THE VALUE OF CLASSICS TO THE TEACHER
In discussing the value and fruitfulness of this field of study to
children, it is impossible to forbear the suggestion of its scope and
significance for teachers. If the masters of song and expression are
able to work so strongly upon the immature minds of children, how much
deeper the influence upon the mature and thoughtful minds of teachable
teachers! They above all others should have dispositions receptive of
the best educational influences. The duties and experiences of their
daily work predispose them toward an earnest and teachable spirit. In
very many cases, therefore, their minds are wide open to the reception
of the best. And how deep and wide and many-sided is this
enfranchisement of the soul through literature!
It is a gateway to history; not, however, that castaway shell which our
text-books, in the form of a dull recital of facts, call history; but
its heart and soul, the living, breathing men and women, the source and
incentive of great movements and struggles toward the light. Literature
does not make the study of history superfluous, but it puts a purpose
into history which lies deeper than the facts, it sifts out the wheat
from the chaff, casts aside the superficial and accidental, and gets
down into the deep current of events where living causes are at work.
The "Courtship of Miles Standish," for example, is deeper and stronger
than history because it idealizes the stern and rigid qualities of the
Puritan, while John Alden and Priscilla touch a deeper universal
sympathy, and body forth in forms of beauty that pulsing human love
which antedates the Puritan and underlies all forms of religion and
society.
Illustrative cases have been given in sufficient abundance to show that
literature, among other things, has a strong political side. It grasps
with a master hand those questions which involve true patriotism. It
exalts them into ideals, and fires the hearts of the people to devotion
and sacrifice for their fulfilment.
Burke's "Oration on the American War" is, to one who has studied
American history, an astonishing confirmation of how righteous and
far-sighted were the principles for which Samuel Adams and the other
patriots struggled at the opening of the Revolution. Webster's speech at
Bunker Hill is a graphic and fervent retrospect on the past of a great
struggle, and a prophetic view of the swelling tide of individual,
social, and national well-being.
If the teacher is to interpret history to school children, he must learn
to grasp what is essential and vital; he must be able to discriminate
between those events which are trivial and those of lasting concern. The
study of our best American literature will reveal to him this
distinction, and make him a keen and comprehensive critic of political
affairs.
Barnett, in his "Common Sense in Education and Teaching" (p. 170),
says:--
"In the second place, literature provides us with historical landmarks.
We cannot be said to understand the general 'history' of a particular
time unless we know something of the thought that stirred its most
subtle thinkers, and interpreted and made articulate the spirit of the
times in which they lived. The most notable facts in the history of the
times of Edward III, of Elizabeth, and of Victoria are that Chaucer and
Shakespeare and Tennyson and their contemporaries lived and wrote.
Political history, social history, economic history, even ecclesiastical
history, are all reflected, illustrated, and interpreted by what we find
in the great works of contemporary literature."
Charles Kingsley, in his "Literary and General Essays" (p. 249), holds a
like opinion:--
"I said that the ages of history were analogous to the ages of man, and
that each age of literature was the truest picture of the history of its
day, and for this very reason English literature is the best, perhaps
the only, teacher of English history, to women especially. For it seems
to me that it is principally by the help of such an extended literary
course that we can cultivate a just and enlarged taste which will
connect education with the deepest feelings of the heart."
Literature is also a mirror that reflects many sides of social life and
usage. There is no part of a teacher's education that is so vital to his
practical success as social culture. John Locke's "Thoughts on
Education" are, in the main, an inquiry into the methods and means by
which an English gentleman can be formed. The aim of the tutor who has
this difficult task is not chiefly to give learning, to fill the mind
with information, to develop mentality, but to train the practical
judgment in harmony with gentlemanly conduct. The tutor, himself a
scholar, is to know the world, its ins and outs, its varieties of social
distinction and usage, its snares and pitfalls, its wise men and fools.
The child is to learn to look the world in the face and understand it,
to know himself and to be master of himself and of his conduct, to
appreciate other people in their moods and characters, and to adapt
himself prudently and with tact to the practical needs. The gentleman
whom Locke sets up as his ideal is not a fashion-plate figure, not a
drawing-room gallant, but a clear-headed man who understands other
people and himself, and has been led by insensible degrees to so shape
his habitual conduct as most wisely to answer his needs in the real
world. Emerson, with all his lofty idealism and unconventionalism, has
an ideal of education nearly akin to that of Locke. This social ideal
of Locke and Emerson is one that American teachers can well afford to
ponder. As a nation, we have been accustomed to think that a certain
amount of roughness and boorishness was necessary as a veil to cover the
strongest manly qualities. Smoothness and tact and polish, however
successful they may be in real life, are, theoretically at least, at a
discount. The Adamses, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Thoreau, were men
who did violence in a good many ways to social usages, and we may admire
their faults overmuch.
To the teacher who stands in the presence of thirty or fifty distinct
species of incipient men and women, social insight and culture, the
ability to appreciate each in his individual traits, his strength or
weakness, are a prime essential to good educative work.
Now, there are two avenues through which social culture is
attainable,--contact with men and women in the social environment which
envelops us all, and literature. Literature is, first of all, a
hundred-sided revelation of human conduct as springing from motive.
Irving, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Holmes, and Lowell are revealers of
humanity. Still more so are Dickens and Eliot and Shakespeare and
Goethe. To study these authors is not simply to enjoy the graphic power
of an artist, but to look into the lives of so many varieties of men and
women. They lay bare the heart and its inward promptings. Our
appreciation for many forms of life under widely differing conditions
is awakened. We come in touch with those typical varieties of men and
women whom we shall daily meet if we will but notice. It broadens one's
perceptions and sympathies, it reveals the many-sidedness of human life.
It suggests to a teacher that the forty varieties of humanity in her
schoolroom are not after one pattern, nor to be manipulated according to
a single device.
The social life that surrounds each one of us is small and limited. Our
intimate companionships are few, and we can see deeply into the inner
life of but a small portion even of those about us. The deeper life of
thought and feeling is largely covered up with conventionalities and
externalities. But in the works of the best novelists, dramatists, and
poets, we may look abroad into the whole world of time and place, upon
an infinite variety of social conditions, and we are permitted to see
directly into the inner thought and motive, the very soul of the actors.
Yet fidelity to human nature and real life is claimed to be the peculiar
merit of these great writers. By the common consent of critics,
Shakespeare is the prince of character delineators. Schlegel says of
him:--
"Shakespeare's knowledge of mankind has become proverbial; in this his
superiority is so great that he has justly been called the master of the
human heart. A readiness to remark the mind's fainter and involuntary
utterances, and the power to express with certainty the meaning of these
signs, as determined by experience and reflection, constitute 'the
observer of men.'"
"After all, a man acts so because he is so. And what each man is, that
Shakespeare reveals to us most immediately; he demands and obtains our
belief, even for what is singular and deviates from the ordinary course
of nature. Never perhaps was there so comprehensive a talent for
characterization as Shakespeare. It not only grasps every diversity of
rank, age, and sex, down to the lispings of infancy; not only do the
king and the beggar, the hero and the pickpocket, the sage and the
idiot, speak and act with equal truthfulness; not only does he transport
himself to distant ages and foreign nations, and portray with the
greatest accuracy (a few apparent violations of costume excepted) the
spirit of the ancient Romans, of the French in the wars with the
English, of the English themselves during a great part of their history,
of the Southern Europeans (in the serious part of many comedies), the
cultivated society of the day, and the rude barbarism of a Norman
foretime; his human characters have not only such depth and
individuality that they do not admit of being classed under common
names, and are inexhaustible even in conception,--no, this Prometheus
not merely forms men, he opens the gates of the magical world of
spirits."
What is true of Shakespeare in a preeminent degree is true to a marked
extent of all the great novelists and poets.
The teacher needs to possess great versatility and tact in social
situations. A quick insight, social ease, freedom, and self-possession
are of the first importance to him. The power of sympathy, of
appreciation for others' feelings and difficulties, is wholly dependent
upon such social cultivation. Otherwise the teacher will be rude, even
uncouth and boorish in manner, producing friction and ill-will where
tact and gentleness would bring sympathy and confidence. Many people
absorb this refinement of thought and manner from the social circles
with which they mingle, and it is, of course, a smiling fortune that has
placed a teacher's early life in a happy and cultured atmosphere, where
the social sympathies and graces are absorbed almost unconsciously. But
even where the earlier conditions have been less favorable, the
opportunity for rapid social development and culture is most promising.
The numberless cases in our country in which young people, by the
strength of their energetic purpose and desire for improvement, have
raised themselves not only to superior knowledge and scholarship, but
also to that far greater refinement of social life and manner which we
call true culture,--the numberless instances of this sort are a
surprising indication of the power of education. Literature has been a
potent agent in this direction. It emancipates, it sets free, the spirit
of man. It lifts him above what is sordid and material, and gives him
those true standards of worth with which to measure all things. It
contains within itself the refining elements, the aesthetic and ethical
ideals, and, best of all, it portrays human life in all its thought,
feeling, and passion with such intensity and realistic fidelity that its
teaching power is unparalleled.
This potentiality of the better literature to produce such noble results
in the higher range of culture is dependent upon conditions. No one will
understand literature who does not study and understand ordinary life as
it surrounds him; who does not constantly draw upon his own experience
in interpreting the characters portrayed in books. No stupid or
unobservant person will be made wise through books, be they never so
choice. Even the student who works laboriously at his text-books, but
has no eye nor care for the people or doings about him, is getting only
the mechanical side of education, and is losing the better part. He who
will draw riches out of books must put his intellect and sympathy, his
whole enthusiastic better self, into them.
The indwelling virtue of great books is that they demand this intense
awakening, this complete absorption of the whole self. The mind of a
child and of a man or woman has to stretch itself to the utmost limit to
take in the message of a great writer. One feels the old barriers giving
way and the mind expanding to the conception of larger things. Speaking
of the ancient drama at Athens, Shelley says, "The imagination is
enlarged by a sympathy with pains and passions so mighty that they
distend in their conception the capacity of that by which they are
conceived."
Those who have received into the inner self the expansive energy of
noble thought and social culture, are the better qualified, from the
rich variety of the inner life, to act effectively upon the complex
conditions and forces of the outer world. The teacher whose inner life
is teeming with these rich sympathies and potent ideals will react with
greater prudence and tact upon the kaleidoscopic conditions of a school.
Practical social life and literature are not distinct modes of culture.
They are one, they interact upon each other in scores of ways. Give a
teacher social opportunities, give him the best of our literature, let
these two work their full influence upon him,--then, if he cannot become
a teacher, it is a hopeless case. Let him go to the shop, to the farm,
to the legislature; there is no place for him in the schoolroom.
Literature is also a sharp and caustic critic of his own follies or
foibles, to one who can reflect. It has a multitude of surprises by
which we are able, as Burns wished,--
"To see oursels as ithers see us."
Even the schoolmaster finds an occasional apt description of himself in
literature which it is often interesting and entertaining for him to
ponder. One of the most familiar is that of Goldsmith in "The Deserted
Village":--
"Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way
With blossomed furze unprofitably gay,
There, in his noisy mansion, skill'd to rule,
The village master taught his little school.
A man severe he was, and stern to view;
I knew him well, and every truant knew:
Well had the boding tremblers learn'd to trace
The day's disasters in his morning face;
Full well they laugh'd, with counterfeited glee,
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;
Full well the busy whisper, circling round,
Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd.
Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault.
The village all declar'd how much he knew;
'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too;
Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage,
And even the story ran that he could gauge;
In arguing, too, the parson own'd his skill,
For even though vanquish'd he could argue still;
While words of learned length and thundering sound
Amaz'd the gazing rustics ranged around;
And still they gaz'd, and still the wonder grew
That one small head could carry all he knew."
A like entertainment and suggestion of what the schoolmaster may be, as
seen by others, are furnished by Irving's Ichabod Crane. William
Shenstone's description of the schoolmistress and the school near two
hundred years ago in his native village, is very diverting. Charles
Dickens's description of schools and schoolmasters is important in the
history of England, and, like his portrayals of child life generally, of
deep pedagogical worth to teachers.
In his book, "The Schoolmaster in Literature," Mr. Skinner has done a
real service to the teaching world in bringing together, into a
convenient compilation from many sources, the literature bearing
directly upon the schoolmaster. Even the comic representations and
caricatures are valuable in calling attention to common foibles and
mannerisms, to say nothing of the more serious faults of teachers.
It is in literature, also, and in those lives and scenes from history
which literary artists have worked up, that the teacher can best develop
his own moral ideals and strengthen the groundwork of his own moral
character. The stream will not rise above its source, and a teacher's
moral influence in a school will not reach above the inspirations from
high sources which he himself has felt. Those teachers who have devoted
themselves solely to the mastery of the texts they teach, who have read
little from our best writers, are drawing upon a slender capital of
moral resource. Not even if home influences have laid a sound basis of
moral habits are these sufficient reserves for the exigencies of
teaching. The moral nature of the teacher needs constant stimulus to
upward growing, and the children need examples, ideal illustrations,
life and blood impersonations of the virtues; and literature is the
chief and only safe reservoir from which to draw them.
We have already discussed the moral value of the right books for
children. The lessons of the great works are so profound in this respect
that they offer a still wider range of study to the teacher. Even the
foremost thinkers and philosophers have found therein an inexhaustible
source of truth and wisdom.
In the Foreword to his "Great Books as Life Teachers," Newell Dwight
Hillis says, "For some reason our generation has closed its text-books
on ethics and morals, and opened the great poems, essays, and novels."
This is a remarkable statement and is the key-note to a silent but
sweeping change in education. He adds, "Doubtless for thoughtful persons
this fact argues, not a decline of interest in the fundamental
principles of right living, but a desire to study these principles as
they are made flesh and embodied in living persons." Again, "It seems
important to remember that the great novelists are consciously or
unconsciously teachers of morals, while the most fascinating essays and
poems are essentially books of aspiration and spiritual culture."
It is suggestive to note that this fundamental text is worked out in his
book by chapters on Ruskin's "Seven Lamps of Architecture," George
Eliot's "Romola," Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter," Victor Hugo's "Les
Miserables," Tennyson's "Idylls of the King," and Browning's "Saul."
This suggests a fruitful line of studies for every teacher.
Among modern essayists, Emerson, Carlyle, Ruskin, and Matthew Arnold
stand preeminent, and they are already well established among the
mightiest teachers of our age, and it may be, of many to come. Sure it
is that teachers could not do better than put themselves within earshot
of these resonant voices. Their heart-strings will vibrate and their
intellects will be stretched to a full tension, not simply by the music,
but by the truth which surges up and bursts into utterance. It is
scarcely a figure of speech to say that the lightning flashes across
their pages. The stinging rebuke of wrong, the noble ideals of
righteousness, place them among the prophets whose tongues have been
touched with fire from the altar.
Besides the historical, social, and moral tuition for teachers in
literature, there are several other important culture effects in it. The
deepest religious incentives are touched, nature in her myriad phases is
observed with the eye of the poet and scientist, and the aesthetic side
of poetry and rhythmic prose, its charm and graces of style, its music
and eloquence, work their influence upon the reader. Literature is a
harp of many strings, and happy is that teacher who has learned to
detect its tones and overtones, who has listened with pleasure to its
varied raptures, and has felt that expansion of soul which it produces.
Literature, in the sense in which we have been using it, has been called
the literature of power, the literature of the spirit. That is, it has
generative, spiritual life. It is not simple knowledge, it is knowledge
energized, charged with potency. It is knowledge into which the poet has
breathed the breath of life. The difference between bare knowledge and
the literature of power is like the difference between a perfect statue
in stone and a living, pulsing, human form.
One of the virtues of literature, therefore, is the mental stimulus, the
joy, the awakening, the intensity of thought it spontaneously calls
forth. Textbooks are usually a bore, but literature is a natural
resource even in hours of weariness. Who would dream of enlivening
leisure hours or vacation rest with text-books of grammar, or
arithmetic, or history, or science? But the poet soothes with music,
solemn or gay, according to our choice. If we go to the woods or lakes
to escape our friends, we take one of the masters of song with us. After
a day of toil and weariness, we can turn to "Evangeline," or "Lady of
the Lake," or the "Vision of Sir Launfal," and soon we are listening
to--
"The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,"
or the echo of the hunter's horn,--
"The deep-mouthed bloodhound's heavy bay
Resounded up the rocky way,
And faint, from farther distance borne,
Were heard the clanging hoof and horn."
At a time when we are not fit for the irksome and perfunctory
preparation of text-book lessons, we are still capable of receiving
abundant entertainment or hearty inspiration from Warner's "How I killed
a Bear," or Tennyson's "Enoch Arden," or "Sleepy Hollow." Literature is
recreation in its double sense. It gives rest and relief, and it builds
up.
Teachers should shake themselves free from the conviction that severe
disciplinary studies are the best part of education. They have their
well-merited place. But there are higher spiritual fountains from which
to draw. Read the lives of Scott, Macaulay, Irving, Hawthorne, and
Emerson, and discover that the things we do with the greatest inward
spontaneity and pleasure and ease are often the best.
Literature, both in prose and verse, is what the teacher needs, because
our best authors are our best teachers in their method of handling their
subjects. They know how to find access to the reader's mind by making
their ideas attractive, interesting, and beautiful. They seem to know
how to sharpen the edge of truth to render it more keen and incisive.
They drive truth deeper, so that it remains embedded in the life and
thought. Let a poet clothe an idea with strength and wing it with fancy,
and it will find its way straight to the heart. First of all, nearly
all our classic writers, especially those we use in the grades, handle
their subjects from the concrete, graphic, picturesque side. They not
only illustrate abundantly from nature and real things in life; they
nearly always individualize and personify their ideas. Virtue to a poet
is nothing unless it is impersonated. A true poet is never abstract or
dry or formal in his treatment of a subject. It is natural for a
literary artist, whether in verse or prose, to create pictures, to put
all his ideas into life forms and bring them close to the real ones in
nature. Homer's idea of wisdom is Minerva, war is Mars, strength is
Ajax, skill and prudence are Ulysses, faithfulness is Penelope. Dickens
does not talk about schoolmasters in general, but of Squeers.
Shakespeare's idea of jealousy is not a definition, not a formula, but
Othello. Those books which have enthralled the world, like "Robinson
Crusoe," "Pilgrim's Progress," "Gulliver's Travels," "Arabian Nights,"
"Evangeline," "Ivanhoe," "Merchant of Venice,"--they deal with no form
of classified or generalized knowledge; they give us no definitions,
they are scenes from real life. They stand among realities, and their
roots are down in the soil of things. They are persons hemmed in by the
close environment of facts.
This realism, this objectifying of thought, this living form of
knowledge, is characteristic of all great writers in prose or verse.
The novelist, the romancer, the poet, the orator, and even the essayist,
will always put the breath of reality into his work by an infusion of
concreteness, of graphic personification. The poet's fancy, building out
of the abundant materials of sense-experience, is what gives color and
warmth to all his thoughts. Strong writers make incessant use of figures
of speech. Their thought must clothe itself with the whole panoply of
imagery and graphic representation in order to be efficient in the
warfare for truth.
What a lesson for the teacher! What models upon which to develop his
style of thinking! If the teaching profession and its work could be
weighed in the balance, the scale would fall on the side of the abstract
with a heavy thud. Not that object lessons will save us. They only
parody the truth. For the object lesson as a separate thing we have no
use at all. But to ground every idea and every study in realism, to pass
up steadily through real objects and experience to a perception of
truths which have wide application, to science--this is the true
philosophy of teaching.
The classic writers lead us even one grand step beyond realism. The
fancy builds better than the cold reason. It adorns and ennobles thought
till it becomes full-fledged for the flight toward the ideal.
As the poet, standing by the sea-shore, ponders the life that has been
in the now empty shell washed up from the deep, his fancy discovers in
the shell a resemblance to human life and destiny, and he cries:--
"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!"
Is it possible that one could fall under the sway of the poets and
artists, appropriate their images and fruitful style of thought, be
wrought upon by their fancies, and still remain dull and lifeless and
prosaic in the class-room? No wonder that true literature has been
called the literature of power, as distinguished from the literature of
knowledge (supplementary readers, pure science, information books,
etc.). The lives and works of our best writers contain an expansive
spiritual energy, which, working into the mind of a teacher, breaks the
shell of mechanism and formality. The artist gives bright tints and
colors to ideas which would otherwise be faded and bleached.
The study of the best literature adapted to children in each age is a
fruitful form of psychology and child study. The series of books
selected for the different grades is supposed to be adapted to the
children at each period. The books which suit the temper and taste of
children in primary grades are peculiar in quality, and fit those pupils
better than older ones. In intermediate classes the boyhood spirit,
which delights in myth, physical deeds of prowess, etc., shows itself,
and many of the stories, ballads, and longer poems breathe this spirit.
In grammar grades the expanding, maturing minds of children leap forward
to the appreciation of more complex and extended forms of literature
which deal with some of the great problems of life more seriously, as
"Snow-Bound," "Evangeline," "Roger de Coverley," "Merchant of Venice,"
etc.
Any poem or story which is suited to pupils of the common school may
generally be used in several grades. Hawthorne's "Wonder Book," for
instance, may be used anywhere from the third to the eighth grade by a
skilful teacher. But for us the important question is, to what age of
children is it best adapted? Where does its style of thought best fit
the temper of the children? The eighth grade may read it and get
pleasure and good from it, but it does not come up to the full measure
of their needs. Children of the third grade cannot master it with
sufficient ease, but in the latter part of the fourth or first part of
the fifth grade it seems to exactly suit the wants, that is, the
spiritual wants, of the children. It will vary, of course, in different
schools and classes. Now, it is a problem for our serious consideration
to determine what stories to use and just where each belongs, within
reasonable limits. Let us inquire where the best culture effect can be
realized from each book used, where it is calculated to work its best
and strongest influence. To accomplish this result it is necessary to
study equally the temper of the children and the quality of the books,
to seek the proper food for the growing mind at its different stages.
This is not chiefly a matter of simplicity or complexity of language.
Our readers are largely graded by the difficulty of language. But
literature should be distributed through the school grades according to
its power to arouse thought and interest. Language will have to be
regarded, but as secondary. Look first to the thought material which is
to engage children's minds, and then force the language into subservice
to that end. The final test to determine the place of a selection in the
school course must be the experiment of the class-room. We may exercise
our best judgment beforehand, and later find that a classic belongs one
or two grades higher or lower than we thought.
We really need some comprehensive principle upon which to make the
selection of materials as adapted to the nature (psychology) of
children. The theory of the culture epochs of race history as parallel
to child development offers at least a suggestion. A few of the great
periods of history seem to correspond fairly well to certain epochs of
child growth. The age of folk-lore and the fairy tale is often called
the childhood of the race; the predominance of the imagination and of
the childlike interpretation of things in nature reminds us strikingly
of the fancies of children. We find also that the literary remains of
this epoch in the world's history, the fairy tales, are the peculiar
delight of children from four to six. In like manner the heroic age and
its literary products seem to fascinate the children of nine to eleven
years. In connection with this theory it is observed that the greatest
poets of the world in different countries are those who have given
poetic form and expression to the typical ideas and characters of
certain epochs of history. So Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, Scott. The
best literature is, much of it, the precipitate of the thought and life
of historical epochs in race development. Experiment has shown that much
of this literature is peculiarly adapted to exert strong culture
influence upon children. Emerson, in his "Essay on History," says: "What
is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek history,
letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods, from the Heroic or Homeric
age down to the domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans, four or
five centuries later? What but this, that every man passes personally
through a Grecian period?" And again: "The student interprets the age of
chivalry by his own age of chivalry, and the days of maritime adventure
and circumnavigation by quite parallel miniature experiences of his own.
To the sacred history of the world, he has the same key. When the voice
of a prophet out of the deeps of antiquity merely echoes to him a
sentiment of his infancy, a prayer of his youth, he then pierces to the
truth through all the confusion of tradition and the caricature of
institutions." The literary heritage of the chief culture epochs is
destined therefore to enter as a powerful agent in the education of
children in our schools, and the place of a piece of literature in
history suggests at least its place in child culture.
The study of these literary masterpieces, the choicest of the world,
while it offers a broad perspective of history, also enters deep into
the psychology of children and their periods of growth and change. What
a study for the teacher!
Suppose now that a wise selection of the best products for school use
had been made. The books for each grade would respond not only to the
ability but to the characteristic temper and mental status of children
at that age. The books would arouse the full compass of the children's
mental power, their emotional as well as intellectual capacities, their
sympathy, interest, and feeling. The teacher who is about to undertake
the training of these children may not know much about children of that
age. How can she best put herself into an attitude by which she can meet
and understand the children on their own ground? Not simply their
intellectual ability and standing, but, better still, their impulses and
sympathies, their motives and hearts? Most people, as they reach
maturity and advance in years, have a tendency to grow away from their
childhood. Their purposes have changed from those of childhood to those
of mature life. They are no longer interested in the things that
interest children. Such things seem trivial and even incomprehensible to
them.
Now the person who is preparing to be a teacher should grow back into
his childhood. Without losing the dignity or purpose of mature life, he
should allow the memories and sympathies of childhood to revive. The
insight which comes from companionship and sympathy with children he
needs in order to guide them with tact and wisdom.
The literature which belongs to any age of childhood is perhaps the best
key to the spirit and disposition of that period. The fact that it is of
permanent worth makes it a fit instrument with which the teacher may
reawaken the dormant experiences and memories of that period in his own
life. The teacher who finds it impossible to reawaken his interest in
the literature that goes home to the hearts of children has _prima
facie_ evidence that he is not qualified to stimulate and guide their
mental movements. The human element in letters is the source of its deep
and lasting power; the human element in children is the centre of their
educative life, and he who disregards this and thinks only of
intellectual exercises is a poor machine. The literature which children
appreciate and love is the key to their soul life. It has power to
stimulate teacher and pupil alike, and is therefore a common ground
where they may both stand and look into each other's faces with
sympathy.
This is not so much the statement of a theory as a direct inference from
many observations. It has been observed repeatedly, in different schools
under many teachers, that the "Lady of the Lake," "Vision of Sir
Launfal," "Sleepy Hollow," or "Merchant of Venice" have had an
astonishing power to bring teacher and children into near and cherished
companionship. It is not possible to express the profound lessons of
life that children get from the poets. In the prelude to Whittier's
"Among the Hills," what a picture is drawn of the coarse, hard lot of
parents and children in an ungarnished home, "so pinched and bare and
comfortless," while the poem itself, a view of that home among the hills
which thrift and taste and love have made,--
"Invites the eye to see and heart to feel
The beauty and the joy within their reach;
Home and home loves and the beatitudes
Of nature free to all."
To study such poetry in its effect upon children is a monopoly of the
rich educational opportunity which falls naturally into the hands of
teachers. Psychology, as derived from text-books, is apt to be cold and
formal; that which springs from the contact of young minds with the
fountains of song lives and breathes. If a teacher desires to fit
herself for primary instruction, she can do nothing so well calculated
to bring herself _en rapport_ with little children as to read the
nursery rhymes, the fairy tales, fables, and early myths. They bring her
along a charming road into the realm of childlike fancies and
sympathies, which were almost faded from her memory. The same door is
opened through well-selected literature to the hearts of children in
intermediate and grammar grades.
The sense of humor is cultivated in literature better than elsewhere. In
fact, no other study contains much material of humorous quality. A quick
sense of it is deemed by many of the best judges an indispensable
quality in teachers. Not that a teacher needs to be a diverting
story-teller or entertainer, if only he has an indulgent patience and
kindly sympathy for those who enjoy telling stories. There is a certain
hearty, wholesome social spirit in the enjoyment of humor which diffuses
itself like sunlight through a school. It contains an element of
kindliness, humanity, and good fellowship which lubricates all the
machinery and takes away unnecessary stiffness and gravity in conduct.
Best of all it is a sort of mental balance-wheel for the teacher, which
enables him to see the ludicrous phases of his own behavior, should he
be inclined to run to foolish extremes in various directions. Much of
our best literature abounds in humorous elements. Lowell, Holmes,
Shakespeare, and Irving are spontaneously rich in this quality of ore,
and it is just as well perhaps to cultivate our appreciation in these
richer veins as in shallow and unproductive ones elsewhere.
Schlegel says of Shakespeare, his "comic talent is equally wonderful
with that he has shown in the pathetic and tragic; it stands at an equal
elevation and possesses equal extent and profundity.... Not only has he
delineated many kinds of folly, but even of sheer stupidity he has
contrived to give a most diverting and entertaining picture."
The inability to appreciate the ludicrous and farcical, and especially
of witty conceits, is felt to be a mark of dulness and heaviness, and in
dealing with children and young people a versatile perception of the
humorous is very helpful. Many of the pupils possess this quality of
humor in a marked degree, and the teacher should at least have
sufficient insight to appreciate this peculiar bent of mind and turn of
wit.
A brief retrospect will make plain the profitableness of classics to the
teacher. They show a deep perspective into the spirit and inner workings
of history. The social life and insight developed by the study of
literature give tact and judgment to understand and respect the
many-sided individualities found in every school. The teacher's own
moral and aesthetic and religious ideals are constantly lifted and
strengthened by the study of classics. Such reading is a recreation and
relief even in hours of weariness and solitude. It is an expansive
spiritual power rather than a burden. Literary artists are also a
standing illustration of the graphic, spirited manner of handling
subjects. Finally, this rich and varied realm of classic thought and
expression is the doorway by which we enter again into the moods and
impulses and fancies of childhood. We thus revive our own youth and fit
ourselves for a quick and appreciative perception of children's needs.
It is the best kind of child study.
* * * * *
A few of the books which are suggestive, and illustrate the value of
literature for teachers, and in some cases even lay out lines of
profitable and stimulative reading, are as follows:--
Newell Dwight Hillis. Great Books and Life Teachers. (Fleming H.
Revell Co.)
George Willis Cooke. Poets and Problems. (Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.)
The Schoolmaster in Literature. (The American Book Co.)
Representative Essays. (G. P. Putnam's Sons.)
Hamilton Wright Mabie. Books and Culture. (Dodd, Mead, & Co.)
James Baldwin. The Book Lover. (A. C. McClurg & Co.)
The Schoolmaster in Comedy and Satire. (The American Book Co.)
Emerson's Essays.
Schlegel's Dramatic Art and Literature. (Bohn's Libraries.)
Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, and Seven Lamps of Architecture.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Book and Heart. (Harper & Brothers.)
Carlyle's Heroes and Hero-Worship.
Counsel upon the Reading of Books. Van Dyke. (Houghton, Mifflin,
& Co.)
Literary and General Essays. Charles Kingsley. (Macmillan & Co.)