theme-work is given out. Phrases count greatly in all human affairs,
but especially in the development of children. Adults are supposed
to understand words so readily as to be free from the danger of
receiving wrong impressions from phraseology which is unfamiliar; but
whether this be true or not, certain it is that the young are often
bewildered by words and queerly affected by turns of language. The same
theme-subject may be hopelessly incomprehensible or at least unhappily
remote when stated in one way, while in another wording it is entirely
possible. The first essential is to make clear beyond all possibility
of doubt what is required, and this is to be accomplished only by using
language which the student understands. The teacher must here as in
all instruction keep constantly in mind that language that is clear
and familiar to him may be nothing less than cryptic to the class. I
remember a lad in a country school who was hopelessly bewildered when
confronted with the subject given out by his teacher: "What Character
in this Book Appeals to You Most, and on what Grounds?" yet who wrote
easily enough a very respectable theme when I said: "She only wants
you to pick out the person in the book you like best, and tell why you
like him." "Oh, is that all?" he said at first incredulously. "But that
isn't saying anything about grounds." The incident, absurd as it is, is
really typical.
I have usually found that the word "compare" will reduce most students
to mere memories, as they strive almost mechanically to reproduce
things set down in the notes of text-books. Nothing is more common than
subjects like "Compare the Characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth,"
"Compare 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso,'" and so on. The result is
generally a statement of the criticisms of the characters or works
mentioned, a statement which is a poor rehash of notes, but has of real
comparison no trace. The comparison calls for analytical powers far
beyond anything pupils are likely to have developed; and when a boy
asked me not so very long ago what a teacher expected of him when he
had been required to compare Sir Roger de Coverley and Will Honeycomb
I was forced to reply that I was utterly unable even to conjecture. I
regard the frequent appearance of theme-subjects of this sort in the
secondary schools with mingled envy and wonder: envy for the teachers
who apparently possess the power to elicit satisfactory work on these
lines, and wonder that the power to do this work seems so completely
to disappear when the pupil leaves the secondary schools.
To comment on the subjects which have actually stood upon entrance
examinations in the last half-dozen years would in the first place
be invidious, in the second would expose me to an unpleasant danger
of seeming to challenge attention to papers for which I have been
personally responsible, and in the third place would do no possible
good. A teacher with common sense can make the application of the
general principles I have stated if he choose; and he will at least
minimize the unfortunate necessity of making the written work a
preparation for examinations.
X
Memorizing is perhaps best done in connection with the last reading
of the play, but that is a mere detail. Students should be encouraged
to commit to memory the finest passages, and should be given an
opportunity of repeating them in the class with as much intelligent
effectiveness as possible. They should not, of course, be encouraged
or allowed to rant or to "spout" Shakespeare; but the teacher should
insist that at least lines be recited so that the meaning is brought
out clearly, and he should encourage the speaker to give each passage
as if it were being spoken as the expression of a distinct personal
thought.
. . . . . . . . .
As I said at the beginning of this chapter, I have not endeavored to
provide a model, but merely for the sake of suggestiveness to offer an
illustration. This is at least one way in which the study of a play
may be taken up in the secondary school. Whether it is the best way
for a given case is another matter; and I must at the risk of tiresome
iteration add that here as everywhere the highest function of the
teacher is to discover what is the best possible method not for the
world in general, but for the particular class to be dealt with at the
moment.
FOOTNOTES:
[167:1] A metal covering for the head: a helmet.
[175:1] Page 80.
[180:1] Personally I would never have a pupil recite except on his feet.
[188:1] See chapter xi.
XIV
CRITICISM
What should be used in the way of tests of the knowledge of pupils is a
puzzling question for any teacher. Like any other pedagogically natural
and necessary inquiry, it can be answered only with a repetition of the
caution that no set of hard and fast rules will apply to all schools or
to all classes. Students themselves, however, would often be perplexed
if they were not given definite tasks to perform, definite questions to
answer, definite facts to memorize. In acquiring the vocabulary needed
for the reading of a play both teacher and pupil feel with satisfaction
that legitimate because tangible work is being done; and for either
it is hard to appreciate the fact that the essential thing in the
study of literature is too intangible to be tested or measured by
specific standards. In what I have called the inspirational treatment
of literature both are likely to feel as if a vacation is being taken
from real work, since the impression is general that the only method of
keeping within the limits of useful educational progress is dependent
upon the accomplishing of concrete tasks.
The need of fitting students for examinations is generally allowed in
practice to answer the question what shall be done. I have already
said that I have personally little faith in the ultimate value of
much of the drill thus imposed, and it is hardly to be supposed that
any intelligent teacher could be satisfied to let matters rest here.
Certainly a pupil who graduates from the high school should have some
power of criticising intelligently any book which comes into his hands,
and of forming estimates of diction, general form, and to a less extent
even of style. His criticism is necessarily incomplete; but it should
be genuine and sound as far as it goes. Such a result is not dependent
upon the power of passing examinations, but is chiefly secured by
precisely that training in appreciation which is least formal and may
easily appear farthest from practice in criticism.
Some actual and definite criticism, however, is legitimately a part of
the school-work; and concerning this certain things present themselves
to my mind as obvious. In the first place criticism is of no value, but
rather is harmful, if it fails to be genuine. From this follows the
deduction that no criticism can profitably be required until the child
is old enough to form an opinion, and that at no stage should comments
be asked which are beyond the child's intellectual development. In the
early stages criticism is necessarily genuine in proportion as it is
personal; and it must have become entirely easy and natural before it
can safely be made at all theoretic.
In the early stages of the use of literature in education, as has
been said already, the aim is to help the child to enjoy, and to
understand so that enjoyment may be inevitable. This should normally be
done in the home, but since in a large number of cases in the common
schools the effects of home training in literature are so lamentably
wanting, the teacher must in most cases undertake to begin at the very
beginning. So far as criticism goes, the early stages are of course
merely the rudimentary likings or dislikings, and the encouragement
of expression of such tastes. Following this comes naturally the
putting into word of reasons for preferences. This must be done with
simplicity, in the homeliest and most unconventional manner, and above
all with no hint to the child that he is doing anything so large as to
"criticise." It is precisely at this stage that children are most in
danger of contracting the habit of repeating parrot-like the opinions
of their elders. All of us have to begin life by receiving the views of
adults, and we are all—except in the rare instances of extraordinary
geniuses, who need not be much considered here—eager to conceal lack
of knowledge by glib repetitions of the ideas of others. To force young
pupils to give opinions when they have none of their own to give is to
repeat the mistake which Wordsworth notes in his "Lesson for Fathers."
The child in the poem unthinkingly declared that he preferred his new
home to the old. His father insists upon a reason, and the poor little
fellow, having none, is forced into the lie:
"At Kilve there is no weathercock,
And that's the reason why."
In the lower grades the thing which may well and wisely be done is to
accustom the children to literature and to literary language. If pupils
come to the upper grades and show that this has not been done, the
teacher still has it to do, just as he must teach them the alphabet or
the multiplication-table if they arrive without the knowledge of these
essentials to advanced work. This is the only safe foundation upon
which work may rest, and although to acquire it consumes the time which
should be put on more elaborate study, that study cannot be soundly
done until the rudimentary preparation is well mastered. Criticism must
be postponed until the pupil is prepared for it.
Criticism, whenever it come, must begin simply, and it must be
connected with the actual life and experience of the child. We are
constantly endangering success in teaching by being unwilling to stop
at the limits of the possible. Boys and girls will be frank about what
they read if they are once really convinced that frankness is what is
expected and desired. They are constantly, if not always consciously,
on the watch for what the teacher wishes them to say. Whatever
encourages them to think for themselves and to state that thought
unaffectedly and freely is what is educationally valuable, and this
only.
Opinions concerning characters in tales perhaps do as well as anything
for the beginning of criticism in classes. A teacher may say to a
pupil: "Suppose you had known Silas Marner, what would you have thought
of him?" The child is easily led to perceive the difference between
seeing or knowing such a man in real life, with its limited chances
of any knowledge of character, of the past history of the weaver, of
his secret thoughts, or of his feelings, and knowing him from the book
which gives all these details so fully. The question then becomes:
"Suppose you had in some way found out about him all that the novel
tells, what would you have felt?" The teacher will easily detect and
should with the gentlest firmness and the firmest gentleness suppress
any conventional answers. The young girl who with glib conventionality
declares that Silas was a noble character whom she pities because of
the way in which he was misunderstood may be questioned whether if
she had lived in Raveloe she would have seen more than the homely,
unsocial stranger, and whether, even had she known all that was
concealed under his homely life, she could have held out against his
general unpopularity. She is forced to think when she is asked whether
among those who live around her may not be men and women whose lives
are as pathetic and as misjudged as was that of the weaver. Children
have ideas about the personages in the stories they hear or read, and
it is only necessary to encourage, in each pupil according to his
temperament, first the formulating of these clearly and then the frank
stating of them.
In all this sort of criticism one thing which should be sedulously
avoided is any appearance of drawing a moral. Deliberately to draw a
moral is almost inevitably to defeat any lesson which the tale might
enforce if it is left to make its own effect. The point to be aimed at
here is not to turn the story into a sermon, but to make it as close
to the individual life of the child as is possible. The difference is
in essence that between being told a thing and experiencing it. Once
this relation is established, the child feels an emotional share in the
matter such as can be created by no amount of sermonizing. It may be
doubted if any genuine child ever drew a moral spontaneously, and in
all this work spontaneity is the beginning of wisdom.
After the pupil has come to have some notion, more or less clear
according to his own mental development, of what the personages in a
story or a play are like, he easily goes on to determine the relation
of one event to another, the interrelation between the separate parts
of the work. He should be able to tell in a general way at least what
influence one character has upon another, and of the responsibility of
each in the events of the narrative.
These opinions should as much as possible be put into speech before
being written. The subject should be talked out, however, in a manner
so sincere and straightforward as to make conventionality impossible.
Students must be held rigorously to honest and simple expression of
real beliefs and feelings. In every class, and perhaps especially
among girls, are likely to be some who will surely repeat conventional
phrases. Children pick up set phrases with surprising ease, and will
offer them whenever they have reason to believe such counterfeit will
be received instead of real coin. These shams are easily recognized,
and they should be mercilessly dealt with, almost anything except
sarcasm, that weapon which is forbidden to the teacher, being
legitimate against such cant. The student who repeats a set phrase
is usually effectually disposed of by a request to explain, to make
clear, and to prove; so that the habit of meaningless repetition cannot
grow unless the teacher is insensitive to it. The genuine ideas of the
pupils may be developed and put into word in the class, and afterwards
the writing out will involve getting them into order and logical
sequence.
It may be objected that by this process each scholar will borrow ideas
from what he hears said in the class. This is in reality no serious
drawback to the method. If the individuals are trained to think for
themselves, each will judge the views which are presented in class, and
will make them his own by shaping and modifying them. In any case the
danger of a student's getting too many ideas is not large, and those
he gets from his peers, his classmates, are much more likely to appeal
to him and to remain in his mind than any which he culls from books.
The notions will sometimes be crude, but they will be so corrected and
discussed in recitation that they cannot be essentially false.
Any criticism which is received from pupils, whether spoken or written,
must first of all be intelligent. Sound common sense is the only safe
basis for any comment, and the higher the grade of a work of literature
imaginatively the more easy is it to treat it in a common-sense spirit.
Pupils should be made to feel not only that they have a right to any
opinion of their own on what they read, but that they are expected
to have one; and that this opinion may be of any nature whatever,
so long as they can justify it by sound reasons. Still farther than
this, they should be allowed freely to cherish tastes for which they
cannot give formal justification—provided they can show a reasonable
appreciation of the real qualities of the work they like or dislike.
In the higher regions of imaginative work the power of analysis of the
most able critic may fail; and it is manifestly idle to expect from
school-children exhaustive criticism of high things which yet they may
feel deeply.
Since it is of so much importance that all comment and criticism shall
be sincere, care must be taken to keep work within limits which make
sincerity possible. Students must not be required to perform tasks
which are in the nature of things impossible. To push beyond dealing
with comparatively simple matters in a frank and direct manner, is
inevitably to encourage the use of conventional phrases and to replace
sincerity with cant.
A nice question connects itself with the determination of how much it
is proper and wise to require of children: it is how much farther it
is well to call upon them to criticise literature than we should ask
them to comment on life. We need to know what we are doing, and though
an examination of the character and motives of a criminal in a book
is not the same thing as would be this sort of criticism applied to a
flesh and blood neighbor, the two processes are the same in essence.
The better the teacher succeeds in arousing the imagination of the
pupil, moreover, the more closely the two approach. We should be sure
that we are doing well in requiring of the young, who would not and
should not be encouraged to dwell on actual crime and suffering, that
they produce original opinions upon these things as represented in
fiction.
It is of course to be allowed that no teaching can make fictions vital
and real in exactly the same way as is that which is known actually to
have happened. An imaginative child vitalizes the story which touches
him, but does not bring it home to himself as he would occurrences
within the circle of his own experience. It may be urged that by
encouraging him to analyze sin in the comparatively remote world of
fancy we give him a chance to perceive its moral hatefulness without
that distrust of his fellows which might come if he were forced to
learn the lesson from the harsher happenings of life; and that in books
the knowledge of character and circumstance is so much fuller than it
is likely to be in experience that he is able to see more clearly.
The fact remains, however, that we should hardly expect or desire a
lucid and reasonable estimate of the late King and Queen of Servia
from the school-children who are being made to write laborious reams
on the motives and the character of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth; that we
should be shocked at finding boys and girls considering in real life
occurrences like the seduction of Olivia Primrose, or suspicions like
those Gareth entertained of Lynette. We certainly cannot afford to
be prurient, or to confine the young to goody-goody books. They may
generally be safely trusted, it seems to me, to read any tale or poem
of first-class merit, although its subject were as painful as that of
"Œdipus." They will receive it as they receive facts of life told
by a wholesome-minded person, often with very little real perception
of the darkest and most sinister side. It will be as it was with young
Copperfield when he read Fielding's masterpiece and took delight in
the hero, "a child's Tom Jones, a harmless creature." When it comes to
the discussion of motives, of character, of black events in fiction,
the case is different. The child is forced to take a new attitude; to
accumulate the opinions of his elders, to view life from their more
sophisticated point of view; and inevitably to receive a fresh, and not
always a desirable insight into evil. I am not inclined to dogmatize on
this point, and touch upon it chiefly for the sake of suggesting that
teachers may do well to keep it a little in mind. Each case, it seems
to me, must be decided upon its own merit, and I at least have no
arbitrary rules to lay down. Of one thing, however, I am sure, and that
is that whatever is taken up at all should be treated with absolute and
fearless frankness.
All criticism of diction, style, or whatever belongs to literary
workmanship necessarily comes late. In the secondary schools I believe
very little can profitably be done in this line at all. Of this I
shall speak later in connection with the study of workmanship, but
here I may say that I suppose most teachers to recognize the obvious
absurdity of such questions about metres and metrical effects as are
given on page 43. That they should be gravely proposed in a book of
advice is indication that somebody believes in them; but any class
of students with which I have ever had to deal would be reduced to
mechanical repetition of cant conventionality by the bare sight of such
interrogations.
One thing which is of importance is the need of encouraging pupils to
judge of any work as a whole. It is so much easier to deal with details
than with a complete work that constantly students leave schools where
the training is in many respects excellent, and have gained no ability
to go beyond the examination of particulars. The far more important
power of estimating a book or a play from its total effect has not been
cultivated. No teacher should forget that the ability to deal fairly
with a whole is of as much more value than any facility in minute
criticism as that whole is greater than any of its parts.
This does not mean that a student can well summarize everything he
reads or that he may wisely attempt it. It does imply that at least his
attention shall have been directed over and over to the great fact that
the study of details is not the study of a masterpiece; that he shall
have been required to judge a book or a play, so far as he is able, as
a whole work and with reference to its entire effect. In talking with
undergraduates even about short works, pieces no longer than a single
essay of Steele or a simple lyric, I constantly find that they are apt
to have no conception whatever that they could or should do anything
but pick out minute details. I ask what it amounts to as a whole, how
it justifies itself, or what is its value as a complete poem or essay,
and they seem utterly unable to see what I am driving at. The painful
attempt to find out what I wish them to say so entirely occupies their
minds as to render them incapable of using whatever power of judgment
they may possess. Not long ago one boy said to me: "I didn't know it
made any difference what the poem was about if you could pick out
things in it." "What do you suppose it was written for?" I asked. A
look of painful bewilderment came into his face, and he answered that
he supposed some folks liked to write that way. I inquired whether he
would test a bridge—he was an engineering student—by picking out bits
without seeing how the parts held together and how strong it was as
a whole, and he returned with puzzled frankness: "But a bridge has a
use." "Very good," was what I assured him, "and so does a poem. Can't
you appreciate that mankind has not been keeping poems from generation
to generation without finding out if they really are useless? Any work
of literature that is really good must be of value as a whole, and
you have not got hold of it until you are able to see what it is for
as a single thing, a complete unit." The fact is so evident that it
seems almost absurd to mention it in a book intended for teachers, but
scores of boys come yearly from the fitting-schools who prove how often
the fact is ignored,—ignored, very likely, because it is taken for
granted, but no less ignored with seriously ill effects.
In general, criticism in the secondary schools should have to do only
with the good points of work. Unless a pupil himself shows that he
perceives shortcomings in what is read, it is on the whole the place
of the instructor to keep the attention of the class fixed on merits,
while defects are ignored. This is not to be interpreted as meaning
that any weakness should ever be allowed to pass for a merit; or as
indicating that it is ever wise to shirk a difficulty. Any intelligent
pupil, for instance, should see for himself that the metaphors are
sadly and inexcusably mixed in the passage:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them.
It is necessary to meet this knowledge frankly, and to show him how it
is that Shakespeare can be so great in spite of faults like this. It is
the inclination of childhood to feel that a man must be perfect to be
great, but even at the cost of encountering the difficulty of such a
faith the truth must be told. In general, however, it is as well not to
go out of the way to enforce the doctrine of human fallibility, and the
youthful mind is best nourished by being fed on what is good, rather
than by being taught to perceive what is bad.