interpreters of literature in a month or a year, whereas the great work
should cover a lifetime. Professor Corson, of Cornell University, who is
acknowledged to be the ablest vocal interpreter of literature in
America, once told the writer that he had made it a custom to read aloud
for an hour each day for more than twenty-five years. Those who have
been privileged to hear Professor Corson interpret vocally the great
masterpieces of poetic literature, as found in Shakespeare, Tennyson,
Coleridge, Wordsworth, Milton and Browning, can better understand and
appreciate the true value of vocal culture as a factor in the great work
of literary interpretation.
If we could combine the voice work of our best schools of elocution and
oratory with the fullest and most comprehensive courses in literature
found in our best universities, we might soon hope for the very summit
of literary culture and training. The worst of our elocution schools are
a positive injury to vocal training as a worthy factor in the
interpretation of literature, inasmuch as they induce both
superficiality and artificiality, their chief ambition being to graduate
pretty girls with pretty gowns who can recite some catch-penny piece of
current literature, before an assemblage of admiring friends, according
to the numbers or lines upon an elocutionary chart or fashion plate.
When these graduates leave their schools after a six months’ course, all
equipped and prepared to voice the depths of Shakespeare, the heights of
Milton, or the zigzag involutions of Browning, they never fail, also, as
a rule, to carry with them the brand or trade-mark of their respective
manufactories.
In the best of our elocution schools, such as are found in Boston,
Philadelphia and New York, where saner and more thorough methods are
pursued and a certain measure of literary scholarship finds a habitation
and a name, respectable attention is given to some of the chief
masterpieces of literature, and a graduate knows something more than the
scrappy selections found in a few recitation books.
Still the aim of all these schools is to turn out readers and teachers
of reading, and this very aim precludes a deep, serious and
comprehensive study of literature.
In many of our leading colleges and universities there is a professor of
oratory, who trains young men for declamation and intercollegiate
contests in oratory and debate, but here again the aim determines the
character and limitations of the work done. The most suitable department
for voice training in a college or university is that of English
literature, for it is as needful in the dramas of Shakespeare as in the
orations of Webster and Burke; as requisite in the lyrics of Moore,
Burns and Longfellow as in the glorious epics of Homer, Dante and
Milton; as potent in the sonnets of Cowper and Wordsworth as in the
tender elegies of a Shelley, an Arnold or a Tennyson.
But what about the vocal interpretation of literature in our primary and
intermediate schools—in our academies preparatory to college and
university work? It is here where the great work of vocal culture should
begin—and begin in earnest, too. But it should never be pursued as an
accomplishment or means of frivolous display. The aim should be, in
every class, the adequate voicing of literary thought. Teachers will
find in the voice an invaluable aid in the work of interpreting,
particularly lyrics.
The lyric being subjective, and its very lifeblood being feeling, a
sympathetic vocal interpretation of it will give a better insight into
its poetic moment or inspirational thought, around which centres the
whole structure, than hours of sentence chopping and phrase stitching.
For the purpose of illustrating this fact let us take Tennyson’s
exquisite lyric, “Break, Break, Break,” which embodies or crystallizes a
mood. Here is the delightful little gem:
“Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
“O well for the fisherman’s boy
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor-lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay.
“And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
“Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.”
It will be remembered that this lyric, as well as another poem, “In the
Valley of Cauteretz,” though not contained in the linked elegy of “In
Memoriam,” are practically a part of it, and are co-radical as to their
subject of inspiration—the sorrow borne by Tennyson for young Hallam.
Here are the lines of the second poem:
“All along the valley, stream that flashest white,
Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the night,
All along the valley, where thy waters flow,
I walked with one I loved two and thirty years ago.
All along the valley, while I walk’d to-day,
The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls away;
For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed,
Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead.
And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree,
The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.”
It is easy to find the poetic moment in the first lyric, as it may be
seen and FELT at once that the whole poem-thought centres around the
inspirational lines:
“But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still.”
We have seen an examination paper strewn with questions upon this lyric,
among them being one asking for the reason why the first line, “Break,
break, break,” is shorter in the number of its feet than the others
which follow. As well ask for the reason of the permanency of parental
or filial affection. The question is entirely gratuitous to one who has
assimilated the poem in its essential life and can voice it properly. To
those who have not responded, or, worse, cannot respond, to the
INFORMING life of the lyric, a technical answer is of as much value as
are many of the treatises that assume to deal with the subject of
versification. But enough. Let the reader be assured of one thing: That
the vocal interpretation of literature is in every way a subject worthy
of his attention, and that he is the best interpreter of literature
whose every faculty is fully developed—not the least of which is the
voice—and who brings to his work a full and vitally spiritualized life.
Now as to the best method of taking up the study of literature—and we
refer particularly to that department of it known as poetry—in our
primary and secondary schools and colleges, why, we should say that the
less method put into the work the better. For indeed there is no best
method in the study and interpretation of literature. A poem being a
work of art, the approach to it must be along the same lines as is the
approach to every work of art.
As a matter of fact, no two interpreters of literature—we use the word
interpreter here rather than that of teacher, since the study of
literature is entirely subjective—will ever approach a poem along
exactly the same lines. Why? Because the poem makes to each a different
appeal. Nothing is truer than the statement that you get out of a poem
what you bring to it. But the teacher of literature should ever remember
that the primary purpose in the study of poetry is not discipline and
instruction but exaltation and inspiration.
Dr. Hamilton Mabie, the well-known American critic and author, writing
upon the study of poetry, says: “So much has been said of late years
about methods of literary study that we are in danger of missing the
ends of that study; in the multiplication of mechanical devices of all
kinds and in the elaboration of systems the joy which ought to flow from
a true work of art escapes us, and we are disciplined and instructed
where we ought to be exalted and inspired. There are other studies which
train the mind and impart information; the study of poetry ought to do
more; it ought to liberate the imagination and enrich the spirit of the
student.”
Dr. Corson, now Professor Emeritus of English Literature at Cornell
University, N.Y., to whom reference has already been made, whose
sympathetic interpretation of poetry will remain a gift and memory to
every student who has ever had the rare privilege of sharing in his
instruction and enjoying the fine infection of his inspiring lectures,
has this to say with respect to the study of poetry: “In studying a poem
with a class of students, the purpose being literary culture (that is,
spiritual culture), the aim of the teacher should be to hold the minds
of the class up as near as possible, which at best may not be very near,
to the height of the poet’s thought and feeling. He should carefully
avoid loosening, so to speak, more than there is need the close texture
of the language; for it is all-important that the student should be
encouraged to think and feel as far as he is able in the idealized
language of the higher poetry.”
Nor should it be forgotten that much of our best poetry is expressed
under the form of a symbol. Take, for instance, Longfellow’s little
simple lyric, “Excelsior.” Think you that the full meaning of that poem
lies upon the surface? Instead of representing the failure of a youth
climbing the Alpine peaks of life, does the poem not rather represent
the triumph of a soul over all earthly difficulties, freed from every
worldly allurement? Is not the voice we hear at the close “from the sky
serene and far” but the voice of triumphant immortality?
If the student would indeed know what poetry really means, and what is
its function, and what the office of a poet, he should read Tennyson’s
“The Poet’s Mind” and “The Lady of Shalott,” the Fifth Book of Mrs.
Browning’s “Aurora Leigh,” and her “Musical Instrument,” and Browning’s
poem, “Popularity.” In nearly all these poems the meaning is expressed
in symbol.
Another thing to remember in the interpretation of poetry is that its
value is constant; nor has it one message or meaning for the boy and
another for the man. But in order that this may be realized it would be
well to take up first for interpretation in the classes the poets whose
work is chiefly confined to the lyric, the idyl and the ballad, and
leave for mature years—the years of philosophic thought—the study of
poets of the more complex and philosophic school.
THE DEGRADATION OF
SCHOLARSHIP
THE DEGRADATION OF SCHOLARSHIP.
Nothing is more evident in this our day than the degradation to which
scholarship is subjected at the hands of certain so-called educators.
Indeed, it has become a malady which sooner or later must prove fatal to
the life and welfare of the body educational. How could it be otherwise
when pedantry with all its assumption and presumption usurps the throne
of scholarship, and true culture often finds but little welcome in the
class-rooms and academic halls of our land?
Nor is this an exaggerated picture of the educational conditions which
obtain right here in the Province of Ontario. No person at all
acquainted with the character of work done in our primary and secondary
schools but knows that in many respects it is not only inferior, but
that much that bears the name of scholarship is only the merest pedantry
tricked out in the feathers and pomp of a school curriculum.
Should you ask for a proof of this statement you have but to visit with
an open and unbiased mind the primary and secondary schools of our
Province and learn for yourself of their lack of efficiency in the
foundation subjects of reading, writing, composition and spelling.
Should your desire lead you further to ascertain something of the
character of the work that is being done in the departments of what may
be designated culture subjects, such as Latin, French and German, you
will quickly find proof that here it is pedantry rather than scholarship
which obtains.
As to the subject of reading, it is conceded on all sides that it is
badly taught in both the Public and High Schools, and that along this
line little progress has been made for a number of years. The High
School teachers lay the blame for this at the door of the Public
Schools, alleging that the pupils read very badly when they enter the
High Schools, forgetting meantime that the charge recoils upon
themselves, since the teachers of the Public Schools are the product of
the High Schools.
The fault lies in the fact that neither teachers nor inspectors of
Public or High Schools in Ontario have had any training in the subject
of reading; or, if they have had, it has only been along the line of
barren and worthless theorizing. This is borne out by the fact that
teachers who have from time to time boldly ventured to prepare manuals
of reading have not been able to apply their own principles, and as
readers or vocal interpreters of literature have been and are pronounced
failures.
If the teacher whose spirit has been quickened by the deeper sympathies
and experiences of life cannot read, how, pray, can you expect the boy
or girl to do so? If “Learn by doing” is pedagogically of great value to
the pupil, should it not be of equal value to the teacher?
Now turn we for a moment to the subject of composition, and what do we
find? A condition which reveals manifest defects in its teaching. We can
readily put our finger on its weak spots, and with Goethe say, “Thou
ailest here and ailest there.” In the first place, the translations in
the secondary schools from Greek, Latin, French and German authors are
so badly done, so inaccurately done, so inelegantly done, that what
should be a daily practice in English composition in the construction of
sentences and paragraphs, the disposal of phrases, and the choice of the
exact word, becomes almost worthless. The introduction of no fad like
oral composition will or can compensate for this.
Again, while the Public and High Schools are being provided with
libraries—in many instances quite an unnecessary expense being
entailed—little direction is given to the reading, and pupils gabble
thoughtlessly through books in mental gallop from chapter to chapter
without adding to the capital of their scholarship a single new thought
or idea, or to their vocabulary a single new word. Was it not at a
convention of teachers, held but a short time ago in an Ontario city,
that a Public School teacher boasted of the fact that one of his pupils
had read sixty books in three months? And not a teacher present—not
even the Inspector—protested.
Then, too, in many cases the teachers cannot teach composition, since
they cannot write themselves. What does a teacher know about sentence or
paragraph construction, or the logical and artistic expression of
thought, who has never served his time as an apprentice in the great
laboratory of composition? It is but a few years since a leading
Canadian journalist told the writer that among the letters sent to his
paper many of the worst and most faulty came from teachers.
Lastly, the study of literature, which should be an auxiliary to
composition, nay, be its right arm, is often such in our schools as to
aid the student but little in the work of composition.
There yet remain to be considered, of the foundation subjects, writing
and spelling. Perhaps nowhere else in the world can be found as many
slovenly and bad writers as here in the schools of Ontario. Go to
England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany or Switzerland, and you will find
that a boy or girl of fifteen years of age writes a hand marvellously
clear and legible. Why is this? Because in Europe its importance is
emphasized, and it counts for quite as much in the estimate of
acquirements as arithmetic or grammar or history or geography. We also
know of no word in the school vocabulary of Europe—in any
language—that exactly corresponds in meaning to our word for school
exercise book—“scribbler.” Sometimes a word when traced to its origin
is very significant.
Now just here it will be well, lest it might be thought that we are
making statements without any facts to support them, to quote from the
official report of McGill University matriculation examination held at
Montreal and the various examining centres of Canada in June, 1908.
Touching the subjects of writing and spelling, the chief examiner in his
report says: “The handwriting of some of the candidates was so unformed
and untidy that it was hard to believe that the writers were actually
candidates at a matriculation examination. Certainly such candidates
will stand a poor chance of being accepted should they look for any
employment in which writing is a factor. It is regrettable that a number
of papers otherwise excellent showed conspicuous lapses in this
particular. This will explain to some candidates thoroughly well up in
their subject why their marks were not high. A word of warning might be
given them that if they wish to have a high standing in English when
they come to college they must give their days and nights to the study
of the spelling-book—or the dictionary, perhaps, for there are no
spelling-books nowadays.” This is frank criticism, and if hearkened to
by schools and colleges cannot but prove a benefit educationally. There
is no attempt here to consider the work of the examiner as
“confidential.” Such criticism is, indeed, the basis of progress.
But pray enter the temple of higher studies and see what we find.
Assuredly the work done in Latin is not thorough. How could it be so
when a course that demands six or eight years of study in Old World
schools is completed here in three? Is it any wonder that the Canadian
matriculant, when pursuing his classical studies at the University, ever
lives on intimate terms with his “crib” or “pony”? How extensive can be
the vocabulary of a student in Latin whose class work has covered but
four thirty-minute spaces a week for three years? What will be his grasp
of the Latin grammar? During his third year he has been “sight reading.”
Is he really prepared for such work at the end of the second year? It is
quite true that “sight reading,” or translation without preparation, is
excellent practice in the study of any language, but does it not
presuppose a solid grounding in the grammar and a wide vocabulary? The
boy’s teacher, fresh from the academic halls of his alma mater, has
pathetically bid farewell to his “crib” or “pony,” and now goes out into
the cold classical world alone to teach “sight reading” to his class,
that have been tiptoed into Latin. What is the result? In most instances
the work is worthless—a loss of time which could have been far better
devoted to the Latin grammar or the extension of his vocabulary. But it
looks well, you know, in a High School curriculum.
In the department of modern languages—that is to say, French and
German—a still worse condition exists. After a three or four years’
course in those languages in an Ontario High School, what does the
student carry away? The ability, think you, to converse in those
languages, to write them and read them easily? Not at all. Though in
many cases the students have been taught by so-called specialists, their
accent in reading French or German is in most instances unlike that of
either “Christian, pagan or man.” They have prepared for an examination
and have passed. That is all.
The purpose in studying modern languages in Europe is to be able to
speak and write them with ease. Here gabbling through syntax and making
application of its rules to the prescribed text seem to constitute the
chief aim in their study. Indeed, an Ontario teacher who went to Europe
a couple of years ago for the purpose of taking a summer course in
modern languages complained on his return that over there too much
attention was given to the speaking of the languages and not enough to
the grammar. He was probably disappointed with Old World scholarship,
finding that it was so devoid of pedantry. No doubt grammar has its
place, but its role is a secondary one in the acquisition of any modern
language.
Let us for a moment consider next how the important subject of history
is taught in our secondary schools. No one will deny how large a place
this subject should hold in a curriculum of well ordered studies in
either a High School or a University. For what is history but a record
of the activities of the human race, and to have a thorough knowledge of
this is in itself equivalent to a liberal education.
But the student who pursues a course in history in the High Schools of
Ontario is beset with a double danger—that of endeavoring to cover too
much ground and thereby getting but a superficial knowledge of the facts
and great movements of history, and that of basing his judgments on data
drawn from only one source.
The course in history, as at present constituted in the High School
curriculum of Ontario, comprises five years. Now, certainly a good deal
should be done in that time, but it would be the sheerest folly to think
that any boy or girl could within that time gain even a fair knowledge
of the history of Greece, Rome, Canada, England, medieval and modern
Europe. This tiptoeing the pupils in history is not a whit better than
tiptoeing them in Latin, French or German. Indeed, we are not sure but
it works greater harm to true scholarship. We are living in an age when
education is becoming so widely diffused that scholarship as a
consequence is becoming very superficial and thin.
As we write we have before us the Syllabus of the Ontario High School
Course in Medieval and Modern History. It briefly outlines the scope of
the work to be done and gives a list of books to be consulted as works
of reference. Now, the scientific method of studying history warns you
to take nothing for granted. First you must verify the facts by
examining the witnesses that testify to these facts. Secondly, you must
properly appreciate or value these facts from the point of view of
principles that ought to govern human actions, and thirdly, these facts
should be explained by going back to the causes, whether particular or
general, that produced them. That is, the scientific method in history
requires, first, verification; secondly, appreciation or valuation; and
thirdly, explanation of historic facts.
In a High School it is true there is not sufficient time for historical
research or investigation, but there is sufficient time to study a
question on more than one side; there is sufficient time to be honest;
there is sufficient time to prefer truth to falsehood; and where in a
mooted point the policy and teachings of the Catholic Church are
involved there should be sufficient time and sufficient honesty to
consult authors who know whereof they write. Take for example the
history of the Middle Ages. Without a thorough and correct knowledge of
the policy, teachings and work of the Catholic Church, how, I ask, may
the student hope to follow and understand the great movements of history
in those centuries? In the first place, the Catholic Church in the
Middle Ages was the bulwark of sovereignty, law and order, the founder
of universities, the patron of letters, the inspiration of art, the
shield of the oppressed, and a very staff and guide to the halting and
stumbling steps of civilization. She was knowledge, she was authority,
she was order, she was reverence.
Taking up now the books of reference recommended in the Syllabus of the
High School Course in Medieval and Modern History in Ontario, we find
the work of but one Catholic author on the reference list—“English
Monastic Life,” by Dom Gasquet, the Benedictine. Is this not truly a
one-sided study of history that obtains in the secondary schools of
Ontario? Yet the teachers of history in those schools are supposed to be
broad-minded and cultured men. Why, then, should they refuse to read the
Catholic point of view in the study of historical periods and historical
movements in which the Catholic Church was the greatest factor?