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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH IN

THE HIGH SCHOOL

CHAPTER I

AIMS

Changes in the Course in English.-In a general discussion concerning the teaching of English in high schools such as this attempts to be, the first requisite is some definition of the aims sought by the various phases under this broad curriculum. The time has passed when teachers of English could complacently assume that their subject held an inalienable and unassailable place in the predestined scheme of things educational. During the past twenty years there have been mutterings of discontent, questionings of efficiency, departure from classic standards, differentiation of purposes, and a shifting of the burden of proof. Changes of material and purposes seemed to swing so far toward individualized specialization that courses in Argumentation for Aviators and Parsing for Plumbers were gloomily predicted. Economic and educational readjustment have precluded any such splitting of the general field of English instruction, and teachers who apprehensively realized that they were not equipped for the imparting of such specialized instruction breathed more easily until the next movement in educational betterment swept into their institutions.

An unsettling procedure which spread rapidly throughout the high schools of the nation was the elective system. As a result of the avidity with which school pupils emulated

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university post-graduates, the traditional curriculum in English was torn to shreds and either patched together as a miscellaneous conglomeration, or replaced entirely by some course new and strange. So-called "business English" will occur to many as an apt illustration of this tendency, but there are more novel examples. Thousands of classes in journalism made composition "alive and practical." Electives in drama and dramatics were offered even in junior high schools. Material is grouped differently. Magazines and newspapers are studied. Short stories are gathered to exemplify "the new America" and the "joy in work." One high school, at least, offered a course in literature illustrating liberal thought of the nineteenth century in England. Many give credit for little theater production.

Four Aims.-In all these discussions and claims, these rejections and substitutions, these standards and experiments, there seem to be the same fundamental ideals and aims which have inspired the best teaching of English at all periods. Though the methods are various, the enthusiasts irreconcilable, the claims exaggerated, the content shifting, and the equipment inadequate, the aims appear to be forever the same. Emphasis may shift among the aims periodically, but no high school in the land will admit that its course in English fails to serve at least one of these aims. Stripped of modification these aims are four:-Knowledge and apprecia<tion of literature, ability to write, ability to speak, and ability to think.

1. Knowledge and appreciation of literature.-In the expression of the first aim-Knowledge and appreciation of literature each word represents its widest rather than its most restricted interpretation. Literature includes the modern as well as the classic, the recent as well as the remote, the interesting as well as the venerable, the humble as well as the haughty. But it must still mean literature. It must

be worthy of attention. In judging it, the mere element of contemporary popularity must be reduced to a minimum. Moreover, if it possess mere interest without additional educating or intellectual stimulating power, it should be scrutinized closely before being admitted to the course in English. The definition of literature is no stable statement. The interpretation of Matthew Arnold's "the best that has been thought and said" varies directly with the degree of exclusiveness attributed to the single word "best." The teacher of English should keep abreast of the keenest critical pronouncements of the time so that he may almost anticipate the chances of permanency of a contemporary writer's products, and consequently choose wisely for inclusion in the course of high school English material upon which both knowledge and appreciation may be based.

Appreciation of literature as here used does not mean a mawkish or sentimental liking for everything classed as best. If a pupil at the end of a varied high school course describes every book or production he has read or studied as "nice" or "interesting" it is a certain indication that his appreciation has not been developed or sharpened. He has followed a course of reading, but there has been little actual educating. Even a young man and woman of eighteen should have the glimmerings of judgment concerning a form of art to which they have been exposed for several years. If a high school graduate does not separate authors and works into groups according to value and interest, and have reasons for his classifications, he has secured no real appreciation of literature. It may be disappointing for a teacher to have a pupil withstand all his efforts to make a poem attractive, but that instructor will be all the better teacher if he can accept a clearly stated and logically reasoned explanation of the pupil's independent judgment.

The greatest benefit the high school course can give to a

pupil is the habit of literary judgment with basic standards and general principles of comparison. The beginning of the exercise of this judgment should be seen by the teacher even though the faculty may not function actively until maturity. The teacher, however, must see clearly that the seed of such flowering is sown in high school years. In addition to his own enthusiasm and admiration for a literary masterpiece, he must possess the pliant sense to recognize the possibility of difference of opinion. He may force an entire class to repeat his laudation of a sonnet when their just emerging sense of rime may be disturbed or not satisfied by the irregular recurrence of sound correspondence. He will be a better teacher if he shows the process of judging, if he explains the details of structure, if he points the way for their minds to search. Realizing that the maximum literary sensibility of an adolescent is far below his own, he must not become impatient or sarcastic at a failure to rise to his mature artistic understanding. Where his own delight fails he must substitute for it the essential of all good teaching-a sympathetic approach towards appreciation through the slightly developed grasp of the pupil.

The teacher should never entirely identify with this sympathetic point of view his own mature opinion. He must be able to enter vicariously into youthful unfoldings, but in his own mental literary concepts he must be far above the learner. The teacher who believes The Psalm of Life to be great poetry displays retarded literary concepts of both form and content. Such a complete merging of levels does not make for the best teaching of literature. A pupil may not be able to recognize unerringly the glaring faults in the style of O. Henry, but a teacher who cannot is going to have trouble in teaching composition. The teacher who at fortyfive is still reading Cooper and Scott with the fervor of thirteen has stood still intellectually.

Before there can be the slightest degree of worthy appreciation there must be knowledge of literature. The teaching of English uses two methods of producing such knowledgeintensive study and rapid reading. Each enforces the other. Close attention to connotative, stimulating, thoughtful productions develops accuracy and retention in more rapid perusal. The latter kind of reading supports the interest in detailed consideration of masterpieces. One is learning how to read, the other is practice in reading. The latter is a usual, life-long habit. The former belongs more definitely to the realm of teaching.

In this aspect of the aim of the teaching of English-the knowledge of literature-the word knowledge means exactly what it says. Knowledge is an idea in accord with fact or truth. Knowledge of literature is as definite an acquirement as knowledge of arithmetical processes or knowledge of physics. Sentimentalists and unapperceptive readers to the contrary notwithstanding, a knowledge of literature is capable of demanding as much exactitude as the most generally considered technical subject in the entire course of study. Inexact teachers and slippery thinkers have allowed a different opinion to grow. The analysis of the theme underlying a great poem, as Wordsworth's Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections in Early Childhood, demands as much knowledge, though of a different kind, as the solution of a problem in permutations and combinations. The construction of the brief for an argumentative masterpiece involves as exact logic as does the solution of an original problem in solid geometry. If members of departments of English find difficulty in having these statements of facts accepted, the fault is partly their own.

The pupil who having studied it cannot reproduce the formula for the binomial theorem simply does not know one of the essentials of algebra. The pupil who having studied

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