IN the whole range of human endeavor no department is so hospitable to
the amateur as education. Here the gates are always open. Wide is the
field and many are the fools who disport therein.
Politics we are all too prone to forget between campaigns; literature
and the graphic arts engage only our languid attention and science
interests us only when our imaginations are mightily stirred. But we
all know how the young idea should be taught to shoot. We are either
reactionaries, lamenting the good old times of the three _r’s_ and the
little red schoolhouse, or we discuss with much gravity such weighty
problems as the extension or curtailment of the elective system, or
we fly to the defense or demolition of the ideas of Dewey and other
reformers. It is folly not to hold opinions where no one is sure of
anything and every one is free to strut in the silken robes of wisdom.
Many of us receive at times flattering invitations to express opinions
touching the education of our youth. Though my own schooling was
concluded at the algebra age, owing to an inherent inability to master
that subject or even comprehend what it was all about, I have not
scrupled to contribute to educational symposia at every opportunity.
Perhaps I answer the riddles of the earnest critics of education the
more cheerfully from the very fact of my benightedness. When the
doors are closed and the potent, grave, and reverend signiors go into
committee of the whole to determine why education does not indeed
educate--there, in such a company, I am not only an eager listener but,
with the slightest encouragement, I announce and defend my opinions.
Millions are expended every year for the public enlightenment, and yet
no one is satisfied either with the method or the result. Some one is
always trying to do something for culture. It seems at times that the
efforts of the women of America to increase the remnant that is amiably
disposed toward sweetness and light cannot fail, so many and so zealous
are the organizations in which they band themselves for this laudable
purpose. A little while ago we had a nation-wide better-English week
to encourage respect among the youth of this jazzy age for the poor old
English language.
I shall express without apology my opinion that in these free States
we are making no marked headway in the attempt to improve spoken or
written English. Hardly a day passes that I do not hear graduates of
colleges confuse their pronouns; evil usages are as common as the
newspapers. And yet grammar and rhetoric are taught more or less
intelligently by a vast army of overworked and underpaid teachers,
according to the text-books fashioned by specialists who really do try
to make themselves intelligible.
My attitude toward this whole perplexing business is one of the
greatest tolerance. I doubt seriously whether I could pass an
examination in English grammar. A Japanese waiter in a club in my town
used to lie in wait for me, when I visited the house at odd hours in
search of seclusion, for the purpose of questioning me as to certain
perplexing problems in grammar. He had flatteringly chosen me from the
club roster as a lettered person, and it was with astonishment that he
heard my embarrassed confession that I shared his bewilderment. To any
expert grammarians who, inspired by this revelation, begin a laborious
investigation of these pages in pursuit of errors, I can only say that
I wish them good luck in their adventure. At times I do manifestly
stumble, and occasionally the blunder is grievous. A poem of my
authorship once appeared in a periodical of the most exacting standards
with a singular noun mated to a plural verb. For proof-readers as a
class I entertain the greatest veneration. Often a query courteously
noted on the margin of a galley has prevented a violence to my mother
tongue which I would not consciously inflict upon it.
To add to the fury of the grammar hounds, I will state that at times
in my life I have been able to read Greek, Latin, Italian, and French
without ever knowing anything about the grammar of either of these
languages beyond what I worked out for myself as I went along. This
method or lack of method is not, I believe, original with me, for there
are, or have been, inductive methods of teaching foreign languages
which set the student at once to reading and made something rather
incidental of the grammar. This is precisely what I should do with
English if I were responsible for the instruction of children at the
age when it is the fashion to begin hammering grammar into their
inhospitable minds. Ignorant of grammar myself, but having--if I may
assume so much--an intuitive sense of the proper and effective manner
of shaping sentences, there would be no text-books in my schoolroom.
All principals, trustees, inspectors, and educational reformers
would be excluded from my classes, and I should insist on protection
from physical manifestations of their indignation on my way to and
from the schoolhouse. The first weeks of my course would be purely
conversational. I should test the students for their vulgarities and
infelicities, and such instances, registered on the blackboard, would
visualize the errors as long as necessary. The reading of indubitably
good texts in class would, of course, be part of the programme, and the
Bible I should use freely, particularly drawing upon the Old Testament
narratives.
I should endeavor to make it appear that clean and accurate speech is
a part of good manners, an important item in the general equipment for
life. When it came to writing, I should begin with the familiar letter,
leaving the choice of subject to the student. These compositions, read
in the class, would be criticised, as far as possible, by the students
themselves. I should efface myself completely as an instructor and
establish the relation of a fellow-seeker intent upon finding the best
way of saying a thing. If there were usages that appeared to be common
to a neighborhood, or intrusions of dialect peculiar to a State or a
section, I might search out and describe their origin, but if they
were flavorsome and truly of the soil I should not discourage their
use. Self-consciousness in these early years is to be avoided. The
weaknesses of the individual student are only discernible where he is
permitted to speak and write without timidity.
When a youngster is made to understand from a concrete example that a
sentence is badly constructed, or that it is marred by a weak word or
a word used out of its true sense, the rules governing such instances
may be brought to his attention with every confidence that he will
understand their point. My work would be merely a preparation for the
teaching of grammar, if grammar there must be; but I should resent such
instruction if my successor failed to relate my work to his.
I consider the memorizing of short passages of verse and prose an
important adjunct to the teaching of English by any method. “Learn
it by heart” seems to have gone out of fashion in late years. I have
recently sat in classes and listened to the listless reading, paragraph
by paragraph, of time-honored classics, knowing well that the students
were getting nothing out of them. The more good English the student
carries in his head the likelier he is to gain a respect for his
language and a confidence and effectiveness in speaking and writing it.
Let the example precede the rule! If there is any sense in the rule
the example will clarify it; if it is without justification and
designed merely to befuddle the student, then it ought to be abolished
anyhow. The idea that children should be seen and not heard belongs
to the period when it was believed that to spare the rod was to spoil
the child. Children should be encouraged to talk, to observe and to
describe the things that interest them in the course of the day. In
this way they will form the habit of the intelligent reporter who, on
the way to his desk from an assignment, plans his article, eager to
find the best way of telling his story. Instead of making a hateful
mystery of English speech it should be made the most natural thing in
the world, worthy of the effort necessary to give it accuracy, ease,
and charm.
The scraps of conversation I overhear every day in elevators, across
counters, on the street, and in trolley-cars are of a nature to
disturb those who view with complacency the great treasure we pour
into education. The trouble with our English is that too much is
taught and not enough is learned. The child is stuffed, not fed. Rules
crammed into him for his guidance in self-expression are imperfectly
assimilated. They never become a part of him. His first contacts with
grammar arouse his hostility, and seeing no sense in it he casts it
aside with the disdain he would manifest for a mechanical toy that
refused to work in the manner promised by the advertisement.