must approach it through some personal experience. The teacher who is
endeavoring to assist him must therefore discover what in the child's
range of knowledge may best serve as a point of departure. In all
education, no less than in formal argument, a start can be made only
from a point of agreement, from something as evident to the student as
it is to the instructor. Consciously or unconsciously every teacher
acts upon this principle, from the early lessons in addition which
begin with the obvious agreement produced by the sight of the blocks
or apples or beads which are before the child. In literature, too, the
fact is commonly acted upon, if not so universally formulated. If young
pupils are having "The Village Blacksmith" read to them, the teacher
instinctively starts with the fact that they may have seen a blacksmith
at work at his forge. The difficulty is that teachers who naturally do
this in simple poems fail to see that the same principle holds good of
literature of a higher order, and that the more complex the problem,
the greater the need of being sure of this beginning with some actual
experience.
With this finding some safe and substantial foundation in the pupil's
own experience is connected the necessity of speaking of literature,
as of anything else one tries to teach, in the language of the class
addressed. Of all that we say to our pupils very little if any of all
our careful wisdom really impresses them or remains in their minds
except that portion which we have managed to phrase in terms of their
language and so to put that it appeals to emotions of their own young
lives. They can have no conception of the characters in fiction or
poetry except in so far as they are able to consider these shadows as
moving in their own world. They should be told to make up their minds
about Lady Macbeth, or Robin Hood, or Dr. Primrose as if these were
persons of their own community about whom they had learned the facts
set forth in the books read. They cannot completely realize this, but
they get hold of the fictitious character only so far as they are able
to do it. They will at least come to have a conception that people they
see in the flesh and those they meet in literature are of the same
stuff fundamentally, and should be judged by the same laws. They will
receive the benefit, moreover, whether they realize it or not, of being
helped by fiction to understand real life, and they will be in the
right way of judging books by experience.
The principle of speaking to pupils only in the language of their own
experience is of universal application, but it is to be applied with
common sense. Nothing is more unfortunate in teaching than to have
pupils feel that they are being talked down to or that too great an
effort is being made to bring instruction to their level. A friend
once told me of a professor who in the days of the first period of
tennis enthusiasm in this country made so great an effort to take all
his illustrations from the game that the class regarded the matter a
standing joke. Yet if care be exercised it is not difficult to mix
with the childish, the familiar, and the commonplace, the dignified,
the unusual, and the suggestive. Starting with a daily experience the
teacher may go on to states of the same emotion which are far greater
and higher than can have come into the actual life of the child, but
which are imaginatively intelligible and possible because although they
differ in degree they are the same in kind. Nothing is lost of the
dignity of a play of Shakespeare's dealing with ambition if the teacher
starts with ambition to be at the head of the school, to lead the
baseball nine, or to excel in any sport; but from this the child should
be led on through whatever instances he may know in history, and in
the end made to feel that the ambition of Macbeth is an emotion he has
felt, even though it is that emotion carried to its highest terms. So
the small and the great are linked together, and the use of the little
does not appear undignified because it has been a stepping-stone to the
great.
The aim in teaching literature is to make it a part of the student's
intimate and actual life; a warm, human, personal matter, and not a
thing taken up formally and laid aside as soon as outside pressure is
removed. To this end is the appeal made to the pupil's experience,
and to this end is he allowed to make his own estimates, to formulate
his own likes and dislikes. Any teacher, it must be remembered, is
for the scholar in the position of a special pleader. The student
regards it as part of the pedagogic duty to praise whatever is taught,
and instinctively distrusts commendation which he feels may be only
formal and official. He forms his own opinion independently or from
the judgment of his peers,—the conclusions of his classmates. He
may repeat glibly for purposes of recitation or of examination the
criticisms of the teacher, but he is likely to be little influenced
by them unless they are confirmed by the voice of his fellows and his
own taste. If young people do not reason this out, they are never
uninfluenced by it; and this condition of things must be accepted by
the teacher.
It follows that it is practically never wise to praise a book
beforehand. The proper position in presenting to the class any work for
study is that it is something which the class are to read together with
a view of discovering what it is like. Of course the teacher assumes
that it has merit or it would not be taken up, but he also assumes
that individually the members of the class may or may not care for it.
The logical and safe method is to set the students to see if they
can discover why good judges have regarded the work as of merit. The
teacher should say in effect: "I do not know whether you will care for
this or not; but I hope you will be able to see what there is in it to
have made it notable."
When the study of poem or play is practically over, when the pupils
have done all that can be reasonably expected of them in the way of
independent judgment, the teacher may show as many reasons for praising
it as he feels the pupils will understand. He must, however, be honest
in letting them like it or not. He must recognize that it is better
for a lad honestly to be bored by every masterpiece of literature
in existence than to stultify his mind by the reception of merely
conventional opinions got by rote.
Much the same thing might be said of the drawing of a moral, except
that it is not easy to speak with patience of those often well-meaning
but gravely mistaken pedagogues who seem bound to impress upon
their scholars that literature is didactic. In so far as a book is
deliberately didactic, it is not literature. It may be artistic in
spite of its enforcing a deliberate lesson, but never because of this.
My own instinct would be, and I am consistent enough to make it pretty
generally my practice, to conceal from a class as well as I can any
deliberate drawing of morals into which a writer of genius may have
fallen. It is like the fault of a friend, and is to be screened from
the public as far as honesty will permit. Certainly it should never be
paraded before the young, who will not reason about the matter, but are
too wholesome by nature and too near to primitive human conditions not
to distrust an offering of intellectual jelly which obviously contains
a moral pill.
Morals are as a rule drawn by teachers who feel that they must teach
something, and something tangible. They themselves lack the conception
of any office of art higher than moralizing, and they deal with
literature accordingly. They are unable to appreciate the fact that the
most effective influence which can be brought to bear upon the human
mind is never the direct teaching of the preacher or the moralizer,
but the indirect instruction of events and emotions. Personally I have
sufficient modesty, moreover, to make me hesitate to assume that I can
judge better than a master artist how far it is well to go in drawing
a moral. If the man of genius has chosen not to point to a deliberate
lesson, I am far from feeling inclined to take the ground that I know
better, and that the sermon should be there. When Shakespeare, or
Coleridge, or Browning feels that a vivid transcript of life should
be left to work out its own effect, far from me be the presumption to
consider the poet wrong, or to try to piece out his magnificent work
with trite moralizing.
The tendency to abuse children with morals is as vicious as it
is widespread. It is perhaps not unconnected with the idea that
instruction and improvement must alike come through means not in
themselves enjoyable. It is the principle upon which an old New
England country wife rates the efficacy of a drug by its bitterness.
We all find it hard to realize that as far as literature, at least, is
concerned, the good it does is to be measured rather by the pleasure
it gives. If the children entirely and intelligently delight in it, we
need bother about no morals, we need—as far as the question of its
value in the training of the child's mind goes—have no concern about
examinations. Art is the ministry of joy, and literature is art or it
is the most futile and foolish thing ever introduced into the training
of the young.
VI
PRELIMINARY WORK
It will not always do to plunge at once into a given piece of
literature, for often a certain amount of preliminary work is needed
to prepare the mind of the pupil to receive the effect intended by the
author. For convenience I should divide the teaching of literature into
four stages:
Preliminary;
Inspirational;
Educational;
Examinational.
The division is of course arbitrary, but it is after all one which
comes naturally enough in actual work. One division will not
infrequently pass into another, and no one could be so foolish as
to suppose literature is to be taught by a cut and dried mechanical
process of any sort. The division is convenient, however, at least for
purposes of discussion; and no argument should be needed to prove that
in many cases the pupil cannot even read intelligently the literature
he is supposed to study until he has had some preparatory instruction.
The vocabulary of any particular work must first be taken into account.
We do not ask a child to read a poem until we suppose him to have by
every-day use become familiar with the common words it contains. We
should remember that the poet in writing has assumed that the reader is
equally familiar with any less common words which may be used. It is
certainly not to be held that the writer intends that in the middle of
a flowing line or at a point where the emotion is at its highest, the
reader shall be bothered by ignorance of the meaning of a term; that
he shall be obliged to turn to notes to look up definitions, shall be
plunged into a puddle of derivations, allied meanings, and parallel
passages such as are so often prepared by the ingenious editors of
school texts. These things are well enough in their place and way; but
no author ever intended his work to be read by any such process, and
since literature depends so largely on the production of a mood, such
interruptions are nothing less than fatal to the effect.
I remember as a boy sitting at the feet of an elder sister who was
reading to me in English from a French text. At the very climax of
the tale, when the heroine was being pursued down a wild ravine by a
bandit, the reader came to an adjective which she could not translate.
With true New England conscientiousness she began to look it up in
the dictionary; but I could not bear the delay. I caught the lexicon
out of her hands, and without having even seen the French or knowing
a syllable of that language, cried out: "Oh, I know that word! It
means 'blood-boltered.' Did he catch her?" She abandoned the search,
and in all the horror of the picturesque Shakespearean epithet the
bandit dashed on, to be encountered by the hero at the next turn of
the romantic ravine. I had at the moment, so far as I can remember,
no consideration of the exact truth of my statement. I simply could
not bear that the emotion of the crisis should be interrupted by that
bothersome search for an exact equivalent. The term 'blood-boltered'
fitted the situation admirably, and I thrust it in, so that we might
hurry forward on the rushing current of excitement. This, as I
understand it, is the fashion in which children should take literature.
Few occasions, perhaps, are likely to call for epithets so lurid as
that in which Macbeth described the ghost of Banquo, but the spirit of
the thing read should so carry the reader forward that he cannot endure
interruption.
When work must be done with glossary and notes in order that the
text may be easily and properly understood, this should be taken as
straightforward preliminary study. It should be made as agreeable
as possible, but agreeable for and in itself. When I say agreeable
for itself, I mean without especial reference to the text for which
preparation is being made. The history of words, the growth and
modification of meanings, the peculiarities and relations of speech,
may always be made attractive to an intelligent class; and since here
and throughout all study of literature students are to be made to do
as much of the actual work as possible, this part is simple.
The amount of time given to such learning of the vocabulary might
at first seem to be an objection to the method. In the first place,
however, there is an actual economy of time in doing all this at first
and at once, thus getting it out of the way, and saving the waste
of constant interruptions in going over the text; in the second, it
affords a means of making this portion of the work actually interesting
in itself and valuable for its relation to the study of language in
general; and in the third place it both fixes meanings in mind and
allows the reading of the author with some sense of the effect he
designed to give by the words he employed.
It is hardly necessary to say that in this matter of taking up the
vocabulary beforehand many teachers, perhaps even most teachers, will
not agree with me. The other side of the question is very well put in
a leaflet by Miss Mary E. Litchfield, published by the New England
Association of Teachers in English:
My pupils, I find, can work longer and harder on "Macbeth" and
"Hamlet," with constantly increasing interest, than on any
other masterpieces suited to school use. Just because these
dramas are so stimulating, the pupils have the patience to
struggle with the difficulties of the text. In general they
feel only a languid interest in word-puzzles such as delight
the student of language; for instance, the expression, "He
doesn't know a hawk from a handsaw," might fail to arouse their
curiosity. But when Hamlet says: "I am but mad north-north
west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw,"
they are on the alert; they really care to know what he means
and why he has used this peculiar expression. Thus word-study
which might be mere drudgery is rendered interesting by the
human element in the play—the element which, in my opinion,
should always be kept well in the foreground.
A large number of teachers, many of them, very likely, of experience
greater than mine, will agree with this view. I am not able to do so
because I believe we should know the language before we try to read;
but I at least hold that the first principle in any successful teaching
is that a teacher shall follow the method which he finds best adapted
to his own temperament. For the instructor who is convinced that the
habit of taking up difficulties of language as they are met in actual
reading, to take them up then is perhaps the only effective way of
doing things. It seems to me, however, a little like sacrificing the
literature to a desire to make teaching the vocabulary easier. It is
very likely a simpler way of arousing interest in difficulties of
language; but in teaching literature the elucidation of obscure words
and phrases is of interest or value simply for the sake of the effect
of the text, and I hold that to this effect, and to this effect as a
whole, everything else should be subordinate. Each teacher must decide
for himself what is the proper method, but I insist that no author
ever wrote sincerely without assuming that his vocabulary was familiar
to his audience beforehand. Certainly I am not able to feel that it
is wise to interrupt any first reading with anything save perhaps the
briefest possible explanations, comments that are so short as not to
break the flow of the work as a whole.
The first reading of a narrative of any sort, it may surely be said,
is chiefly a matter of making the reader, and especially the childish
reader, acquainted with the story. Since little real study can be
accomplished while interest is concentrated on the plot, it may be wise
for the teacher to have a first reading without any more attention to
the difficulties of vocabulary than is absolutely needed to make the
story intelligible, and then to have the difficulties learned before
a second and more intelligent going over of the work as a whole. Each
teacher must decide a point of this sort according to individual
judgment and the character of the class.
In all the lower grades of school work whatever literature is given to
the children should be in diction and in phrasing so simple that very
little of this sort of preliminary work need be done. So long as what
is selected has real literary excellence it can hardly be too simple.
We constantly forget, it seems to me, how simple is the world of
children. Dr. John Brown, dear and wise soul, has justly said:
Children are long in seeing, or at least in looking at what is
above them; they like the ground, and its flowers and stones,
its "red sodgers" and lady-birds, and all its queer things;
_their world is about three feet high_, and they are more often
stooping than gazing up.
It does not follow that children are to be fed on that sort of
water-gruel which is so often vended as "juvenile literature." They
should be given the best, the work of real writers; but of this the
simplest should be chosen, and in dealing with it the children should
not be bothered with thoughts and ideas which are over their heads.
They live, it must be remembered, in a "world about three feet high,"
mentally as well as physically.
In preliminary work the first object is to remove whatever obstacles
might hinder ease and smoothness of progress in reading. Beside having
all obscure terms understood, it is well to call attention to some of
the most striking and beautiful passages in the book or poem which
is to be read. They should be taken up as detached quotations, and
the pupils made to discover or to see how and why each is good. The
pleasure of coming upon them when the text is read helps in itself; it
diminishes the strain upon the mind of the student in the effort of
comprehension, and it doubles the effect of the portions chosen. My
idea is that many fine passages may be treated almost as a part of the
vocabulary of the text; their meaning and force may be made so evident
and so attractive that when the complete play or poem is taken up a
knowledge of these bits helps greatly in securing a strong effect of
the work as a whole.
We teachers too often ignore, it is to be feared, the strain it is
to the young to understand and to feel at the same time. We fail to
recognize, indeed, how difficult it is for them—or for any one—to
_feel_ while the attention is taxed to take in the meaning of a thing;
so that in literary study we are likely to demand the impossible, the
responsiveness of the emotions while all the force of the child's mind
is concentrated upon the effort to comprehend. Whatever may be done
legitimately to lessen this stress is most desirable. The preparation
of the vocabulary, the elucidation of obscure passages obviously aids
in this; but so does the pointing out of beauties. Instead of being
bothered in the midst of the effort to take in a poem or a play as a
whole and being harassed by the need of mastering details of diction or
phrasing, the student has a pleasant sense of self-confidence in coming
upon obscure matters already conquered; and in the same way receives
both pleasure and a feeling of mastery in recognizing beauties already
familiar.
The preliminary work, besides this study of any difficulties of
vocabulary, should include whatever is needful in making clear any
difference between the point of view of the work studied and that of
the child's ordinary life.
In "The Merchant of Venice," for instance, it is necessary to make
clear the fact that the play was written for an audience to which
usury was an intolerable crime and a Jew a creature to be thoroughly
detested. The Jew-baiting of recent years in Europe helps to make
this intelligible. The point must be made, because otherwise Antonio
appears like a cad and Jessica inexcusable. The story is easily brought
home to the school-boy, moreover, by its close relation to the simplest
emotions.
The two facts that Antonio has incurred the hatred of Shylock through
his kindness to persons in trouble and that he comes within the
range of danger through raising money to aid his friend Bassanio are
so closely allied to universal human feelings and universal human
experience that it is only needful to be sure these points are clearly
perceived to have the sympathies of the class thoroughly awakened. All
this is so obvious that it is hardly necessary to say it except for the
sake of not omitting what is of so much real importance. Every teacher
understands this and acts upon it.
To include this in the preliminary work may seem a contradiction of
a previous statement that it is not wise to tell children what they
are expected to get from any given book. The two matters are entirely
distinct. What should be done is really that sort of giving of the
point of view which we so commonly and so naturally exercise in telling
an anecdote in conversation. "Of all conceited men I ever met," we say,
"Tom Brandywine was the worst. Why, once I saw him"—and so on for
the story which is thus declared to be an exposition of overweening
vanity. "See," we say to the class in effect, "you must have felt sorry
to see some kindly, honest fellow cheated just because he was too
honest to suspect the sneak that cheated him. Here is the story of a
great, splendid, honest Moor, a noble general and a fine leader, who
was utterly ruined and brought to his death in just that way." This is
not drawing a moral, and it seems to me entirely legitimate aid to the
student. It is less doing anything for them that they could and should
do than it is directing them so that they may advance more quickly and
in the right direction.
This indication of the general direction in which the mind should move
in considering a work is closely connected with what might be called
establishing the proper point of departure. This is neither more nor
less than fixing the fact of common experience in the life of the pupil
at which it seems safe and wise to begin. What has been said about
the way in which a teacher calls upon the experience of the pupils to
bring home the picture of the Village Blacksmith at his forge is an
indication of what is here meant. In teaching history to-day, with
a somewhat older grade of pupils than would be reading that poem of
Longfellow's, an instructor naturally makes vivid the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew by comparison with the reports of Jewish massacres in our
own time; and in the same line the fact that it is so short a time
since the King of Servia was assassinated, or that the present Sultan
of Turkey cemented on his crown with the blood of his brothers, may
be made to assist a class to take the point of view necessary for the
realization of the tragedy in "Macbeth." I have already spoken[83:1]
of the humbler, but perhaps even more vital way in which the vice of
ambition that is so strong a motive power in that tragedy is to be
understood by starting from the rivalry in sports, since from this so
surely intelligible emotion the mind of the boy is easily led on to the
ambition which burns to rule a kingdom. It is wise not to be afraid of
the simple. If the poem to be studied is "The Ancient Mariner," it is
well to discover what is the strangest situation in which any member of
the class has ever found himself. After inciting the rest of the pupils
to imagine what must be one's feelings in such circumstances, it is not
difficult to lead them on to understand the declaration of Coleridge
that he tried to show how a man would feel if the supernatural were
actual.