demanded for the simplest comprehension of a work may be necessarily
beyond the possible reach of child life.[240:1] The limitations of
youth have, however, and should have, the same effect in literature as
in life. They restrict the comprehension and the appreciation of the
facts of existence, and equally they restrict the comprehension and
the appreciation of the facts in what is read. The impressions which
the child takes from what he sees or from what he reads are not those
of his elders, although this is less generally true of emotions than
of facts. The important point is that the impressions shall be vital
and wholesome, and above all else that they be true with the actual
verity of human experience. We all commit errors in the conclusions we
draw from life; and children will make mistakes in the lessons they
draw from books. Books which are wise and sane, however, will sooner or
later correct any misconceptions they beget, just as life in time makes
clear the false conclusions which life itself has produced.
I have spoken more or less about the enjoyment of this study by
children, and it is difficult if not impossible to conceive that if
a class is rightly handled most children will not find the work a
pleasure. It is necessary, however, to be a little on our guard in the
practical application of the principle that children get nothing out
of literature unless they enjoy it. They certainly cannot enjoy it
unless they get something out of it; but it will hardly do to make the
enjoyment of a class too entirely the test by which to decide what work
the class shall do. Pupils should be stimulated to solid effort in the
way of application and concentration, and I have already pointed out
that in mastering the difficulties of literary language they should
be made to do whatever drudgery is needed, whether they are inclined
to it or not. They cannot, moreover, read with intelligence anything
with real thought in it, until they have learned concentration of mind.
Children, like their elders, value most what has cost something to
attain, and facile enjoyment may mean after-indifference.
The contagion of enthusiasm is one of the means by which children are
most surely induced to put forth their best efforts to understand and
to assimilate. If the teacher is genuinely enthusiastic in his love
for a masterpiece, even if this be something that might seem to be
over the heads of the children, he arouses them in a way impossible
of attainment by any other means. A boy once said to me with that
shrewdness which is characteristic of youth, "My teacher didn't
like that book, and we all knew it by the way she praised it." Sham
enthusiasm does not deceive children; but they are always impressed by
the genuine, and no influence is more powerful.
The most serious obstacle which teachers of literature to-day meet
with, I am inclined to think, is the difficulty children have in
seizing abstract ideas.[241:1] So long as study and instruction are
confined to the concrete and the particular the pupil works with
good will and intelligence. The moment the boundary is crossed into
the region of the general, he becomes confused, baffled, and unable
to follow. The algebra of life is too much for the brain which is
accustomed to deal only with definite values. What is evidently needed
all along the line is the cultivation of the reasoning powers in the
ability to deal with abstract thought. Personally I believe that this
could be best secured by the simplification of the work in the lower
grades, and by the introduction of thorough courses in English grammar
and the old-fashioned mental arithmetic. If some forty per cent. of
the present curriculum could be suppressed altogether, and then ten
per cent. of the time gained given to these two admirable branches,
the results of training in the lower grades, I am convinced, would
show an enormous improvement. I may be wrong in this, and in any case
we must deal with things as they exist; and the teacher of literature
must accept the fact that he has largely to train his class in breadth
of thinking. He will be able to deal with generalizations only so far
as he is assured that his students will grasp them, and this will
generally mean so far as he is able to teach them to deal with this
class of ideas.
* * * * *
This book has stretched beyond the limits which in the beginning were
set for it, and in the end the one thing of which I am most conscious
is of having accomplished the emphasizing of the difficulties of the
branch of work with which it is concerned. If I have done nothing more
than that, I have discouraged where I meant to help; and I can only
hope that at least between the lines if not in the actual statements
may be found by the earnest and hard-working teachers of the land—that
class too little appreciated and worthy so much honor—hints which will
make easier and more effective their dealing with this most important
and most difficult requirement of the modern curriculum.
FOOTNOTES:
[240:1] See pages 68-70.
[241:1] See page 112.
INDEX
Abilities of children differ, 30, 60.
Abstract ideas, 23, 112-115.
Acting out poems, 94.
Addison, _De Coverley Papers_, 128, 138, 146-150;
_Spectator_, 146, 223.
Analysis _vs._ synthesis, 21.
Art, literature an, 53;
not to be translated into words, 2;
purpose of, 1, 73.
Bach, _Passion Music_, 116.
Beethoven, 53;
_Ninth Symphony_, 116.
Biography, literary, 222-226.
Blake, William, quoted, 31;
_The Tiger_, 93, 96-108.
Bronson, W. C., _Voluntary Reading_, 228, 230.
Brown, Dr. John, quoted, 79.
Browning, 72, 115, 239;
_How they Brought the Good News_, 113;
_The Lost Leader_, 114.
Burke, 221;
_Speech on Conciliation_, 37, 65, 138-146.
Byron, _Destruction of Sennacherib_, 133, 215.
Carlyle, _Burns_, 213.
Chaucer, 225, 239.
Children, abilities differ, 30, 60;
at disadvantage, 118;
comply mechanically, 93;
conceal feeling, 85;
do not know how to study, 46-48;
know when bored, 52;
learn life by living, 19;
must be taught in own language, 68;
must do own work, 58;
must form estimates, 70;
not affected by preaching, 18;
puzzled by literature, 49;
responsive to metrical effects, 117;
skip morals, 89;
their world, 18, 79;
too much demanded of, 45;
understand only through personal experience, 15, 67.
Coleridge, 72;
_Ancient Mariner_, 37, 84, 85, 181.
College entrance requirements, 8, 30, 138, 213;
books, 34-38;
editors of, 6.
Conventionality, how met, 197.
Cook, May Estelle, _Methods of Teaching Novels_, 128.
"Cramming," 59.
Criticism, 193-206;
asked of pupils, 44;
of trashy books, 231;
must take pupil's point of view, 231.
Decker, quoted, 169.
Defoe, _Journal of the Plague Year_, 224.
Deliberation in work necessary, 217.
Description, how written by pupils, 127.
De Quincey, 211;
definition of literature, 123;
_Flight of a Tartar Tribe_, 234.
Diagrams, futility of, 6.
Dickens, quoted, 7, 202.
Didactic literature, 22, 109.
Edgeworth, Maria, _Parents' Assistant_, 23.
Eliot, George, 129;
_Silas Marner_, 5, 32, 37, 56, 127, 152, 197.
Emerson, 211;
quoted, 65.
Emotion, aim of literature to arouse, 85;
in literature, 2, 90;
the motive power, 24.
Enthusiasm, connected with culture, 24;
contagious, 241;
necessary in teaching, 55;
justification of, 57;
reason to be reached through, 40, 50.
_Evangeline_, 234;
questions on, 42, 43, 45.
Examinational teaching, 74, 121-135.
Examinations, 28, 44, 70, 184;
an Institute paper, 130-135;
best prepared for by broad teaching, 122;
boy's view of, 8, 9;
danger of, 40;
entrance, 35, 45;
inevitable, 121;
necessarily a makeshift, 4;
not the aim in teaching, 28, 73;
study for, 121-130;
valuable only as tests, 121;
what counts in, 125;
what examinations should test, 44.
Fables, truth of, 21.
Fielding, _Tom Jones_, 202.
Goldsmith, _Vicar of Wakefield_, 44, 56, 152.
Hawthorne, quoted, 167.
_Heart of Oak Series_, 91.
Honesty essential in teaching, 54.
Illustrations, care in using, 211.
_Il Percone_, 32.
Imagination essential in study of literature, 3;
not created but developed, 53;
nourished by literature, 26.
Inspirational use of literature, 74, 88-95, 117, 236.
Irving, _Life of Goldsmith_, 37.
_Ivanhoe_, 37, 152;
quoted, 169;
study of, 159-163.
Johnson, Samuel, quoted, 91.
"Juvenile" literature, 80.
Lamb, Charles, 234.
Language of literature, 63-67, 118;
of pupils, 64, 68-70;
value judged by effect, 209.
Life, "realities of," 20.
Limitations, inevitable, 46-48;
must be accepted, 31, 196;
youthful, 240.
Litchfield, Mary E., quoted, 77.
Literature, a Fine Art, 53;
aim of, 85;
algebraic, 112;
approached through personal experience, 67, 69;
deals with abstract ideas, 67;
difficulty in teaching, 28-38;
defined by De Quincey, 123;
essentially human, 238;
history of, 40, 222;
"juvenile," 80, 239;
language of, 63-67, 118;
measured by life, 56;
must be connected with life, 68;
must be taught in language of learner, 68;
not didactic, 22, 109;
not taught by arbitrary methods, 238;
nourishes imagination, 26;
pupils indifferent to, 48;
relation to life, 110;
reproduces mood, 116;
symbolic, 113;
truth in, 112-114;
vocabulary of, 74;
why included in school course, 11-27.
_See_ Study of Literature; Teaching of Literature; Literary
Workmanship.
Literary appreciation, may be unconscious, 93.
Literary workmanship, 207-221.
Longfellow, 83;
_Evangeline_, 42, 43, 45.
Macaulay, 211, 214;
_Life of Johnson_, 37;
_Milton_, 35, 36, 212, 213.
_Macbeth_, 3, 5, 37, 40, 57, 69, 76, 77, 83, 85, 118, 124, 202;
false explanations of words in, 63;
Miss Cook on, 128;
note on, 32;
study of, 165-192.
_Machiavellus_, 32.
Memorizing, 191.
_Merchant of Venice_, 6, 81, 118.
Metrical effects, 116;
beyond ordinary students, 186;
children susceptible to, 117;
in _Evangeline_, 43;
relation to character, 119;
study of, 94;
_vs._ intellectual content, 216.
Middleton, _Witch_, 32.
Milton, 15, 53, 117, 220, 225;
_Comus_, 34, 85, 117, 228;
_Il Penseroso_, 34, 41, 190;
_L'Allegro_, 34, 41, 190;
_Lycidas_, 34, 117;
_Paradise Lost_, 123, 127, 131, 228.
_Milton_, Macaulay's, 35, 36, 212, 213.
Moral, drawn by children, 129;
not to be drawn by teacher, 71-73, 163, 164, 198;
skipped by children, 89.
North, _Plutarch's Lives_, 170.
Notes, 75, 136;
to be studied first, 76.
Novel, study of, 152-164.
_Œdipus_, 202.
Oral recitation, 180, 184, 198.
Originality in children, 43.
Parables, truth of, 21-22.
Paraphrases, 219.
Plutarch, 170.
Poetry, compared with prose, 211-217;
nature of, 215.
Point of departure, 83, 143.
Point of view, 82, 149, 180.
Pope, quoted, 211.
Praise, not to be given beforehand, 70;
when wise, 71.
Prose, compared with poetry, 212-217.
Quicken tree, 168.
Raleigh, 25, 26, 64, 215.
Raphael, _Dresden Madonna_, 57.
Ray, 168.
Reading, aloud, 61, 154, 177;
final, of play, 186;
first, of play, 176-179;
in concert, 62;
intelligent, basis of study, 61-67;
second, of play, 179-186;
voluntary, 227-236.
Readings, disputed, 185.
Reference, books of, 136, 137.
Rembrandt, 208;
_The Night Watch_, 57.
Riche, Barnabie, quoted, 167.
Ridicule, danger of, 230.
Roosevelt, President, 57.
Sarcasm, forbidden, 199.
Scott, _Ivanhoe_, 37, 152, 159-163, 169;
_Lady of the Lake_, 37.
Shakespeare, 13, 16, 46, 47, 48, 49, 53, 57, 69, 72, 90, 117, 119,
129, 142, 168, 170, 181, 183, 184, 186, 187, 191, 206, 211,
212, 213, 225, 239;
_Hamlet_, 77, 127;
ill-judged notes on, 32;
_Julius Cæsar_, 34;
_Lear_, 168;
_Macbeth_, 3, 5, 32, 37, 40, 57, 63, 69, 76, 77, 83, 85, 118, 128,
165-192, 202, 239;
_Merchant of Venice_, 6, 81, 118;
_Midsummer Night's Dream_, 32;
_Othello_, 83, 167;
quoted, 205;
reason of greatness unexplained, 55;
_Richard III_, 166;
_Romeo and Juliet_, 6;
_Tempest_, 118;
_Troilus and Cressida_, 239.
_Silas Marner_, 5, 37, 56, 127, 152, 197;
note on, 32.
_Sir Roger de Coverley Papers_, 128, 138;
study of, 146-150.
_Speech on Conciliation_, 37, 65;
study of, 138-146.
Stevenson, _Treasure Island_, 152-159.
Swift, _A Modest Proposal_, 224.
Study of literature, in lower grades, 30;
must be deliberate, 217;
not study about literature, 40;
not study of notes, 34;
object of, 27, 29, 31;
obstacles to to-day, 39-60;
overweighted with details, 187;
puzzling to students, 47, 48;
test of success in, 30;
used as gymnasium, 88.
Summary, not a criticism, 204.
Supernatural, the, 84;
in _Macbeth_, 181;
in _The Ancient Mariner_, 181.
Superstition, about witch, 173;
about quicken tree, 168.
Synthesis _vs._ analysis, 21.
Teacher asks too much, 41-46;
ignores strain on pupil, 80;
must have clear ideas, 27, 49, 149;
must take things as they are, 39;
not clear as to object, 49;
not equal to demands, 53-60;
obliged to do work of home, 227;
to lead, not to drive, 58.
Teaching, helping to extend ideas, 210;
method in, 136, 224.
Teaching of literature, aim of, 11-27, 69-70, 236;
cannot be done by rule, 86, 138;
choice of selections in, 90-92;
confused methods, 6;
deals with emotion, 2;
educational, 3, 74, 109-120;
examinational, 3, 74, 121-135;
fine passages taken up in, 80;
importance of reading aloud in, 61;
inspirational, 49, 74, 88-95, 117;
must be adapted to average mind, 89;
preliminary, 74-87;
uncertainty in, 1-10;
written work in, 126.
Technique, instruction in. _See_ Workmanship, literary.
Tennyson, 49;
_Elaine_, 37;
_Merlin and Vivian_, 170;
_Princess_, 37;
_Revenge_, 26, 215.
Text, 136;
model, 137.
Thoroughness, 119.
Titian, 53, 208.
Translating, effect of, 218.
_Treasure Island_, study of, 152-159.
Truth in literature, 112-114.
_Vicar of Wakefield_, 44, 56, 152.
Vocabulary, growth of, 209;
Miss Litchfield's view, 77;
of Burke's _Speech_, 139;
of _Ivanhoe_, 160, 162;
of _Macbeth_, 165-171;
of prose, 137;
of _Sir Roger de Coverley_, 147;
of _Treasure Island_, 153, 155;
study of, 76-79, 125, 193;
to be learned first, 74, 110, n.;
to be learned from reference-books, 76.
Washington, George, 22.
Words, value of, 16.
Word-values, 17.
Wordsworth, 49, 239;
_Lesson for Fathers_, 195.
Workmanship, literary, 207-221.
Written work, 126-130;
comparison in, 190;
description in, 127;
in study of _Macbeth_, 187-191;
supreme test in, 129.
The Riverside Press
_Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co._
_Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Variations in spelling and hyphenation remain as in the original.
The following corrections have been made to the original text:
Page 165: XIII[original has "XII"]
Page 174: gnaw till the ship springs a leak[original has
"aleak"]
Page 245, under "Examinations": best prepared for by broad
teaching, 122;[original has a comma]
Page 247: Teaching of literature, aim of, 11-27,
69-70,[original has a semi-colon] 236
End of Project Gutenberg's Talks on Teaching Literature, by Arlo Bates