LITERARY MATERIALS FOR THE FIVE UPPER GRADES
There is great abundance and variety of choice reading matter suitable
for the grades from the fourth to the eighth inclusive. The best sets of
reading-books have drawn from this rich material, but no series of
readers can compass adequately the field. Some of the longer classical
stories and poems have been incorporated into readers, but a single set
of readers cannot be made large enough to contain a quarter of the
valuable reading matter which should be furnished in these grades. The
large publishing houses now supply, at moderate expense, in small and
convenient book form, a great variety of the very best complete
masterpieces. In order to show more clearly the richness and variety of
this material, we will discuss briefly the principal kinds of reading
matter which are distributed through these five grades. We assume that
during the first three years of school life children have learned how to
read, having mastered the forms and symbols of printed language. At the
beginning of the fourth grade, therefore, they are prepared to read some
of those choice literary products which constitute a part of the
permanent literature of the world. After having collected and arranged
these products, we find that they fall into several distinctly marked
classes.
1. The Myths.
These include such stories as Hawthorne's "Wonder Book" and "Tanglewood
Tales," Peabody's "Old Greek Folk Stories," Kingsley's "Greek Heroes,"
"The Story of Ulysses," Bryant's translation of the "Iliad" and
"Odyssey," Pope's "Homer," and many other prose and poetic renderings of
the Greek myths.
Another group of myths include Mabie's "Norse Stories," "Heroes of
Asgard," "Siegfried," "Myths of Northern Lands," Skinner's "Readings in
Folk Lore," and many forms of the Norse myths. The story of "Hiawatha"
belongs also to this group, while some of the earlier English and Roman
myths belong to the same class.
The choicest of these mythical stories are distributed as reading matter
through the fourth and fifth grades. They constitute a large share of
the most famous literature of the great civilized nations. It is worth
while to name over the virtues of these stories and poems.
They have sprung directly out of the people's life, they are race
products, worked over from age to age by poetic spirits, and finally
gathered into enduring form by a Homer, Virgil, or Spenser. The best of
our later poets and prose masters have employed their finest skill in
rendering them into simple and poetic English, as Bryant, Kingsley,
Longfellow, Pope, Hawthorne, Palmer, Tennyson, Church, and many more.
They are the best descriptions we have of the customs, ideas, and dress,
the homes, habits, and motives, of the ancestral races. Many other
sources, as temples, ruins, tombs, coins, etc., help to explain this
early history; but this literature calls it again into life and puts
meaning into all other sources of knowledge.
The influence which this early literature has had upon later historical
growth of the great races is overwhelming, and is plain to the eyes of
even unscholarly persons. The root from which the marvellous tree of
Greek civilization grew is seen in Homer's poems.
In these myths we find those commanding characters which typify the
strength and virtues of the race, as Achilles, Ulysses, Siegfried,
Penelope, Thor, Apollo, Theseus, Hiawatha, Orpheus, Diana, Vulcan,
Prometheus, and the Muses.
A close acquaintance with these creative ideas of the early world is
necessary to an understanding of all subsequent life and literature. And
it is not merely the names of Greek divinities and definitions of their
character and qualities which put meaning into the numberless allusions
of modern writers. One reason why many modern thinkers smile at the
triteness and childishness of Greek fable is, that they have not caught
the spirit and meaning of the Greek story. The great masters of thought,
like Goethe, Shakespeare, Emerson, Tennyson, and Bryant, have seen
deeper.
It is, moreover, in childhood, during the early school years especially,
that we may best appreciate and enjoy these poetic creations of an early
world. It is hardly to be expected that people whose youth has been
clamped into the mould of commonplace and sensuous facts, and whose
later years have been crusted over with modern materialism and
commercialism, should listen with any patience to Orpheus and the Muses,
or even to the wood notes of Pan.
We hardly need to dwell upon the idea that the old heroic myths are the
delight of boys and girls, and that this sympathy for the myth is the
foundation of its educative power. Nor is it the purpose of the school
to warp the minds of children into this one channel of growth. The
historical and scientific studies run parallel with the myth, and give
strength for realities.
It is not difficult to see that music, the drama, and the fine arts
spring from these old myths as from their chief source. They furnish
motive to many of the greatest works of dramatist, composer, painter,
and sculptor, in all the ages since. AEschylus and the Greek dramatists,
Goethe and Wagner, Fenelon and Shakespeare, drew abundantly from these
sources.
A few of the striking characters of this great age of heroic myths
should be treated with such fulness as to stand out clearly to the
children and appeal to the heart as well as to the head. Ulysses and
Siegfried stand in the centre of two of the chief stories, and exemplify
great qualities of character, strength, wisdom, and nobleness of mind.
In the third grade the children have had an oral introduction to some of
the old stories, and have had a spirited entrance to Mythland. This oral
treatment of the stories is a fitting and necessary prelude to the
reading work of the fourth and fifth grades. It is more fully discussed,
together with the art of the story-teller, in "The Special Method in
Primary Reading and Story."
Closely related to the myths, and kindred in spirit, are such choice
reading materials as "The Arabian Nights," "King of the Golden River,"
Stockton's "Fanciful Tales," "The Pied Piper," and a number of shorter
poems and stories found in the collections recommended for fourth and
fifth grades. Some of Hawthorne's and Irving's stories belong also to
this group.
2. Ballads and Traditional Stories.
A somewhat distinct group of the best reading for fourth and fifth
grades is found in the historical ballads and national legends from the
early history of England, Germany, Italy, and France. They include such
selections as "Sir Patrick Spens," "The Ballads of Robin Hood,"
"Horatius," "Bannock-burn," "The Heart of the Bruce," "The Story of
Regulus," of "Cincinnatus," "Alfred the Harper," and many more. In the
list of books recommended for children's reading are several ballad
books, Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome," "The Book of Golden Deeds,"
"Tales from English History," and several others, with great variety of
poem and story. Many of these selections are short and spirited and well
suited to awaken the strongest enthusiasm of children. They are
sometimes in dialogue form, both in prose and verse, have strong
dramatic action, and are thus helpful in variety and force of
expression. There is also much early history and national spirit
involved. The old historical ballads and traditions have great educative
value. They are simple, crude, and powerful, and awaken the spirit to
receive the message of heroism. In her introduction to the "Ballad
Book," Katharine Lee Bates says, "For these primitive folk-songs, which
have done so much to educate the poetic sense in the fine peasantry of
Scotland--that peasantry which has produced an Ayreshire Ploughman and
an Ettric Shepherd--are assuredly,
"'Thanks to the human heart by which it lives,'
among the best educators that can be brought into our schoolrooms."
"The Lays of Ancient Rome," the "Ballads," and the "Tales from English
History" belong to the heroic series. Though far separated in time and
place, they breathe the same spirit of personal energy, self-sacrifice,
and love of country. They reveal manly resistance to cruelty and
tyranny. We may begin this series with a term's work upon Macaulay's
"Lays" and a few other choice stories in prose and verse. Thereafter we
may insert other ballads, where needed, in connection with history, and
in amplification of longer stories or masterpieces like Scott's "Tales
of a Grandfather," and "Marmion." In the fifth grade, children are of an
age when these stories of heroism in olden days strike a responsive
chord. They delight in such tales, memorize them, and enter into the
full energy of their spirited reproduction. The main purpose at first is
to appreciate their thought as an expression of history, tradition, and
national life. A complete and absorbing study of a single series of
these ballads, as of Macaulay's, supplies also an excellent standard of
comparison for other more or less similar episodes in the history of
Switzerland, Greece, England, and America.
These historical legends merge almost imperceptibly into the historical
tales of early English, Roman, and French or German history. The
patriarchal stories of the Old Testament furnish the finest of early
history stories and should be included in these materials. "The Old
Stories of the East," and "Old Testament Stories in Scripture Language"
are among the best.
3. Stories of Chivalry.
Tales of chivalry, beginning with "Arthur and his Round Table Knights,"
"Roland and Oliver," and other mediaeval tales, have a great attraction
for poets and children. Such books are included in our lists as "The
Court of King Arthur," the "Story of Roland," "Tales of Chivalry," "The
Boys' King Arthur," the "Age of Chivalry," and "The Coming of Arthur"
and "Passing of Arthur." There are also many shorter poems touching this
spirit of chivalry in the Ballad literature. The character and spirit of
King Arthur as revealed in the matchless music of Tennyson should find
its way to the hearts of children before they leave the school. Like Sir
Galahad, he could say,
"My strength is as the strength of ten
Because my heart is pure."
4. Historical Stories and Poems.
In the fifth and sixth grades children should begin to read some of the
best biographical and historical stories of America and of European
countries. Of these we have excellent materials from many lands and
periods of time, such as Higginson's "American Explorers," Morris's
"Historical Tales" (both American and English), "Stories of American
Life and Adventure," "Stories of Our Country," "Pioneer History
Stories," "Ten Boys on the Road from Long Ago," "The Story of the
English," "Stories from Herodotus," "Pilgrims and Puritans," Hawthorne's
"Biographical Stories," "Stories from American Life," and others.
In the oral history lessons given on alternate days in fourth grade (see
special method in history) we have made a spirited entrance to American
history through the pioneer stories of the Mississippi Valley. These
should precede and pave the way for classic readings in American
history. In the fifth grade, the stories of Columbus and of the chief
navigators, also the narratives of the Atlantic coast pioneers, are
told. The regular history work of the sixth grade should be a study of
the growth of the leading colonies during the colonial period and the
French and Indian Wars.
In the fifth grade we may begin to read some of the hero narratives of
our own pioneer epoch as rendered by the best writers; for instance,
Higginson's "American Explorers," "Pilgrims and Puritans," "Stories of
Our Country," and "Grandfather's Chair." They are lifelike and spirited,
and introduce us to the realism of our early history in its rugged
exposure and trials, while they bring out those stern but high ideals of
life which the Puritan and the Cavalier, the navigator, the pioneer
hunter, and explorer illustrate. Higginson's collection of letters and
reports of the early explorers, with their quaint language and
eye-witness descriptions, is strikingly vivid in its portraiture of
early scenes upon our shores. Hawthorne, in "Grandfather's Chair," has
moulded the hardy biography of New England leaders into literary form.
5. Great Biographies.
In addition to the shorter biographical stories just mentioned, as
children advance into the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, they should
make a close acquaintance with a few of the great biographies. There is
an abundance of excellent American biographies, but we should limit
ourselves to those most important and best suited to influence the
character of young people. It is necessary also to use those which have
been written in a style easily comprehended by the children. Some of the
best are as follows: Scudder's "Life of Washington," Franklin's
"Autobiography," Hosmer's "Life of Samuel Adams," and the lives of John
Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, and Lincoln in the "Statesman Series."
There are two fairly good books of Lincoln's early life for children.
There are also many shorter biographies included in the books
recommended for regular or collateral reading.
In style and content the story of Franklin is one of the best for
children. The "Autobiography" of Franklin has many graphic touches from
American life. His intense practical personality, his many-sidedness and
public spirit, make up a character that will long instruct and open out
in many directions the minds of the young. His clear sense and wisdom in
small affairs as in great, and the pleasing style of his narrative, are
sufficiently characteristic to have a strong personal impression. It
will hardly be necessary to take the whole of the "Autobiography," but
the more attractive parts, leaving the rest to the private reading of
children. "Poor Richard's Almanac" intensifies the notion of Franklin's
practical and everyday wisdom, and at the same time introduces the
children to a form of literature that, in colonial days, under
Franklin's patronage, had a wide acceptance and lasting influence in
America.
Plutarch's "Lives" furnish a series of great biographies which grammar
school children should become well acquainted with. The lives of
American writers and poets should be brought to the attention of
children in conjunction with their productions. "The Children's Stories
of American Literature" and the introductory chapters of many of the
masterpieces furnish this interesting and stimulating material. It
should not be neglected by pupils and teachers. For older pupils and for
teachers several of Macaulay's "Essays" are valuable, and the style is
strikingly interesting. For example, the essays on Samuel Johnson, Lord
Chatham, Milton, Addison, and Frederick the Great. Motley's "Essay on
Peter the Great" and Carlyle's "Essay on Burns" are of similar interest
and value. "The Schoenberg Cotta Family" is valuable in the upper
grammar grades. Most of this kind of reading must be outside reference
work if it is done at all. Teachers should, first of all, enrich their
own experience by these readings, occasionally bring a book to the class
from which selections may be read, and, secondly, encourage the more
enthusiastic and capable children to this wider field of reading.
6. Historical Poems and Pictures of American Life.
Some of the best American poems and prose masterpieces are fine
descriptions of American life and manners, in different parts of the
country and at various times. Such are: "Courtship of Miles Standish,"
"Tales of the White Hills," "Snow-Bound," "Rip Van Winkle," and "Sleepy
Hollow." "The Gentle Boy," "Mabel Martin," "Giles Corey," "Evangeline,"
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," and some of the great biographies, like those of
Samuel Adams, Franklin, Washington, and Lincoln, are also fine
descriptions of home life in America. The same may be said of some of
the masterpieces of English and European literature, for example,
"Ivanhoe," "Roger de Coverley," "The Christmas Carol," "Vicar of
Wakefield," "William Tell," "Silas Marner," "The Cotter's Saturday
Night," and "Schoenberg Cotta Family."
The culture value of these pictures of home and domestic life for young
people is surpassingly great. Gradually their views are broadened, and
they may be imbued with those social, home-bred qualities and virtues so
fundamental in human life.
Irving's stories and Longfellow's "Miles Standish" give a still more
pronounced and pleasing literary cast to two of the characteristic forms
of life in our colonial history, the Puritan and the Dutch Patroon. If
the children have reached this point, where they can read and enjoy the
"Sketch-Book," it will be worth much as a description of life along the
Hudson, and will develop taste and appreciation for literary excellence.
Even the fanciful and ridiculous elements conduce to mental health and
soundness, by showing up in pleasing satire the weaknesses and foibles
of well-meaning people.
"Snow-Bound," "Songs of Labor," and "Among the Hills," while not
historical in the usual sense, are still plainly American, and may well
be associated with other poetic delineations of American life.
"Snow-Bound" is a picture of New England life, with its pleasing and
deep-rooted memories. Its family spirit and idealization of common
objects and joys make it a classic which reaches the hearts of boys and
girls. "Among the Hills" is also a picture of home life in New England
mountains, a contrast of the mean and low in home environment to the
beauty of thrift and taste and unselfish home joys. The "Songs of Labor"
are descriptive of the toils and spirit of our varied employments in
New England and of that larger New England which the migrating Yankees
have established between the oceans.
"Evangeline" is another literary pearl that enshrines in sad and
mournful measures a story of colonial days, and teaches several great
lessons, as of the harshness and injustice of war, of fair-mindedness
and sympathy for those of alien speech and country, of patience and
gentleness and loyalty to high ideals in a character familiar and sacred
to all.
7. The Poetry of Nature in the Masterpieces of Literature.
Both in poetic and in prose form there is great variety and depth of
nature worship in good literature. There are few, if any, of the great
poets who have not been enthusiastic and sympathetic observers of
nature,--nature lovers, we may call them. We can hardly mention the
names of Emerson, Bryant, and Wordsworth, without thinking of their
loving companionship with nature, their flight to the woods and fields.
But the same is true of Lowell, Whittier, Hawthorne, Whitman, and all
the rest. When we add to these, those companions of nature, such as
Thoreau, Leander Keyser, Olive Thorn Miller, Burroughs, Warner, and
others of like spirit, we may be surprised at the number of our leading
writers who have found their chief delight in dwelling close to the
heart of nature.
An examination of the books recommended for children's study and
delight will reveal a large number of the most graceful, inspiriting
products of human thought, which are nature poems, nature hymns, odes to
skylark, the dandelion, the mountain daisy, communings with the myriad
moods and forms of the natural world. Such books as "Nature Pictures by
American Poets," "Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics," "Poetry of the
Seasons," the "Open Sesame" books, and others, show an infinite variety
of poetic inspiration from nature. Adding to these Burroughs's "Birds
and Bees," "Wake Robin," "Squirrels and other Fur-bearers"; Thoreau's
"Succession of Forest Trees"; Higginson's "Outdoor Papers"; Keyser's
"News from the Birds," "In Bird Land," and "Birddom"; Torrey's "Footpath
Way," and "Birds in the Bush"; Long's "Wilderness Ways," and "Ways of
Wood Folk"; the "Plant World" of Vincent, the "Natural History" of
Selborne, and others of like quality,--and we have an abundance of the
most friendly and enticing invitations to nature study. These materials
are suited, by proper arrangement, to all the grades from the fourth up.
Under good teachers such books can do no other than awaken and encourage
the happiest kind of observation and sympathy for nature. It is the kind
of appreciation of birds and trees, insects and clouds, which at once
trains to close and discriminating perception, and to the cultivation of
aesthetic sense in color, form, and sound.
The love of nature cannot be better instilled than by following these
poets.
While the study of literature as it images nature cannot take the place
of pure science, it is the most powerful ally that the scientist can
call in. The poets can do as much to idealize science study, to wake the
dull eye, and quicken the languid interest in nature, as scientists
themselves. Away, then, with this presumed antagonism between literature
and science! Neither is complete without the other. Neither can stand on
its own feet. But together, in mutual support, they cannot be tripped
up. The facts, the laws, the utilities, adaptations, and wonders in
nature are not so marvellous but the poet's eye will pierce beneath and
above them, will give them a deeper interpretation, and clothe them in a
garment of beauty and praise. There is nothing beautiful or grand or
praiseworthy that the poet's eye will not detect it, and the poet's art
reveal it in living and lasting forms. Let the scientist delve and the
poet sing. The messages between them should be only those of cheer.
It is in this myriad-voiced world of fields and brooks, of mountain,
lake, and river, of storm and cloud and of the changing seasons, that
poets find the images, suggestions, and analogies which interpret and
illustrate the spiritual life of man. The more rigid study of science in
laboratory and class-room is necessary to the student, but it would be
a narrow and pedantic teacher who would not welcome the poetic temper
and enthusiasm in nature study.
The teachers of reading have, therefore, the best of all opportunities
for cultivating this many-sided sympathy for and insight into nature,
and at the same time to train the children to correlate these nature
poems with their science studies. Observers like Thoreau and Burroughs
give us the greatest inducement for getting out into the woods. They
open our eyes to the beauties and our hearts to the truth of nature's
teachings. These are the gardens of delight where science and poetry
walk hand in hand and speak face to face. It would not be difficult to
show that many of the greatest scientists were poets, and that some of
the chiefest poets have been foremost in scientific study.
8. The Sentiment of Patriotism in Literature.
The powerful national spirit finds expression in many forms of
literature, in hymns, in war song, in oration, in essay, in pioneer
narrative, in stories of battle, in novel, in flag song, in ballad, and
in biography.
We have already noted the great significance of American history stories
in fourth and fifth grades. It is from the early pioneer epoch and the
colonial history that we derive much of our best educative history. The
heroism of these old days has been commemorated in story and poem by our
best writers.
As we approach the Revolutionary crisis a new body of choice literary
products, aglow with the fire of patriotism and independence, is found
stored up for the joy and stimulus of our growing young Americans: "Paul
Revere's Ride," "Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill," Washington's
letters, "A Ballad of the Boston Tea Party," "Ode for Washington's
Birthday," "Lexington" (Holmes), "The Song of Marion's Men," "The Green
Mountain Boys," Webster's speeches at Bunker Hill and on Adams and
Jefferson, "Old Ticonderoga" (Hawthorne), Burke's speech on the American
War, Washington's "Farewell to the Army," The Declaration of
Independence, "Under the Old Elm," and descriptions of some of the great
scenes of the war by our best historians.
It is to be desired that children in the seventh grade may have
opportunity in regular history lessons to study in detail a few of the
central topics of the Revolutionary epoch. This will put them in touch
with the spirit and surroundings of the Americans.
In the reading lessons of the same grade we may well afford to discover
and feel what our best patriots and men of letters have said and felt in
view of the struggle for freedom. The noblest expressions of sentiment
upon great men and their achievements are contagious with the young.
Patriotism can find no better soil in which to strike its deepest roots
than the noble outbursts of our orators and poets and patriotic
statesmen. The cumulative effect of these varied but kindred materials
is greater than when scattered and disconnected. They mutually support
each other, and when they are brought into close dependence upon
parallel historical studies, we may well say that the children are
drinking from the deep and pure sources of true Americanism.
Parallel to whatever history we attempt to teach in the eighth grade
should run a selection of the best literary products that our American
authors can furnish, and here again we are rich in resources. The
thought and life of our people find their high-water mark in the poet's
clarion note and the statesman's impassioned appeal. No others have
perceived the destiny of our young republic as our cherished poets,
Longfellow, Whittier, Bryant, Holmes, and Emerson. They have stood upon
the mountain tops, looking far and wide through the clear atmosphere,
while the great army of the people has been tenting in the valleys
below. These wakeful priests and prophets have caught the bright tints
of the morning while the people were still asleep, and have witnessed
the suffused glory of the sunset clouds when the weary masses below had
already forgotten the day's toil. One thing at least, and that the
greatest, can be done for our children before they finish the common
school course. They may rise into this pure atmosphere of poet, patriot,
sage, and prophet. They may hear these deathless strains and feel the
thrill of these clarion notes. Let their ears be once attuned to the
strength and harmony of this music, and it will not cease to echo in
their deeper life. The future patriots will be at hand, and the coming
years will see them rising to the great duties that inevitably await
them. We have a body of noble, patriotic material which is capable of
producing this effect if handled by skilful teachers: the Ordinance of
1787, _The Federalist_, Numbers 1 and 2, Washington's "Inaugurals" and
the "Farewell Address," Everett's "Oration on Washington," "O Mother of
Mighty Race" (Bryant); "Our Country's Call" (Bryant); "Abraham Lincoln"
(Bryant); Lincoln's "Inaugurals" and "Gettysburg Speech," "Army Hymn"
and "The Flower of Liberty" (Holmes), Webster's "Second Speech on Foot's
Resolution," The Emancipation Proclamation, "The Fortune of the
Republic" (Emerson), etc., "Antiquity of Freedom" (Bryant); "Centennial
Hymn" (Whittier); "The Building of the Ship" (Longfellow); "The Poor
Voter on Election Day" (Whittier).
Why not gather together these sources of power, of unselfish patriotism,
of self-sacrifice, of noble and inspiring impulse? Let this
fruit-bringing seed be sown deep in the minds and hearts of the
receptive young. What has inspired the best of men to high thinking and
living can touch them.
It is not by reading and declaiming a few miscellaneous fragments of
patriotic gush, not by waving flags and banners and following
processions, that the deeper sentiments of patriotism and humanity are
to be touched, but by gathering and concentrating these fuller, richer
sources of spiritual power and conscious national destiny. The
schoolroom is by far the best place to consolidate these purifying and
conserving sentiments. By gathering into a rising series and focussing
in the higher grades the various forms, in prose and verse, in which the
genius of our country has found its strongest expression; by associating
these ringing sentiments with the epochs and crises of our history, with
the valorous deeds of patriots upon the field and of statesmen in the
senate, with the life and longings of home-nurtured poets and sages,--we
shall plant seed whose fruitage will not disappoint the lovers of the
fatherland.
Mr. Horace E. Scudder, in his two essays on "Literature" and "American
Classics in the Common School," has portrayed with convincing clearness
the spiritual power and high-toned Americanism which breathe from those
literary monuments which have been quarried from our own hillsides and
chiselled by American hands. We recommend to every teacher the reading
in full of these essays, from which we quote at much length:--
"Fifty years ago there were living in America six men of mark, of whom
the youngest was then nineteen years of age, the oldest forty-four.
Three of the six are in their graves and three still breathe the kindly
air. [Since this was written, in 1888, the last of the six has passed
away.] One only of the six has held high place in the national councils,
and it is not by that distinction that he is known and loved. They have
not been in battle; they have had no armies at their command; they have
not amassed great fortunes, nor have great industries waited on their
movements. Those pageants of circumstances which kindle the imagination
have been remote from their names. They were born on American soil; they
have breathed American air; they were nurtured on American ideas. They
are Americans of Americans. They are as truly the issue of our national
life as are the common schools in which we glory. During the fifty years
in which our common school system has been growing up to maturity these
six have lived and sung; and I dare say that the lives and songs of
Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and Lowell have an
imperishable value, regarded as exponents of national life, not for a
moment to be outweighed in the balance by the most elaborate system of
common schools which the wit of man may devise. The nation may command
armies and schools to rise from the soil, but it cannot call into life a
poet. Yet when the poet comes and we hear his voice in the upper air,
then we know the nation he owns is worthy of the name. Do men gather
grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? Even so, pure poetry springs from
no rank soil of national life.
"I am not arguing for the critical study of our great authors, in the
higher grades of our schools. They are not the best subjects for
critical scholarship; criticism demands greater remoteness, greater
foreignness of nature. Moreover, critical study is not the surest method
of securing the full measure of spiritual light, though it yields
abundant gain in the refinement of the intellectual nature and in the
quickening of the perceptive faculties. I am arguing for the free,
generous use of these authors in the principal years of school life. It
is then that their power is most profoundly needed, and will be most
strongly felt. We need to put our children in their impressionable years
into instant and close connection with the highest manifestation of our
national life. Away with the bottle and the tube! Give them a lusty
draft at the mother's full breast!
"Nor do I fear that such a course will breed a narrow and parochial
Americanism. On the contrary, it would destroy a vulgar pride in
country, help the young to see humanity from the heights on which the
masters of song have dwelt, and open the mind to the more hospitable
entertainment of the best literature of every clime and age. I am
convinced that there is no surer way to introduce the best English
literature into our schools than to give the place of honor to American
literature. In the order of nature a youth must be a citizen of his own
country before he can become naturalized in the world. We recognize this
in our geography and history; we may wisely recognize it also in our
reading.
"The place, then, of literature in our common school education is in
spiritualizing life, letting light into the mind, inspiring and feeding
the higher forces of human nature.
"It is the business of the old to transmit to the young the great
traditions of the past of the country, to feed anew the undying flame of
patriotism. There is the element of destiny. No nation lives upon its
past; it is already dead when it says, 'Let us eat and drink to-day; for
to-morrow we die.' But what that destiny is to be may be read in the
ideals which the young are forming; and those ideals, again, it is the
business of the old to guide. They cannot form them; the young must form
them for themselves; but whether these ideals shall be large or petty,
honorable or mean, will depend upon the sustenance on which they are
fed.
"Now in a democracy, more signally than under any other form of national
organization, it is vitally necessary that there should be an unceasing,
unimpeded circulation of the spiritual life of the people. The sacrifice
of the men and women who have made and preserved America, from the days
of Virginia and New England to this hour, has been ascending from the
earth in a never-ending cloud; they have fallen again in strains of
music, in sculpture, in painting, in memorial hall, in tale, in oration,
in poem, in consecration of life; and the spirit which ascended is the
same as that which descended. In literature above all is this spirit
enshrined. You have but to throw open the shrine, and the spirit comes
with its outspread blessings upon millions of waiting souls. Entering
them, it reissues in countless shapes, and thus is the life of the
nation in its highest form kept ever in motion, and without motion is no
life.
"The deposit of nationality is in laws, institutions, art, character,
and religion; but laws, institutions, character, and religion are
expressed through art and mainly through the art of letters. It is
literature, therefore, that holds in precipitation the genius of the
country; and the higher the form of literature, the more consummate the
expression of that spirit which does not so much seek a materialization
as it shapes itself inevitably in fitting form. Long may we read and
ponder the life of Washington, yet at last fall back content upon those
graphic lines of Lowell in 'Under the Old Elm,' which cause the figure
of the great American to outline itself upon the imagination with large
and strong portraiture. The spirit of the orations of Webster and
Benton, the whole history of the young giant poised in conscious
strength before his triumphant struggle, one may catch in a breath in
those glowing lines which end 'The Building of the Ship.' The deep
passion of the war for the Union may be overlooked in some formal study
of battles and campaigns, but rises pure, strong, and flaming in the
immortal 'Gettysburg Speech.'
"Precisely thus the sentiment of patriotism must be kept fresh and
living in the hearts of the young through quick and immediate contact
with the sources of that sentiment; and the most helpful means are those
spiritual deposits of patriotism which we find in noble poetry and lofty
prose, as communicated by men who have lived patriotic lives and been
fed with coals from the altar.
"It is from the men and women bred on American soil that the fittest
words come for the spiritual enrichment of American youth. I believe
heartily in the advantage of enlarging one's horizon by taking in other
climes and other ages, but first let us make sure of that great
expansive power which lies close at hand. I am sure there never was a
time or country where national education, under the guidance of national
art and thought, was so possible as in America to-day.
"The body of wholesome, strong American literature is large enough to
make it possible to keep boys and girls upon it from the time when they
begin to recognize the element of authorship until they leave the
school, and it is varied and flexible enough to give employment to the
mind in all its stages of development. Moreover, this literature is
interesting, and is allied with interesting concerns; half the hard
places are overcome by the willing mind, and the boy who stumbles over
some jejune lesson in his reading-book will run over a bit of genuine
prose from Irving which the schoolbook maker, with his calipers,
pronounces too hard.
"We have gone quite far enough in the mechanical development of the
common school system. What we most need is the breath of life, and
reading offers the noblest means for receiving and imparting this breath
of life. The spiritual element in education in our common schools will
be found to lie in reserve in literature, and, as I believe, most
effectively in American literature.
"Think for a moment of that great, silent, resistless power for good
which might at this moment be lifting the youth of the country, were the
hours for reading in school expended upon the undying, life-giving
books! Think of the substantial growth of a generous Americanism, were
the boys and girls to be fed from the fresh springs of American
literature! It would be no narrow provincialism into which they would
emerge. The windows in Longfellow's mind looked to the east, and the
children who have entered into possession of his wealth travel far.
Bryant's flight carries one through upper air, over broad champaigns.
The lover of Emerson has learned to get a remote vision. The companion
of Thoreau finds Concord become suddenly the centre of a very wide
horizon. Irving has annexed Spain to America. Hawthorne has nationalized
the gods of Greece and given an atmosphere to New England. Whittier has
translated the Hebrew Scriptures into the American dialect. Lowell
gives the American boy an academy without cutting down a stick of timber
in the grove, or disturbing the birds. Holmes supplies that hickory
which makes one careless of the crackling of thorns. Franklin makes the
America of a past generation a part of the great world before treaties
had bound the floating states into formal connection with venerable
nations. What is all this but saying that the rich inheritance we have
is no local ten-acre lot, but a part of the undivided estate of
humanity. Universality, Cosmopolitanism,--these are fine words, but no
man ever secured the freedom of the Universe who did not first pay taxes
and vote in his own village."--"Literature in School" (Houghton,
Mifflin, & Co.).
9. The series of American classics is nowise confined to the ideas of
local or national patriotism, but above and beyond that deep and
powerful sentiment which magnifies the opportunity and manifest destiny
of our nation, it grasps at the ideal form and content of those
Christian virtues which now and evermore carry healing and comfort to
the toiling millions. Our poets, as they have pondered on the past and
looked into the future, were not able to be content with less than the
best. As the vision of the coming years unrolled itself before them they
looked upon it with joy mingled with solicitude. In the mighty conflicts
now upon us only those of generous and saintly purpose and of pure
hearts can prevail.
"Brief is the time, I know,
The warfare scarce begun;
Yet all may win the triumphs thou hast won.
Still flows the fount whose waters strengthened thee,
The victors' names are yet too few to fill
Heaven's mighty roll; the glorious armory
That ministered to thee is open still."--BRYANT.
To reveal this Christian armory, the defences of the soul against the
assaults of evil, has been the highest inspiration of our poets. What
depth and beauty and impersonation of Christian virtues do we find in
"Snow-Bound," "Among the Hills," "Evangeline," "The Conqueror's Grave,"
"To a Waterfowl," "The Groves were God's First Temples," "The Living
Temple," "The Sun Day Hymn," "The Chambered Nautilus," "Vision of Sir
Launfal," "The Great Stone Face."
The Bible is not generally admissible as a schoolbook, but the spirit of
Christianity, clad in the forms of strength and grace, is immanent in
the works of our poets. So universal, so human, so fit to the needs and
destinies of men, are the truths of the great evangel, that the prophets
and seers of our race drift evermore into the sheltering haven they
supply. To drink in these potent truths through poetry and song, to see
them enshrined in the imagery and fervor of the sacred masterpieces of
our literature, is more than culture, more than morality; it is the
portal and sanctuary of religious thought, and children may enter it.
10. The higher products of literature contain an energy that quickens
spiritual life in morals, in art, and in religion. To many people, whose
lives are submerged in commercial pursuits or in the great struggle to
develop and utilize the material resources of the world, these spiritual
forces seem vague and shadowy, if not mythical. But there are plenty of
heroic souls in the realm of letters, such as Emerson, Scudder, Ruskin,
Arnold, and Carlyle, who are not disposed to let men settle down in lazy
satisfaction with material good, nor to be blinded even by the splendor
of modern achievements in engineering, in medicine, and in the
application of electricity. We must at least reach a point of view high
enough to perceive the relations of these natural riches to the higher
nature and destiny of man.
Scudder says, "It is to literature that we must look for the substantial
protection of the growing mind against an ignoble, material conception
of life, and for the inspiring power which shall lift the nature into
its rightful fellowship with whatsoever is noble, true, lovely, and of
good report."
Shelley, in like spirit, says: "The cultivation of poetry is never more
to be desired than at periods when, from an excess of the selfish and
calculating principle, the accumulation of the materials of external
life exceed the quantity of the power of assimilating them to the
internal laws of human nature. The body has then become too unwieldy for
that which animates it."
Matthew Arnold, in "Sweetness and Light," while discussing the function
of that truer culture and "perfection which consists in becoming
something rather than in having something," remarks:--
"And this function is particularly important in our modern world, of
which the whole civilization is, to a much greater degree than the
civilization of Greece and Rome, mechanical and external, and tends
constantly to become more so. But above all in our own country has
culture a weighty part to perform because here that mechanical
character, which civilization tends to take everywhere, is shown in the
most eminent degree. Indeed, nearly all the characters of perfection, as
culture teaches us to fix them, meet in this country with some powerful
tendency which thwarts them and sets them at defiance. The idea of
perfection as an inward condition of the mind and spirit is at variance
with the mechanical and material civilization in esteem with us, and
nowhere, as I have said, so much in esteem as with us."
11. Judged by these higher standards our writers and literary leaders
were not simply Americans. They were also Europeans. The Puritan brought
his religion with him, the Cavalier acquired his gentlemanly instincts
in the old home, not in the untrodden forests of the New World. Much of
what we call American is the wine of the Old World poured into the
bearskins and buckskins of the West, with a flavor of the freedom of our
Western wilds. Though born and bred on American soil and to the last
exemplars of the American spirit, our literary leaders have derived
their ideas and inspiration from the literature, tradition, and history
of the Old World. It will be no small part of our purpose, therefore, to
open up to the children of our common schools the best entrance to the
history and literature of Europe. Our own writers and poets have done
this for us in a variety of instances: Hawthorne's rendering of the
Greek myths, Bryant's translation of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey," a good
half of Irving's "Sketch-Book," Lowell's "Vision of Sir Launfal,"
"Aladdin," and "Prometheus," Irving's "Alhambra," Longfellow's "Golden
Legend," "Sandalphon," Taylor's "Boys of Other Countries." Nearly the
whole of our literature, even when dealing ostensibly with American
topics, is suffused with the spirit and imagery of the Old World
traditions. There is also a large collection of prose versions of
European traditions, which, while not classic, are still lively
renderings of old stories and well suited to the collateral reading of
children. Such are "Gods and Heroes," "Tales from English History,"
"Tales from Spenser," "Heroes of Asgard," "Story of the Iliad and
Odyssey."
The transition from our own poets who have handled European themes to
English writers who have done the same, is easy and natural; Macaulay's
"Lays of Ancient Rome," Scott's "Tales of a Grandfather," "The Stories
of Waverley," the "Christmas Carol," Kingsley's "Greek Heroes" and
"Water Babies," Ruskin's "King of the Golden River," "Lady of the Lake,"
"Marmion," "Roger de Coverley Papers," "Merchant of Venice," "Arabian
Nights," "Peasant and Prince," Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress,"
"Gulliver's Travels," and others have become by inheritance and
birthright as much a part of the American child's culture as the more
distinctive products of our own writers. No line can be drawn between
those writings which are American and those which sprung from the soil
of England and Europe. So intimate and vital is the connection between
our present and our past, between our children and their cousins across
the water.
These American and European literary products lie side by side in the
school course, though the predominating spirit through the middle and
higher grades up to the eighth should be American. We have noticed that
in the earlier grades most of our classic reading matter comes from
Europe, the nursery rhymes, the folk-lore, fables, and myths, because
the childhood of our culture periods was in Europe. But into the fourth
grade, and from there on, beginning with the pioneers on sea and land,
our American history and literature enters as a powerful agent of
culture. It brings us into quick and vital contact, not simply with the
outward facts, but with the inmost spirit, of our national life and
struggle toward development. This gives the American impulse free and
full expansion, and fortunate are we, beyond expression, that pure and
lofty poets stand at the threshold to usher the children into this
realm, founded deep in the realism of our past history and rising
grandly into the idealism of our desires and hopes. As we advance into
the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades the literature of Europe begins
again to increase in quantity and influence, and to share equally with
American authors the attention of the children.
The Americanism of our poets and prose writers, as previously shown, has
also another side to it, which is one sign of the breadth and
many-sidedness of literature as a study for the young. North America is
a land rich in variety of natural scenery and resource. Nature has
decked the New World with a lavish hand, forest and mountain, lake and
river, prairie and desert, the summer land of flowers and the home of
New England winters. The masterpieces of our poets are full of the
scenery, vegetation, sunsets, mountains, and prairies of the Western
empire. The flowers, the birds, the wild beasts, the pathless forests,
the limitless stretches of plain, have mirrored themselves in the songs
of our poets, and have rendered them dearer to us because seen and
realized in this idealism. Unconsciously perhaps the feeling of
patriotism is largely based upon this knowledge of the rich and varied
beauty and bounty of our native land.
"I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills,
My heart with rapture thrills,
Like that above."
As along the shores of our Northern lakes the clear and quiet waters
reflect the green banks, the rolling, forest-crowned hills, the rocky
bluffs, the floating clouds, and overarching blue, so in the homespun,
classic verse and prose of our own writers are imaged the myriad charms
of our native land. Bryant especially is the poet of forest and glade,
"The Forest Hymn," "The Death of the Flowers," "The Return of the
Birds," "A Summer Ramble," "The Fringed Gentian," "The Hunter of the
Prairies," "The White-footed Deer," "To a Waterfowl," "Thanatopsis," and
many others. Longfellow's "Hiawatha," "Evangeline"; Whittier's "Barefoot
Boy," "Songs of Labor," "Among the Hills," and "Snow-Bound"; Hawthorne's
"Tales of the White Hills"; Holmes's "Spring"; Lowell's "Indian Summer
Reverie," "The Oak," and many more.
The literature selected for these grades has a wide scope. It is
instinct with the best Americanism. It draws from Europe at every
breath, while enjoying the freedom of the West. Social, political, and
home life and virtue are portrayed in great variety of dress. Nature
also and natural science reveal the myriad forms of beauty and utility.