to a consideration of the
details of the work and the stages of progression.
As to the beginnings, experience in teaching both
the hig her Grammar Grades and High School freshmen, has borne in upon us the importance of investing the Hig h School period with distinctive character,
- of fostering in the freshman a strong sense of the
new page turned, the new chapter begun, the fresh
start, the new opportunity. This result will to some
'.!xtent come of itself. The freshman feels at once, by
the less regimental treatment, the larger trust, the
expectation of stricter self-government, that he has
advanced a step toward the life of freedom.
The
organization of the studies under a body of specialists
is an intimation that higher and more exacting work
is to be required of him.
The appearance of the
elective factor - in the matter of foreign ·languages
at any rate (we will not gnaw here at this scarred
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bone of contention)- brings with it thoughts of Cl
life-career which give a new sense of nearness to manhood's responsibilities.

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We believe in utilizing this factor in the English work.
Let us signalize this new departure. We have found
a certain virtue in using the term Rhetoric in conjunction with our Composition, just to give the sense
of a tcrra incognita; of a new outlook on the composition work from a more commanding elevation. We
have avoided Grammar if our freshmen have had a
strong, recent dose of it. We have tried to strike a
new vein of interest in the reading matter, and to
indicate that we are taking a step forward in our
methods of study. Our first written exercise has been
a series of questions as to previous work in English,
- books read in and out of school, the part reading
has played in the student's life, his preferences, and
how they have changed, etc. This inventory is, for
many reasons, an invaluable document; and until it
is received, all plans for the year's work must be to
some extent provisional. The wise teacher will not
be satisfied with it alone. He will get all available
information concerning the schools from which his
students have come, and the course of English study
pursued there.
Following the same cue, and realizing the importance of beginnings in all things, the teacher will be
careful to plan certain typical lessons and experi·

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253

ences for the newcomers, which shall suggest the
spirit and the atmosphere that is to surround the
work. There is to be enlarged recognition of individual
rights and responsibilites, to meet the growth of the
feeling of realized selfhood that is proper to the adolescent period. Each pupil will be gently thrown back
upon himself by being asked at an early moment to
do an individual piece of work - report to his class on
this or that matter.
Again, because this period is marked by a greater
capacity of intellectual labor and concentrated attention, the first tasks will announce to the class that
more prolonged and more absorbed effort is to be
exacted of them. But this severer effort is to be made
in an air of quiet, promoting an eager yet tranquil
activity.
For it is a peculiarity of the adolescent
period that, while the pulse of life beats strong, while
vitality is at the flood and emotion is often torrential,
there is great danger of overstimulating and overtaxing. This new life, while it must find sufficient
outlet, must also be husbanded. "Inspire enthusiastic activity," is the safest motto for the teacher at this
time, counsels Dr. Stanley Hall; but he is also very
insistent that we must avoid a prodigal employment
of this "new and final invoice of energy." It is the
more necessary to conduct the work in a spirit of glad
yet quiet diligence, because these young men and
women (notably the young women) are subject, many

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of them, to moods or spells, now of inertia, and now of
unwonted activity; of elation, and de pression (thoughts
of suicide are not un common at this time, we are
told).
So that we shall aim in these first recitations and meetin gs with our freshmen to strike the
key-note of dignified and tranquil, yet inspiring and
laborious effort. We are going to work for the sak e
of the joy in the work, yet sometimes grimly against the
grain for ends to be ta ken on trust.
With su ch thoug hts in our minds, we shall b e careful to choose promising reading matter to make a
start with, preferably two or three short selections
in poetry and prose; following a rule - to be observed
thr..rngh th e High School course - of sandwiching the
quieter books judiciously among the more exciting ones.
These "points of rest" give a happy rhythm · to the
work. After the stir and tension of works like "The
Ancient Marin er," "The Tale of Two Cities," "Julius
Cesar," "Macbeth," let us have the contrasting calm of
"The Dese rted Village" or Gray's "Elegy," of Lamb
or Hawthorne, of Sir Roger and Mr. Spectator and

of emphasis in the composition work, descriptive literature will receive special attention; while masterpieces
of exposition and argument will claim attention in the
third a nd fourth years. But it is one thing to allow a
certain e mphasis to fall, now upon na rr ative, and now
upon descriptive lite rature and so on, following the
com position work; quite anoth er to confine attention
almost exclusively in any year to one or the other
order. In the first place, - repeatin g our argument in
Chapter XI, - the student is co ncerned in his varied
daily work with all forms of composition; secondly,
th ere is no principl e of logical progression that either
binds th e different kinds of writing together in a given
sequence, or dearly separates . them, - at least, this
is true of narrati on and description, which overlap ;
thirdly, we need some variety for the sake of the varied
interests and quick contemporaneous developments of
th e adolescent period; fourthly, the mind does not
develop in any such linear fashion, but is advancing in
the sum of its powers, including the reaso ning and
argumentative powers, the recognition of which we so
often delay until th e third or fourth year; lastly, the
scheme is too long drawn out and monotonous, - an objection that applies with special force to a year's occup ation with description and th e descriptive type of
literary masterpiece. We should as little think of prescribing for each of the four years an exclusive study
of the novel, the epic, the essay, and the speech respec -

254

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the Rev. Dr. Primrose.
What particular works we select for our first year students will depend largely upon our general scheme for
the four years. The simplest scheme is tb:i.t which
adapts itself in part to the composition work. In the
first year a generous proportion of the books will be of
the narrative order; in th e s~cond, following the change

255

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tively. We rather recommend a scheme that includes
in each year's work most of the leading types of literary
art, with in tensive, emphasized work (correlating with
the composition, - where, however, we must equally
avoid monotony) during part of the year in one direcThus, we should feed and develop the various
tion.
powers of the mind, - invention al, constructive, imaginative, observational, reasoning, and persuasive, -while
these would receive each in its turn that intensive,
systematic, analytical treatment that gives to the
student the self-conscious mastery of them.
Our first year's course will, then, take shape after
this fashion. Emphasis at the outset will be upon
narrative literature, and for these reasons : it gives a
wholesome objective bias to the work; it carries over
the tendencies of what we have called the epic phase
of the higher Grammar Grades into the incipient stage
of the adolescent period, before many of the students
have reached the age of puberty; and it enables us to
settle down to the large structural aspects and problems
that are basic in advanced literary studies. We shall
deal with the ballad, expanding into the short epic,
noting the difference between the lyric and the epic
mode; and with the short story, leading us on to
the novel, noting the differences between these two
species upon which Professor Brander Matthews has
insisted in his "Philosophy of the Short Story." We
shall not attempt to go far into theory at this stage -

only so far as will enable the student to appreciate
more keenly the excellences of the typical masterpieces
he is reading. This work will find its natural complement in the study of a play by Shakespeare, the emphasis being distdbuted between the structural and
poetic features and the character interest of the play.
As to the works to be selected for these varied
studies, we shall be guided by what our freshman class
has read. If they have not taken Scott, we may use
hiin, - a ballad, an epic, a novel. Rossetti's ballad of
"The White Ship," and Arnold's "Sohrab and Rustum" or "Balder Dead," among the shorter epics, are
especially suitable. We have found few things better
than the parts of the "Odyssey" (in Bryant's version),
brought together in No. 43 of the Riverside Literature
series, under the title" Ulysses among the Phceacians,"
which can be timed for the moment when the class is
busy in its history work with the early Greek period.
The relation of the ballad to the epic may be brought
out strikingly in dealing with Homer; and a ballad or
lyric treatment of some of the episodes that are included
in our selection may be used for comparative purposes.
The story of the "Odyssey" as a whole also gives us
a chance to work in some of the loveliest of lyrics on
classic themes, -Tennyson's "Lotos Eaters," Dobson's
"Prayer of the Swine to Circe," and many other stories
which the teacher will find in Gayley's indispensable
'Classic Myths in English Literature" (Ginn). What

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task can be more stimulating to the teacher than that
of bringing his students, at such a critical transitional
moment in their lives, into touch with Homer and the
noble simplicity of the Hom eric world ;-with Ulysses
at his best; with the athletic youth of Ph reacia ;
with the magical grace of N ausicaa's robust young
womanhood; with the refined simplicity of the royal
household of Arete, and the chaste beauty of Phreacia's
craftsmanship and life?
Also as to the short story and the novel, we shall
draw upon Hawthorne or Poe, Irving ("Tales of a
Traveller" preferably), Kipling, Scott, Stevenson,
Dickens, or Thackeray, according to the conditions by
which we find ourselves confronted.
In addition to this study of the narrative poem in
association with the ballad, and of the short story
leading on to the novel and the play, we shall make
room for a generous supply of lyric poetry, and the
beginnings of public speaking and debate. In the
High School no less than in the Elementary School,
much lyric poetry would be learned, and sung or
recited, in connection with the commemorations and
festivals, the morning exercises, and the entertainments
given by the school. On this head we must refer to
our general treatment of the matter in Chapter X.
The work in public speaking and debate should be
the beginning of a course that is to be carried through
the four years of the High School; and it will be

convenient to outline it at this point. An interest in
debating will have manifested itself doubtless - at least
on the boys' part - in the upper Grammar Grades; and
some teachers have successfully organized work in debating there. The zest is often keen in the High School
freshmen. We should gratify it informally at first,
and m;:i.ke our beginning, as part of the work in
composition, with the writing and delivery of short
speec hes of a commemorative rather than of an argumentative character. Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech will
give us an initial impulse, the student trying his hand
at brief orations for use at the Thanksgiving Day or
Memorial Day exercises, or short eulogies for Washington's or Lincoln's Birthday. Other types of short
speeches - the complimentary speech suitable to the
class-gathering or surprise-party, the birthday celebration, or what not- may be worked in. This may be
made valuable in developing a sense of differences in
literary tone and style-in literary pitch; and it will
give steadiness and address in platform work, and
impart a touch of reality and immediacy to the literary
studies.
In the second and third years this work in oratory
and debate may be carried steadily forward into the field
of argument, the school debating club being utilized as
an indispensable annex; and in the fourth year it may
find its culmination in connection with the study of
Burke's Speech on Conciliation, required, as it fortu-

259

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LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

nately happens, for college entrance.
The studies
would aim at the development of the reasoning powers,
would involve an elementary study of logic, and would
centre in the preparation of the notes and briefs to be
used in speech-making. The student would be taught
how to work up topics. and how to apply, in a new way
and with obvious exigency, the principles of literary
construction (unity, clearness, coherence, repetition,
summary, illustration, figures, climax, etc.) which he
has previously seen in relation to the narrative and the
description.
It is remarkable how much these are
vitalized by the needs of the debate. In the third year
there might be valuable intensive work on Webster. 1
The teacher will find many available cheap texts that
will furnish material from which the student will be
able to draw much nutritive thought, and catch the
glow of an ardent patriotism and humanitarianism :
Lincoln's and Washington's Speeches, Schurz's Eulogy
of Lincoln, Webster's Speeches, and some of Emerson's
and Lowell's Addresses, in the Riverside series; Curtis
on the Public Duty of Educated Men, some of the Campaign Speeches of Lincoln and Douglas, etc., in Maynard's English Classic series.

How much time should be spared for this work must
depend upon the teacher's power and equipment, and
upon the school conditions. It might be made an elective, and an adjunct of the debating club. We have
known it to be worked in as a Friday afternoon" special,"
taking the place that used to be h eld by the old-fashioned Friday afternoon "rhetoricals." But such a
course has so much to yield of both pleasure and profit,
and has such obvious bearing upon the education for
citizenship in a democracy, that we should give it an
hour a week - if necessary, one of the three hours assigned to Literature - during the first or second year,
or both; and in the third and fourth y ears would add
some weeks of intensive work upon Webster and Burke,
as already suggested.
In passing on now, after disposing of the whole subject of oratory and debate, to the planning of our literary studies for the second, third, and fourth years, we
must not fail to note what rapid changes, wh a t quick
maturing of faculty, is taking place in our boys and
girls. There is a striking difference between the first
and the fourth year students; the child has become
the young man and young woman - the young woman
outdistancing the youth in many directions (perceptive

260

1 An admirable text-book would be Professor F. V. Scott's edition of
some of Webster's Speeches in Longmans' English Classics. It contains
valuable suggestions for the tea cher that are pertinent to the object we
have in mind here. It needs supplem enting, however, by the texts of
Webster's argumentative speeches. The bibliography on p. xxxiii will
put the tea cher in the way of many helps toward the elaboration of his

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course; but it calls for a few recent additions, such as Lam ont's "Specimens of Exposition," Baker's "Specimens of Argum entati on," Baker's
"Principles of Argum entation," Mac Ewan's " Essenti als of Argumen~•
tion," and Buck's "A Course in Argumentative '~' riting . "

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power, artistic feeling, e.g.), and being much nearer the
goal of adult ripeness. Were it not that the scale of the
present treatment of our subject forbids, we should
have to go into the question of the desirability of a
differentiation of the work of girls and boys. U ndoubtedly certain sex differe nces, which the teacher of English cannot fail to notice, manifest themselves at this
time; and it is to our minds an open question whether
regard should not be paid at this stage to these differences in the English work. 1 This rapid ripening of
adult instincts and insight will make some difference in
what we select, and still more in the temper in which
we deal with it, the plane of our treatment.
As to the order of our studies, confining our attention for the moment to the works prescribed for
college entrance, we may note that the lists for

fourth years, with a view to the expediencies of examination, or to leave all the "Study" books for the fourth
year. We have already disapproved of the plan to put
all the novels into the first year, or even the first and
second years, for the sake of parallelism with composition work in Narration and Description respectively.
We should also refuse to follow historical considerations. We must be guided by ethical and resthetic
demands. The history of literature is of secondary importance in the High School period. We must work
with might and main for literary appreciation, regardless for the most part of all extraneous considerations.
The sensible course to pursue, in dealing with Shakespeare's plays, e.g., is to deal with them in the order of
their artistic and ethical complexity. "Macbeth" we
shall leave to the very last, and shall have prepared the
way for an appreciation of that by previous progressive
work on "Julius Cesar" and "The Merchant of Venice," "As You Like It," "Midsummer Night's Dream,"
"Richard III," etc. Our work will have been cumulative; there will have been a gradual year-to-year
growth in the power to appreciate and interpret Shakespeare.
So, too, with the three novels. The natural course to
pursue will be to begin with the novel of the simplest
genre, the historical novel a nd novel of adventure, "Ivanhoe," say; then to pass on to the novel of manners, the "Vicar of Wakefield," and the novel of char·

262

1903-4-5 contain three novels and three of Shakespeare's plays. How shall we distribute these through
our four years? We may reject with a mere word the
proposals either to put most of them into the third and
1 Th e subj ect is touched on in Professor Clark Wissler's "The Interests
of Chilclren in th e Reading Work of the Elem entary Schools" (Pedagogical S eminary, Vol. V, pp. 523-540), quoted at length in Professor Thorndike's Mo nograph on "The Study of Children" (Teachers College .Record,
Vol. II, No. 3), which contains an allusion also (p. 29) to Miss Clara
Vostrovsky's stutly on th e sam e subj ect. See also Professor S. Thurber's
address on" English Literature in Girls' Education" (School .Rev iew, Vol.
II, 6, June, 1894). We tak e th e oppo rtunity t o advise th e yo un g teacher
to allow none of Mr. Thurber's papers, scattered through the periodicals,
to escape his clutches.

THE T EACHING OF ENGLISH

acter, "Silas Marner," so leading on, as a result of 01:1r
study of George Eliot, to the more pronouncedly problem novel and psychological novel of to-day, by way of
works like "Romola" and "Felix Holt," "The House
of the Seven Gables," " Esmond" and "Pendennis,"
"Nicholas Nickleby," and "The Tale of Two Cities" to mention no others. This is to follow, or rather to
wait upon, the maturing vision and feeling of our students. We cannot force the pace. We cannot take the
kingdom of perfection by violence. We cannot despatch
at a single attack this or the other type of literature.
We have not a matter of scientific principle or progress
to deal with here; but the gradual, insensible formation
of taste, judgment, imagination, sympathy. We most
heartily reecho these wise words of Professor Samuel
Thurber, " If I have any pedagogic conviction more
especially rooted in my philosophy than any other, it is
this, - that a moral or resthetic principle cannot be
communicated ab e:r:t1'a, but must be grown up to by innumerable accretions of insight." In this spirit we say,
then, in regard to the arrangement of our course of
English Study, that we must use our best forethought
and ingenuity in planning how our students may grow
up, step by step, year by year, to the appreciation in the
fourth year of the " _big things" on the College entran_c e
list, and any others of our own selecting: "Macbeth,"
Burke on Conciliation, Milton's "Comus" and '' Lycidas," Macaulay's Essay on Milton, - we do not name

LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

the "Princess," which we regard as an unwise selection,
and have so learned by experience.
Guided by these general principles, we may begin our
second year by working the descriptive vein. Now is
the time for such works as Gray's "Elegy" (with
"Thanatopsis" and Dekker's and Shirley's Verses on
Death), "Childe H a rold," "L'Allegro" and" II Penseroso," "Snowbound," "The Cotter's Saturday Night,"
"The Eve of St. Agnes"; for short lyrics of the more
descriptive order, and a few that have the subjective
touch felt in Shelley's and Wordsworth's poems on th_e
Skylark, Emerson's "Rhodora," and "Titmouse," and
"Humble Bee"; while in prose we have Stevenson (the
novels and " Travels with a Donkey "), " Lorna Doone "
(for home reading, and class discussion), some of Burroug hs's nature studies, some history selections (Green
or Motley), and late in the year the "Idylls of the
King" and th e "Merchant of Venice" as the large
items of our year's work. H ow these are to be utilized
we shall explain in our next chapter. How to cover so
much .ground satisfactorily, will be explain ed by what
we have to say concerning methods of treatment.
The third year student generally begins to show some
encouraging effects of the first two years of steady work.
Evidences of a maturing sense of form and style, of
sensitiveness to some of the finer qualities of poetry, begin to manifest themselves. This outcroppin g of results
for which the teacher has been working patiently, are

266

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

his reward for much apparently ineffectual effort during
those two or three years. We can be more sturdy in
our work, can attempt a little criticism and some
elementary work in ..IEsthetics, gathering our energies
for deeper appreciation in the fourth year. We may
start this third year - while the principles of exposition
are engaging attention in our composition - with some
of Dryden and Pope. If we use that convenient collection, Syle's " From Milton to Tennyson" (Allyn &
Bacon), - and we have found either, that volume or
Hales' "Longer English Poems" (Macmillan), or
George's "Chaucer to Arnold" (Macmillan), and Pancoast's "Introduction to English Literature" (Holt)
indispensable at this stage, - we shall take its appropriate selections from Dryden and Pope, adding
for collateral reading "Palamon and Arcite" (for plot
interest and a little comparative work with Chaucer),
the " Essay on Criticism," and the "Rape of the
Lock"; and then we may pass on to such recent poetry
in this mode as Arnold's "Scholar Gypsy," adding
"Thyrsis" and some of Arnold's lyrics, and, of course,
the "Forsaken Merman," - for who would omit that
bewitching, sea-sprayed song? For prose of the
expository order we might take either a few of
Bacon's Essays, some Bible selections, "Pilgrim's
Progress," Carlyle's Essay on Burns, or Ruskin's
"Sesame and Lilies." This is the year, also, for some
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LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

haps some of Stevenson's Essays, and, in connection
with the De Coverley papers, Macaulay's Essay on
Addison. We must not forget the intensive work on
Webster's oration~ and speeches already sketched in
connection with the special course of public-speaking
and debating ; and we must also allow time at the end
. to keep our progressive study of Shakespeare going,
selecting "Midsummer Night's Dream," or "As You
Like It," or "Twelfth Night," or one of the historical
plays. (We sh.:rnld not take at any time during the
course either" Hamlet," "King Lear," or "Othello.")
The fourth year will start with Burke's Speech on
Conciliation, while the stress in our composition work is
upon argMment- a tough piece of work that may very
well employ the fresh energies of the early part of the
school year. This done, we can, with an eye both to
establishing our reading in historic perspective and to
refreshing our memories of works read and authors
studied, go to " Macbeth " (rounding off our Shakespearean studies), then to "Comus" and" Lycidas," following it by Macaulay's Milton Essay, by means of
which our students ought to have a good idea of the ·
course of culture and literary development during
the progress of the Renascence and the Reformation
in England. We may then pass on to gather up the
threads of that interesting "period of prose" from
Dryden up through Pope, Addison, Steele, Johnson,
and Goldsmith, and come to the beginning of the

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Romantic Movement, reserving or reviewing "The
Ancient Mariner," and grouping Byron, Keats,
Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley; passing on to
Tennyson, with a little comparative work upon Browning, if we have a class of good enough quality to undertake the comparison. We are here suggesting the
utmost that may be done with students of good quality,
and in a school which avoids the make-up-for-lost-time
rush of a year of cram for college.
An alternative to the historic survey and study is
comparative work on the drama. Reserving "Macbeth " for the last of our studies, we can work out from
it into a comparative study of some Greek tragedy (.iEschylus' "Prometheus Bound," and Sophocles' "CEdipus "), or a French or German play, according to the
proficiency of our class in their French and German
studies. This is a question of turning the work in
other languages to account in our English class.
Occasionally one may be able to utilize the Book of Job
in such comparative work.
Whether we take this latter alternative will depend
upon the importance we attach to a knowledge of the
history of literature, and the reflection of the Zeit-Geist
in the works of the masters. We should devote, we
have said above, very little time in the High School to
historical considerations. A fair sense of historic succession may be gradually built up in the student's
mind. Each new author read should be put into time-

269

relations with those already studied, and occasionally
the cultural evolution of the period may be touched
upon. We know no more effective way of doing
this than to work out with increasing detail a chart
in which should be incorporated the salient historic
facts as they emerge. Nicols's and Ryland's Tables
of Literature and History will be useful in this
connection, and so will the tables in Pancoast's
History and in Longmans' or other editions of School
Classics.
Just how far the personal and biographical interest the time and place interest, the anecdotal interest- shall
be developed in our work, it is impossible to say with
any touch of dogmatism. The teacher's leading purpose must be to get the student to read, appreciate, and
evaluate the great creative works. He will grudge
much time taken from that to read books about books.
He may flavor at times with the solider kind of
literary gossip.
When he is reading Goldsmith and
Johnson with his class, it would be strange were he
not tempted into the by-paths of picturesque personalities by Boswell's "Johnson," which he should .
consider it wicked not to introduce to his students.
Much may be introduced by the way. Occasional
lantern talks and lectures on general topics should be
given; and generous but judicious use made of pictures of authors and places, and illustrated editions of
their works (Abbey's "Shakespeare," Thompson's "Sir

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Roger," etc.). The students may use illustrative mate·
rial in their note-books, and contribute to a general
school collection. The more suggestive and speaking
the class-room atmosphere, the better. Few of us will
be able to realize what Mr. George has realized in his
English room at Newton, but we can all strive for
something of the sort; we can all keep advancing
toward the goal set up by Professor Genung in the
following stimulating passage: " Our school rooms suggest in various ways the
matter-of-fact, the practical, the utilitarian, and this
is right; benches and desks are for study; books to
be thumbed and ground up into lessons; inkstands and
pads for fingers, formulre, notes. All this is emphatically the prose of school life. Now I would have
the class room, if I could, decorated with such pictures,
books, busts, and the like, as would help the room in
some degree to support the taste for refinement and
beauty, history and imagination.
I would have the
faces of great poets and thinkers looking down upon
the student's work.
I would have some good books
there; such especially as would not only be of practical value, but would give the student an idea of a
good edition and a worthy form of publication. I
would have some of the great scenes of history and
poetry shining before him in works of art; so that
entering here he might come out of the sordid, everyday surroundings into a region sacred to higher things.

.There is too little of this in our schools ; too little
of the spiritual and high-minded . And there is perhaps no class. room so well calculated to foster this
as the class room wherein we think and talk of great
writers and their art." 1

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1 "The Teacher's Outfit in Rhetoric," School Review, Vol. III, No. 7,
September, 2895.

LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

CHAPTER XV
LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL: METHODS OF TREAT·
MENT AND STUDY ; THE BEGINNINGS

I

II

THE fact that such works as" The Ancient Mariner,"
"The Vision of Sir Launfal," "Ivanhoe," "The Last
of the Mohicans," which are commonly read in the
Elementary School, are among those prescribed for
the College entrance examinations, indicates that no
hard-and-fast line can be drawn between works especially suitable for either the Elementary School or
the High School. As we have said before, some works
are universal in their appeal, and speak to the children
of all ages. They mean much or little, according to
the range of the heart and mind to which they appeal.
This fact indicates the only safe point of view from
which to approach the problems of method in the
High School.
A teacher soon discovers that the
treatment of "The Ancient Mariner" in the first year
of the High School cannot be what it should be in
the fourth year, when the student knows more, and
is so much riper in judgment and feeling. Hence
there are pitfalls in outlining methods applicable to
the High School period. Some teachers are misled
by elaborate, overedited editions of the prescribed
272

t.

273

classics into inflexible methods. Regardless of widely
varying conditions, they pay unaltering regard to the
same minutia: of editorial scholarship; and so they
a;e lost in details, and slight the large, life-giving
features of their work. But the rule of the text-books
is impossible, if only because they set such different
standards.
We could name recent text-books that,
by their method of presentation and editorial profusion,
are unsuited to any but good fourth year or postgraduate classes; others that are not up to the level
of average first-year classes. There must be discrimination here, based on a recognition of the great differences that, in the four years of adolescent growth,
distinguish the graduate from the freshman. There
are as many ways of dealing with a book as there are
phases in human development.
Trying to find a foothold to stay ourselves in our
quest for methods adapted to these varying circumstances of the High School period, we may start
from these two facts : it is in this period that the
average student (there are exceptions) develops a
pronounced interest in poetry, feels deeply for the
first time the emotional appeal of poetry; and for the
first time manifests a keen appreciation of style and
an increasing responsiveness to beauty.
(Girls are
ahead of boys in this respect.) This is what we
might deduce from the characteristics of adolescence.
The tense, surging emotionalism of youth engenders
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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

a new and respectful feeling for the celestial mad.
ness of the poet. Hyperbole comes natural at this
time. No language is too extravagant for the spellbound, ebullient maid and youth. The tropes of a
Romeo and a Juliet, who are the fascinating classic
types of adolescent perfervidness in speech, are
after his manner. And with this acceptance of highly
emotionalized speech comes the feeling for style, the sensuous element in literature, - the ebb and
flow of rhythm, the picturesqueness of figure, the
heightened color of words.
These emotional developments give us our unique
opportunities in the High School. Clearly, to be
puttering over philological microscopy, or hedging
our students about with dictionaries, encyclopredias,
etc., when we can be feeding and developing ethical
and resthetic insight and appreciation, is a fatal mistake. Here is a chance to establish a life-long delight in literary excellence and in communion with the
great spirits of the past. To succeed in that must
be our master-aim ; so that methods must first of
all look toward the larger ethical and resthetic
values in literary study. We may now enlist the
waxing passion for beauty in behalf of ultimate
ethical aims; find new approaches to the true and
the good by the avenue of the beautiful. This means
that in the study of poetry we must be careful not to
damage its essentially poetical quality in our eagerness

to rationalize it, to clear up difficulties of secondary
importance, to master the minutire of allusion and
diction. We can afford to emphasize the stylistic
element. For example, - to speak of our study of
prose, - we shall do well to select chiefly writers whose
distinctive qualities of style give interesting individuality to their work; those who, like Macaulay and
De Quincey, Stevenson and Lowell, and the masters
of impassioned and imaginative oratory like Webster,
have obvious and at times exaggerated stylistic
traits, rather than those who, although safer as
models, -Addison and Goldsmith, Irving, Cooper
and Thackeray, - have less striking peculiarities. 1
In this connection we must emphasize the increasing rather than the waning importance of reading
aloud as the best means of bringing out the expressiveness of poetry and prose. Whereas, before this time,
it has been chiefly the straightforward sing-song of
verse and the simpler forms of stanza that have
been appreciated, now we note the rapid growth of

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1 The trend of opinion has been steadily in this direction of working
for the large ethical and resthetic values. Compare, e.g., those early
Clarendon Press editions of Shakespeare, to which we were many of
us so deeply indebted, which deliberately eschew literary or resthetic
annotations, with the most recent American school editions of the plays,
say, Professor Katherine Lee Bates's edition of "A Midsummer Night's
Dream" (Leach, Shewell, and Sanborn), the notes of which, divided
into Textual, Grammatical, and Literary, give sixty-three pages to the
last named and twenty-seven pages to the other two combined.

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

a power to enjoy the subtler beauties: the variations and irregularities of Shakespeare's, Milton's, and
Tennyson's blank verse; the ripe metric art revealed
so clearly in " Macbeth" ; the involved, climactic
phrasings of the Spenserian stanza and the sonnet.
It is in close connection with this oral interpretation
of masterpieces that we would take up the principles
of versification, holding firmly to the point of view
that an analysis of verse forms and the scansion of
lines are to be purely in the interest of sympathetic
and expressive oral rendering.
Our scansion must
be a scheme of notation indicative of the accent and
emphasis, tone and tempo, to be accorded in reading.
We shall indicate more definitely what we mean in
outlining presently a graded course in versification. 1
And now for the application of these and other related principles. The first year is a year of beginnings,
and therefore of cautious and somewhat tentative work.
Our plan, with some filling out in connection with the
course in composition, will be this: we shall get
under way with some short stories, varying in character; pass on to the ballad (the short story in verse)
and epic typ e; th e n (ringing again the changes upon
the differences between prose forms and verse forms)
I We may now add Steve nson to those who illustrate the importan ce
of the oral element in developing style. Says his recent biographer, " In
his own delicate hearing lay perhaps the root of his devotion to style."

Balfour's" Life," Vol. II, p. 193.

LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

277

take up the novel; and conclude with a play, with its
last lessons for the year on the structure of the "tale
that is told," in its several varieties of form.
We have often used Hawthorne's "Twice-told
Tales" to begin with, because, certain drawbacks notwithstanding, they include conveniently in one volume
many well-n.igh perfect types of story and sketch,
which our students may distinguish, classify, and compare: the monologue-like "Rill from the Town Pump"
and the plotless "Toll-gatherer's Day "; the simple
incident type, "David Swan," and the more dramatic
"Gray Champion"; that masterful study in incident,
character, and suggestive meaning, "The Ambitious
Guest"; the dramatic allegory, "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment "; the sequence of quasi-historic sketches,
"Legends of the Province House," so full of atmosphere and interwoven ethical intention. Another advantage which these stories possess is that some of
them reveal the actual process of the writer's creative
art; we see, e.g., out of what original materials of fact,
and what added, intensifying material of imagination,
the "Ambitious Guest" and the "Great Carbuncle"
were magically elaborated. In this connection it is
easy to interest the student in Hawthorne himself, his
personality, and his shy, retired, ~hadow-haunted life,
as he is reflected in some of the stories, and as he discloses himself in his Preface; and if a study of the
"House of the Seven Gables " is to follow in the sec-

•
THE TEA ':HING OF ENGLISH

•1

ond or third years, this will be valuable as preparation
and foreg round . Also, topical reports may be made
upon assigned portions of the Preface to the " Scarlet
Letter," upon Hawthorne's" Life and Letters," and sundry magazine articles, especially those on "A Glimpse
into Hawth.o rne's Workshop," and "Hawthorne':1
Salem," published years ago in the Century. It will
be well to supplement this exclusively Hawthorne work
by a study of two or three short stories of quite differ- .
ent temper a nd kind, - such, let us say, as Mr. Quiller-Couch 's "Roll Call of the Reef," Mr. Davis's Van
Bibber Stories, or som e of Mr. Kipling's best work, indeed, there is a wide range of choice from Poe,
Harte, Stockton, H owells, Bunner, Hamlin Garland,
Miss Jewett, Miss Wilkins, etc.
This work sh ould be simply and quickly a nd, above
all, cleanly done, without dissipatin g the characteristic
atmosphere and suggestiveness of the stories - things
that must be f elt, and recognized, either overtly or tacitly.
The main matter in this story work, however, is structure, the anatomy and logic of form in its most obvious
aspects, consisting chiefly in a clear perception of
what gives unity to each story, of the relation of the
parts (episode and incident) to the whole; and of the
ways in which effects of expectation and premonition,
delay and surprise, climax and catastrophe, are produced . The stories may be assigned sometimes singly
(one preparation and recitation will suffice for the

LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

279

shortest) and sometimes in pairs for comparative purposes. Having been neatly disposed of, they should
leave a helpful residuum of notes, outlines, graphic diagrams, summaries, and reports, and, in connection with
the composition work, compositions, reductions, imitations, etc., all of which should prove useful for reference purposes late r on.
And here we may interpose what we have to say
about note-taking. It is very easy to overdo this business; and yet we are not of those who would dispense
with notes altogether. The note-book must never be
a substitute or maid-in-waiting for the memory, or an
aid to cramming: inveterate note-takers injure both
memory and the power of intense, sustained attention.
It must not be a collection of essays or even of sentences,
nor a carry-all of unassorted, unorganized scraps and
siftings caught from the teacher's table. It should not
wastefully reproduce anything that is in books used or
easily accessible. It should be, no less than is a science note-book, a graphic, shorthand prese ntation of
solutions of literary problems, - parallelisms, comparisons, etc. We should lay it down as a general rule,
that no notes are to be made for the sake of mere recall, but for the sake of the powers called into play in
making them. In their simplest form they should involve some selecting and organizing of data. Th ese data
should be organized in such a way as to tell th eir story
by their very appearance, - clear heading and subhead.

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

ings, and well articulated outlines, - and, be it added,
by the absence of fussy and futile rulings and flourishes
and beribbonings. The report of a lecture heard
should take this outline form, a care for the thought
being uppermost, and the thought-relations to be indicated by the form. These expressive outl ines, tables,
charts, diagrams, maps, and other ingenuities of condensation should be the bulk of the matter in the
note-book ; and it should give indications that the individuality of the student has been worked into it.
Approximative models or suggestions may be given by
the teacher for the various kinds of notes, as the students are called upon to make them. The notes should
b e inspected from time to time, and appraised chiefly
on the score of their convenient brevity and formal expressiveness; it b eing the object of the teacher in his
corrections and deletions to educate the student's perception of relative values, teaching him to strain away
from the salie nt and focal facts of a subject all the

it worth while, for fu ture serviceableness, to put down,
may be made a part of the process of assimilation
through reflection. We have found it convenientin the study of Shakespeare and Milton especially to get students to classify the most significant words
m this wise : -

280

merely savorless and marginal facts.
We must not overlook, however, the value of the
mere writing up of rough notes as compelling the studen t to recall and rethink the living commentary and
discussion of the class. That is why we would not
prohibit altogether notes on words, idioms, etc., in the
works studied.
The more or less mechanical work
of expa nding the hurried jotting or symbol of the
moment into a significan t note which the student thinks

281

NOTES ON DICTION

Obsolete

Chan ged in Meaning
or Usage

" Merchant of

Venice."

28 Vailir.g=
bowing

17 still=always

Differently
pronounced

8 o-ce-a

11 0 Gear=pur17 5 thrift= success, 54 as-pect
cf. "thrifty."
pose
161 Prest =ready
cf. Fr. pr@t.
=prest.
6 1 prevented=
come before.
Cf. Bible use.

Idioms, etc.

144 Childhood('s)
proof
185 of my trust

" L'Allegro."
12yclept:=call ed
cf. German
"ge-" in

past. part.

138 pierce =

67
tells
his
tal e

=counts: cf.

lik e "verse"

"teller" in

(still so in
N. E. family name).

a bank
= total, cf.
"tally" a nd

33 trip it, cf.
"go it"
and" stop
it."

"talesman."

In the case of Gray's "Elegy" the sti1dent may be
asked what words or phrases remind him of Milton

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

(if he has read the shorter poems); or in Goldsmith's

We are now to pass, in our first year's work, from
the short story to the epic or narrative poem ; but not,
let us note, without some work of a descriptive, expository, and critical nature in connection with the study
of Hawthorne's life and personality. In this biographical work our principle of progressive development from
year to year may be followed; and in it, too, the point
to be kept to the fore, in the selection of data, is the
relative value of the facts.
We shall ask: What
events are important in Hawthorne's - Milton's Gray's-Goldsmith's-life? Why? One biographical formula, we must point out, will not do for all types
of life and character: the influences of parentage and
place, of nature and books, of society and solitude, of
health or sickness, of early education or its neglect,
of romance or routine, of ease or hardship, - these influences may count for much or for little; and we must
help our students to seize and interpret those dominant
characteristics of a person and his career which reflect
themselves in the works we examine.
In dealing now with the epic or narrative poem - be
it one of Scott's or the Ph~acian episodes from the
"Odyssey," or Arnold's "Sohrab and Rustum" or
"Balder Dead" -we shall drive home in new ways
the principles of construction studied in the short
story; and we shall try to bring out the differences
between prose and poetry as vehicles. Here are a few
leading questions : What can the poet do, as story-teller

282

poems what words recall the usage of earlier poets, or
have changed their meaning in any way since Gold-

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Studies in plot are tabulated and diagrammed, - e.g.
the plot of " Silas Marner" in double columned table
showing the interplay of the "Marner" and "Cass"
threads; that of the "Merchant of Venice" and "As
You Like It" in five columns showing to excellent purpose the more complex web of those plots; while the
plot of " Macbeth" may be diagrammed a~ter the pyramidal manner adopted by Freytag in his "Technique
of the Drama," and followed, after Freytag's pattern,
by Miss Woodbridge in her volume on the drama.
So, too, character-groups, pairs, contrasts, foils, are
graphicaliy presented in intersecting circles, enchainments, etc., according to the students' preferences and
ingenuities. Places associated with authors or works,
and journeys like Quentin Durward's, or Milton's _or
Goldsmith's travels, may be located on outline maps.
All such devices, we repeat, should be designed to
throw upon the pupil tasks of selecting and organizing
his material with scientific purpose. Special attention
should be paid to note-taking and note-making in the
first year of High School work.
After this necessary digression we may resume the
consideration of our main topic, the treatment of the
works selected for the first year.

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and plot-maker, that the prose· writer does not and
cannot do? and why? For instance, what liberties
may the poet take in the way of descriptive amplifications and digressions ? What magic of musical witchery does he employ to check the flow of his story and
to detach our interest for a time from the main matter?
Why can he impose upon us these catalogues of names,
these repetitions, these little asides, these long-drawn
similes, these cameos of irrelevant description? Why
are we so ready to lend an ear to his - " Ah I that reminds me"? How much is Scott or Homer, Arnold
or Morris (if we glance at his "Jason" or "Atalanta's
Race") or Tennyson given to these things? Let us
see what, in Scott's "Marmion" or" Lady of the Lake,"
is of capital plot interest, and what is of subordinate,
episodic interest ? Where are we delayed ? Let us
take stock of the nature of these delays - show them
in a table or diagram. Where are there musical interludes, as in an opera? Are they worth while? Do
they justify themselves?
This is the direction we should take, and how far we
shall go in this direction must depend upon circumstances.
Can we do anything better than work along these lines
to enable the student to get a grip at once on the plot,
on character and scenic interest, and on the style of the
work ? We believe not. These things hang together ;
they give meaning to one another; they illustrate the
prime principles of unity and variety in unity, and the

LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

meaning and the limited application of the canon of
A<:sthetics, - that beauty is its own excuse for being, as nothing else can.
Following these lines, we may consider wherein our
treatment of Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel " would
differ from that we have suggested in Chapter X for
the higher Grammar Grades. We shall work in a larger
way. After the first rapid reading in the manner therein
indicated, - the vocal rendering of the finer parts by
the teacher being the leading feature, - we shall diagram or outline the plot in such a way as to show the
firm, clear course of the main story, and the branching
of the subordinate episodes, digressions, asides, etc.
These we shall discuss. Would we omit or skip any of
them ? Does this or that one seem to be mere padding,
or a freakish indulgence of poetic high spirits ? The
dull and unappreciative will be for omitting; the more
susceptible will insist that this seeming digression is
necessary for the light it sheds on the circumstances
of the action or on a character, or is a small but indispensable link in the chain of events. This real digres·
sion, idyllic or lyric or reflective, is justified by the
fact that it restfully lowers the pitch of excitement
for a moment, or prepares us the better for the
stress that is to follow ; while this other we would
not dispense with because it is so fine, - "Why,
those two lines make it worth while!" And so con·
siderations of structure will lead us on to considera·

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LITERATURE IN THE HI GH SCHOOL

tions of style, and exhibit the common-sense logic oi
style.
This reading of one of Scott's poems might be preceded or followed by a reading of Arnold's " Sohrab
and Rustum," - for the sake of its Homeric qualities, its close-knit structure, the splendid crescendo
from the hush and first stirrings of the dawn up to the
moment when "the noise of battle hurtles in the air;"
and the diminuendo down to that last scene of silence
and of night. The presence and the significance of
Hom eric simile, epithet, refrain-like repetitions and
enu'merations, might be brought out by a little comparative work with a selection from Homer. In fact we
should lose no chance to work by comparison: the
High School freshman is ready for more advanced
work in this direction. For instance, in the study of
Bryant's version of the parts of the "Odyssey" before
alluded to ("Ulysses among the Phreacians "), we ourselves have found that a comparison of Bryant with
Pope, Butcher and Lang, Palmer, and Mackail has
helped often to sharpen the appreciation of style in
surprising manner. We may add that we like to find
an opportunity thus early in the course for a good
example of blank verse, to serve as a beginning of our
studies and exercises in versification.
Concerning the study of a novel, to follow this work
with th e narrative poem, not much need be said. The
work may be less schematic and detailed than what we

have been doing so far. It will be a change to work
from the character side of plot, and to mine the character interest. A few general questions on the plot
(Where is the climax ? What are the factors in the
entanglement? Where is th e movement of the story
most rapid? Where slowest?) may be followed by
character analysis of the hero, heroine, and villain ;
and then by questions on th e style (What is the best
description of (a) a scene? (b) a person in outward
presentment? (c) a character? How much dialogue is
there? When does it come ? Does it advance the
plot? Has the prose any notable qualities of rhythm?
of imagery?), to which we may add any questions as to
paragraph or . sentence characteristics that may hitcl:l
with our composition work.
And now we may quiet down to a short spell of work
on the author, Scott, - if it is one of his novels we have
been reading. We may read parts of Irving's Essay
(the account of his visit to Abbotsford) and some
good critical essay (say, Andrew Lang's in his volume of "Essays in Little," which conveniently contains
an essay on Dumas). We may work out some preferences - Scott, Henty, Cooper, Dumas, Kingsley according to the reading of the class.
Finally, we shall reach Shakespeare,-" Julius Cresar,"
- if it has not already been read. Let the teacher read
it through, with a minimum of comment, to the class;
and it will pay to have spared no pains to become pro-

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

ficient in this task. Professor Corson, in his little book
on "The Voice and Spiritual Education" (which with
the companion volume on "The Aims of Literary
Study" should receive every teacher's careful attention
and study), quotes Sir Henry Taylor as saying that he
regarded the reading of Shakespeare to boys and girls,
if he be well read and they are apt, "as carrying with it
a deeper cultivation than anything else which can be
done to cultivate them." Experience has proved to us
that there is scarcely any exaggeration in these words.
There are few gifts, if any, that will atone for the
absence in an English teacher of the powers to read
Shakespeare well, - we do not mean read him as platform readers do, with great pomp and ceremony; but
clearly, with pleasant tone, and good enunciation, ancJ
with the feeling, the sincerity, the earnestness, and the
artistic conscience that are born of the desire to awaken
in young hearers a love of the master. We recall
a High School teacher whose pupils, after going in a
class to a Christmas reading of the "Christmas Carol"
by a justly famous reader, declared that they much
preferred their own instructor's way; the moral of
which is, we think, that the teacher is able, in the close
intimacy and freedom of the class room, to grip the
heart and understanding of his class as no platformartist possibly can.
This first reading of "Julius Cresar" by the teacher
should have left upon his students a deep and lasting

impression of the play in its totality, with the parts in
due perspective, of its essentially dramatic and rhythmic
features (its rise and fall of emotional emphasis), and
of its poetic power. This will provide a basis for the
development work that is to follow . First, we shall
call for an outline or synopsis of the scenes to reveal
the plot. This must be done with utmost brevity in
terms of what happens, of action. So we shall develop insight into the first essential of dramatic art :
that it is concerned with what men do under the stress
of temptation, struggle, opportunity. And so we may
bring out the differentire of the drama as compared
with the epic, the novel, the short story.
Our second reading, by the class, calling for the
memorizing and presentation of selected scenes by the
students, will be an exercise in interpretation, and will
involve the clearing up of such difficulties in metrics
'
in words, constructions, and allusions, as stand in the
way of such oral rendering and interpretation. This
should be our practical test : Do we understand ? The
teacher may introduce the subject by explaining to the
class that the language of Shakespeare's time, while (as
they will have noticed) very much like our own, yet
had its peculiarities, which sometimes stand in our
way (obsolete words and idioms) and sometimes mislead us (changes in meaning and pronunciation).
This is obvious in the opening of the first scene. The
class may point out the words, - "mechanical," "ought
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LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

not walk," "laboring day," "profession," "cobbles~
(for the pun), "naughty," "knave," "vulgar," etc.,an excellent crop! Well, we must be sure, as we go,
that we are not being tripped up in our attempt to
decipher what Shakespeare means. The teacher will
not press the matter far, but will let the niceties alone.
The feeling for Shakespearean English must grow
gradually from year to year. The students may tabulate in their note-book (see table on p. 28 1) twenty
salient examples culled from the text.
When this
second circumspect, interpretative reading is done, we
may review the ground covered, and round off our
studies in language by working out a few parallelisms
(of the teacher's selection) between Shakespeare's English and Bible English - a first step toward a literary
study of the Bible (this also in tabular form).
The talk on the metrics- with perhaps a short
exercise or two - may come when the first difficulties
occur, as they will in the first and second scenes : as e.g.
the transition from the prose of the " base mechanicals" to the verse of the dignified tribunes, the short
lines, the free movement of the verse, the differences
of pronunciation (touched, spirit, construe), the presence
of rhyme, etc. The motive of such work, we repeat,
must be the desire to deliver the lines effectively.
One good exercise to test appreciation of rhythm is to
require students to divide into lines passages written on
the board in lineless prose form. At this point, too,

we may test familiarity with the play by short class
exercises, asking by whom certain important lines were
spoken.
Now the way is clear for char~cter-study, leading on
into the deeper study of the plot, with which it is to
some extent involved.
This may be by means of
problems, or in question form. For example, we may
ask: "What mistakes did Brutus make? And what
light do they throw upon his character?" Or we may
call for a tabular presentation of Cresar's character
(data for a composition) thus: -

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QUALITIES
OP

CHARACTER

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Scene Line
Act
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Words or Incident cited

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Or we may ask for a comparative study, in similar
form, of Calpurnia and Portia, or a contrast between
Brutus and Cresar.
. Lastly, returning to plot again, we may try to master
its logic. Here are some of the questions we may put
(sometimes the class is equal to only one or two of the
simpler of them) : -

1.

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Seeing that Cresar is killed so early in the play, how
is the title to be justified? Is he the hero?

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Does Cresar's death mark the climax? If so, how
is the interest sustained in the major portion of
the play which follows?
Why
is Scene I a good opening scene? Of what
3.
facts and circumstances does it put us in possession ? In what state of mind does it leave us?
4. Could we omit the scene with Cinna the poet ?
5. What object is served by the scene between Portia,

While the many opportunities the play presents for
work in Narration, Description, and Exposition will be
utilized in connection with the course in Composition,
we must use these exercises to help the imaginative
grasp of the circumstances and setting of the play.
What sort of man was Cresar to outward view, as Shakespeare presents him? - is an instance. Or we have
given as a general topic "A Street Scene in Rome,"
asking each student to describe as he sees it, vividly
in his mental eye, any one street scene in which the
populace of Rome share, - that mob whose presence is
felt, whose murmur is heard, so continually throughout
the play. Various moments of the play will be selected.
We have still to consider how we shall provide for
a study of the life and times of Shakespeare, and of
other matters connected therewith. We have generally
found time for a mastering of the few facts about
his life in the first year. In the second year we have
placed in our pupils' hands Dowden's "Primer"; and
in the third and fourth years have sent them for
amplifications to Lee's Life, Dowden's larger work,
"Shakespeare, his Mind and Art," Moulton's "Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist"; and have put them in
touch, for special purposes, with Hudson's "Shakespeare's Life, Art, and Character," Ward's "English
Dramatic Literature," Coleridge's "Lectures on Shakespeare," Halliwell-Phillips' "Outlines of the Life of
Shakespeare," and Furness's Variorum Edition of the

292
2.

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Lucius, and the Soothsayer?
6. Why the scene introducing Cicero, who appears
this once only?

7. Why does the Ghost appear to Brutus rather than to
Cassius?
Or, if our class is equal to it, we can enumerate (in
table) Shakespeare's departures from Plutarch, and try
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to discover the reason for them.
·we have left untouched any discussion of the ethics
of the play, and the rhetorical exercises that may grow
out of it. These will be incidental for the most part.
Such questions as - Was Cresar's assassination justifiable? Why do we condemn Brutus's suicide? - are
sure to arise. Sometimes these problems can be turned
over to the debating class. It is in connection also with
the work in public speaking and argument that we
would deal with the speeches of Brutus and Antony
- a comparison of the prose style of the one (why
prose?) with the verse style of the other; and an analysis of the parts in their effect upon the audience.

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plays. 1 We have found it convenient to distribute
the topics of this supplementary work thus : rst year, Life of Shakespeare.
2d year, The A ge of Shakespeare, with special reference
to th e theatre.
3d year, Periods of his dramatic activity : facts as to
folios, quartos, etc.
4th year, His dramatic development: internal evidences
chiefly .
In this chapter our outline of the first year's work
has been interrupted by a necessary treatment of such
topics as note-takin g, Shakespearean studies, etc. These
we have th oug ht it better to treat incidentally as they
arose th an to defer for separate treatment elsewhere.
l Valuable ~u ggesti o n s to teachers for the advanced studies which it is
essent ial for th em to undert ake , will be foun d in th e pamphl et, "English
in Secondary Schools," by Professors Gayley and Bradley of the University
of California ( published by the University, at Berkeley) .

CHAPTER XVI
LITERATURE

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(continued)

AT this pausing point we may remark upon the
impossibility of dealing, in a treatise so general in
scope as this on~, with the manifold problems of
High School work. We shall hope to have covered
the leading problems ; but even this necessitates an
exposition so condensed and rapid as to court some
danger of confusion.
What we have said about the leading features of
the work of the first year renders unnecessary an
equally detailed treatment of the work of the three
following years.
At the beginning of the second
year the emphasis shifts from the narrative - that
is, preeminently the structural aspect of literary artto the descriptive - that is, preeminently its color and
music, its impressionistic aspect. Wholes are now of
less importance: parts of more. We shall aim to get
our pupils to see and feel now how a perfectly simple
idea can clothe itself or unfold itself in a fascinating
manner by means of image, association, and enriched
musical language.
Milton's "L' Allegro" and " II

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LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

Penseroso," Gray's" Elegy," and Goldsmith's" Deserted
Village" are all excellent for this purpose, and all of
them interest students at this time. Milton is especially good because his pair of poems allow of comparative work, and give us at the same time the
beginning of three years' progressive work on Milton.
It is partly for these reasons, but even more because
of the varied and telling work that may be done
with them, that we use them to exemplify our treatment of this type of poem.
First of all, vocal rendering becomes increasingly important; for the beauties of these poems can be revealed
to the full only through the lips. Milton's extreme
sensitiveness to vocal effectiveness is evident in them
in many ways. There is nothing better to be found to
illustrate the expressive values of changes in rhythm,
accent, and quantity, changes in time and tone, changes
from crisp staccato to smooth legato effects.
The poems having been read by the teacher, with
enough explanation and discussion to bring into relief
the mood that dominates each, and the means by which
the contrasting ideas and tempers are bodied forth
(the day-time social blitheness of the cheerful man,
and the night-time solitary joyousness of the meditative
man), the class may at once be set to memorizing and
rendering the lines while the cadences are fresh upon
the ear. \\Tith this will go discussion and elucidation
of the metrics and a few metrical exercises, while the

detailed parallelisms and contrasts will be brought out.
In the former we shall do justice, ( 1) to the lovely
change from the harsh and trailing lines of the introductory dismissal, to the light and flowing lines of the
invitation to the "godesse fair and free," or, in "Il
Penseroso," to the richer, graver, fluted tones of the
address to the "godesse sage and holy"; (2) to the frequent changes in the lines from the iambic to the trochaic accent (to put the matter in ordinary terms);
(3) to the exquisite modulation of the tempo (noticeably
through the differences in vowel values), as when, in
the midst of caprice-like daintiness of the "Come, and trip it, as you go,
On the light fantastic toe,''

we have the rallentando, the slower, fuller-vowelled,
monosyllabic movement, the firmer tread, the check of
a touch of the poet's reserved seriousness, with"And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty,"

a slight but very significant out-cropping of the poet's
spiritual passion, which the student will later appreciate when he follows the steady, heroic march of the
master toward that goal of freedom which is registered
in the series of poems that closes with "Lycidas."
The parallelisms and contrasts may conveniently be
registered in some such manner as this : -

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

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" L' ALLEGRO,.

1-10
11-46
47- 150

Dismissal, - of Melancholy.
Invitation to Mirth.
Progress of day of social delights.
(a) Lark's Reveille(b) "Dappled Dawn," cock,
hounds, etc.
(c) Sunrise.
( d) Sounds of labor.
(It will be we 11 to quote
the lines.)

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LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

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IL PENSE ROSO ..

of deluding joys.
to Melancholy.
of night of solitary
joys.
(a) Evening.
(b) Nightingale's
even-song.
(c) Moonrise,
(d') Curfew.

Or we may include such details as the following: Descent of Mirth: Venus
and
Bacchus:
Youth and Jollity; or
Milton's own = Zephyr and
Aurora: the lightsome
west-wind and the spirit
of morning.
Mirth=a nymph.
Her companions:
etc., etc.

of Melancholy:
Vesta and Saturn;
that is, Domestic
Quiet and Solitariness.

Melancholy=a nun.
Her companions :

Then we may deal more thoroughly with the descriptive features of the verse, - in pause, word, phrase, figure, and imagery; in alliterative and onomatopoetic
effects; in mental picture and sensuous musical quality.
Afterward, we may reach behind the poems to the
poet : What kind of personality is it that expresses itself
thus in two such moods ? Is it a rich, large one? a
nature-loving one? book-loving? music-loving? theatre

299

haunting? By what is it attracted in nature? By
sights or sounds or odors? by color or motion? near
or distant landscape? Are there ev idences of fine
observation? Think of some other poet's way of looking at Nature. What are his intellectual interests? his
And this may lead to looking up
favorite authors?
and capturing the facts as to Milton's early life up to
the Horton period.
The opportunities for descriptive composition in connection with the poem are as many as the teacher
is inclined to utilize.
As to what should follow this work on Milton, we
shall be guided by the outcome of what we have done,
and the state of mind in which we find the class. Sometimes it is desirable to catch a deeply-aroused interest
in this type of literature by passing on at once to the
"Deserted Village," or Gray's "Elegy"; or (striking
a contrast between the Miltonic and the modern
romantic) to pass to Byron's "Childe Harold" or
Keats's "Eve of St. Agnes," - which has the attractiveness of a narrative interest along with its tapestried
richness of descriptive beauty. Or it may be the
nature-side of the poems that has kindled interest;
and we may catch this wave, and also make a desirable change to prose by taking an essay or two by
Burroughs or another, or some of the nature poems in
Syle's volume. Or we may take up Stevenson on the
descriptive side, with "Travels with a Donkey" or "An

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

Inland Voyage" for text, and a plentiful supplement of
descriptive matter drawn from his essays and sketches.
The state of the work in Composition will, of course,
be a factor in our choice. That may have revealed a
special weakness in observation, or what not, which it
may be well to strengthen by intensive study of those
authors who are especially strong in this quality.
These ends, along with others, may indeed be pursued by turning at once to fiction, - to "Silas Marner"
or "Lorna Doone," both strong in descriptive power.
The scene at the Rainbow in the former will be a
pendant to the cottage tale-telling scene in "L' Allegro,"
and will help us in an inventive effort to elaborate that
scene, and present the credulous peasantry of the
seventeenth century. "Lorna Doane" transports us
back almost to the very period, and its profuse description will give us copious material for analytical and
imitative work.
Of these two works, " Silas Marner" will afford us
the better opportunity to carry forward our studies
of .fictitious narrative. Novel reading is such a large
factor in our modern life and culture, that it is worth
while to help our students to adopt proper standards
and cultivate a sound taste in their choice of fiction.
" Silas Marner" forms an excellent bridge from the
Scott type of the fiction of adventure to the modern
novel of character problems and of sociological import.
Let it be read at home, and reviewed in some rapid

way in the class. We have found the plan of requiring
the class to invent good titles to the chapters effective;
this exercise provokes profitable discussion of the
question as to what are the salient points of the story.
Then the plot may be diagrammed as suggested on
page 282, and the central, unifying idea of the story
br0ught out.
It will be well then, with the plot
diagram before us, to go over the book chapter by
chapter, scrutinizing more carefully the part each plays
in relation to the main idea. A good many interesting
questions may be put in this connection, e.g. : -

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What periods of time elapse in the story ? Give
references.
What object is served by introducing Sally Oates
in Chapter II?
What is Dolly Winthrop's part in the development
of the plot?
Would the story suffer by cutting out the confab at
the Rainbow? 1 etc.
The problems of character will follow ; and the more
trenchantly they are put, the better. For example, we
may ask, concerning Miss Nancy: Would she, in our
estimate of her, have refused Godfrey Cass if she had
known of his first marriage? There will remain such
questions as to language and style, time and place
1 Teachers will receive valuable help in pressing this side of their work
from the notes to Mrs. Colby's edition of" Silas Marner" (Appleton).

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LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

interest, the author and her works, the dominant ethical
problems of the play,-fate and character, retribution
and expiation, - as are in order according to the plane
of the class in intelligence and cultivation. The class
may be asked to cull four or five of the profoundest
reflections on the graver problems of life. With girls,
at least, it is easy to arouse a deep interest in the personality and literary career of George Eliot.

by reason of the separate problems or ideas that are
worked out in each self-sufficient section of the poem,
and the great underlying problem of the whole in both
its direct and its symbolic meaning. But the main
thing is close, sympathetic contact with Arthurian
romance, with its high, chivalrous ideals, and its bypaths up into those high altitudes of Celtic legend and
heroism of which mention has already been made.
Mere contact with this world is a great education; and
Teilnyson gives it such rich emblazonry, and presents
its heroic figures with such noble gait, that it ought
to contribute a deep and lasting element to the spiritual
enlargement of our students. It will be well to draw
1:1pon other poets to supplement Tennyson here and
there, - an Arthurian poem or two by Morris, or
Arnold's "Tristram and Iseult."
In the third year we exploit a new vein, in connection with the attempt to conquer the principles
and art of exposition.
We pass from the romantic
to the classic mode ; from the masters of imagination
and inspired spontaneity, to the masters of a more
deliberative and calculating temper. Our programme,
we may recall (see page 266), is to begin with Dryden
and Pope, and to pass on to the study of Addison's
and Steele's prose as the ripe fruit of the new tendency toward an easier, more lucid, and more measured prose style. From the expository manner equable, unagitated- we may proceed to expository

302

We have still, according to our plan, the "Idylls
of the King " and the "Merchant of Venice" to provide for. We may interpose, if time allows, something
of the essay kind, - Lamb or Bacon, Ruskin or Carlyle
(a chapter from "Heroes"). We have sometimes read,
in order to play into the hands of the composition
work, Poe's essay on the Poetic Principle; and have
developed the ~sthetics of literary description as com-

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pared with the descriptive powers of the space arts.
This work, however, had better be considered in connection with the course in Composition and Rhetoric.
Of the treatment of the "Idylls" and the "Merchant," little need here be said: it will follow the lines
laid down for the first year work with the narrative
poem and with "Julius C~sar." Tennyson's epic will
give us a rare chance to follow out our distinctions
between prose and poetry by using Malory's prose
version for comparative purposes; it will introduce us
to a more complex and ornate form of blank verse;
above all it will give food for thought and investigation

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method; then - because it will follow naturally upon
our readings in the "Spectator" - we may take
Macaulay's "Essay on Addison," a fairly good example of the biographical order, which will give us work
in structural analysis that will be valuable.
Without being slavishly governed by the needs of
our expository work in Composition, we may indirectly
and directly contribute to that work. To live in the
atmosphere of the period from 1650-1750,-the Age
of Reason, Common Sense, Prose, - will, in itself,
be helpful. We shall be studying the new critical
and self-conscious spirit which owed much to French
influence, in the Epistles of Dryden and Pope (the
"Essay on Criticism " or "Essay on Man"); in some
of the "Spectator" papers - e.g. on "Party Politics,"
" The Overcrowding of the Learned Professions,"
" On Country Manners"; and, if we revert to an
earlier type for the sake of comparison, one or two
of Bacon's Essays.
Here will be plenty of opportunity to study how an idea or given line of thought
may be worked out, and to realizing that, whereas in
narration and description there are conditions and
props to guide us (sequence in time, relations in
space, etc.), in the expository type of writing we
must rely solely on the logic of thought-connection, on definition, proportion, restraint.
Here is a craftsmanship that is governed by cautious, ingenious
planning, and calls for clearness in procedure and

LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

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expression, - a Popean neatness and appositeness, an
Addisonian limpidity and ease. Such are the virtues
we shall strive to discover and appreciate, and to
embody in turn in our own attempts.
But this aim is not to deflect us from our chief
concern, - that of getting our students to understand
and enjoy each work according to its proper and
peculiar excellences, the compact sententiousness and
trenchant aphoristic quality of Dryden's and Pope's
epistles; the fine-mannered, delightful characterization
of the "Spectator'.' papers, their vivid recall of the London and the rural England of good Sir Roger's days,
their telling, good-natured criticism of the foibles of
the time.
" Don't you find your students very much bored
by the ' Spectator ' papers ? " asked a distinguished
academic visitor to our class room. We have heard
this question frequently put. We know that in some
cases the doubt has been justified; but these were
cases in which the papers were mishandled.
Sometimes they have been read too early in the first
year; at others, too clumsily. They may be made a
delightful experience to boys and girls of the third
or fourth year. How? By hearty, appreciative reading, ( 1) creating for heart and mind the engaging,
the urbane and gracious, if quaint, personality of Sir
Roger, and of the good baronet's friends, taciturn Mr.
Spectator, garrulous Will Wimble, and the rest; (2) re·

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constructing, with amplification from other sources, the
social and literary life of London, - its clubs and coffee-houses, its street scenes, theatres, amusements ; and
(3) similarly reviving for the imagination the country
scenes and customs of Old England. It is most important to add Sir Roger to the beloved book-friends
of our circle; to enjoy his simple humanity, quiet considerateness, and childlike frankness.

thrown enhancing light on the men and the epoch.
There may be a map of old London, with coffeehouses, theatres, etc., located. Our literary map of
England and Ireland, which we keep on hand and
enlarge as new data occur, will be added to ; and our
chronological tables brought down to Addison's dates.
If we pass on at once to Macaulay's "Essay on
Addison," all matters connected with the lives of
both Addison and Steele may be taken in connection
with that. An effective way of dealing with it and
with all works of its kind, as we have found, is
this:I. Teacher's Introduction : the foreground .
Macaulay
and his Essays. The Great Reviews and Reviewers.
2 . Reading of Essay : so many pages assigned ; the
student required to underline neatly in pencil the
topic matter of each paragraph; the text discussed so as to assure a mastery of the main
points.
3. The structure of the whole essay to be shown in
a detailed outline; this involving a second reading, conquering smaller details of allusion, etc.
4. This outline made the basis of a development of
detail in topical treatment: (a) The course of
Addison's life, especially his political fortunes
(involving main facts as to political changes);
(b) His literary development and works; (c) His
literary friendships and connections, especially

We may ope n up these large avenues of interest
at the outset; and as we read the papers (some in
class, but most at home), collect our data, to be
arranged later in outline form . In introducing the
papers to our class we may strike the key-note by
inviting them to make acquaintance with one of the
very few perfect gentlemen of fiction - as he has
been called . (Can they think of any others?) Will
they agree with that verdict? If so, by virtue of
what qualities? As we read we shall note any felicities, run down difficult words and allusions, and try
to follow the easy flow of the style, - which, when
we have concluded our study, we may try to imitate
by inventing a new short "Spectator" dissertation of
our own.
Of supplementary work there may be as much as
one will, - browsings in the " Spectator " at large,
with expository summaries of any numbers that may
especially strike the fancy ; in Steele 's letters ; in
Thackeray, Dobson, and other writers who have

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his relations with Steele, Pope, and Swift; (d)
His character; Macaulay's bias; unfairness to
Steele (cf. Thackeray's estimate), etc.
5. The technique of the Essay: management of two
strands: -

biographies, will be of g reat value, if we can make it ;
so that much may be· said for work in (I) or ( 2).
Any of these four stu<lies will be treate<l after the manner already suggested for the novel or the play; although,
of course, there will be some variations, some abbreviating of steps, some advance beyond the steps taken in
dealing with former instances. Also we shall have
found room fo,r a study of Webster in the course in
oratory and debate, -which will come well toward the
end of the term, so as to lead on in the beginning of
the fourth year to Burke's Speech on "Conciliation."
Thus our fourth year will open then. The treatment
of Burke's Speech will resemble that of Macaulay's
"Essay on Addison"; only that, as it implies the personal presence of the orator, the scenes and circumstances of the delivery, - historical setting, audience,
the issues at stake, - it will involve the taking of a different point of view.
Certain imaginative exactions
have to be made. Moreover, here we have a great
unitary argument; a sort of necessary progression of
ideas, - the pressing forward, as with an army of ideas
on the march, toward a beleaguered citadel.
We shall begin by reviewing th~ facts leading up to
the delivery of the speech,-facts of American and English history. The student must have a sense of Burke's
effort being, from the English point of view, an attempt
made, "on the eve," to avert a great disaster; from the
point of view of actual occurrences in the Colonies, a

I. Addison's life, and the political life of his time, and
II. Addison's works and their qualities; and, lastly,
III. Paragraph structure: echoes. Sentences: echoes
- Diction - Rhythm - Imagery. Proportion;
masses; interruptions and digressions.

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As to what shall follow these studies, must again
depend upon circumstances. Several alternatives suggest themselves: (I) we may take up briefly the
biography of Macaulay (a knowledge of it is required
for College entrance), and use freely Trevelyan's-entertaining "Life and Letters"; or (2) we may, by way of a
contrasting study, read Carlyle's "Essay on Burns";
or (3) we may take a new departure from Macaulay's
suggestion that in the De Coverley papers we have
the beginnings of the modern novel, and read the
"Vicar of Wakefield" in the line of evolution, or
"Esmond," or "The Newcomes," or another; or (4) we
may make a thorough change, and introduce here our
third Shakespeare play,-"Midsummer Night's Dream,"
"As You Like It," "Twelfth Night." An excursion
into the field of biographical literature, which shall give
an intimation of the really great biographies and auto-

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pathetic, tragic effort "after the event." This don~
we shall begin to read the speech aloud ; but once well
under way, and the imaginative illusion of speaker and
audience secured, we shall dispense with the vocal
reading of a great part of it, selecting those passages
which patently involve speaker and audience. Each
recitation will begin with a summary of what has been
read up to date; when the argument, qaving been resumed, may be carried forward clearly. The topic of
each paragraph will be indicated either by underlining or
by written condensation (precis). Then a brief will be
drawn, showing, besides the careful subordinations of
primary, secondary, and tertiary strata in the argument,
the broad divisions - introduction, announcement of
position and thesis, exposition of data, etc. It is a
great mistake, we think, to relieve the student of any
part of this work by editorial aids ; and we would
strongly urge the importance of using a text-book that
does not offer these weakening crutches. We know
that this is a stiff piece of work, but it is very much
worth while. It is in connection with this elaboration
of the brief that we shall consider the subject of argument and the syllogism generally, and their leading
types; shall take a large outlook over the speech, its
logical unity or the absence of it; its proportron, its
varying emphasis and climax. Then will follow a detailed study of the parts, as these are set forth in the
brief, involving a clearing up of all facts and allusions,

LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCH OOL

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including a comprehension of the leading data as to the
British Constitution and parliamentary organization and
procedure; then a study of the style, literary allusions,
and reminiscences; and finally a closer study of Burke,
his personality and career, and his other American
speeches, - conveniently brought together for us by
Professor George (see Heath's edition).
This may cost at least two months of steady work,
at the rate of three recitations a week (not including
parallel composition work in Argumentation). It is not
too high a price to pay. R apid, slipshod work on
such a masterpiece is a folly, an impertinence. We
must give the mind time enough to become saturated
with it, to react naturally upon it. How great a service
may be done to our students, we may better realize if
·we recall Mr. John Morley's words concerning the
three speeches on American affairs, that they are "the
most perfect manual in all literature for the study of
great affairs, whether for the purpose of knowledge or
action," - great by reason of "the vigorous grasp of
masses of compressed detail, the wide illumination from
great principles of human experience, the strong and
masculine feeling for the two great political ends of
Justice and Freedom, the large and generous interpretation of expediency, the morality, the vision, the noble
temper." And concerning Burke himself: "There are
great personalities like Burke who march through
history with voices like a clarion trumpet and some·

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thing like the glitter of swords in their hands. They
are as interesting as their work. Contact with them
warms and kindles the mind." 1

youthful souls. We must be on our guard against
this, and feel our way with tJ.ct, suggesting rather
than grappling with the ultimate ethical issues in-

We have scant opportunity to speak about the other
features of the fourth year work. We should pass on
now to "Macbeth," gathering together, with the aid of
the notes taken in the three preceding years (an important function of these notes), the large threads of our
Shakespearean studies. The work may be less formal,
and more abbreviated, - although we would not omit the
oral reading of the play, because the ear should be amply accustomed to the free, irregular rhythms and long,
large swell of the verse. If we can get our students
to apprehend and feel the high seriousness of the play
(to use Arnold 's terms), the grand style of the verse, the
amplitude of the treatment, by way of bringing home
the greatness of the issues involved and the largelimbed nature and carriage of Macbeth, - we shall
have done the best of good service. The plot may be
diagrammed, as we have already suggested, by means
of the pyramidal figures employed by Freytag; and
there may be a close study of the act and scene
structure, the subtle, dramatic patterning of the
play.
The study in this respect, and also in its
supreme interest, - the character development of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, - may easily lead the enthu·
siastic teacher into depths beyond the reaches of

volved.
The space-limits imposed upon us in this volume,
which we already begin to overstep, prevent our going
into further details, and necessitate a brief treatment of remaining features of the work of the fourth

1

"011 the Study of Literature," in "Miscellaneous Studies.''

year.
After the gloom of the great tragedy it will be a
happy change to emerge into the sunlight of Milton's
"Com us," and enjoy the strains of the pastoral flute
and Thyrsis' madrigal. We can make a transition by
an excursus on the subject of the history of the drama
and the theatre in England, and the rise of the masque.
To insure appreciation at once of th e lyric blitheness
of "Comus," and of the chasten ed austerity of the
high argument in behalf of Virtue, is no easy task.
We must not worry the text; there must be a spirit
of reserve and delicacy in our handling : plenty of
reading, of memorizing, of declamation ; and just as
much work on the text as is necessary to make it
generally intelligible. Let the teacher select th e most
important points, and see that these are well comprehended. Then we should refer back to "L' Allegro "
and "II Penseroso," and note Milton's growth, especially in the treatment of Nature. Then " Lycidas "
may follow, to be treated in the same reserved but

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admiring fashion . Happy the teacher who can evoke
any adequate response in young hearts from so rare
a product of the highest poetic workmanship ! If he
can lodge its lovelier elegiac harmonies in the memory
of his students, if he can make it sing itself and its
pictures and images, - the high lawns, Lycidas'
laureate hearse, the train of mourning figures, the
wash of the sounding seas,----:- so that it may become
something of a touchstone of excellence when recalled
in later years, he will have done better than well.
Macaulay's "Essay on Milton" may follow, to be
treated after the manner of the "Essay on Addison,"
and the remainder of our time given to one or other
of the rounding-out studies suggested in Chapter XIV.I
We would not be more definite and prescriptive. We
have insisted upon the value of plans, and we have
nothing to retract on that score in relation to High School
work. But while we do well to plan each year's work
beforehand, and a scheme of treatment for each book
studied, we must be ready to modify these to suit the unexpected development or lack of development on the part
of our students. Sometimes we shall linger more than
we had arranged to do over this or that piece of work;
it will seem worth while with some sets of pupils: at
other times we shall run up against dead spots and
hurry on.
It all comes back to the necessity of preserving the

personal element, keeping the personal touch delicate,
and the personal sympathy sensitive at this stage of the
work. To be impersonal and general in it, to allow
the pupil to escape beyond the radius of heart-to-heart

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and mind-to-mind contact, is to fail.

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COMPOSITION IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

CHAPTER XVII
COMPOSITION IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

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WE shall not in this chapter cover ground already
traversed in our chapters on composition in the Primary
and Grammar Grades, but, taking for granted the leading principles affectini composition advanced in those
chapters, shall try to meet the new circumstances and
demands that arise in the High School. What changes
in method of attack and in the development of plans
are called for, now that we have the adolescent to deal
with? Generally, it may be said that the vital distinction between this stage and the preceding stages of our
work is that, whereas the emphasis has hitherto been
strong upon habituation and uniformity, in the High
School stage a new reliance is put upon conscious freedom or self-regulation, and upon developing individual
differences and preferences. We have to deal with
students who, while much more critical than pupils of
the pre-adolescent period, are :-ievertheless much more
accessible and mouldable, much more readily and deeply
inspired, than their juniors. In the English work the
most important developments are of those nascent emo316

317

tions referred to in an earlier chapter, -- a feeling for
style and a capacity for appreciating poetry.
The first essential of real succe~s in com position
work is to make proficiency in it seem worth while to
our students. This does not mean getting up a sensational interest in the work. It does not mean cockering
the whims, the passing moods, and flying interests of
the student. Nor does it mean working by the fashionable recipe that school is, not a preparation for life,
but life itself, - a doctrine that too easily tends to sap
the vitals of youth and to work havoc among us. The
pupil knows better. He discriminates between tlie life
of adult self-direction and vocation which is ahead of
him, and the necessary preparation for that life. This
preparation will seem worth while, and will even be
"good sport" to him, for all its austerities, provided
the end is appreciated and the teachers trusted . In this
field, as in the field of athletics, the student takes his
seat at the training table to make ready for a contest
that is ahead. He is doing what others think it right
that he should do, to attain ends he cannot fully
foresee or appraise. Humility is required of him, and
trustful obedience. Let him feel that the wisdom of
the ages and the sages - the long experimentation and
gathering tradition of centuries - is behind him ; and
that respect for his elders and betters is his first lesson.
He is not in school primarily to please himself ; he is
there to fulfil his rational human destiny, as his elders

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

COMPOSITION IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

interpret it. He is there for work; and he is fortunate
if, in doing that work, he gets (as well he may, - and
should) a sense of the worth-whileness of it that is a
joy and a satisfaction to him.

sided expression ; against wilfulness and self-indulgence.

The moral of these reflections is, that the English
teacher will do a great wrong to his students unless his
labors with them are touched by something of a spirit
of austerity, requiring a serious, self-denying girding of
the loins. One may so easily follow the fashion of
going too eagerly in quest of the student's so-called
"interest," especially at a time when he is prone
imperiously to assert them. We have too frequently
seen the debilitating effects of such concessions. Instead, it is rather a teacher's business, - sometimes to
create interests; sometimes to starve them. His point
of view, which he must help his students to take with
him, is that of the race and the ages; his outlook, that
of civilization and its needs. It is his business to lift his
students out of narrow and narrowing grooves of interest,
to keep open, as Herbart puts it, 'the circle of their
ideas, and to expand that circle. It is his business to
tone his students up with a manly zest, so that they
may regard the tasks assigned to them as so many
challenges,-ay, as foes resolutely to be wrestled with,
if you will. And this attitude does not involve any
repression of individuality, which every good teacher
rejoices to recognize and foster; it merely means safe·
guarding true individuality against premature and one·

An attitude of this sort is quite consistent with a
recognition of the varied incentives to effort that ought
to count in English work. There is the utilitarian
incentive, - the practical importance of the art of the
ready writer ; its sheer business value. With one type
of student - of the poorer sort undoubtedly - this will
have considerable weight; but it should yield to higher
motives. There will be no heartiness in work done
under its merely prospective influence.
It may be supplemented by an appeal to the social motive, to amour
propre, - an appeal that may be most effectively made
indirectly by the quiet assumption that refined speech
is an indispensable part of good manners and gentle
breeding, the safest passport into cultivated society.
While this may be preached sometimes from the teacher's
desk, it is to be felt chiefly through the teacher's
own example and personality; through the spirit and
atmosphere of the work. Goodness, as some one has
said, is self-diffusive; and so it is with good manners; they are self-commending; and the teacher who has
them, perforce diffuses them.
But these motives to taking pains must not stand in
the way of a third, - the princeliest of them all,- a
craftsman-like pleasure in the work itself. Nothing less
will satisfy the good teacher; he must rouse the
linguistic conscience and artistic spirit. To excel in

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1'HE 1'EAC1-I ING OF ENGLISH

COMPOSITION IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

the work must be a point of honorable and cherished
ambition. The boy or girl must be happy, his classmates and, above all, his teacher must be happy, over
any good piece of language work turned out from the
literary shop or workroom, as over any admirable piece
of work turned out from the art studio or the machine
shop. This or that deft piece of narrative or ingeniously-wrought story; this or that graphie description,
flashing a place or a personality upon the mind ; this
or that crystal-clear exposition or irresistible argument,
- should provoke admiration and delight just as an
effective piece of wood-carving or bent iron-work or
beaten brass does. And it may. We speak out of
personal experience in a Manual-training School, where
the good literary craftsman was frequently followed
in his work with the interest with which the craftsman
in wood or iron was followed at the bench or forge;
where literary products were overhauled with something of the curiosity and pride shown in overhauling
the products of the arts and crafts.

spirit surrounding it is rather that of the factory, where
certain marketable, machine-made products are made.
Rules for good conduct are posted, with a list of
fines and penalties. Some of our teachers and textbooks speak as if a boy may be drilled and harried
into clearness and correctness of speech, as he may be
into punctuality or cleanliness. But the important habit
of punctuality, if we succeed in establishing it, is a
very different matter from a continuing passion for
taking pains in self-expression ; a continuing scrupulousness, not only to make ourselves understood and to
square our expression with our thought, but to carry
conviction, and to do justice to our own feelings and
ideals. We are dealing with character in a broader and
deeper way, not only to initiate and establish fixed habits,
but to generate tendencies, - a certain consecutive bent

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Speaking with no sentimental yearning toward
academic Utopia, but on the basis of actual experience
and groping effort, we say deliberately that the trouble
with much of our work is that it is too coarsely and too
clumsily done. It lacks atmosphere; it is not pursued
either broadly or finely enough, in the spirit of the
craftsman. Anything like delight in the making and
using of linguistic products is absent from it. The

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of the nature.
It is true that the teacher of Composition may
achieve a certain kind of business success in getting
his pupils to write in an orderly and correct and
wooden manner, and that he may force the pace in
gaining this end; but he will miss the larger educational and disciplinary values in Composition work if
he is controlled by this aim. The more or less
mechanical results which he achieves may be obtained
just as well, or better, by the way, in pressing forward to the greater ends. In the one case, we pro·
duce a correct but probably disaffected writer; in
y

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the other, with less violent and hurried assault upon
carelessness, disorder, and haste, we produce the boy
who has something of a way of putting things, something of a relish and pride in the felicities of
his writing. The broader method involves a realization on the teacher's part of the fact that what he
has on h£s hands £n attempt£ng to make of a student
a good wr£ter £s, first of all, a character, and only secondar£ly an £ntell£gence and an aptt"tude. How if, by
his rude daily demand for perfunctory work, his
curt "stand and deliver," he should have undermined the finer forces of character, - the love of
order, of power, of beauty, of fairness and courtesy,
- all of which are involved in the effort to be correct and effective in one's speech?
We shall never get our students to assume the
proper attitude toward their work in Composition and
Rhetoric unless we can make them feel that in striving for the art of self-expression, they are striving
for self-comprehension, self-mastery, and self-origination. We must bring home to them the fact, speaking now in more technical terms, that work in
description or narration involves much more than
mere observance of the rules of grammar and rhetorical construction ; that it is at once a training of the
eye to see, the mind to discriminate its objects and
its impressions, the heart to report its feelings of
beauty and delight, the conscience and memory to be

true to fact; and, similarly, that in exposition and argument they are called upon to do justice to a thesis
or idea; to be scrupulous in the presentation of facts;
to respect their foes, and be at pains to appreciate a
foeman's point of view; and to gain their point fairly
by the power of fact, of logic, of truth. It is for these
reasons, among others, that we agree heartily with
Professor Genung when he says : "I have always regarded rhetoric as dealing, in all
its parts and stages, with real literature in the making, and composition, however humble its tasks, as
veritable authorship, well meant and conscientious.
There is no mystery in the literary art or mood
which is not present in germ in the efforts of the
schoolboy as he writes about the objects of his youthful interest; the difference lies merely in the different
stages of mental development and skill. . . . To put
the student frankly on the basis of authorship, and
respect him accordingly, to impose upon yourself, as
his guide · and model, a corresponding standard of
achievement and culture, is to impart immensely greater
reality to his study of rhetoric, and to help him realize, what is the truth, that his exercises in words and
sentences are concerned, not with what will soon be
superseded, but with constructive principles that must
accompany his work to his life's end."
And now for some of the practical consequences of
our position, with its stress upon the importance of

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working, in the spirit of refined artisanship, for character
developm e nt through self-expression.
If in the class room and conference room we are
intent upon these larger values - character values and
cesthetic values in conjunction; if we are working
for the clear, observing eye, for large, bold ways of
conceiving things, for fineness and resonance of sensibility, for moral insight and scrupulousness, - this
must mean a liberal amount of individual work with
our students; and this means small classes and frequent personal conferences between pupil and teacher.
Squad-drill in Composition should be out of the question m High School work. We speak, not with the
bias of the specialist, but from the Principal's point
of view, when we urge that in no department of the
High School will it pay so well to be liberal in the
provision of teach ers and the limitation of the size
of classes as in the English work. The influence a
good English teacher may have through effective
personal work (as distinguished from hurried squadwork) in the class room, and through the still greater
intimacy of the private conference, is incalculable.
We will be more definite.
First of all, the work in the class room must permit
of much reading aloud of the written work. Every
student should be called upon at least twice a month
- when, he will not know beforehand. Our classes
must not be so large as to preclude this. The semi·

oar method will be approximately followed, more par·
ticularly in the third and fourth years.
In the class
criticism the note of positive appreciation will lead,
and fault-finding come afterward. The teach er will say:
" Sewell, that was well conceived, strongly welded
togeth er; or that was finely or sturdily felt, or it had
life and movement.
What a pity that certain flaws
You repeated
in the workmanship bothered us!
yourself there, and weakened your effect.
There
you bungled or missed a strong antithesis. You were
ambiguous or confused in one place. You threw us
off the scent by an irrelevancy.
You misused a
word. It was clear, from your confusion in reading
at such a point, that you had not punctuated. You
must not allow these things to discount your good

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effects."
It is after the papers have been handed in that the
teacher, in the privacy of the conference room, will
find that opportunity kindly to rebuke and rally which
delicacy denied to him in the publicity of the class
room. "Your work is full of feeling - a valuable
asset; but it is seriously discounted by mental incoherence. See here and h ere." Or, "Your work indicates a failing that will cripple you through life, if not
battled with ; you are carelessly in acc urate. Things
are not as you represent them. Either you have not
been conscientious enough to look closely and patiently
at your object, or you have not been at pains to find

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words for what you saw. Your loose use of words
implies either indolence or a crude, slap-dash way of
thinking." Or, again, "Your letter to your friend was
dashing, but a trifle self-magnifying or lacking in considerateness ; and see, he will be obliged to read this
passage twice, because the absence of punctuation
marks or this ambiguity will puzzle him." There is no
need to enlarge upon the deep impressions for good
that may be made upon a student by means of these
friendly and intimate talks over the "business" of
writing. A boy's or girl's work in Composition opens
innumerable doors into the heart and mind and conscience.
The next point to be insisted upon in the organization of the Composition work is that of giving practical
effect to a view generally taken by good teachers, but
too seldom acted upon, - that students shall be expected in any written work done in the High School
(and we would add oral work, were that possible) to live
up to the standards exacted by the English Department,
and that they shall in some way be held to account for
their shortcomings. We know too well the difficulties
in the way of putting this pious theory into practice.
The special teachers have no time, - frequently have
no inclination, - sometimes no skill, to enforce the rule.
On the other hand, it is not possible that all written
work should pass muster before the English Department. What then? Shall the effort be altogether

abandoned as impracticable? Not at all; the matter is
too important. We must consider it more carefully.
As we have said in an earlier chapter, the important
requirement is that whenever the student is engaged
in the act of composition, - that is, whenever he is expressing himself, - he must feel bound to be accurate
in his way of saying things, whatever the subject may
be or whatever the nature of the exercise he is engaged
upon. More injurious, perhaps, than anything else to a
student's powers of expression, is the distinction he
draws between the work done for the English Department as a set exercise in Composition, and work done
for the history teacher or the classics teacher, as the
case may be, to test his knowledge. The student
thereby sets up two linguistic standards, and develops
two linguistic selves. He sets off the work in Composition as something apart, - something in which peculiar
endeavor and a special scrupulousness are expected. In
some schools so much written work is required, that it is
impossible that it should be well or even carefully done.
The Composition teacher is apt to forget that, in addition to his own special written work, the students have
many written tasks for other teachers. It is quite as
important, indeed it is more important, that these
should be creditably done, than that the Composition
work of the English Department should be. Far better
were it in such circumstances for the English teacher
to say to his class: "To-morrow you have an account of

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:he battle of Thermopylce, or the Roman Prretorship,
to write for your history teacher; I have arranged with
him that this essay shall serve the purpose also of the
English Department." Or, again, "I find that to-day
you had a written review or test in Cicero, and that it
included the translation of a passage from the •De
Senectute.' The Latin teacher will hand the papers
to me, after he has seen them, and I shall go over them
from the point of view of the specialist in English."
Other ways of dealing with the problem may suggest
themselves; but the point here insisted upon is, that,
somehow or other, the students must feel that the
English Department does concern itself with the work
done in all departments, by way of enforcing the general principle stated above. It may be by descending
at times upon the several departments in turn, and
gathering a select crop of papers; or by making special
arrangement for periodical returns from each. It has
been our good fortune to work with teachers in other
departments with whom there was an understanding in
this regard. We would receive from them weekly,
or less frequently , papers that obviously required attention from the English Department; and, at stated intervals, batches of papers from the whole class, for
supplementary criticism on the language side. The
least that the English teacher can do is to keep informed as to what written work his classes arc doing
in other departments, and what problems in expression

it presents. One other point in this connection; that is,
the importance of establishing uniform requirements in all
departments as to the form and quality of written work,
- paper and ink, headings, margins, indorsements, etc.
It is at this juncture that, casting an eye over the sum
of written work that is being done by our students, we
find ourselves involved once more in a recognition of
the fact that they are continually called upon to produce compositions of all kinds, - narrative, descriptive, expository, argumentative. Returns from other
departm ents will bring this out. From this it foll ows
that, in attending to one particular kind of composition
and a special set of problems at one time in the English D epartment, we cannot exclude altogether some
attention to the other kinds and to general problems.
The n ecessity of having a method, and of achieving a
progressive and methodical conquest of the difficulties
of writing, will involve us in placing an emphasis for
the time being upon this or that kind. Such particularization in the English fi eld may be likened to intensive work upon special periods in the field of History.
A certain large an<l general view of the whol e subj ec t
is taken for granted, while steµ by steµ a closer and
more careful view a nd treatm ent of a certain part of
the field is gained. It is well to rem e m her a lso that
before our students reach the High Sc hool, they have
been workers in th e fi eld at large, a nd may have worked
intensively upon some parts of it.

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Allowing, then, for the fact that, while engaged upon
the intensive cultivation of a particular species of composition, we have these larger aims to pursue, we may
elaborate our plan of dealing successively in three or
four years of our course with the four species, - N arration, Description, Exposition, and Argument.
We
would begin at once with the work of writing short,
and, at intervals, lengthier narratives - incidents of
personal life, stories remembered, episodes from books
of travel, adventure, ;md biography; reductions of long
stories, novels, and poems. There are those who prescribe a year of introductory work - partly review, and
partly a survey of general principles governing Composition in general; some grammatical considerations;
rules as to choice of subject, diction, sentences, paragraphs, etc. We have put this plan to the proof, and
have found it less successful than the one we now advocate. In the first place it does not give that sense of a
fresh beginning which is so important. Let our students feel now that their Composition work is to be
done on a higher plane, - on the basis of rhetorical
principle. Explain what Rhetoric means; bring home
the distinction between it and Grammar. Let them feel
that a working knowledge of Grammar is to be presupposed- however sorely some of them may need brushing
up in it.
This method of procedure does not mean, however, that we shall at once begin to load up with

rhetorical principles and rules. No. We would proceed with Rhetoric in the High School as we proceeded with Grammar in the Elementary School. We
would discover, register, and apply our rules in the
process of our practice, proceeding from the art to
the science. We begin at once to learn to do by
doing, and not by a laborious mastery of tools. We
shall get help from models and from judicious criticism, but we shall at once be involved in the
elaboration of certain simple principles that are involved in our actual work. We might suggest to our
pupils that the simplest thing to be done is to be
able to answer their parents' or friends' endlessly
repeated questions, "What have you to tell me? What
of importance or interest has happen ed to you to-day
or lately? Give an account of yourself. Let's have
your story." Here is a real task: why not excel in it?
Why not see to it that the story (narration) is clear,
has a point (idea, climax), and hangs together (unity);
that, if possible, it is interesting and entertaining
(style). "See, - this is the sort of thing, - this little
sketch from Bunner or Daudet or Stevenson or Hawthorne (a note from one of the 'Note-books,' perhaps).
Now recall or hunt up something similar you have heard
or read. Try your hand at telling a friend in a letter
of something that has happened to you recently.
Give an imaginary narqi.tive (oral) to your father
in reply to his evening inquiry for the news of the

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day." In some such way we may get started with
the real and stimulating business - alas! to some
only : to others it is the still boresome business - of
writing, instead of with tiresome exercises in how
to choose a subject, how to abbreviate, how to arrange
a complex sentence, and what not.
We have one more important reason for proceeding
in this way; it is the reason that is leading us away
- as recent text-books show - from the old synthetic
method of proceeding, from the parts to the whole,
from a study of bricks and mortar, . rooms and
floors, instead of from a plan of the whole edifice,
and working down to the constituent parts and the
required materials. The old method, beginning with
words, proceeded to sentences; advanced then to
paragraphs, and finally to the whole composition.
The new method begins with the large, if inchoate
thought that is to articulate itself in a paragraph or
a group of paragraphs, and works down into the
parts as th ey are conditioned by the purpose and
spirit of the whole. It is an illustration once more
of the counsel of the artist, - "Get in your masses
first ; settle your d etails afterward, and let them determine themselves through the attempt to create a
whole, and to convey a total meaning and impression."
Let it be admitted that there is difficulty in working
out this method consistently. The advocate of the

COMPOSITION IN THE HI GH SC HOOL

333

old method may well urge that in paying so mu ch
attention to the larger features of composition work,
there is danger of loose dealing with those faults in
the use of words, spelling, sentences, construction, and
so on, which the student will commit. We ca nnot, as .
a matter of practice, ignore those mistakes, or postpone the treatment of them in detail, until we have
mastered the art of planning and exec uting the larger
elements of composition. V cry true, we answer;
there must, after all , be something of a combination
of the two methods. But we should insist upon
starting at the big end of the plank. We should start
by getting our students to envisage in a large way
the subject upon which they intend to write, and to
articulate its parts gradually, down to the smaller
divisions. If it is urged, in rejoinder, that there
ought at least to be preliminary work on the sen·
tence, seeing that "sentence-sense " is so fundamental
in composition, -we would reply that the sentence
as an isolated unit is unknown in composition, save
in the form of the proverb. The sentence is always
the servant- ay, the child - of the paragraph; and
the education of the feeling for the sentence necessarily involves its being studied as a part of the
larger whole in which it has its strictly determined
function. By and by there may be a review of the
whole subject from the synthetic point of view in a
brief course in formal Rhetoric, just as there was a

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review of Grammar at the conclusion of the Elemen·

continuity in the stages of his progress; and the
teacher must provide for this. And yet his students
will learn to write much as an art student learns to
paint; by getting to work in the master's studio and
taking the master's cues.
He will "catch on," will do
largely by instinct what the master will know how to
justify by theory, until, by and by, an implicit theory
emerges out of and steadies the practice. He will
accept the master's aid in determining what to do
first, on what to concentrate for the time being and
what for the nonce to slight or postpone - be it
special problems of form, composition, color, values,
atmosphere. The master decides that, for the time
being, this special difficulty must be mastered, as a condition of the next step forward; that one left until
this is conquered.
vVithout pressing the analogy
between two arts, which, while having broad principles in common, differ much in details of method,
we may state how, as it seems to us, the four years'
work in Composition should be ch arted.
Our plan is to distribute the technical difficulties of
writing as far as possible according to the sharpness
and urgency with which they emerge in dealing successively with the four species of Composition. It is
clear, for example, that narration involves preeminently the problems of structure in their simplest
form ; that description brings into more striking
clearness problems of diction; exposition, problems

334

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tary School course.
The parallelism b etween the courses in Grammar
and Rhetoric will hold in still another particular the use of a text-book. A good text-book in Composition and Rhetoric may be used for reference and
for occasional exercises, but for little else. The chief
desiderata in such a book are a simple summarizing
of the leading principles, copious illustrations, and
judicious exercises. Let there be a good working
class-room collection of the standard books, to which
the students may be referred for guidance on particular points. But we have come to believe that our
prime task as teachers of Composition and Rhetoric
is to bring home to our students how inevitably the
art of writing and the science underlying it develop
of themselves in and through the orderly, progressive
practice of writing. It is upon this practice, and not
upon a text-book, that we must rely to develop needs:
the text-book ma y be used to meet these needs ; not
to forestall or create them.
A text-book may also perform the valuable service of rough-charting a course along which the
teacher may guide his pupils; and we are assuming that the teacher will so steady himself by the best
text-books, and get from them all the help he can
in his voyaging. The pupil must not be allowed to
feel that he is merely drifting. He must perceive a

335

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of definition and clearness; while argument involves
the consideration of force and tact. Argument indeed
conducts us from the domain of Rhetoric to that of
Logic, and involves such severities of thought and
of skill in construction, that we cannot proceed far
with it in the High School.
Narration is so much easier to manage than any
other form of composition, that it gives us the best
chance 1:0 deal with certai~ elementary and general
problems of form and technique.
It is the most
objective species of literary composition; the writer
feels the firm hold of fact and of the simple logic
of sequence upon him.
Required to move from a
definite starting-point to an unmistakable goal, - a
simple conclusion in the case of the plotless narrative;
a climax, where there is plot, - his task is to mark
the larger stages of progression ; to paragraph these;
to attend to his paragraph echoes and links; to knit
well together his component sentences, on the same
prin ciple of ca rrying forward the action step by step,
steadily and surely, sentence by sentence, without
the endless, draggin g chain of th e " 1'1 nd" and the
"but" form ation. The student's mind is to be kept
to the story, his sentence form ations - lon g a nd
short, loose or periodic - corresponding with the
nature of the incident, its length or brevity, slowness
or swiftness. It is the simplest type of sentence and
paragra ph - the loose ·- that is called for; and the

punctuation is correspondingly simpl e. Simplicity, in
fact, a sound straightforwardness, is what is primarily
demanded. Wordiness and irrelevancy can be easily
detected and demonstrated.
The fundamental principles of Unity, Mass, Coherence, Sequence, are seen
on a large and convincing scale, and appreciated as
they cannot be on a small scale in the sentence, - to
which they may now be the more easily applied. As
the weight of attention will fall on the logic of
incident, the scenic interest and character interest,
which involve descriptive work, will be permitted
only when such descriptive enlargements are necessary to develop the action. The most conspicuous
result of this first stage of our work should be a
gain in vigor and precision.

l

We have already suggested the various forms
which Nq.rration may take - personal experience and
anecdote in letter and diary; invention in supplying
the conclusion of an unfinished tale, or in making
variants upon a given story, or in the complete
weaving of one. We have also in sisted that the
work should go hand in hand with the study of
models in the literature class, supplemP,nted by
special studies in the comp osition class. \ Ve will
add here only a recommendation of plenty of work
in reduction and expansion. Let the student reduce
to the lowest terms the plots of some of Hawthorne's
tales; and let the teacher call for the expansion of
z

338

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

COMPOSITION IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

a reduction made by himself from some short story
unknown to his class. Well-chosen newspaper reports
may be treated in the same way.
Biography also
lends itself to these exercises in economy and condensation.
The work in Description, at the outset of the second
year, brings us face to face with a new set of problems.
We believe in raising these problems in the sharpest
way by considering at the outset the two types of
description, - scientific and literary; description for
information and explanation, and description for impression and enjoyment.
This may be done by
comparing examples such, let us say, as those brought
into happy juxtaposition by Professor Genung; a guidebook description of Avignon from the Cyclopredia, and
an impressionistic description from Felix Gras' "The
Reds of the Midi." ("The Working Pripciples of
Rhetoric," pp. 16-17.) Following this line of treatment, it may be brought home to the student that in
writing a letter of direction to a friend, a diagram of
streets and roads will be much more effective in
enabling his friend to find his way than a verbal
explanation will be. Similarly, the verbal description
of an object for identification (a police specification,
e.g.) will differ from one for appreciation. We shall
work out this difference in concrete instances ; and
in doing so, we shall have to take into account all
the vital considerations concerning descriptive writing;

the point of view, the selection of the salient and
focal features, the order and grouping of them to the
end of economizing the reader's attention, and so on.
We shall be led to discriminate between the objective
character of the scientific or explanatory description
(the truth of external fact) and the subjective character
of the impressionistic and appreciative description
(seeking truth of subjective impression); between the
denotative diction demanded by the one and the connotative, suggestive diction required by the other.
Let there be plenty of this comparative work. Let
the student attempt both modes.
Let him transform
a scientific enumeration or analysis made in the laboratory into a literary description.
Read to him or
dictate the passage wherein Mr. Stedman contrasts
the weather bureau report of an approaching storm
with two stanzas of verse reflecting the storm as it
sweeps down upon the northern ports, lashes the
headlands, and pours its furious armies into the bays.
Discuss examples from Darwin and Huxley, Burroughs
and Jefferies, books of travel and exploration, books
of verse, especially Tennyson's descriptive poems.
That is the way to give meaning and interest to the
work. A treatment of the Synonym, Simile, Metaphor,
will be involved in this. We shall find, as we go, the
need of greater skill and variety in sentence-formation, and of more varied punctuation. The significance
of rhythm and onomatopoetic effect in literary descrip·

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

tion will become plain.

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Finally, descriptive work in

versification will be asked for.
We have always found great value in the attempt
to lead our students to see wherein description in
words differs from the artist's description in color and
form . What is it that words cannot give at all, or
give but weakly? Shape, color, sound. What can
they do that no other vehicle can compass so well?
Change, movement, succession - the suggestion, intimation, comparison. Examine with the pupils some
of the prolix descriptions attempted occasionally by
writers -even Scott. Note how much better the end
might have been gained by a sketch or picture. A
flood of light may be let in by this method . Students
may be brought to a most helpful sense of what they
may legitimately attempt by the verbal method of
description. This is not advanced work: it comprises
the very elements of the subject. The teacher must,
of course, be familiar with the distinctions drawn in
JEsthetics between the time arts and the space arts,
and with the gist of L essing's famous discussion of
the subject in the "Laocoon."
When some skill has been acquired, there may be a
return to the narrative, with a view to an amalgamation
of the two kinds, and a n expansion - in cases where it
is absolutely required - of the narrative by descriptive
adjuncts of character, scenery, and circumstance.
How shall we most effectively begin our intensive

COMPOSITION IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

341

labors in Exposition ? By reverting to its kinship with
Description ; by showing that it is merely a development of Description of the explanatory, enumerative
species. We may compare Ruskin's celebrated description of the locomotive, or Thoreau's brief, impressionistic picture of it, with such an expository
description as that by Holmes in Lamont's " Specimens of Exposition " (Holt). To avoid con fusion, it
will be well to bring out strongly the differences
rather than the affinities between the two types. Our
models will be as distinctive as possible, emphasizing
especially the fact that, wh ereas Description gives us
things as they appear to be, as they affect the senses
and the mind through the senses, Exposition deals
with them as they are for thought, "as conceived
and organized in thought," to use Professor Genung's
phrase; exhibiting their anatomy and their functioning, and rationalizing these so that they may be must be- understood by any reasonable person. We
are to try to get beyond what is particular, individual,
and unique in the object and the impression produced
by it, to what is general and common. We must get
ourselves out of the way first of all, - our idiosyncracies
of feeling and expression must be banished; and then
we must not allow our interest to be centred on
what is peculiar or strange, unusual or abnormal- in
the thing we are dealing with. Splendid discipline
this, both of mind and character !

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We shall therefore press on to the means by which
we reach this result: definition ; analysis, with an
understanding of genus, species, and differentia; simplification and explication by repetition, description,
or illustration; distinction by antithesis or contrast,
obversion, analogy, and comparison. We shall then
deal in a new and closer way with terms, and handle words with severer scrutiny; weigh synonyms,
antonyms, homonyms, ambiguities, equivocations, etc. ;
the denotation and connotation of words; the literary
and scientific modes of employment.
Following our usual method, these different matters
will be dealt with as we go, and not developed at
any length rhetorically before we get down to work.
It is a good plan to begin with models, and to reduce
them to outline form ; to summarize, epitomize, and
at times paraphrase or metaphrase them. In original
work we may begin simply, with subjects carefully
delimited ; and it is here, where it becomes fully
significant, that this problem of the delimitation of
the topic should be studied, and not before. General
propositions involving no great complexity of treatment, and no extended research, will serve best, topics involving definition and discussion rather than
propositions involving the forestalling of objection5.
Then we shall go into methods of treatment.
The
processes to be gone through will be something like
this:-

COMPOSITION IN THE IllGH SCHOOL
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343

Taking stock of one's own ideas and knowledge;
overhauling it, and so realizing the gaps in one's
knowledge and the cloudiness in one's thoughts,
etc.

Rough sketch of a plan of treatment on the basis
of one's present knowledge; making the best of
this, and getting it provisionally organized.
3· Getting new thought and knowledge, and verifying old; consulting dictionary, encyclop~dia, and
standard auth oriti es.
Taking notes on our
reading.

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4. Revision and expansion of the first sketch in the
light of the new facts and ideas; involving us in
the selection and rejection of material available.
Decision as to scale of trea tment; proportion.
5. Final arrangement and development : (I) The larger masses. ( 2) Detailed outline, providing for subordinate elements. Special attention to beginning (announcement of them e)
and conclusion, with its summary, if one is desirable.
There will be class exercises in several of these processes : delimitations of g eneral topics; provisional outlines made on the basis of present information and
ideas; discussion and elaboration by the class; revised
outlines on the basis of the new information and suggestions contributed by the class. Then, after concluding criticisms and suggestions by the teacher, the same

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

topics or others may be assigned for home treatment
after further research and more careful consideration.
The transition from Exposition to Argument is nat~ral, inevitable.
It means a change from explanation
to advocacy; from non-commitment to partisanship; from
the setting forth in an orderly manner of something
that is so, to the establishing of something that is not
conceded, but must be proved and carried. Here there
is a right and a wrong, or at least a better and a worse;
and we are the challenging or challenged champions
of what we believe to be the right, the better. Our
forces must be ranged in battle array ; properly placed
and supported with a view to the nature and resources
and probable tactics of the other side. We may trace a
certain analog y between Narration and Description, and
Exposition and Argument, respectively, in this wise:
Exposition, like Narration, presents a series of stages
along a prescribed route with a goal at the end, each
stage being naturally sequent upon the preceding one;
whereas in Argument, as in Description, we have not
a straight, sectioned road to traverse; but rather a
labyrinth to thread, a pattern to weave, a settled point
of view to keep ; - in fine, there must be a scheme of
reasoning upon which the ordering and presentation of
our facts depend. Each step forward has to be taken
cautiously and circumspectly, with an eye to the total
effect; and must be safeguarded from surprise and
attack. Then there must be advance into the oppo-

COMPOSITION IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

345

nents' territory; and plans to surprise and disarm or to
discomfort and rout, must be carefully laid.
The way must be opened by a little systematic work,
with models before us, on the nature and processes
of argument; the syllogism and enthymeme; induction
and deduction; hypothesis, inference, ~nd proof; attack
and refutation by reductio ad absurdum and otherwise.
Then we shall enter on debate, on the basis of the carefully prepared brief, holding our debaters strictly to
account in following it; in the course of which our
first modicum of theory will be developed. We shall
call periodically for briefs and for the whole or parts
of a speech, - sometimes before and sometimes after
delivery. We shall require the whole class occasionally
to write certain parts of a speech on a given theme, either openings, refutations, conclusions, or perorations; these being general exercises for the development of readiness and effectiveness. The work may
be lightened occasionally by exercises in the humorous,
ironic, or epigrammatic manners, - if the teacher can
trust himself to keep such work within proper bounds.
These things become possible only if we keep the
work simple and vital. It is a great mistake to go far
afield in either Exposition or Argumentation and Debate (especially in the latter) into large and, to the
students, remote questions of public and political controversy. That will be the tendency; boys and girls
would be men and women before their time. But the

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

COMPOSITION IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

chief reason why we should rein the Pegasus of youth
in this matter is that we shall be missing a great opportunity to bring our students to close quarters with the
problems of personal and educational life which they
ought to be revolving, and do fitfully revolve at this
time. We can teach them to grapple with these pertinent problems in a thorough and systematic, instead
of a slipshod, haph azard way. W e can induce a habit
of reflection and sober second-thinking, a desire to
interrogate ready-made opinion and unexamined prejudice ; we can help to check hasty generalizations, and
demonstrate the n ecessity of consulting precedent and
adducing proof and illustration; we can correct the
callow egotism of the intellectual fledgling; and above
all, we can give dignity and meaning to the interests
and everyday affairs of youth.
Our work will be,
not for display, but usefulness. We shall have on
our hands the important business of helping to form
and clarify the public opinion of the school.
In the course of the work on Argumentation and
Debate, there will b e opportunity for using and reviewing all the other kinds of Composition. Exposition is,
of course, involved first of all; and the method of the
analyti cal outline will be that followed in th e preparation of the brief, although the brief will permit of
parenthetical annotations, for help in speaking, which
the expository outline will not include. The appeal
to the feelings involved in the attempt to persuade will,

it will early be discovered, require skill in illustration ,
description, and narration.
And, as distinctive features, considerations of rhythm and verbal effectiveness,
of dignity and impressiveness, of elevation yet variety
of tone (where, by the way, we shall have to deal in
particular with the balanced construction), will occupy
us on the side of formal Rhetoric.
And now, in bringing our treatment to a close, we
must-omitting many matters of not unimportant detail - mention some general points.
First, as to class methods. The skilful management
of class discussion by the teacher is the most vital
factor in the situation.
We have urged that there
should be plenty of reading of the students' productions. Each should feel that he may be called on at
any recitation to read what he has written, for the judgment of his classmates. It is they, his peers, rather
than his teacher, who are to be for him as he writes
his audience and critics. Behind them will stand for
his imagination, as final appraiser, judge, and court of
appeal, the figure of his teacher, of whom he should
think as holding him to his very best, as following his
every step in progress, as demanding evidence of his
having profited by all the help received. The class
discussion ought to be the most valuable of aids. Next
in importance (though prior in time) is the preliminary
discussion in the class of the topics assigned for home
work. The teacher's directions as to th e kind of com-

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position desired ought to be adequate; and often it may
be desirable to probe the topic in a broad, suggestive
way so as to stimulate thought and open up possible
methods of treatment, available models, and sources of
information.
As to the teacher's correction of work handed in to
him, he must be careful not to overdo correction: that
discourages ; and so does much rewriting. Some of
the more serious and significant blunders and shortcomings may be written on the board to be corrected on the
spot, or otherwise. Errors in spelling and punctuation
may be similarly treated ; and - let it on no account be
forgotten - special excellences brought to the notice of
the class. Of course, these aids must not be lavish and
constant, and must not weaken the students' power to
walk alone. Errors below a certain percentage may be
corrected on the paper or on a separate sheet. The
student or the teacher should keep all compositions for
the sake of reference. \Vhen a student is doing unusually poor work, the teacher should seek for the deeper,
hidden causes, psychological or physical ; and aid in
remedying them rather than their innumerable results
in the defective compositions.
As to the form of the work, and the cultivation of
the sense of form, we have already declared our opin
ions on the point (see pp. 192-193). Rules will help
but little; we must work in a larger way for an organic
appreciation of comeliness, order, and expressiveness

by spacing and arrangement, pagination, margination,
indention, paragraphing, titling.
We may try to
arouse a sense for clear, formal handwriting as we
should for artietic printing. A few specimens of old
manuscripts may help. Perhaps an old leisurely dignity may not be beyond recall. We may war against
modern rush and flurry.
Finally, we would emphasize the importance of
working for sincerity, of escaping, that is, from conventional, ready-made ways of speaking and writing;
of commending individuality in seeing and reportin g,
or, in the case of natures of an imitative cast, individual admirations, - a boy's loving pupilage to a
favorite author, - so only they be genuine and heartfelt.
Let us hail differences gladly, keeping our own preferences out of the way, and emphasizing them only when
there is a call for the championship of the noble
against the petty, the real against the sham.
The
most fatal of results - and a not infrequent one is when boys write what they think will please the
teacher and will jog with his views and whims. The
best of results is where, along with an initial humility
in the presence of greatness, we can secure a bold
reliance upon the truth as our young scholars see it,
and that independence of spirit which scorns prevarication and make-believe, the cheap pose and flippant jest

34<)

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VERSIFICATION IN TH E HIGH SCHOOL

CHAPTER XVIII
VERSIFICATION

IN

THE HIGH SCHOOL

T HE course in versification is, as we have already
intimated, an integral and vital part of the English
work, and not a mere fringe upon it. The ends which
are to be gained by it are, (I) a deepened appreciation
of poetry in and through the attempt to fashion quasipoetic products,~ again an attempt to teach through
self-activity; (2) a development of the power to distinguish between the peculiar " notes " of poetry and
of prose, ·- that is, between discourse suffused and
heightened with emotion, and discourse pitched in the
lower key of prose writing; and (3), with this, a
craftsman-like way of handling words ingeniously, to manipulate inversions, to scrutinize vocabulary
closely, and to command synonyms and rhyme words;
and (4) developing this literary tactfulness, by learning
to employ simile, metaphor and other figures, alliteration and onomatopceia, where they may be legitimately
employed to gain certain common literary effects light or stately, tripping or slow-footed, humorous or
grave.
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It is necessary, of course, at the very outset to put
the students at a right point of view by explaining
to th em these purposes. There is to be no attempt
to make poets, any more than there is to make great
painters by the work in drawing, painting, and modelling.
The class is to understand that, much as the boys in
the old English Grammar Schools wrote (and still write)
Latin verse to show their mastery of Latin quantity
and the elementary rules of Latin composition and
versification; so they, too, are to give evidence of a
certain accuracy and facility in the handling of their
mother-tongue, of an ear for word-music, and of a reminiscent appreciation of the work of the poets studied.
Experience has shown us that there need be little or
no fear of any injurious effects : but that, on the contrary, very excellent results may be obtained, - chief
among them, a new zest in the English work, and a
great deal of innocent and refined pleasure through
the invigorating effort to scale the low foot-hills of
Parnassus.
An essential condition of success is system in the
work. There must be a basis of systematic work in
scansion; and then the progressive study and production
of verse forms in their increasing complexity. We will
deal first of all with the work in scansion.
Scansion is to be regarded as a method of indicating
by a system of signs, how verse is to be read aloud

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It is a means of training the ear. The pupils are to
show by the use of this notation the accent or rhythm,
the quantity and the tempo, of the lines. In order
that this may be done, however, there must be certain
changes in the methods ordinarily employed, and, indeed, a better technical understanding of English versification than is usually shown in our text-books. For
example, it will not do to start from the principle that
the basis of English versification is accent merely.
Quantity or duration is an important element, and must
also be taken into account. Our system will accordingly make allowance for the spondee and pyrrhic as
well as the iambus, the trochee, and other kinds of feet
mentioned in text-books and treatises; for the reason
that a foot is frequently made up of two equally accented syllables, - sometimes heavy (spondee) and
sometimes light (pyrrhic). Moreover, due allowance
must be made for the irregularities of English verse,
the impossibility, that is, of scanning the higher products
of English poetry by any uniform sing-song method.
The student must be made to feel at the very outset
that verse when it is passionate is, as Ruskin says,
" made more beautiful by certain modes of transgression of the constant law" exemplified in the normal
lines. Unless the pupils feel the changing pulsation of
the verse, realizing that the music varies with the rise
and fall of the passion, then we shall have that wooden
and valueless scansion that actually damages the ear

and beclouds the poetic perception. A very good text
to follow is this paragraph from Ruskin 's " Elements
of English Prosody": "The measures of verse, while their first simple
function is to please by the sense of rhythm, order, and
art, have for second and more important function that
of assisting, and in part compelling, clearness of utterance; thus enforcing with noble emphasis, noble
words; and making them, by their audible symmetry,
not only emphatic, but memorable."
If we follow this clew, and adopt a suitable method,
we shall find that our students are undergoing an education not only of their musical sense, but of their
poetic nature, their power of feeling, their capacity for
passion, - which is of far greater importance.
Let us at once illustrate what we mean by our contention that a regard must be had for quantity as well
as for accent in English verse. Suppose that our students are in their first year reading Shakespeare's
"Julius Cresar." It is the passage in which Cassius
is attempting to rouse Brutus's feelings against
Cresar:-

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"Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus ; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about . .. ."

How impossible to scan these lines according to any
regular iambic plan . The student, in order to indicate
by his notation how the passage should be read, will
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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

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VERSIFICATION IN TH E HIGH SCH OOL

L
Come,

have to employ other signs.1 He will mark his lines
like this: .J (,,
VV
Why man II he doth
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Like a
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I bestride I the
v

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II and

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narl row world
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Walk unlder his

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men

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I huge legs I and peep I about ....

So, too, if we are reading, let us say, Milton's
"L' Allegro," a similar effort must be made to indicate
the variations upon the normal iambic tetrameter line,
and - a more difficult matter - the irregularities of
the ten introductory lines which are so full of musical
expressiveness. We shall want the pupil to feel (and
to show in his scansion) the forceful staccato effect
in that opening energetic dismissal of loathed melancholy, with the emphatic force of the word" loathed" : .!:.__

v

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v

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Hence, loath Ied me! Iancholy.

What a metrical absurdity the line becomes when read
as regular iambic trimeter. It is difficult to indicate
the light stress on "me!." And so with the fifth line
that gives us more of the same sense of emphatic and
energetic power : Find out

I some unlcouth

cell.

Not only . effects of this kind with their heavy trailivg emphasis, but the very opposite light effects of the
tripping lines, We have tri ed, for simplicity, to make the one set ordinarily used
serve. W e need two : one for accent and one for quantity. Note difficulty
in case of" md-ancholy" (below), and" Liberry " (next p.).
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must be appreciated, and it may be desirable to indicate, in words, the changes from "slow" to "quick,"
"stately" to "tripping," and so on. Thus, in the lines
that follow, we must be sensitive to the change in word
values which betokens the touch of seriousness in the
thought:v

v

And in
v

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I thy right I hand lead I with
v

The mounltain nymph,

I sweet

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thee

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Libl erty ;

noting the beautiful emphasis secured by the strong
" right hand," followed by the rich vowel effects of
" lead " and " thee " ; and again in the next line, the
full values of "mountain nymph" and "sweet. " To
miss these things is to miss what alone gives value to
the exercises in scansion.
This is no place to attempt to set forth at length
the views on English versification implied in the position taken above; and what we have said must suffice.
On any other basis, the writer would not regard it as
worth while to bother his students with scansion. It
is, for him, a means of cultivating an appreciation of
the musical and . passional expressiveness of great
poetry.
And now we may indicate the lines upon which our
progressive studies of verse form s should proceed. In

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VERSIFICATION IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

order that the student may not be hampered by the
difficulty of rhyme at the beginning, our first exercise
may be in blank verse, taken in connection with some
blank-verse poem that we are studying. Let us suppose that it is the selections from Bryant's translation
of the "Odyssey," the "Ulysses among the Phreacians" before mentioned. We may give the class a
start by proposing a subject, and providing a first
line. The subject is to be "The Sirens" ; the moment chosen being when they sang their luring songs to
Ulysses as he and his sailors sailed by their dread
abode; or, if the students prefer, the sailors may be
Jason and his Argonauts (the writer once read to his
class William Morris's dialogue between the Sirens
and Orpheus). It will not do to pitch the note too
high, and so an introductory line like this may be

crous bungling; but it will all be worth while. To
many the work will be a first revelation of the charm
and significance of verse.

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suggested : And as they neared the shore they heard the songs

and if a second line is desirable, we may continue:Of Sirens sweetly singing from the bay. · · .

The class will be asked to suggest the next line ; and
by means of suggestion and criticism, we may build
up a little stanza of five or six lines that will have
served to give courage and stimulus to our young
craftsmen. Let them now be asked to take either
the same subject or any other and produce a dozen
lines or so. Of course, there will be all sorts of ludi·

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The advance from blank verse to the couplet and
the quatrain is a natural step forward. The quatrain we have found it convenient to take in connection with the study of Gray's "Elegy"; the couplet,
when Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" is studied. A
simple exercise in connection with Gray is to attempt
a description of morning twilight hours and sunrise,
with the sounds and sights common to country life
at dawn. The subject is discussed, and various experiences are contributed, and, almost before it is
aware, the class has on hand a stock of material which
may be worked up into verse form. Similarly with
Goldsmith's "Deserted Village." The exercise may
be an attempt to describe some deserted building
or spot which the students have known, or some
person or place after the manner of the descriptions
of the village parson and schoolmaster in Goldsmith's
poem.
At this point we may begin the study of the more
formal and compact types of poem. We have usually begun with that dainty form of French verse,
the triolet, - a copious supply of models for which
may be found in the little volume of "Ballades and
Rondeaus" in the Canterbury Poets, compiled by Mr.
Gleason White. In fac\., it may be well to take this

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VERSIFICATION IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

form, and to work it before the quatrain and couplet are
handled. Here again, of course, the results will be
anything but satisfactory; the dainty triolet will be so
roughly handled that the teacher's taste and conscience will be sorely tried. It will be well, as a first
exercise, to give a motive or subject, and to supply the
first two lines ; for example, if we should be working at
the time on Milton's shorter poems, we may take a cue
from " L' Allegro" and "Il · Penseroso" ; we have also
used the " Merchant of Venice" and secured creditable
triolets on Portia, setting as a first line -

Such in brief is the plan we ourselves have followed.
Without some such course in versification, we regard
the work in English as lacking one important means
of culture, and one efficient aid in securing good results
in linguistic expression.

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Love laughed in her eyes. . . •

The triolet may lead on into the single quatrain
embodying an epigram. Models may be drawn from
William Watson, Landor, and Emerson. After this
·the progression may be successively through the sextain, the octette (ottava rima), the Spenserian stanza,
and, finally, the sonnet. We have managed to secure
a passable sonnet from about fifty per cent of our
senior class.
If circumstances favor, along with these exercises
we may work in a little imitative work, a ballad or
narrative poem at times, and a few parodies, using
Bayard Taylor, Owen Seaman, and other masters in
this line. Now the class will produce its class song,
and sometimes verses for special commemorative occa·
sions, - Memorial Day, Christmas, May Day, etc.

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THE QUESTION OF FORMALISM IN METHOD

CHAPTER XIX
THE QUESTION OF FORMALISM IN METHOD

WHAT we have to say in these supplementary or
summarizing words on method is said as the result of
experience, not alone in teaching boys and girls in tbe
Elementary School and the High School, but also in the
teaching and training of teachers, including teachers of
the higher and lower grades in our public schools.
The chief burden of our counsel, - when we arf
asked for an opinion on the subject, - is that what
we chiefly need for the improvement of our English
teaching is a broader, richer, and more thorough literary
training and culture for our teachers. 1 It must be
1 We provide for ourselves a little shelter from any possible downpo.ir
of protest again st our attitude hy quoting these words from a recent
address of President Hadley, of Yale: "The chief difficulty is that we
have at present so few teachers who are competent to give good instruction in English except through the medium of Latin or Greek. Over and
over again have I heard men argue for the extension of English teaching
in place of the classi cs, when the speakers showed by their diction, their
gramm ar, and their rhetoric, that they had not the least conception of
what good English expression really was. . • . When we have a body
of t eachers who are ready to teach English with equal seriousness, and are
abl e to suppress that vastly greater body who handle it mechanically or
carelessly, then, and not till then, shall we be able to talk of superseding
the classics in our educational system. Under present conditions they re·

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insisted that they shall be exemplary in their habits of
speech, capable and interesting readers and writers ·
well schooled - concretely and practically schooled- ~
in the principles of Rhetoric and Criticism, so that they
may know and feel good literature when they see it;
generally well read in the great classics (absolutely necessary to the formation of taste and judgment), and in
the history of, at least, English Literature. We may
take for granted the possession of those general attainments - disciplining power, sympathy, patience, etc. _
which are essential in a teacher of anything; there
being no need for special emphasis upon any of these
qualities in connection with English teaching unless it
be the possession of imaginative sympathy with the
child, - the power to take the child's point of view in
the sphere of imagination, fancy, illusion, make-believe;
to be myth-maker, fetich-worshipper, idolater, play-actor,
with him. To do this is difficult, we know, and implies
that love of children and childhood which is the one infallible mark of the true teacher; but we shall not
enlarge upon this familiar idea.

If we do not lay stress upon the need of a new methodology, upon more psychology, child-study, Herbartian
lore, and the obstetrics of pedagogy generally, it is not
because we are insensible of the value of these things.
main vitally important to the welfare of the country as a means to accurate expression and clear thought in the communications betwee n man and
man ." - From the " Education of the American Citizen."

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We rate them high; but we hold that the clamorous
need of the hour, so far as English teaching is concerned, is, above all, a more adequate culture, a sound
elementary knowledge and practice of English, the possession of linguistic power, refinement, and liking.
We regret the large proportion of time that is often
lavishly spent on the study of lww to teach, only because there is more pressing need of getting to know
w!tat to teach. Of what weak avail it is that a teacher
should know all the devices to be followed in composition work, if she uses bad English in her presentation,
and is a bungler when it comes ·p doing herself what
she asks her pupils to do. The most skilful questions
are spoiled if they are put in bad grammar or inexpert
language. Linguistic and literary proficiency is as
much to be required in a teacher of English as artistic
skill and cultivation are required in a teacher of Art.
The teacher must be a craftsman.
When it is fully understood and realized, however,
that the first essential of good teaching is an adequate
knowledge of the subject taught, and (in the case of
English) a feeling for it and a power over it, we may
safely proceed to consider more curiously questions of
method.
We use the word "method" here to imply orderly
procedure in one's work, in its largest aspects as in its
minute details. We have more than once laid stress
upon the initial importance of planning one's work.

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Good, clear, large planning is indispensable; and the
plans must be the teacher's own, reflecting her own insights, her own hold upon the subject, her personal
preferences and outlook. In Literature she is forbidden to teach what she does not like.
Plans are essential even for the most inspired, just
because they are inspired. Their inspiration must be
under control; and it must be assisted and get its
.chance by being unhampered by any anxiety as to the
purpose it is serving. Inspiration runs to waste if it is
not wisely employed. It is a steed that needs hitching
to a serviceable wagon. The plan is this wagon. Besides, the teacher who does not plan well ahead, bears
a harassing daily burden of anxious, hand-to-mouth
contriving. If she has settled well in advance wlta t
she shall do, - which is not a matter of inspiration,
but of careful ingenuity, - she may then devote her
attention to the problem of how to do it, - of how to
utilize the unforeseen circumstances of the hour ; how to
use those unexpected allies, or thwart those unsuspected
difficulties, which are. always turning up. Here is the
chance for daily inspiration : let the teacher be free to
take it.
In adopting plans she will be unwise to repose upon
text-book plans.
Slavishly to follow them is better,
to be sure, than to have none at all; but is poor policy.
In the first place, no teacher will see eye to eye with
the writer of the text-book; she must at least edit it

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THE QUESTION OF FORMALISM IN METHOD

for her own use, to play into the hands, not only of
her own capacities and stock of knowledge, but also
of th e outfit and needs of her pupils. We recall here an
instance which, although it did not occur in connection with elementary school work, is apt. A certain
much-used text-book, treating of diction, proceeds in
traditional fashion to insist upon the importance of
purity, etc., and warns against barbarisms.
The
student (first year High School) must restrain his weakness for using obsolete words, "ycleped, for called"!
he must shun hybrids, e.g. "singist" ! for singer, and
resist the temptation to bandy such technical words as
"anneal," "reagent." We heard this gravely recited
by a first year High School class. What teacher with
sound sense, who plans with an eye for her own real
boys and girls, will waste time in this way? Who, in
dealing with common errors, localisms, or slang, will
not consider the actual barbarisms to which her own
pupils are prone, instead of strange text-book importations? Her own plans will provide closely and liberally for her own boys and girls with their actual outfit,
their peculiar shortcomings, their actual circumstances,
and their probable destiny; and will ignore the irrelevancies of the text-book, which is to be her servant and
not her master.
But there are some special difficulties against which
we must be on our guard. In teaching English, more
especially in the earlier years, perspective and empha-

sis, suggestion and imitation, are so important and yet so
elusive and fluid, that planning is as difficult as it is
necessary. The chief difficulty may be indicated by the
word thoroughness,- to be thorough enough, and thorough with the kind of thoroughness possible in such a
matter as language; to avoid pedantic, literal, murderous thoroughness - how difficult that is J

365

That would be an absurd thoroughness in drawing
which would keep a child drawing circles until it could
draw a perfect one. Similarly, it would be a choking
pedantry in English work that would confine a child to
the practice of certain words or forms of speech until
its usage was rigorously perfect. Clearly, thoroughness
in an art is a relative thing, - relative to the general
powers of the child; it can only be approximative. But
to allow so much is to open the door, it might seem, to
slovenliness, to touch-and-go . methods, to the fine haphazard, spontaneous, unpondered work which is done by
some "inspired " teachers, - day-by-day, hand-to-mouth
work. This is to run with blind scare from Scylla
straight into the clutches of Charybdis. There must be
a plan that, while recognizing the indeterminateness of
the child's growth in the grasp and use of language, in
appreciative and creative power, nevertheless aims at
certain definite, restricted results, so far as these can be
proximately secured from the child. The teacher must
by experience form her expectations as to the degree of
thoroughness that may be expected, and then work

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THE QUESTION OF FORMALISM IN METHOD

systematically and clearly for it step by step. In some
few things absolute accuracy may be worked for, -as
in memorizing work, in the pronunciation or enunciation of certain words, in the general form of the written
work; but in most things (such as the meanings of
words, spelling, handwriting, story-telling) 'we must be
satisfied with what, by dint of good example, patient
practice, wise correction, and frequent but changeful
(and disguised) repetition, the child can on an average
attain to.
As to method generally, it is nothing more than
developed common sense, as Huxley insists somewhere. 1
One may be well versed in the theory of method and
yet be a very poor teacher : for no method can be
successful without the tact that comes of careful, cautious practice. However, one teacher's experience may
assist others in developing a method of their own; and
the writer therefore puts on record 'what he regards as
the more important counsels of perfection which have
formed themselves in his own mind, with the possibility
of their being of use to some fellow workers: I. To teach one thing at a time, but always in relation to one's plan as a whole; as an outgrowth of what
has gone before, and as pointing forward to what is to

succeed. Figuratively, provide every fact with proper
couplings, so that it may take its place in a series.
Beware of discursiveness and miscellaneousness.
2. To let everything attempted either by oneself or
one's pupils be done as well as it can the first time, and
not indifferently well because there will be a chance
to improve upon it later, for
(a) As to the teacher's part, the first impression or
impact upon the child is incalculably important, coloring all subsequent dealings with the matter: hence,
it should be as clean and strong, as telling and unforgettable, as stimulating and suggestive, as it can be
made; and
(b) As to the child, any initial slackness discounts
subsequent effort. The child ceases to be "all there."
We have in mind, as an evil in English work, the practice so often permitted of making first the "rough "
copy of the composition, and then the "fair," improved
copy. Sometimes this is unavoidable or desirable ;
but there ought to be as little of it as possible, as it
begets children who can do nothing "out of hand,"
with promptness and certainty of attack. It fosters
slovenliness and half-heartedness.
In reading, similarly, the beginner must do his best at the first
attempt.
3. While, however, the deep first impression is very
important, it is not by any means sufficient in order
to secure la sting interest in the deeper sense of th at

1 Huxley's essay on Descartes' famous" Essay on Method" is worth
niany of the more technical treatments of this topi c, and has the recommendati on of being well and attractively written . . De Garmo's" Essential•
of Method" (Heath) will be found helpful.

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term, - the sort of interest that will brace the energies
for any drudgery that it may be necessary to undertake ; the sort of interest that is a motive toward the
discipline of the will.
And to fail to secure this
sturdier kind of interest, is a very serious defeat in
attempting to teach a subject like Literature, in which
interest is the very breath of life. That the indispensable initial wave of interest may not spend itself
to little and partial purpose, it must be backed by
another which shall catch this, and sweep the new
thing into vital relations with the existing interests
of the child. In technical terms, it is not enough that
the new thing should be perceived; it must be apperceived ; must receive a warm welcome into the child's
mental habitation, and open up communications and
sympathetic alliances with the old dwellers in that
habitation.

5. To get in one's masses first is the phrase, borrowed from the studio, that best expresses our next
counsel. Begin always 'Yith the large, salient aspects
of things: ignore all detail that may be ignored, in order
to get a powerful seizure of a thing as a whole. Fill in
details later - and for the very young child, the
fewer the better.
How far to elaborate detail the
teacher's tact must decide. Exhaustive treatment 1s
always a mistake; the plant must be left growing m
the mind.
6. Repetitio mater studiormn: this maxim of the
Jesuit educators is peculiarly true of literary studies.
One must be always deepening one's hold on the old
and great things, lovingly recalling them and conning
them, as we do with the great tunes and pictures.
Repeat, review, revive continually; but in new and
unexpected ways, in new lights, in altered perspective,
in fresh connections. Some new effect is usually to be

4. To insure this result it is desirable to prepare
the way, or, to keep to our trope, to herald the approach
of the newcomer; so that the child may sympathetically
go out to meet it in a mood, and with knowledge
enough, to stimulate appreciation . This means ( 1) creating a favorable attitude of mind and a right emotional
atmosphere, (2) removing obvious stumbling-blocks in
the way of the child's approach to the subject, - any
strange, puzzling facts that are prominent in the poem
or story, unfamiliar names, allusions, a knowledge of
which is vital.

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gained by comparison or contrast. Encourage delighted brooding, especially upon the big things that
will stay with one; let the affections gather more and
more massively about them.

7. To develop in the child a sense of responsibility
toward his knowledge and powers. Make him a reverent curator of his treasures: call him continually to
account. Above all, let him "do something about
it " ; i.e. turn his possessions to use. Hold him, however, to strict account only on work actually done
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with him, and on things he is expected to know not on outside or supplementary matters.
8. Be as independent of . your text-book as possible. Know well the literature you use. Have a
full memory. Work out of your appreciation: le cmu1'
au mett'er.

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CHAPTER XX
SUMMARY -

IDEALS AND AIMS IN THE TEACHING AND

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STUDY

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Pirnv AILING

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ENGLISH.,

WITH

SOME . CRITICISMS

OF

PRACTICES.

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conclusion we may attempt to summarize some of
our leading points and to supplement these with a few
after-thoughts.
I. Literature and Language must be taught from
their own distinctive point of view, - the point of view
of Art. They are not information studies ; 'they are
not sciences; they aim to develop, not knowledge, but
power, - imaginative sympathy, sensibility, admiration.
This means that when a teacher passes from a lesson
in Geography, let us say, to one in Reading, her point
of view must undergo a complete change. Now she
has quite other aims than those pursued in her geography work; now the whole atmosphere of the class room
has altered. She has been dealing in her geography
work with facts and their logical connection ; now she
is dealing with the emotional interpretation of facts,
with experience in its relation to human hopes and
.fears, fancies and imaginings, desires and duties, ideals
and aspirations. The fact is now of less importance
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SUMMARY - IDEALS AND AIMS

than the spiritual rendering or interpretation of it, the
emotion al response to it. Has she been telling the
little people abo ut the winds - breeze, gale, hurricane
- and the points cif the compass - polar North and
tropic South ? Now she turns to poetry, and lo! the
wind has become a human presence for the child: "0 you that are so strong and cold,
0 blowe r, are you young or old ?
Are you a beast of field or tree,
Or just a big, strong child like me ? "

and by and by the narve imagination of the child, which
conceives of the weird horseman riding by in the moaning darkness, will become the adult imagination which,
with Shelley, feels the "wild west wind" as the very
"breath of Autumn's being." l
What we too often find is that the teacher has not
this fundamental perception of the meaning and function of Literature. Literary products are handled grossly,
for their fact values ; or, in the higher grades, as products the merely intellectual comprehension of which
calls for certain explanations, grammatical or allusional.
But what has to be worked for is spiritual discernment
and emotional apprehension. This defect is not to be
wondered at. To handle Literature as such requires
not a little culture; and culture, in the form of resthetic
1 The difference between the scientific and the poetic statement of a
fact is conc retely and happily illustrated by Edmund Clarence Stedman
in his" Elements of Poetry."

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insight, is the last requirement we have made of our
teachers. We speak out of experience as a t eac her
of teac hers; and we assert that the teacher who knows
what the specific and proper office of Literature is,
as distinguished from that of S cience, is a rare a nd
precious exception; and rarer sti ll is one who can distinguish a first class poem or short story from a second or
third rate one, or can apply the fundamental can ons of
literary criticism.
Let us hasten to say that the teachers are not
wholly, nor indeed principally, to blame in this matter.
They are not always taught, nor are they always in
their teaching expected, to deal with Literature as such.
We have already cited an illustration of this from
the Language Number of New York Teachers' llrlonographs. We pointed out that th e examination questions
on the "Lady of the Lake, " whi ch were put to th e
graduating classes in public schools to secure admission
to the High Schools, included not a single literary question among the ten of them, but that the paper was a
grammar paper almost entirely. What teacher can do
good literary work with such a paralyzing test to prepare for? How can she prevent her term's work from
being other than stupid drudgery and rude butchery, which must disgust her pupils with Literature
altogether?
II. Passing from appreciation to usage, the fundamental principle to b e followed is that the mastery of

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language is a matter of practice, - practice animate<\
by interest and enthusiasm, guided by good models and
by wise counsel and criticism. Children learn their
native tongue by imitation ; and imitation continues to
be, throughout the school course, the chief factor in language work. The rules of Grammar and rhetorical precept are later and comparatively unimportant means to
the end sought. Of models, the most influential is the
teacher herself; the influence of book models is heavily
discounted if the teacher's own practice is not exemplary and winning. And by example we mean, first and
foremost, oral example. Here again we have been very
slack in our requirements, very low in our standards.
The shortcomings of the average teacher as a writer are
serious enough (we speak after much reading of teachers' compositions, note-books, etc.). Their unguarded
spoken language, however, is worse than their written
productions. The standard to-day (thanks to the energetic efforts of such men as Superintendent William H.
Maxwell) is rather higher, doubtless, than it was a few
years ago when Dr. Rice reported the results of his observations; but it is still ridiculously low. One still
hears at times bad grammar and idiom; while as for any
stylistic quality, revealing literary or artistic feeling,
how rare it is ! We also look in vain in the average
school for good, cultivated pronunciation, clear enunciaation, pleasant tones, a proper use of the vocal organs.
Again we say, small blame as a rule to the teachers,

who neither by training nor examination are impressed
with the importance of these things. And this brings
us to our next point.
III . The basis of all literary training is oral. The
ear is the arbiter of speech; the mouth, not the pen, its
greatest instrument. Not "Does it look right?" but
" Does it sound right?" is the first and fundamen ta! test
of language; it is the ready test of everyday life, and
the final test of the great poets and masters of Literature. We are more and more a reading and writing
people, to be sure; and yet we must not undervalue the
practical importance of oral proficiency as an element
of success in life. To · be "well spoken" is still a
strong point in a man's favor in many walks of life.
The pleasant voice and delivery, the breeding implied
in correct speech, the evidence of character and culture
in the touch of distinction in the vocabulary, the
power of graphic description and narration, -these
things have sometimes even a commercial value; while
ability to read and recite agreeably, to debate and
argue effectively, is almost everywhere a valuable asset,
and in certain callings - political, ministerial, legal - an
indispensable condition of success.
We must gain the ear of the child; that is at first our
only resource as teachers ; and our chief resource it
ought to be at all times. We must cultivate the child's
auditory taste as, in our art work, we must cultivate his
visual taste It is well known that many of our errors

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

SUMMARY-IDEALS ANb AIMS

in spelling are the outcome of faulty oral impressions.
But we do not act upon this theory. We address our
language work in the main to the eye, and slight the
art of the tongue. We do not examine orally either our
pupils or our teachers. A teacher 's habits of speech
may be abominable, but we do not find it out; and we
shall not, until we make much of oral examinations.
Worse still, when we do discover it, we are not troubled
by it. . We have been inclined to greet as a fantastical
heresy Professor Corson's proposal that our literary
examinations shall be tests in reading; and that literary
culture shall mean, first of all, vocal culture. But his
arguments in his admirable little book, "The Aims of
Literary Study" (to which we have already drawn the
attention of teachers), are in the main irrefutable. 1 We
must follow Dr. Corson's line of argument, too, in maintaining that the greatest influences in the literary
education of the child are those which flow from the
impressive vocal rendering of great poems by the
teacher. (A great poem ill presented is like a great
picture seen in a poor light.) These may be made great
character-forming experiences in the life of the child;
great spiritual experiences. And the psychologists are
with us in attaching importance to this neglected side
of literary training. Mr. Tracy, in his "Psychology

of Childhood " (Heath), quotes the French dictum,
"L'oreille est le chemin du camr" - "The ear is the
pathway to the heart " - and adds, " There is no
sense, in the education of which greater care should
be taken than the sense of hearing." 1
We have been led almost insensibly from one aspect
of vocal and auditory training (considered, i.e., as a
means to correct, skilful, refined discourse) to the other
(considered as the chief means of spiritual interpretation) as the pathway to the heart, as the means therefore of moral !!lid spiritual education. This is a
principal point, which takes us from the more technical
to the largest cultural view of our subjei::t. Hence the
great importance we ought to attach to vocal accomplishment in the teacher - good reading and reciting
and story-telling. A special plea should be made for
good story-telling. The story, we think, ought to play
a much more prominent part than it has played in the
class room. Story-telling, with all the magic of personal coloring and mimicry in oral delivery, should be
one of the teacher's best accomplishments. Story-telling - anecdote, the gleaning from experience and reading to entertain company, as the peasant balladist in
the hut, the Arab in his tent, the gypsy by the wayside

376

\Ve refer t o this and to Dr. Corson's companion volume," The Voice
and Spiritual Education" (both published by the Macmillan Co.), as containing the best supports of this position.
I

t He also cites these words from Perez' "Education Morale des le Berceau" : "Envelopper l'enfant d'une atmosphere de sons doux, tendres, el
rejouissa nts, c'esl travail/er a son bonheur actuel, c'esl fai re beaucoup pour
ron liumettr et sa moralile future."

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

SUMMARY - IDEALS AND AIMS

or around the camp-fire, makes use of it- may be a
much more powerful agency in our education than we
have made of it hitherto.
Nothing but good would come of the attempt to be
less print-ridden, to forsake and forget, more than is
our wont, the cold printed page, and to catch warmth
and glamour from the voice. We shall stand no
chance of getting this, however, until we demand from
our teachers pleasant, pure, and flexible utterance; a
feeling for rhythm and rhyme; a power of evoking
the onomatopoetic, alliterative, and musical effects of
language.
IV. The supreme aim of literary and linguistic trainling is the formation of character. This includes and
transcends all other aims ; and it is because it is an
aim which can be more effectually realized by Literature and · Language than by any other study, that

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379

education, and the master-motive of all literary discipline and nurture. We d_<?·---~~ educate primarily __!9_r_
knowledge; for - th_~~session of knowledge affords no __
g~arante~- th~t -it-Will be w~~thiiy emp_i2xed. It i~ a
"meansto an - ~~d; and that-end i;-th~-~~imating inter-

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Literature, by almost common consent, must hold the
central and dominating place in our school curriculum.
The springs of a man's character are in his loves and
hates, his tastes and desires, his ideals and aspirations ;
and the life of these depends much upon the light and
the perspective with which they have been invested by
the imagination. This imaginative exaltation of life,
of noble human longings and ideals, it is the province
of art, and especially of Literature as the highest art,
to achieve, and, in turn, to foster and communicate.
Here we have the starting-point and the goal of all

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est, the controlling aim and impulse, of a man's activity.
We communicate knowledge in vain if we do not evoke
stable and growing interests and enthusiasms.
Of
what avail all our nature study, if it has not quickened
a love of natlfe, an ennobling curiosity and reverent
wonder in the presence of the physical world? Of
what avail our history study, if it is not a treasured
Ariadne's thread to lead us through the labyrinth of
the problems, personal, social, and political, that wall
us about on all sides? Of what avail to have read
Shakespeare and Milton, Emerson and Lowell, if the intercourse has not provoked a life-long thirst for helpful and inspiring communion with them and other great
spirits? If by our clumsiness we have killed or lessened the love of Letters in any child, we have made
a curse of the literary knowledge we have given him.
And yet the love which it is the supreme purpose of
Literature to generate or deepen in the child, is not love
of literary culture itself, but rather of the life which
" We create life
Literature reflects and irradiates.
through ideals," said Pestalozzi; and it is to bring the
child under the sway of noble ideals of manhood and
womanhood, noble types of life, noble deeds, noble feel·

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SUMMARY - IDEALS AND AIMS

ings and thoughts about life and the duties and oppor.
tunities of living, - for this that Literature must be
employed. (To read great books with one's heart and
imagination in the reading, is, in a certain sense, to live ;

. from Literature that she can communicate its life to
others.
"The most valuable critic," says Dowden,
"is the critic who communicates sympathy by an exquisite record of his own delights." The words may
be applied to the teacher; her own delight in what
she is reading or teaching must be as a fountain of
life in a dry place. Her own likes may be ignored
in teaching other subjects; but here the absence of
liking cannot be' pardoned. For the twentieth time,
it may be, she has to teach her little class, "Piping
down the valleys wild " ; for the twentieth time she
feels and communicates the joy of that beautiful lyric.
For the twentieth time she has to repeat with older
pupils, "Yet once more, 0 ye laurels," and the old
thrill is hers once more.
As well might she think
of remaining insensitive to the fiftieth return of
spring, or the daily pageant of sunset and the starsprent heavens, as of remaining unmoved by these
miracles of the poet's art.

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' to gain vicarious experience. And this life, in which
we participate through books, - because it is invested
with an imaginative halo, and has an ideal suggestiveness, completeness, and force, which provoke admiration
and longing,
is so important because it sets up imita( tiv;~dencle~ that carry us into action. We all tend
to become what we admire; to copy the men and
women to whom we have given our hearts away. It is
through these, as embodying ideals that have hypnotized us and have spread a subtle, sweetly tyrannizing
influence through our being, that we are creating our
own life and shaping our destiny, to recur to Pestalozzi's thought.
Here, then, in so using Literature as to form
character, is the teacher's most important and delicate task. To accomplish it, she must know how to
deal with Literature vitally as a form of life, as a
means of embodying and creating ideals that cast
their imaginative spell about the child. She must
herself have lived vitally, and must have related her
culture to her living, to her quest for ideals, to her
own deepest experiences. Only life begets life; only
what comes from the heart goes to the heart ; and it
is only as the teacher has herself first drawn life

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There is one pitfall, however, that awaits those who
are eager in the pursuit of this final aim, - that of
forcing the didactic note.
A work of art is not a
sermon or a pulpit; and we wrong it when we compel it to argue, or use it to enforce our own little
moralizing text. Art recognizes that the syllogism is
less powerful than the parable in its effect upon
character; that a man's arguments are not so expressive as his personality and habits. It seems necessary

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SUMMARY - IDEALS AND AIMS

to insist upon this, because teachers and text-books
have a noticeable leaning to what is "preachy " in
Poetry and Literature ; they tend to treat Literature as
they would the Ten Commandments. That is the
result of failure to apprehend the true nature of
Literature as a form of art ; to recognize that its
influence is silent and subtle, reaching the reason
through the emotions ; affecting profoundly and unconsciously the child's moods and temper; his way
of looking at, and feeling about, things. That is why
full justice must be done to the beauty of Literature,
even in the interests of its moral effect.
We must
not neglect its sensuous appeal; the color and singing quality of its words; its cadences and rhythms.
V. The development of appreciative power is the
best of aids in the development of expressional
power. In other words, expression is intimately
related to impression. The best class in Composition
is generally the best class in Literature. Those can
give most and best who have received most and
best. Children learn to write as they learn to swim,
- by watching and imitating others ; by trying under
the lead of a model. They develop a feeling and
instinct and knack for writing, without which they
will never be effective as writers. Unless one can
develop this craftsmanlike pride and interest one
labors to small results. The child or youth who
writes well is he who feels that he has something to

say, wants to say it, and to say it well - to make
his point. He naturally falls back, consciously or
unconsciously, upon examples known to him. A
workmanlike regard for his tools, a sense of responsibility toward the medium in which he is working, this is what we want in the end to develop; and
this is developed, not by rule and injunction, but by
catching the spirit and developing the conscience of
the craft through the persistent effort to practice it.
It is a great and very common mistake to dissociate
the two sides, the appreciative and the creative; to
neglect to use the one as a main agency in the development of the other. A professor who has written a textbook on composition is reported as having said at an
educational conference: "It seems really axiomatic
that in school work the study of English Literature is
less necessary than the study of what makes correct,
everyday English." This position is weak, on every
score, we believe; whether from the point of view of
culture, or of character development, or of expressive
power; but it is unfortunate chiefly because it sets up a
sort of rivalry between two complementary studies and
interests.
Our composition work ought to be much
more imitative than it is: much more resonant with
echoes of the work of the masters ; but it will not be
until we make much more extensive use of models than
we have done.
Mr. Webster, in his recent book on
Composition (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), so full of good

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1'Ht TEACHING OF ENGLISH

counsel and suggestion, has gone so far as to adapt his
High School Course in Literature to serve the ends of
his Course in Composition. This is dangerous, we
think; because literary study has its own independent
ends to serve. There is less danger in reversing the
order. The experience of most of us, I venture to say,
tallies with that of the college examiner, who found that
of boys from two schools, those who came from the
school where much zestful reading was done, excelled
those who came from the one where, with less attention
to Literature, a "thorough" drill in Composition and
Rhetoric was given. The sense of form, which is the
vital matter, had been better developed in the successful boys by the influence of models, than in others by
the rigor of rule.
Needless to say that what applies to the taught,
applies to the teacher; she also, as a craftsman, must
draw inspiration and power from the great masters;
she must live in the atmosphere of the great literary
accomplishments of the race; must consult and study
perpetually masterpieces of the class which she is trying
to get her pupils to produce, and must keep alive by
practice her own creative powers. Let her work with
her children as the master-workman of eld worked
with his apprentices, -as an exemplar as well as a
preceptor.
VI. One common fau lt in our present practice is due
to the failure to see that thrrn g ht and language arc twin

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products, and that we must deal with both m order to
deal effectively with either. We speak, e.g., of working
for a vocabulary, without recognizing that the accumulation of a vocabulary implies growth of thought, the
development of cognition. "The growth of mind," as
Professor Laurie says, "and the growth of language
in the mind go together. There has to be organized
in the boy the language of his inner life, so that the
language may grow with the life, and the life with the
language."
This development of the inner life can
be no more effectively aided than by the endeavor to
express it in language. Such a personal view of the
case we fail to take. The new college entrance requirements illustrate this failure. They, and the examination papers based upon them, are in nothing so defective (excepting only the omission of oral tests) as in
their composition tests, which are confined to subjects
drawn from the books prescribed for reading and study.
Such tests do not throw a student back upon himself;
and they give the false impression that Composition
has to do with reproducing (which often is nothing
else than re-organizing) the material drawn from books
and from class instruction. The kind of Composition
which life, and even college work, will require from the
student, will be of no such stilted, academic character.
The man will have to express himself, his own interests,
experience, knowledge . T h is cli~rcgzu( l of the personal
equation explains why composition work in our Gram2C

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

mar and our High Schools is often so very poor, so life·
less, so artificial, so impersonal, so bookish. Here
is the bane of the R eproduction, which figures so
largely in our work: the student feels that he is merely
asked to do over again what is done already in his
books. This is well enough, if the aim is to test knowledge and its orderly storage in the mind: a student will
see the point of that ; but he instinctively feels that,
for a test of his ability to compose, he must have the
fresh, challenging task of delving in the field of his
own mental possessions, selecting the pertinent ones,
sorting and arranging them for the first time, and
giving them an attractive form and that interesting
personal quality which they will have only if he is
really true to himself. Here it is not so much what
he knows - the less he is troubled about that the
better; it is how he knows it, and can tell it, to impress
and interest others. His principal problem is one of
organization.
VII. Self-expression is natural to the child; it is a
form of self-activity in which he delights, provided we
touch his real interests, or wisely tax his ingenuity. But
as a rule his composition work is a bore and a "grind,"
as he calls it. That is our fault; partly because we are
thinking in routine, text-book terms of the task, and of
getting the child to do justice to it, instead of thinking
of the child, and of getting him to do justice to himself;
partly also because we do not set the child free from

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SUMMARY - IDEALS AND AIMS

anxiety as to what he shall say, and allow him to put
all his strength upon the way of saying what he has at
easy command. Not that he has not to be tried by any
discipline. In this, as in all other work, he has to learn
how to take pains, to conceive and carry out a plan, to
stick to his work until it is completed, and to toil on
after the first impulse has failed him.
VIII. A danger to which we are liable, under the
stress of our new ideals and enthusiasms, is over-ambition, or perhaps reckless ambition. Quantity menaces
quality, and precocity (which is usually to be deplored)
threatens us. We have made a plea (see Chapter III)
for education according to Plato's conception of it,
as appropriate and sufficient nurture or feeding; and
we feel strongly that our English work, especially,
may be much more nutritious (which does not mean
more advanced) than it has been. But we do not
nourish if we overfeed or misfeed or overtax, and our
ambitious new programmes show a tendency toward
all these things. If we attempt too much at once, we
do nothing thoroughly; and we get into confusion, slovenliness, and forgetfulness. Our work may be simple
and yet rich, instead of being like much work in the
past, simple and starving ; as white flour is simpler than
brown, but less feeding . To illustrate, - Wordsworth's
"We are Seven," Blake's "Little lamb, who made
thee?" are no less simple than Isaac Watts's preceptive
rhymes ; but they make twice as much brain-stuff

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SUM MARY - ID EALS AND AIMS

They are suggestive; and so they take root and grow,
if properly seeded down. To do little work, so it be
of the telling kind, rather than much of an indifferent
quality; and to do this little cleanly, finely, so that it
sticks, - this is what we want. And this is even more
true of work in Composition than in Literature: we
must be careful not to ask for too much, recognizing
t hat a child's receptive and appreciative powers outrun
his expressive powers, and that time must be allowed
for the digestion of what he receives.
IX. We must avoid waste in order to get good results; and this we shall do when ( r) our programn: es
are more organic and unified th an the y are now, au!
(2) when the work of each g rade is done by the teacher
in the light of the course as a whole, and according tc.,.
the final ends aimed at.
(I) Our English Course ought to show a definite
organizing policy animating and articulating the work
pf each and every grade ; a network of connecting tissue
uniting it all. The work of each grade must be clearly
defined and well developed ; advancing steadily from
the point where the work was left in the preceding
grade, and covering just as much new ground as can be
covered on the road toward the goals fixed by the
course. In general (we are too well aware of exceptional circumstances) each teacher ought to be able to
rely, in English work, as confidently as she may in such
obvi ously step-by-step studies as Arithmetic, upon cer·

tain definite accomplishments and con quests in the class
that comes up to her at the beginning of th e year - no
less and no more. Such and such specifi c bad h abits
. 't" an d " saw ' r ") h ave b een attacked in preceding
( " am
grades; certain powers (the comprehension of what a
paragraph means, and of how to construct two related
paragraphs in a simple scheme of contrast) have been
exercised; such and such poems and stories have been
read, re-read, memorized, used for comparative purposes,
etc. These powers will now b e re-exercised in the
advance toward new difficulties ; and th e class will at
the end of the year carry a very d efinite ly e nl arged inh eritance to the next grade - no less a nd no more.
The teacher, on such a plan, must lear n to leave certain
mistakes and failin gs alon e, although they may chafe
her. They will be strug gled with in a later grade. Let
her, in her reading, press he r develop ment work a nd her
explanations only up to the fixed limits ; in her written
work, attempt only such and such fo r ms of composition.
Limitation will be the condition of effectiveness.
(2) The success of such a plan mu st depend upon
the teacher's ability to see the work of her grade in
its organic relation, not only to the work of the
grade below and the grade above her own, but as a
stage in the progress toward certain final results, and as
a contribution to those results. Not only does it give
interest and meaning to her work thus to foresee the
bud in the seed, the full flower in th e bud, the fruit

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the flower; but it is the necessary condition of
unity of aim and continuity of developm~nt in the
school work.
No elementary teacher can do her
work effectively who is not working upon the same
general principles, grammatical, rhetorical, and critical, as those upon which the High School or College
teacher is working. She must, therefore, have a good
theoretical and practical command of those principles. She is simply applying them at a different
stage of the child's development, and needs a peculiarly delicate skill, born of a divination of the child's
nature, in order so to apply them. She must bring
something of the same high critical standards to her
choice and treatment of literature; something of the
same feeling for style as the High School or College
teacher should bring. She, too, is working, in ways
appropriate to the age of her pupils (now empirically,
now rationally, now synthetically, now analytically),
for Clearness, Force, and Rhythm, for Purity and
Propriety, for Coherence and Sequence; and she
must know accurately and fully both what these
qualities are, and the chief secrets of their attainment.
So recurs once more the refrain to our various
criticisms, - the need of a higher literary culture
among our teachers, higher standards, better and
richer training. Here we have the first condition of
any noteworthy im_provement in our school work. It
is unnecessary to pass any detailed criticism upon the
in

SUMMARY - IDEALS AND AIMS

391

English teaching in our Normal Schools and Training
Colleges; it is, on the average, admittedly inadequate.
We do not lose sight of the fact that English is
only one of many subjects which the Elementary
School teacher is called upon to teach; but we affirm
that it is the most important subject, the core and the
foundation of the curriculum, disciplining the mind to
truer, wider vision, purifying and deepening the emotions that are the main factors in character, bracing and
strengthening the will to the patient control and the
energetic and noble use of the powers of heart and
mind.
Our plea for English culture, broad and deep, as
the one thing needful in our teachers of English, is
made in no partisan or exclusive spirit. We are not
of those who are in any way jealous of the claims
and assertiveness of Science. Our ideal in education
is not a distinctively literary education ; and to us anything like a literary pose, literary snobbery or pretentiousness, is utterly intolerable. It is a wholesome
experience for a literary man to have to serve his time in
a technical school, where the students are all for Science and the Crafts, and regard Literature and Language as species of refined, purgatorial requirements.
He works without a halo: no shy, illusive light lends
enchantment to his devotions to the Muses. He
must win respect for his subject by its blood-red,
purple-veined humanism; by its sheer power over the

l

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

SUMMARY - IDEALS AND AIMS

heart; by its resistlessly attractive dealings with recognizably real, palpitating things. No fine flutings,
no dainty word-devices, will avail. And this, we say,
is wholesome for both teacher and taught. Would
there were more of such frankly human testing of
literary products, to exterminate the brood of triflers
who are the victims of that graphomania which we
have had diagnosed for us of late. No; let us have,
as the best basis for literary appreciation and effectiveness, a sturdy love and zest of life, a feeling for
the glory and greatness and sacredness of it, the common human and natural quality of it; - for this great
round earth, so strangely afloat among the constellations; these restless millions upon it- heroes and nobles, conquerors and conquered; this tragic-comic drama
of human life, and the great inheritances which Science
and Art have left us, and which need no literary
advertising. Above all let us prize a first-hand knowledge of Duty and Love, Courage and Honor, Justice
and Freedom : happy are we if we can get or evoke
these as foundations for that glorification of them which
Literature achieves.
We need not fear to set the highest humanitarian
standards for ourselves. Our danger is less that of
unduly magnifying our teaching office than of dropping
to the level of a commonplace professionalism. We
should -come nearer being priests than purveyors; and
indeed, it is in the growth of the feeling that is begin·

ning to pervade our ranks of our being a lay priesthood,
called to the cure of young souls, that we have cause
for highest hope. This is true of all teachers, whatever
their subject; for there is none but has its ethical, its
religious serviceableness. But to the teacher of Literature this view applies in the most obvious way. His best
and ultimate aim must be to help his pupils to partake in
an exceptional degree, through the greatest works in
Poetry, of the highest fruits of the ethical and religious
consciousness of man ; - to effect through them that
cleansing, that purgation, which was regarded by the
master-mind of antiquity as the high religious office of
its greatest literary products, its Drama. To instil
ideals, through contact with them in Literature; to promote self-command and worthy self-expression through
the cultivation of power over the tongue, - such is the
calling to which the teacher of English is properly self.
dedicated.

392

393

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SKETCH OF HIGH SCHOOL COURSE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, SHOWING HOW THE
WORK MAY BE MASSED T O SECURE BOTH COHERENCE AND PROGRESSION
WHILE VARIED TO INCLUDE THE LEADING LITERARY SPECIES
Kind of Work

First Year
Emphasis at the start
on narrative species.

EPIC and BALLAD.

Scott's narrative
poems.
"Sohrab and Rustum."
Homer ( Ulysses in
Phreacia).
' Ballads, ancient and
modern; short and
long.

LYRIC, IDYLLIC and
REFLECTIVE.

SHAKESPEARE.

"Julius Cresar,"
(Plutarch, Froude.]

Second Year

Third Year

Fourth Year

Beginning with empha- Beginreing with empha- Emphasis on argusis on descriptive species. sis on expository species.
mmtative species.

" Idylls of the King."

"Ancient Mariner,"
"Forsaken Merman."
Gray's" Elegy," Gold- Dryden: Odes, Epissmith's "Deserted
ties, " Palamon and
Arcite." Prose.
Village," Byron's
"Childe Harold," etc. Pope: Epistles; "Essay
K eats's "Eve of St.
on Criticism"; "Rape
of the L ock. ,.
Agnes,' ' etc.
"Merchant of Venice." "As \" ou Like It, "
"Macbeth."
"Midsummer
[Comparative Study
Night's Dream."
I
of Drama. l

.....,,,,..,

SHORT STORY and
NOVEL.

"Silas Marner,"
"Christmas Carol,"
" Lorna Doone,"
" Cloister and the
Hearth,'' etc.

"Comus" and "LySonnets and some
cidas."
prose.
["Romola," "House
"Vicar of Wakefield,"
of the Seven
" Cranford," " Pride
Gables,'' etc.]
and Prejudice,''" Esmond," Dickens,
etc.

" L' Allegro,'' and " II
Penseroso."

MILTON.
Hawthorne, Poe,
Irving, Kipling,
Bunner, Stockton,
etc.

·-

" Ivanhoe " etc.
MISCELLANEOUS
PROSE: ESSAY,
SKETCH, BIOGRAPHY, etc.

Life and Letters of
Hawthorne and
Scott.

"Travels with a Donkey," etc.
Burroughs (for Nature interest), etc.

Bacon, Milton, Bible.
Swift, Defoe, Bunyan,
De Coverley Papers,
Macaulay's Addison.

Macaulay's Milton
(with Mark Pattison's or Raleigh's
biographies) .
Carlyle's "Essay on
Burns."

SPEECHES and ORATIONS.

Lincoln's Gettysburg
Speech.

Curtis: " Public Duty
of Educated Men."

Webster.

Burke (Morley's
Life).

The arrangement docs not indicate the order in which the works should be taken in any year. See text, Chap. XIV.
Only a few books, among the many from which choice might be made, have been named: and these, for the sake of
suggestion. For additions see the List of Books for Home Reading Recommended by the Conference on College Entrance
Requirements in English. The most flagrant omissions are American poets and writers (Em erson, Lowell, Ho\m.,s}, and
such great names as Shelley, Wordsworth, and Browning; De Quincey, Landor, and Ruskin. These may he substituted for
those authors who have already been read in the Grammar Grades, or may be introduced for comparative or collateral reading.

.....

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INDEX
(Abbreviation: H . S. for High School.)

r·

Ad,/ison, 266, 267, 304 ff.
Adolescence, "the golden age," 235;
characteristics, 235 ff., 316; qui ck,
de ep changes in, 235 ff.; new interests and desi res o f, 236; needs
of, as determining choice of Literature for, 239; period for selecting
vocation, 240; by discovering and
developing special aptitudes, 241;
developme nt of sustained attention in, 242; its waves of changing
interest, 242 ; nascent sex-consciousness; religious and ethical
interests; love of Nature; crazes
and fads, 243; these often sudden and short-lived, 243; period
of storm and stress, contradic tions in, 244-5; egoism, introspection, social feeling, loyalty,
self-sacrifice,
rivalry, jealousy,
sex-consciousness, 245; greater
capacity for intellectual labor,
253; danger of overstimulation,
253; its "new and final invoice
of energy" to be husbanded, 253;
eager activity in tranquillizing atmosphere, 253-4; ne ed of wholesome objective bias in work, 246,
256; qui ck maturing of facult y;
differences between freshmen and
seniors, 261-2; girls and boys,
differences; co-erlucation during,
262; slow, uncongcious growth
in powe r anrl insi ght; no forcing
pace, 264; d evelopment of a?S-

th atic insight anti fo ~ling, 265,
273; new sensitiveness to poetry
and styl e, 273-4; especially among
girls, 273; developing prope r attitude toward school in relation to
life, 317; humility, self-subor<li nation in, 31 7-8; interest and
interests ; danger of debilitating
concessions, 3 I 8; ne ed of bracing
touch of austerity in treatment of,
318; its task of self-command, 322.
Adventure, travel, etc., books of,
127 .
./Estlutics, study of, 266, 283, 302,
340.
Allusions, treatment of, 104, 171.
Alp!tabet, learning of, 74.
Amn·icrm culture and ideals; emergence of new type of, 4 ff ; writ en
and themes foremost in Gramma.1
Grades, I 48. See P atriotism.
Amplification, 190, 337-8.
"A ncient Afar i11er," 147, 268, 272.
Aptitudes, di scove ry of, as aim of
education, 240 ff.; serviceablenes1
of Literature, 248-9.
A1-gm11e1tt, 178, 26o, 292, 310; ethi.
cal v&lues in, 322; speci al prob·
!ems of, 336.
Arit!tmetic in relation to composi ti on; and as involving training in
language, 178.
Arnold, Afatt!tew, 49, 237; poetry
for H . S., 257, 266, 283, 286, 3 01.
Art, corre lation of Enj?lish wur~

397

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INDEX
with, 193; as educator of emotions, 238; use of picture and
illustration, 26<); analogue in
Literary Composition, 332, 335;
literary and pictorial forms of,
compared for descriptive purposes,
340; Literature as form of, 371 ff. ;
didacticism, 381-2; effect on
character, 382.
Arthurian romances, l 29, l 34, 303.

Bacon, Lord, 141, 266.
Bain, Professor Ale.xa1t<ler, on use of
outline, l 14; on obversions, 190.
Ballads, 129, 131-2, 162; use in
story-telling compositions, 186;
study of, in H. S., 256-8; relation
to epic, 257.
Bible, literary study of, 132, 213, 220,
266, 268, 290.
Biograplty, 127, 168, 181, 278, 282-3,
287, 293-4, 298, 307-8.
Books, office of, in the home, 14, 15,
I I 7; different kinds calling for
varying treatm ent, 141; reading
of, as a form of life, 38o.
Boswtll'1 "Johnson," 269.
Browni11g, 155, 156, 268.
Bttrke, on "Conciliation," 258, 264,
267, 3og-12.
Bunts, 265, 266, 308.
Bu,.rouglts, .foltn, 299.
Byron, 246-7, 265, 299.
Cadyle, 266, 308.
Ctlebrations, Festivals, Anniversaries, etc., as literary opportunities,
8o fl., 136, 145, 189, 258; care
in making programmes for, 145-6;
original speeches for, 259; original \'erses for, 358.
Ct/tic poetry and legend, 53, 134 ff.;
value of Celtic strain in English
poetry, 135, 303.

Chnnrcter, development of, I 25, 3691
376-7, 391-2; in composition
work, 194, 202, 349; in the adolescent, 235 ff. (see Adolescence),
251-4, 264, 317-8, j21; problem
in composition, to mould a character rather than train an aptitude,
322; in debating, 346; influence
of Art o n, 381-2; dangers of didacticism, 381.
Characfel"-stttdy in Literature, 167,
287, 291, 298, 301, 305-6.
Chal"ts, Diagrams, Maps, Tables, in
n ote-book, 280 ff.
Child, th e, as literary personality, xiii.,
37-8; literary outfit on entering
school, 22-3; Locke's faulty conception of, 36 ; Comenius' concepti on o f, 37; beginnings of literary
development, 38; danger of forcing linguistic development, 39;
naturally poly-expressional, 40;
simple picture language proper
to, 43, 200; dramatizing instinct
of, 53; gesture, 53; a denizen of
two worlds, 54-5; make believe,
54; development of, following that
of race, 56; effect of modern conditions on its learning to read and
write, 62 ff.; tastes and interests
of, 79 ff.; Nature's appeal to, 80;
human interests in life of, 8o;
ethical content of litera.ture for,
81; at heart a poet, 84; emotions,
dominancy of, in, 90; mistaken
demand for evidences of progress,
107; rude work to he expected
from, 108; control of reading of,
l 17 ff .; dangers of over-direction,
120; flexibility and adaptability of,
I 22; experiences of, real and vica·
rious, 123; steps in development
of, 122-3; epic-phase, 124; expression natural to, 1 7j; mental

INDEX

399

of the Last Minstrel," 168; in
organization of, through composidescriptive composition, 339·
tion, 174; expression of, dependent
upon impression, I 76; regard for Composition, causes of av ersion to,
I06, 173, 386; oral work in, basic,
individuality of, 184; postpone in107, 109; undue excellence in
trospection in, 184; commendation
handwriting expected, 107; child
for, 192, 203; its ignorance and
hampered by attenti on to penunread iness discriminated, 197;
manship, 108; too much work in,
spontaneity, 199; its speech full
asked for, 109; should be brief,
of literary surprises, 201; as gram109; the single sentence, 110;
marian, 211-2; its reflective use
class work, cooperative, 111; meof lan guage, 211 -4; interest in
chanics of, punctuation, r te., 112,
words, 213; varying linguistic
192-3; the single paragraph,
aptitudes and habits of, 218;
112-3; narrati on to start with,
growth of mind fr om mass to de114; use of outline, 114, 199 ;
-tail of thought, 219 (see Adoltsrambling habit, 115-6, 198; ought
unce); organic development of
to grow naturally out of school
faculties and p owe rs, 255; girls
life, 17 3; root id ea of = m ental
and boys, 262; grad ual, unconorganization, 174, 177, 195; pro·
scious growth in insight and power,
cess and end of, 174-5; expres264; extent to which its interests
sion dependent upon impression,
are to be followed, 317- 8; teach175, 382-4; r elation to reading and
·er's dealings with, 361; ind ete rliterary study, 176, 186, 293, 382;
minaten ess of language of, 365;
sense of form and onkr in, I 76;
emotions of, basic in character,
use of the term t u be sparing,
and chief conc ern in literary train176; not to be set apart as sepa·
ing, 379, 382; importance of audirate study, I 77, 182, 326; involved
tory factor in education of, 375-7;
in every study, 177 ff.; kinds of,
over-educating, 387-8. See Clzal"179 ff.; integration with other
acter, imitation.
studies, 178 ff.; technique of, 179;
Child-study, 19, 122, 361. See Child
development of narrati on, 179 ff.;
and Adolescence.
in history, 18o-1; must allow for
"Christmas Cal"ol," 130, 288.
expression of personal experie nce
Classical element in English Literaand individuality, 184, 196, 385;
ture, 133, 257, 303.
letter-writing, 185; form, neatClass wol"k, collective, in composi·
ness, etc., in , 185; study of contion, 111; class-audien ce for readstruction, plot-weaving, etc., 186;
ing, 191, 324; in composition,
completing unfinish ed anecdote,
347-8.
187; in play-writing, 187; in
Co-education, more men teachers to
sch ool m agazine, I 87; in versifirealize ideal of, 239; in H. S., 262.
cation, 188 ; through translati on,
Commius, conception of child, 36,
189; paraphrase, reproduction,
79·
amplification, summary, obvcrsion,
Comparntive work, possihilities of,
condensation, 190; use of tele50, 143; in connection with" Lay

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INDEX
'f

400

401

INDEX

1!
gram, proverb, n ewspaper, 190;
written t o be read to class, 190,
324; debating as, 19 1; a ccurate
headings, 192- 3; summary of principles, 194; as p romoting self.
control, 194, 322; miscellaneous
drill in, 196; should have practical
encls and see m worth while, 19 7;
difficulties to be overcome, 197;
lack of matte r, 19 7-8 ; ignorance
and unread in essdistingui•h ed, 197;
class discussion, 19 7; preliminary
discussi on of ass;gn ed topic, 198;
care in ch oice of topic, 198; delimitati on of topic, 199; wordiness, 200; clearn ess, 200; study
of Gramm a r involved in, 210;
plan of work fo r H . S. will partly
determine work in Litcratnre,
254- 5 ; relati on of four kinds of,
255; speeches and orati ons in
H. S.; models, 259-6 1; study of
Age of Pros~ and Reason in connec ti on with, 304 ff. ; in H . S.,
31 6 IT.; must be made to seem
worth whil e, 317; int e rest s to he
appealed to in, 3 17-8; va ri ous
incenti ves characteri ze d, 3 19-20;
need of spirit of cra ftsman ship,
31 9-20; oft en too coarse ly a nd
clumsily handled, 320-1; involves
primarily trai n ing a characte r
rath er th an an aptitud e, 322;
charact er values in various kin ds,
322-4 ; to be treated as auth orship, 323; necessit y of individu al
work , - th e conferen ce, 324- 5;
correction, 324-5, 348 ; r ead in g
of, al oud, 324; all written work
to be regard ed as, 326-8; h ow to
give effect to this vi ew, 327- 9;
cooperati on among t eachers, 328;
work in all kinds, at all tim es,
with intensive work in one, 329;

narrati on as beginning, 330; na
need of preliminary survey of general principles, 330; practice before precept, 331; the old sy nth etic
method and the new analytic ;
begi nning with paragraph, 332;
from mass to detail, 332 ; paragraph vs. sent ence as startin gpoi nt, 333; rh etoric in rel atio n
to, 334; special problems o f di fferent kinds of, 335-(>; devel opment of narrati ve kin d, 336-8; of
descripti on, 338-40; of exposition, 340-4; of argument, 344-7 ;
handling recitati ons in, 347-8;
rough copying of, 367; need of
freeing mind from anxiety as t o
what to say; sole concern to
be how to say, 386-7.
" Camus," 247, 313.
Condozsation, 190.
Com/ruction, lite rary, development
of sense of, 186, 26o, 278, 282-4,
285, 287. See Form.
Correction of mistakes, 4 7, 172,
177, 201, 217, 389; in H. S.,
324-5.
Correlation , 76 ff.; in compositi on
work, 178 ff., 193; of language
work and composition, 215, 22532; English grammar a nd that
of foreign tongue, 224; Compositi on and Literature in II. S.,
254-5.
Cono11, Professor, on Vocal Interpretation of Lit erature, 288, 376.
Course of study , need of systematizati on, 147, 388; basis of, in E nglish of H . S., 254-5; det ermining
features of, in Compositi cn and
Literature, 254-5; H. S. work in
Lit erature f<>r four years, 2 5 7 fl.:
tabular ske tch of, in Literatur
for H . S., 394-5.

Craftsmanship, need of spirit of, in
pupil, 319-20, 335, 382; Professor
Genung on, 323 ; teacher must
have, 362, 384.
Criticism, literary, study of, 266,
.
304 . See .,£.stlu tics.
Ctdture, claims of, in education, 24 ~.
Cm·tis George Wi/l£am , study of lus
oratlon on th e "Public Duty of
Educated Men," 26o.

studies, m4; to be allowed for in
composition work , 176. .
.
Drama, comparative work in, 268,
study of, 282, 289, 312, 3 13• 393·
See Shakespeare.
Dramntizi11g instinct in children,
53, 187.
Drydm, 266, 267, 303-4.

Ear, as basis of literary trainin g, 21,
See Oral, and
24 , 36, 375 -6.
Vocal T1ttet·pretation.
Earle's "Simple G rammar o~ Eng·
lish Now in Use," 213; view of
grammati cal sturly, 214 . .
Easy-woi·d versi ons of classi cs, 85.
Ed11cati1111, Platonic conc eptl!~n of,
as nurtu re, 28 IT., 387; fun ctio n. of
literature in, 29, 378; as " drawing

D ehting, 191, 250, 292'. 344-.6;
H . S. course in, connecting with
study of orations (Webster, Burke,
etc.), 258-61. .
.
Declamation, d esiderata m, 53·
De Coverley Papers, 266, 305-6.
See Addiso1t.
.
D efi11ite11ess, importance of, Ill teach ing, !0 , 154_ 5, See Tlzorougk5
ness.
Description, not beginning·w?rk for
child, 113, 178; in relation to
g eography work, 182 ff.; emphasis on, in second year of H. S.,
255, 263, 265, 295, 298- 9 ; lar~er
aims involved in, 3 22 ; special
problem~ of, 335 ; ~ev~lopment ~f,
338 ~4o; k inds, sc1en.tific .and hterary, literary and p~ctonal, 3.3840; in co mbination with .n.arral!on,
1
340 ; relation to expos1t10n, 34 •

out" processt 29; assi~ilation in,
30 _ 1 ; danger of one·s1de d book·
ishn ess in, 63 ; eff ects of modern
urban environme nt on, 62 ff. ; dan·
ger of over-rationali zin g early, 656· centres of int erest in process
of, 79 ff ; sway of ed uca~or's id eals,
122-3; t wo aspects of, Ill H. S. ~e­
riod , 239 ; general culture a~ aim,
239 ; or preparation for hfe hy
ch oice of vocation, 240; must
provide for all t ypes of c ~arac t e r,
2 1
241 . formal discipline m, 4 •
ma~y-sid ed d evelopme nt, 24.1;
of ad olescent, 243; poli cy
D'!v4:t~pmmt·work in literary study, needs
adapted to ad o~ esce ~t, 244-5; ~o­
101, 289 ; in notes, etc., 27g-282.
cations for whi ch literary st udies
See und er Works cited.
may prepare, 24 8; importance of
Dewey, D1·. j ohtt, on learning to read
.
mar 1ung
o fl stages.' sense of fr esh
and write, 58 ff.
start with H . S., 251; ne w features
Diagnrm, C/U1rt, Table, Map, use
of H. S. regime, 251 ; process .of,
o f in note-book and literary study,
organic, 255, 256; as ~reparat1 0~
279- 82.
for life or as it self hfr, 3i 7-8 ,
Dictionary, use or, 105, i6g, 227,
in centives in , 319- 2 1; at. hottom,
229, 23 I.
.
.
character-forming, especially in
Discursiveness, dangers of, m hterary
2D

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402

INDEX

composition, self-formation as
aim in, 322; reaching the individual, 324 ff., 349; not for
knowledge, 379; to establish admirations and interests, 379- 80;
art and beauty as influences, 3812; over-ambitious, overfeeding,
387; avoiding waste, 388. See
Child, Character.
Eliot, George, 302.
See "Silas

viril e virtues, 239; many -sided
development and thor oughneS!!,
241; culture and charader, 242;
humor as factor, 125, 247; slow,
unc onscious growth toward, 264;
sense of beauty as aid, 274, 292;
relation of school and life, 3 r?;
involved in composition work,
322-4, 34 1, 349 ; self- comma nd
an d self-formation, 322 ; in debat·
Marntr."
ing, 346; how lit t-rary an d linEmerso11, 41 5, 6, 265.
guistic studi es may promote, 378Emotions, training of, through litera80; formation of ideals, ]79-8o;
ture, 29-30, 85, 90, 125, 238, 379;
dangers of di ,fa cti cism, 381.
dominance in adolesce nt period, Exhibits of English work, 194.
238; art as means of training, 238; Expositio,., emphasis on, in third
through poet ry, 353; character
year of II. S., 255, 266; models,
rooted in, 379.
266, JO] If.; ethical aspects of
E11glislt Couru, need of unity nnd
work in, 323; special problems
continuity, viii., 388; of systemaof, 335: developm e nt of, 340-4;
tization, 147, 389.
processes, 343; relation to arguEnglislt teaching, aims, ix., 11, 8o ff.,
ment, 344.
125; in H. S., 235 ff., 274, 371
ff., 378 ff., 391-3.
Fables, as model of one-paragraph
Environment, creating child's spircomposition, 226.
itual, 34; effect of modern urban, Festivals. See Celebrations.
in relation to reading and writing, Expression, powers of, not commen62 ff.; elements of child's, 80 ff.;
surate with mental powers, 39;
teacher as factor in, 122; classchild's many ways of, 40; early
room, 270.
development should be mostly inEpic, study of, 124 ff.; epic-phase in
cidental, 40; natural to child, 173;
child's development, 124; grand
dependent upon impression, 17 51
types of, 127; b eginnings of study
382-3; relation to thought, 384- 5;
of, 128; continuing in H. S., 256;
as aid to development of inner
relation to ballad and 0ther forms,
life, 385; checked by anxiety as
257 ff., 283.
to what to say, 387.
Essay, the study of, 302, 307-8.
First steps, importan ce of, 17.
Ethical C1,ltu1·e Sc/tools, viii.-ix. Fitch, Sir j o.rlma, on Grammar and
127.
Language Study, 206.
Ethical mds in teaching English, 11, Form, literary, 176, 192-3, 348-9;
80, 81, 124, 125, 147, 194, 202-3,
in letter-writing 185; developing
369, 392-3; during peri od of
sense of, in H. S. students. 26c,
adolescence, 236 ff., 316; neerl of
273-4; in short story, 278; througb
more men teach ers to exemplify
versitication, 357-9.

INDEX
Freytag, 282.
l+oebd, 18, 31.
Gayley's "Classic Myths in English
Literature," 133, 257.
Gems of poetry, collections of, 87.
Genung, Professor, 270, 323, 338,
341.
Geography, in relation to composition, 178 ff., 182.
George, Professor A.j'., his "Chaucer
to Arnold," 266; his English room
at Newton, 270, 311.
Gesture in declamation, 40, 53.
Girls in H. S., differences between,
and boys, 262, 27 3·
Goldsmitlt, 282, 299, 357·
Grading selections for use in different classes, 89 ff ., 140 ff., 146, 272;
in II. S., 394-5.
Grammar, place in course, 204 fl.;
language lesson as substitute for,
205 ; meaning of reaction against,
205-7; characteristics of English,
206, 208; Latinization of, 206,
209; ends gained by old type of,
20n possibilities in study of, 208;
disciplinary vabes in, 208-9;
method of studying native tongue,
2w; child's . natural beginnings
in, not at first a separate stud y,
2ri; course of progression, 21112; the child perforce a grammarian when he begins to use
language reflectively, 214; need
of terminology, 214; an inci rlent
of work in Composition and
Literature; rules only to meet
needs, 215; formal grammar, as a
systematic and developed review
of facts already acquired, 220; inductive npproach, 221; exercises
in, 222; plan of text-book, 222-4;
in grammar schools or H. S., 224 1

252; foreign language study as a
factor, 224; plan of organic language and grammar study, connecting with work in composition,
225-32; in H. S., 252.
Gray's" Elegy," 265, 281, 357•
Habit, good speech as, 10, 319; of
taking pains in work, 321.
Hadley, President, 36o n.
Hales' " Longer English Poems,"

266.
Hall, G. Stanley, 58, 67, 72, 90, 235,
2 53·
Hawth orne, 157, 258, 264; study of
"Twice-told Tales," 277-8; life
of, :178.
/:ltrbart, 318, 361.
Heroes, historic and legendary, literary celebration o f, 80 IT., 126, 127.
"/:fiawatha," misused as treatise on
Indian culture-epoch, 78.
High School, responsibility of, for
illiteracy, 17, 106; grammar in,
204, 224; the gold en opportunities of adolesce nce for, 235 ff.;
social demands on, as d etermining
nature of literary studies, 239;
varying future of students to be
regarded, 240; aiding choice of
vocation, 240--1; providing for all
types of character, 241, 247;
poli cy adapted to ad olescent, 2424; not to promote refinements of
scholarship or limit interests, 244;
training to use of books for practical purposes, 248; and to use of
library, 248; nee d of good school
library in, 248, 250; school magazine desirable, 250; should be invested at start with distinctive
character, 251; new features of
regime, 251, 316; beginnings of
work in, should signalize new de-

J
I

II

INDEX
partures, 252, 253; and communicate new spirit and atmosphere,
253; effort in to be laborious but
tranquil, 253-4; plan of cour~e in
Literature and its r elations to
Composition, 254 IT.; festivals and
morning exercises, 258 ; oratory
and d ebate, course in, 258-61;
cl~s; rnom for English work, 270;
spmt of work in, 317-8; following and controlling pupi ls' interests
in, Jr 8; ends to be served in debating, 346.
H is/oJ)', in relation to Literature
So ff., 82-3, 126, 147, 379; in re'.
lat ion to Composition, 178 IT. ; of
English language, 231; of English
Litcratttre, 267-8.
llisto1y of Liternlure, study of, in
11. s., 268.
Ifom e, lingttistic and literary infltten ccs of, 12 ff.; relations to school,
12; foundations of hi st oric and
epic appreciation in festivals of,
80; du mcsti c Yirtues in Literature,
81; home reading, 117 IT.
H ome 1'ending and sch ool reading,
14, I I 7.
Homer, his noble·, simple spee ch as
mode l, 43, 129; study of, in II.
s., 2 57-8, 286.
"Ifow they brottght the Good News
from Ghent" (Browning's), treatment of, 156.
/iu111 01·, importance of education in,
49, 125, 247.
Huxley, on method, 366.

than a social problem, g-11; re
sponsihility o f H . S. for, 17, I06.
lmagi1talio,., 32, 123, 181, 182, 37 &
!mitatio11, 31, 122; Plato's doctrine
of, 33; dangers of, 95; language
and writing learned through, 374 ,
382; as factor in character-building, 380.
" lwidmf (Jj the Fren ch Cnmp"
(Browning's), treatment of, 15 5-6.
bu~i~idun/ity, r egard for, in compos1t1on work, 184, 191, 315 , 324,
349, 385.
I11d11 cth•e method, 221, 225.
In/tresl, 85, 122, 144, 317-8, 3 68.
.frvi11g, 258, 287.
"Ivanhoe," 263.

Jncobi, Dr. Afary Putnam, on learning to read and write, 59 fl . ; on
English grammar, 2o6.
"Juliw Cn:snr," 287, 289.

Ji:ents, 247, 265, 299.
Ki11rftrgnrfe11, lan guage training in,
18 ff.; child's progress before entering, 19 ff.; need of forward look
in, 20; literary standards, 24, 28;
stories and story-telling in, 25;
ethi cal emaciation of stories,
25; teacher's voice, manner, and
style, 26; selection of poetry and
stories, 51 ff.; story-telling requirements, 43 fl.; influence of
kindergarten ideals on primary
education, 6o.
Knowledge, not purpose of literary
study, 77 ff., I04; a prerequisite
.!dents, formati on of through literary
of literary appreciation, 82.
and lin guistic studies, 379, 393 .
"IdJ•l/s of the Ki1tg" 129, 246, 265, Lahorntory method, 170, 222.
"L' Allegro" and ".fl Penuroso,"
302-3.
flliternr.t', 3, 8 IT.; responsibilities o f
study of, 296-9, 354-5 .
the school for, 9 IT.; less a school La11g, Andrew, 287.

INDEX
language, reading lesson and, !04 l.iterary standard.<, 28, 49, 89 IT.,
12g-30, 146, 392; in simplest
(see Gram111a1'); criticism uf lanpieces, 51 ; perverted by currelat·
guage -lesson text-books, 215, 219;
ing mania, 77 IT.
steps forward in, grade by grade,
Literature, considerations to guide
216-7 ; work must have regard
selection of, 76 ; misuse of, for
to actual habits and lin guistic
knowledge purposes, 77 IT.; relaaptitud es of child, 218; various
tion t o history, 80 IT., 8.1; volnm es
schemes cited, need of setof selections, 87; emoti onal appeal
tled sohemu, 218; basic principle
of, fundamental, t;)O, 379; imporsuggested, 219; plan of lan guage
tance of presenting lit erary wholes,
work and grammar, - connection
96, 102; epic type of, for growing
with composition, 225-32.
child, 124; epic masterpieces, 1 29;
Language and t!iouglit, 39, 214, 219,
its relation to life, history, heroes,
384-5.
and nature emphasized thr ough
"Lay of Rosabelle" (Scott's), ways
school festivals, 136 IT.; conditions
of studying according to Professor
of its becoming a vital power in
Hales, 157-8.
peopl e's lives, 137; how much to
" Lay of the Last Minstrel," method
be studied, 138; prin cipl e of pro·
of tr eatment in high er grammar
gression governing cottrse, 138;
grades, 16o ff. ; in H . S., 285.
mistreatment for grammati cal
Learning by doing, 31, 331, 334, 374·
values, 139, 373; different kinds
Letter·wi·iting, 185, 226, 229, 230,
of, calling for varving ways of study,
326.
140-1; classili cation of material
Lincoln, Gettysburg speech as model
for grammar grades, 143; gradual
for short commemorative speech,
accumulation of repertoire, 145-6;
259; other speeches, 260.
composition in connection with,
Linguistic conscience and pride,
186; grammar study inv olved in,
American lack o f, I I.
2IO; aim of study of, in H. S.,
Linguistic power and mental power,
236 IT.; and life, 237, 378-So;
39. See T/wugl1t.
needs of arlolescent nature to be
Libran•, school anrl home, 117-8;
met by, 243-6; examples of suitfun ction of librarian as adviser,
able, 246-7; vocal ions for which
121; in H . S., 248, 250; H. S.
lit erary studies may prepare,
student should command resources
248-9;
striking key-note of
of, 248.
sturli es in H. S., 251-4; taking
lift, Literature and, 136 ff., 237,
inventory of freshmen 's lit erary
379, 391-2; education as preparapreferences and antecedents, 252;
tion for, 239-40; lit erary studies as
sandwi ching qui et books between
preparation for vocations , 248-9;
more exciting, 254; work in,
creation of ideals through Literapartly determiner! by plan s for
tur e, 379-So; reading great books
composition, 254-5; general work
'" form of living, 38o; relation o f
ancl intensive, 256; narrative type,
composition work to demands of,
emphasized in first year, 256-Si
385.

I

'\

I

I
.I
:1

'I

~I
\I
\\

\\
'1

[,

1'

INDEX
276; epic species, ballad, short
Afanmrs, good speech as a point o~
story, novel, 256--8; Homeric
JO, 3 19· 375.
~tudi es, 25 7-8, 283; public sp eakA-laps, use of, in literary studies, 282,
ing and debate, course in, 258-61 ·
307.
girls' studies in, 262; studies i~
Masterpieces. See Study o/ MasterShakespeare, 263, 28 7-94 ; in
piecu and Littrature.
~ovels, 263-4; works of descripMathematics, relation to compositive order, 265 ff.; of exposit ory
tion work, 178, 183.
ord er, 266--7; of argumentative
Mal/hews, Proftssor Brander," Phiorder, 267J history of, in H. S. ,
losophy of the Short Story," 256.
268; personal and biographical
Aft111orizi11g, importance of, 48.
studi es, 269, 283; foe ling for
"Aferchat1t of Vtnice," 281, 28:z,
style, 273; aims in teaching, 274;
302.
resthetic values in teaching, 275,
Mt/hod, 75, 89 ff., 93 ff., IOI ff., 104,
382; work on Hawthorne, 277-8;
.13~. I 52 ff., 169, 194, 197,J61ff.;
note-taking, 27g-82; study of di crn grammar study, 210 ff.; in
tion, 281; epic, 283; Hom eric
English work, suggestions u to,
studies, 286; novel, 287, 300, etc. ;
367-70. See under Works cited
metrics, 290; character-study, 291;
and Study of Masterpiun.
Milton, 296-9; music of wvrds
Mttrics. See Poetics and Versifica297; expository type of, 295 fT.;
tion.
Dryde n, Pope, Addison, 303 ff.; Afilton, example of inappropriate
Macaulay, 308; Burke, 311; point
treatment of" Paradise Lost," 151of view in teaching. of, 371 fT.;
2; "Comus," 247, 313; poems,
an.cl science, 371-3; primarily for
264, 265, 267; study of dicti on,
vorce and ear, 375-8; relation to
note-taking on, 281; "L'Allegro"
composition, 382-4.
and "II Pcnseroso," 296--9; LyciLocke's faulty con cepti on of child, 36.
das, 313-4; Macaulay's essay on,
Logic, in connection with grammar,
314.
212; in H. S., 26o, 3 10, 342 ,
Afodd, use of, in compositi on, 185,
344.
196, 203, 229, 230, 342; in venifi.
"Lorna Doone," 246, 265, 300,
cation, 35 7-8; teacher as, 42, 374Lowcll,.f. !.'.,linguistic patriotism, 5; Afor/ey, John, on Burke, 311.
study of his orations, 26o.
Mother, as first language teacher, 20.
"Lucy Cray" (Wordsworth 's), sug- "Afothtr Coou," 20.
gested treatment of, 92 ff., 97 ff.
Afothtr-tongtu, 21-2. See Grammar.
"Lyddas," 313-4.
Afotor-activity of child in composiLyric, 145, 256--7, 258.
tion, 174. See Self-activity, Ltarning by Doing.
Macaulay, 264, 267, 304; study of Mythological element in names of
Essay on Addison, 307-8; Essay
places, festivals, etc., 133.
on Milton, 314.
"Macbeth, " 267, 282, 312- 3.
Narration, beginning composition
Malu-bdieve world of child, 55 •
work with, 113-4; studies inTolT·

INDEX
ing, 178 ff.; species and development of, I 79 ff.; in history work,
180; in biugraphy, 18 1; emphasis
in first year of H. S., 255 ff .; deeper
aims involved in, 322; intensive
work in H. S., 330 ff. ; special
problems of, 335; involving description, 340.
Nature, child's interest in, 80, 125;
festivals, 136--7 ; in poetry, and
Literature generally, 298, 299.
J\'nv.rpnper, use of, in composition
work, 190.
Note-taki11g- and note-books, 279-82.
Novels, study of, 144, 263-4; short
story and novel, 256 ff.; masterpieces, 264, 286-7.
Nuru, influence on child, 22.
Nurury R!iymts, child's first literary
food, 21.

Oburvation in composition work,
300, 322.
Oral element in literary training, 21,
94, J07; composition,, 109, 177,
275-6, 375-6.
Orations.
See
Debate, Burke,
Spuclus.
Outline, use of, 114-5, 229, 230, 307,
310, 344-5; in note-books, 27982.

Penmanship, early skill in, not to be
expected, 73, 107; composition
work thwarted by, J08; first steps,
110.
Pntaloszi, 379.
"Pilgrim's Progress,'' 266.
Platt, necessary for good teaching,
154 ff., 363-4; must be definite
yet flexible, 154.
Plato, 17, 28, 33-4; his doctrine of
imitation, 33.
Plot, study of, 186, 278, 282-4, 287,
291 - 2, 312, 336, 337.
Plutarch, 292 . .
Pot, 258, 302.
Potties, study of, 167, 188-9, 283-4,
287, 290, 297-8, 302, 350 ff.
Poetry, the staple of literary diet in
Primary Grades, 84; high office of,
393·
Pepe, 266, 267, 303-4.
Pt•tcccity, danger of verbal and bookish, 40, 66, 387.
Preuntaticti of masterpieces, impor·
tance of first impression, 94; as
wholes, 96; points as to, 104, 169.
Sec Stttdy of Masterpieces.
"Pritutss,'' The, 265.
Prou, study of masters of, 303-5.
Proverb, 110, 190.
Psycltclogy, 361, 376--7; of adolescence, 238 ff.; features of, 242-3.
See Child, Character.
Punctuatictt, 112. See i~ Plan cf
Languag-t Work (pauim ), 225-32.

Paragraph, development of, 226
ff.; single paragraph composition,
226; pair of, 228; three inseparables, 228-9; beginning-middleend triad, 229, 310; starting with, Readers, school, 86--7, 143.
Readi~ and writi~, when to begin
in H . S., 332-4.
to teach, 58 ff.; intellectual develPttrap!irasing-, 190.
opment involved in learning, 59,
Pater, Wttlter, 33.
72; effect of Kindergarten on early
Patriotism, literary and lyric expresbeginning of, 6o; Dr. Dewey's
sion of, at school celebrations and
views on, 61 ff.; relation to other
anniversaries, 137; in song, 145;
school interests, 6o; effect or
education in higher type of, 148.

INDEX
modern social progress on learning
of, 62; psy chologi cal objection<;,
64; two competi11g conceptions
of· how to teac h, 67 fl.
RMdi11g, child's, extent of, 117;
habit, 118; over- ambiti on, 119;
over-prescription, 119 ; how much
in school, 138.
Readi ng alo ud, 162-3, 2i5• 287, 296,
310, :; 12 ; of compositi ons, 324;
practice in , at h ome, 143 ; teache r's
part in, 94, 100, 103, 162, 375-8.
See also Vocal /11taprctation.
Readiag lesson , conduct of, 93 ff.;
points as to, 104.
Recitation, conduct of, I 70, 172,
197-S; in com positi on work, 191;
first in I I. S., <;triking new key-note,
251-4; in composition, 347-8.
R ed11ctio1t, 190, 337.
References, making, 171. See Allusio11s, /Jictio11ary.
R eform of J:11glish teachi11g, significance of movement for, 1 ff.;
President I I adley on, 36o n.
Repetition, 369. See ll-femorizi11g ,
l\'evie<-v.

R eprod11ctio11, of st ory in kindergart en,45, 190; hane of too mu ch, 386.
Results, mistak en demanr.l for in literary rlcvclopment, 107.
R eview, the, 369.
Rh eioric, 330, 333; in relation to
grammar, 334.
"Robinson. ( ·rusoe," misuse of, for
knowledge purposes, 78.
Rossetti, lltristi11a, value of her
poetry, 52.
Ruskin, 266; on versification, 353.
Scansin11, 2i6; basis of work in
versificati on, 35 I; way of rega rding, 35 1; principle<; of, 352.
S chool, relation to home and social

environment, 12 fT., 80; celchra·
ti ons and fe•ti,·al s, 80, 1 J6-7;
n1aga zinc in relation to co 111p0si·
ti on work, 187; appropriate cl a<;!
room for English work in, 270;
need o f teachers enough in I I. S.
for arlcciuate individual work, .324;
personal problems of, rlealt with
in debat ing, 346; clarifying public
0pi nion o f. 346.
S cliM I 1·00111 , a dapted for English
work, 270.
Science , compositi on work in r elati on t o, 113, 178 ff. , 339 ; p »int
of view of, and that of Lit e rature,
371-2.
Scott, 129; work on, in grammar
grades, 16o, 161; study of life of,
168, 287.
Scurlder, llorna, 148.
Selertio ns, for readi ng and memorizing, need of all kincl s,49; different
kinds to be discriminated, 49; the
"core" of classic pieces, 4g-50,
131, 144; volum es of, 87-8; of
epic nncl hallacl orde r, 128- 9; what
to exclude, 129; what and how
much to study, 138; ciuality, 146;
ethical standard first test , 147.
Sec l.iterature, Littral")' Standn1·ds, Study of Afasterpiues.
Se!f-nrtfrity, 31, 1;4.
Sc11te11rt, d evel opm ent of, as th oughtunit - basis of work in bnguar.cstudy and
compos1t1on, 225,
332- 3; proYrrh as model of sclfsuflicient, 226; relation to paragraph, 333; in narrati on, 336.
Shahsfenre, for the yo ung, 5 ~ ; study
of, 213, 220- 1; study of his language, 232, 28 1,289; tragccliesfor
H . S., 24 7; progressive \\'Ork for
H . S., 263, 267; di e!;, .n, notetaking on, 281; "Merchant of

INDEX
Venice," 281-2, 302; "Julius
in composition work, 186; imporCresar," 287, 289; life and times
tan ce of in ed uca ti on, 377-8.
of, 293-4, 308;" Macbeth," 312-3. Study of masterpieces, pitfalls in ,
Shaw, Professor Edward R ., 64 n.,
13g-4 1; differences in d eg ree of
detailed considerati on, 141; classi73 n.
Shelley, 246-7.
fication, 142; fur grammar grn<ies,
Sho1·t story. See Stories and Story143; ways of becoming acciuaint cd
with, 144 ff.; importan ce of ri ght
telling.
" Silas llfarnn·," 264, 282, 300.
t emper in, 150- 1; to l• e gurcrncr.l
Singing games, 21, 145.
by nature of work, 152, 15 8; co m" Snowbound," 265.
position in connection with, 186;
" Solirab and Rustum," 283, 286.
in H. S., t ypical selecti ons for,
Song, much poetry learned through,
246-7, 249-50, 254; sandwiching
145, 258; patrioti c, humanitarian,
quiet works betw ee n more ex citand nature, 145; class-songs, 189.
ing, 254; of ballad, lyri c, epic, draSpalding, Mrs., her " Problem of
matic species; short story, novel,
Elementary Composition," cite<i,
and play, 256 ff., 283; of spee ches
11 I; on word-coll ecting, 213.
and orations, 258-61; Shake"Spectator" papers, 305-6. See Adspeare, 263; of novels, 263-4;
diso11 .
works o f descri ptive order, 265 ff . ;
Speeches and Public-speaking, in conof expository orde r, 266-7; of arnec ti on with debate and stu dy of
gumentat ive orde r, 26 ; -S ; gradorations, 258-61; composition of
ing of works, 272; too minute,
various kinds; models, 258; cul273; danger from over-edited
mination in Burke, 258; Webster,
texts, 273; resth ctic values in,
study of, 26o; Burke, study of
274 - 5; vocal rendering, 275-6;
"Speech on Con ciliati on," 309- 12;
short stories, Hawthorne, etc,
in relati on t o co mposition work in
277-8; note-taking, diagramming,
argumentation, 344-6.
etc., 27g-82; word-study, 28 1;
"Sohrab and Rustum," 286;
Spelling, 170, 376.
Sp ontaneity, 199, 386. See also Child.
Homer, 286;
novels, 286-7;
"Julius Cresar," 287-92; "L'AlStevenson, 265, 267, 276, 299.
Stories, different kinds of, 46, 54;
legro" and "II Pcnseroso," 296masters of short st ory, 47, 258,
9; "Silas Marner," 300-2; "Jrlylls
of the King," 303; "Merch ant o f
277-8; range of selection, 56-7,
88; epics, 128, 186; halbd and
Venice," 281-2, 302;
Age of
sh ort epi cs, 256-8; short story
P rose, 303 ff.; Dryden, Pope,
and novel, 256; in form of drama,
Addison, 303 fl.; " Spectat or " pa257; Hawthorne's " Twice-told
pers, 305-6; Macaulay's Essays,
Tal es," 278 ; form, structure, at306-7; Burke on " Conciliation,"
mosphere in, 278.
309-12; "Macbe th," 312; "Camus" and "Lycidas," 313-4; Es·
Story-telling, 25, 331, 336-7; skill
say on Milton, 314.
in, 26, 377; requirements of, 43,
46; need of training in, 46, 88; Style, development of sense of, in

.

410

INDEX

H. S. students, 27 3-4; masters of,
two types, 27 5.
Summary, the, 190.
S;,le's "From Milton to Tennyson,"
266.
Sy11011yms, 190.

. ..

. ~'

. - ..
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~

.

.

..

INDEX

note of new spirit and regime in
first dealings with H . S. fr eshme n, 25 I ff. ; should investigat e
literary antecedents of pupils, 252;
need of touch of bracing austerity
in deal ing with students; danger
of cockering int erests, 318;
power of personality, 319, 3 24 ;
has on hand in co1np .isition work
a character rathn than an aptitude, 322;
treating pupils as
authors, 323; n eed of persunal
work in composition, 324; must
k eep an eye on written work on
all subjects, 327-8; handling class
in compusilton, 347-8; need of
broader culture, 360-1, 390;
equipment, 361;
att ention to
method, 361-2; must he craftsman, 362, 384; need of plans,
363; inspirati on, 363; thoroughness as a pitfall, 365; must change
attitude in passing from Science
to Literature, 371; victim of examination system, 373; habits of
speec h, 376; his life in relation to
his work,JSo; joy in his work, 381 ;
mu st live wi th great masters, 384;
must kn ow English course from
start to finish, and his own work
in its relati on thereto, 389;
training of, its admitted inadequacy, 391; hi gh office of, 392-3.
Telegram, use of, in composition
work, 190.
Tennyson, I 57, 268.
Teutonic myth and legend, as ele·
me nts in literary study, 133.
Text-book, use o f in grammar, 215,
216; in composition and rhetoric,

Tm ch<"r, personal innuence C'f, on
child, 33, 36, 42, 11 9, 374 ; use
of ideal child-speech by, 42; as
story-teller, 43-4, 377; voice and
mann er, 44; need of training
in story-telling, 46; equipment
desirable for teac hing reading and
writing, 74, 373-4; importan ce of
spirit of her teaching, 75, 318;
value of her vocal int erpretati ons
of literature, 94 ff., 162, 275, 287;
dangers of assertion of lit erary
prefer en ces, 119; powe r in determining child's interests, 122, 318;
liberty of programme, 151; must
get to kno w th e individualitv of
h er class, 153; treatm ent of ~lass
for composition purposes, 19 1-2;
n eed of appreciativeness and com mendation fr om, 192, 202; using
bright pupils to educate dull , 19.1;
exhibiting excellent wo rk, 194;
rega rd for spontaneity, 199; sympathv with child 's way of putting
things, 201; should cover welldcGned Geld in h er grade, 216--7,
389; need of skill in frequent
review work, 2 I 7; opportunities
whi ch adolescent gives to JI. S.
teacher, 235 ff.; his office, 237-8,
245 -6, 318; personality must
support ideals prefigured in I .iterature, 238; need of mor e men
teachers in upper grammar grades
.n1.
and H. S., 239; perplexed hy Tharlcrn1', 306, 308.
connict of old and new ideals in Thoro11gh11ess, 84-5,
education, 241; should strike key241, 365.

.

139-42, 1691

4I 1

of English course, 350; ends to
Tlzovght and language, 39, 214, 219,
be gained by, 350-1; basic work
384-5.
in scansion, 351-2; progressive
111urber, Professor Samuel, 262, n.
work in various verse forms, 356-9.
264.
Trai11i11g of teaclzers, literary, in· " Vicar of lValujield," 263, 308.
Vocal ittterprdatio11 of masterpieces,
adequacy of, 391. See Teacher.
94; of "Lucy Gray," 100, 103;
Translation, as composition work,
practice at h ome, 143, 375-6.
189, 328.
See Readi11g aloud.
Treatment of masterpieas, as determining place in course, 89 ff.; Vocabulary, gaining a, 112; developing an int erest in words, 213.
meth od s of, 91 ff.; importance of
See /.Vord-study.
first impression, 94; presentation
of wholes, 96; securing unity Vocatiom, preparation for, in H. S.,
240 ff . ; specified, 248-9.
of impression, 96; development
work, IOI; summary of points, Voia, inOuence on child, 36 ; teach er' s, 374, 375-6. Sec Vocal Inter104; to be progressive, 138; n ot
pretation of Masterpieces.
to be for grammatical values, I 39;
too lengthy and exhaustive, 140;
other pitfalls, 140-1 ; differences l Vaste, avoidance of, 388.
in, dictated by differences in lVebsler, Daniel, study of man and
his speeches, 26o.
books, 141; fitting spirit essential, 1 51; freedom to be allowed /¥/zitman, 4, 5, 35·
teacher in, 151 ; to be governed /.Vlwles, lit erary, securing apprehension of, 96, 102.
by nature of work, 152; must
also be guided by quality and Word-meth od vs. sentence-method
in t eaching reading, 67 fl.
equipment of class, 153; need of
plans, 154; evil of ind efiniteness lVoodwm·a', P.-ofessor F. C., on Study
o f English Gra mmar, 208.
in, 155 ; of Browni ng's" Incid ent
of the Fren ch Camp ," 155; of his Wordsworth, 35; his "Lucy Gray,"
suggested method of treatment,
"How th ey brought the Good
92 ff.
News from Ghent," 156; degrees
of definiten ess, 15 7; of the " Lay Writing, when to bcg'in, see Reading; psychological objections to
of Rosabelle," after Professor
early practice of, 64; as motor
Hale s, 157-8 ; of the" Lay of the
side of read-write pro cess, 73;
Last Minstrel," 16o ff.; general
undue excellence in, pressed for,
counsels as to, 169. See Litera107; first st eps in mechanics of
t11re, Study of Masterpieces,Mdlzod.
(capitalization, et c.), 215.
See
Trench, his "Study of Words," 213.
also in Pinn of La11g11age Work,
" Twice-told Tales," 277.
(passim), 225-232.
Uni~y, regard for, in masterpieces, Word-study, 169, 213, 231, 232, 281,
102 ff,
289; in descripti on, 339; in exp osi tion, 34 2. See also DictionVe.-sijication, 167, 188, 276, 290,
ary, Vocabulary.
340; work in, an integral part
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