Literature in the Elementary School Part 9

There is such a thing as literary reading as distinguished from the reading of matter technical in content and merely intellectual in appeal. Teachers, accustomed as they are to read for facts and intent upon the logical emphasis, are peculiarly p.r.o.ne to read literature poorly--missing the music and the emotion, rendering it all in the hard intellectual manner that is acceptable only as the vehicle of the colorless matter of a technical treatise. There is also such a thing as the telling of a literary story, as distinguished from the telling of any other story. A narrative of events in history, an account of some occurrence in nature or ordinary affairs, may be expected to proceed from point to point without arrangement or succession other than the order of incidents as they occur. The interest is the interest of fact; the thread is that of cause and effect, or any other plain sequence.

But in the literary story the incidents are sifted and arranged. Certain details are prophecies--foreshadowings of things to come; certain incidents are vital turning-points in the action; certain phrases are the key and counter-sign of the whole story; some paragraphs are plain narration; some are calm description; some are poetic interpretation; some roar with action; some glow with emotion; some sparkle with fun; some lie in shadow, others stand forth in the brilliant light; there are movements in the story, marked by a change of scene, a change of situation, a pause in the action--parts which would be marked in the drama as scenes or acts; there is the gradual approach to the center, the pivotal occurrence, the readjustment of affairs to ordinary life.

Ideally, all these things will be indicated in the presentation that an accomplished story-teller makes of a literary story. This seems to set the standard very high--too high for the discouraged attempt of the overworked grade teacher. If so, she may reflect that it is triumphantly true that such is the affinity between the child and the story that he will get much delight and nourishment out of any telling of it. Who has not hesitated between a smile and a tear at the spectacle of a child or a cla.s.s hanging enthralled and hungry upon a story rendered by a mother or a teacher whose every p.r.o.nunciation was a jar, whose every cadence a dislocation, and whose every emphasis a misinterpretation?

And remember, the art of story-telling is not the art of the theater, not the art of the actress, but the art of the mother, the nurse; the art of the "spinsters and the knitters in the sun;" the art of the wandering minstrel, of the journeyman tailor, of the exiled younger brother; art designed to reach, not an audience beyond the footlights, but one gathered on the sunny bench of the market-place, on the hearth-stone, under the nursery lamp, in the shady garden, and in their own teacher's schoolroom.

As a practical matter, the teacher, in presenting a story or a narrative poem, should take advantage of the natural pauses, the end of one incident or movement and the beginning of the next, in dividing his material for the actual lessons, so that in a long story or in a drama, the end of the lesson coincides with the close of a series of incidents or the close of one of the larger movements. Nothing spoils a bit of literature more effectually than taking it in accidental or fragmentary bits. At any cost of time and pains, let there be a sense of completeness in each lesson, a feeling of repose, if only temporary, at the end of each instalment. And whether he closes his lesson or not, the teacher should at the close of every such movement in a cla.s.s of older children pause to discuss, to review, or to summarize. When he makes this recognition of the close of a series of incidents, or of a movement, he accomplishes two things: he secures a certain amount of completeness, and he helps on in the children the desirable sense of organization, of composition, in their story or play.

The nature of the bit of literature chosen must guide the teacher in his first presentation of it. When it is a thing in which the movement is rapid, or the interest in the action or the plot intense, it will doubtless be best to go rapidly through the whole, not pausing for any details. Then go over it slowly again, pausing for appreciation and comment. It seems well to repeat here that if the story is long and the plot involves any intensity of suspense, it may be well to let the children know the issue early in the story; the wisdom of this step will depend largely upon the average nerves of the cla.s.s. There may well be several readings of a thing worth reading once. Every teacher knows how well content the younger children, especially, are to go over a thing many times. The interest of the cla.s.s of older children may be kept up through the many readings of a story or poem, by shifting each time the ground of comment or discussion, opening up a new question or revealing a new point of interest at each reading. In other pieces, the slower moving stories and lyrics, the children are willing to linger over the details at the first reading.

It is all but impossible to indicate what such details are, or what we mean by lingering over them. I have pointed out in some detail, in the chapter on poetry, the kind of thing that one would linger over for comment and question.

If it is a new, rare, or especially picturesque word, we may ask questions and receive comments, or according to the situation, give quick and direct information about it: "The golden orange _glows_;" "He strung the bow _deftly_;" "The b.u.t.ter-cup catches the sun in its _chalice_." These three words call for attention for different reasons, in addition to the fact that any or all of them might be new and unknown words to the cla.s.s. In the case of a figure or image we would pause and discuss the various terms and details of it, until most members of the cla.s.s have at least intellectually apprehended it. Such a complex little figure and image as "footsteps of the falling drops down the ladder of the leaves" calls for leisurely appreciation and a.s.similation. A peculiar musical onomatopoeic line will interest them; "Burly dozing b.u.mble-bee," is such a line. They will be delighted to discover why this peculiar a.s.semblage of sounds was chosen in connection with this insect.

"The long day wanes, the slow moon climbs," indicating and imitating by its slow movement and long vowels the pa.s.sage of the lingering hours, is an effect they should be led to realize. We should pause to point out, or to inquire into, the implications of some pregnant or pivotal sentence, such as: "Now, Cinderella's G.o.dmother was fay;" or, "Cyclops, you asked my n.o.ble name, and I will tell it: My name is Noman." The bit selected for detailed study may be larger, amounting to a complete incident--for example, Nausicaa with her maids washing her beautiful clothes by the river; some scene or incident full of character and symbolical meaning, as the scene with the hen and the cat in _The Ugly Duckling_; some ethical or moral question that calls for judgment, such as Robin Hood's treatment of the unjust abbot, or Portia's decision as to Shylock's bond.

These examples, chosen at random, are intended simply to suggest the kind of thing to be stopped over. It would be a grave mistake to pause over every such detail, or to try to make sure that the children apprehend even intellectually every item as it appears. Leave many of them for subsequent readings; let many of them lie permanently, depending rather on the effects of the general tone and spirit of the production for your results. One of the first lessons to learn about the teaching of literature is that it will not do to teach the whole art on the basis of one specimen--that it will not do to teach in any case all that one could. One must rather try to teach the characteristic, the inevitable lesson--the lesson demanded by the genius of his piece. Let the teacher avoid by all means the pitfall of "talky-talk" and lecture.

Keep the literature as near play as possible--the play that cultivates and disciplines through the avenues of refined pleasure.

It will often be necessary for the teacher to shorten and otherwise edit the thing he chooses. There will come from time to time dull pa.s.sages, descriptive pa.s.sages, pa.s.sages whose subject-matter is too mature, or in some other way undesirable for his cla.s.s. He will often be able to economize effort and to secure a better unity of impression, by omitting what is mere enrichment of the picture or reinforcement of the teaching; such incidents may be removed without altering the meaning or the movement. The teacher must be experienced enough to recognize such unnecessary or superfluous incidents; otherwise he only mutilates his story in condensing it.

When the children have advanced to some proficiency in reading, they will, of course, begin to read some of their own literature, reading aloud in the cla.s.s and often having the text before them as the teacher reads. All the children that can read at all should, as a rule, have a printed copy of anything they are asked to memorize; and as a matter of social duty, the teacher of literature, or the teacher in the literature cla.s.s, will from time to time have a careful exercise in reading for the younger readers; while he will have much reading aloud from the older grades; remembering that the inevitable obverse of receiving literature through the ear is the rendering it with the voice. But, on the whole, they will fare best if up to and probably through the sixth grade they receive what is distinctively literature through the ear. And even after that they should often hear their material rendered by a good reader in cla.s.s, even though they may be required to read the same material over beforehand, or subsequent to the cla.s.s reading.

Every teacher should have in reserve a store of stories and poems, and beautiful pa.s.sages from great masterpieces which he produces from time to time as a surprise to his cla.s.s. This is many a time the most effective lesson possible--adding to the children's pleasure the delight of surprise, creating in them the impression of the inexhaustible supply of beautiful things, and testifying to their teacher's own joy in the things he wants them to love.

Other minor and practical matters, more closely connected with the return from the children than the presentation to them, will be discussed in the next chapter.

Finally, the whole matter is conditioned and colored by the fact that in any case the literature is transmitted to the children through the personality of the teacher. This is partially true of all a child's subjects and his whole experience in school; but the fact that literature is so inwoven with feeling, and so bound up with matters of personal taste, that it concerns itself so much with matters of ethics and conduct, makes it peculiarly liable to take on color, to narrow or to widen with the personality of him who chooses and renders it. A teacher must accept this fact, and profit by the obvious warnings that arise out of it; but better than that, build his work upon the many beneficent aspects of the fact. The teacher before his cla.s.s is the sacred bard at the feast; he is an exhaustless spring of joy, a tireless playfellow, a preacher who never proses, a schoolmaster who never scolds.

CHAPTER XV

THE RETURN FROM THE CHILDREN

The discussion must naturally limit itself largely to the immediate return that we may ask of the children from their lessons in literature; since it is not possible to do more than hint at their ultimate effects.

It is, of course, a matter of pedagogical morality to ask from them some immediate and practical return, or some actual literary contributions to the lessons. There are certain modifications of the modern doctrine that every stimulation of the mind or the emotions should eventuate in activity--modifications that apply to all the fine arts. The aesthetic experience is a complete experience in itself; the apprehension, the enjoyment, and the final appreciation which one pa.s.ses through in his contact with a beautiful piece of art--a picture, a symphony, an ode--const.i.tute a complete psychic experience; they eventuate in a better taste, a higher ideal, the record of a pure and n.o.ble joy. They do not demand further activity. We need not feel, therefore, that it is a matter of necessity to ask that in every case the cla.s.s make some tangible response to every literary impression.

But the teacher of literature must feel that he shares with all their other teachers the responsibility and the duty of making social beings of the children, of equipping them with the means of expression and communication, so that they may turn back into the sum-total a product in exchange for the material they draw out. He must, therefore, a.s.sociate with the lessons a legitimate amount of exercise for his cla.s.s in imparting what they have learned and in creating literary products for themselves.

The first and simplest return we ask is the oral comment, the immediate discussion that accompanies the presentation of the work. When a story has been read, there should always be opportunity for question and comment. This the teacher must guide and restrain. Of course, he should be hospitable to suggestions and contributions, patient, and generous to questions. But he must be cautious never to let the talk even on the part of the smallest children remain mere prattle, or degenerate into an aimless scamper around the paddock; he will see that there is a point or a line to cling to, and he will manage that this shall be done. Every teacher knows how one petty or commonplace child, one would-be wit or skeptic, can drag the discussion into the dust and keep it there, unless he is promptly and perhaps vigorously suppressed. Of course, in these discussions there is very small opportunity for training the voice and criticizing the language. Let there be, if possible, a free flow of comment and contribution, uninterrupted by any corrections except those of the most egregious errors. The teacher who guides it should study his questions, and even with the little ones should bring into the light of discussion the vital and salient things, and by means of a question from time to time, keep the conference away from triviality and gossip. He will begin to train his children from the beginning to make legitimate inductions from their material, and will require them to give reasons based upon the actual story or poem. He will be able to lead them to find the precise point of departure in the story for the introduction of their personal experience or their new incident, and he will help them in every case to make clear the application of their own material to the discussion.

It is in this spontaneous and free, but guided, conference that the children get most good out of the literature lessons. Of course, as they grow older the discussion of persons and their conduct, and the ethical and social bearing of events and opinions, may be broadened and deepened. As they grow older, too, more correctness and style and fulness may be demanded in their impromptu contributions to the discussion. A child may, without suspecting it, and consequently without self-consciousness, acquire some considerable skill in extemporaneous speaking and some genuine intellectual ease in conversation from these cla.s.s discussions.

Another natural return to be asked from the children is the repet.i.tion of the story, in whole or in part, by members of the cla.s.s in their own words; though of course, after many hearings of it well told the children will have incorporated into their own vocabulary the most useful and characteristic words. This exercise should never be allowed to pa.s.s into a careless and slipshod performance; the children should be alive and responding alertly to the call made upon them. Their grammar, their sentences, their emphases and intonations may appropriately be corrected more vigorously in this exercise than in the spontaneous discussion.

The best literary effect is not secured by having the story retold immediately after the children have heard it, nor by having them understand beforehand that it is to be retold as a formal exercise. It may be brought out of them on some later occasion so as to give it the air of an independent contribution to the pleasure of the cla.s.s.

Nothing is more deadly to the atmosphere of a story than the certainty on the part of the children that they are going to be called upon to retell it. This should never become a habitual exercise. It helps in a literary as well as a social way to divide the story in the retelling among the children according to movements, or even according to incidents, since this calls attention to its parts and organization.

We may reasonably expect all the poems taught as literature to be memorized, since it does not take many repet.i.tions of a poem to fix it in a child's memory. The vocal production of this poem gives the best opportunity for cultivating the child in voice, in enunciation and p.r.o.nunciation. The teacher should not, of course, seem querulous and exacting in small matters, and it is better to leave a few careless spots in any one poem than to spoil the children's pleasure in it by too close criticism; but he can do much to help all the children toward a distinguished manner of expression. These memorized poems, like the stories they learn, should not be regarded as formal exercises to be recited once and be done with. They should be called for from time to time as contributions to the pleasure of the whole cla.s.s. Time is profitably given now and then to a story or verse tournament, a _sang-fest_, when the whole store of things acquired is brought out and enjoyed. In the two older cla.s.ses each child may be required to choose, prepare, and present to the cla.s.s a bit of literature. The choice and preparation must be done in consultation with the teacher; the presentation to the cla.s.s regarded as a contribution to their artistic experience and accepted without criticism.

Paraphrasing is a process of doubtful value. It is never possible to express the precise meaning or mood in other words, and in the case of verse it serves to destroy the sense of inviolability of form that one would desire to develop and deepen. The direction, "State the same thought in other words," should never be given. To one delicately alive to the value of words and the shades of thought, it is a mere contradiction in terms. The same may be said of the practice of getting the children to subst.i.tute synonyms; in literature, especially in poetry, there can be no true synonyms, and no precisely synonymous expressions.

Many pleasant experiments are to be made in connecting some of the handwork of the youngest children with their literature. The attempt to realize some of their images in actual stuff const.i.tutes an artistic experiment that has its literary reverberations, and helps to deepen the a.s.sociation. Let them make a cloak for _Little Red Riding-Hood_, a fairies' coach of a nut sh.e.l.l, a boat, a tent--or whatever little object or property is imbedded in the story. Out of practically every story, and out of many of the poems, they get an inspiration for a picture or a bit of modeling. Such a.s.sociations with literature are legitimate and natural. This appears very clear when we reflect that we are hoping to cultivate the taste and imagination of the children, and to teach them to love human life, with all that this implies, as well as to drill them in language, grammar, and writing.

It seems necessary to handle aspects of the problem of language and writing in connection with literature in several different places, as we come upon the topic from different points of view. As has been said before, it is the duty of the teacher of literature, and of the lessons in literature, to help along the work in the language arts. It is even fair to a.s.sume that the children will take more interest in their composition lessons, and will get more profit out of them, when they are attached to something they have done in literature; but this is because they get out of literature more impulse toward creation, and more inspiration toward a beautiful and striking manner of expression. But composition is not merely a medium of creative expression; it is a means of plain communication, and should be developed in both directions and from both sources. This means that the children should write in connection with all their subjects, so that they do not, on the one hand, a.s.sociate "English" and writing with literature only, and do not, on the other hand, run the risk of forming no style but a literary style.

It is certainly true that we disquiet ourselves and persecute the children unnecessarily concerning the whole matter of writing during the elementary period. The children scarcely acquire the process of writing as a manual thing in the first four years. During the next four by good luck and much toil, most of them manage to reduce it to the stage of a tool. Their consciousness of the process added to their consciousness of their spelling and grammar, leaves them little freedom in using the written composition as an avenue of spontaneous expression. Add to this the fact that a large part of this period--the period of ten to fourteen--is the beginning of the great reticence. They are not telling what they know or feel; they have narrowed their vocabulary down to the absolutely necessary terms; they have seen through every device by which the teacher seeks to get them to express themselves. Their written compositions will be, therefore, dogged exercises, and should be connected, as far as possible, with colorless information subjects.

There are exceptional children and exceptional cla.s.ses, indeed, to whom these generalizations do not apply. We have all heard of cla.s.ses in distant elementary schools which "loved" to write.

But there will of necessity be a certain amount of composition that will fall in with the work in literature, and will const.i.tute one of the logical returns we ask of the children. This the teacher would like to have as spontaneous and as literary as possible. In general, we should like it to be creative, and not critical or reproductive. We would encourage them to devise new adventures of Odysseus, or of Robin Hood, to give an experience of their own organized into a genuine story, an interpretation and effective description of some incident or event that has interested them or been invented by them. It is necessary, if you expect to get anything literary or creative out of them, to help to put them in the creative and literary mood. Talk over with them the thing they mean to do; see that they have the vocabulary they will obviously need; enlarge their range of comparison and allusion by discussion; lead them to divide their material into suitable parts with some acceptable sequence; enrich their topics by kindred material; guide them into the observation and interpretation of material in the imaginative and literary way.

Some aspects of this process are ill.u.s.trated in the following experience: A teacher had been reading Howard Pyle's _Robin Hood_, with occasionally one of the original ballads interspersed (but not the traditional "Robin Hood and the Potter"), for three months; the children had also memorized during the same time three short lyrics; and in every lesson there had been discussions; the time had come when they must make something. They decided to follow the plan of their book and tell how Robin Hood added a new member to his band. These children were making pottery by way of handwork, and had lately had an interesting visit to see a potter working with his wheel. So the suggestion naturally made by some member of the cla.s.s, that the new member of Robin Hood's band be a potter, was received with instant favor. The teacher read them "Peter Bell," and their hero promptly became a peddler-potter--the very same, suggested an agile child, whom Tom, the Piper's son, found beating his a.s.s, and upon whom he played the merry trick. By this time the cla.s.s could be restrained no longer. They climbed over one another's shoulders, literally and figuratively, with eager suggestions and copious details. After discussing the plan long enough to suggest an organization of the material into three natural parts, the children were set to work. The orderly and patient children produced satisfactory stories, abundant in material and beautiful in detail. All the others produced stories which, however disorderly and careless, were breathless with feeling and overflowing with stuff. Some of them adopted Tom, the Piper's son, as the new member of the band, not being able to forgive the potter for beating the a.s.s; some adopted them both; others, only the Potter, duly lessoned and converted; all provided for the donkey. When they were aroused and provided, there was a spontaneous outflow of what was in every case, allowing for the varying temperaments and acquirements of the children, a really literary production.

As long as the children are seriously hampered with the mechanics of writing, they should be allowed to dictate their work, when any practical plan can be devised for this. When the cla.s.s is not too large, they should be taught to make a co-operative product, the teacher taking down what they agree upon, revising it to suit them. In the case of the older children these spontaneous and "literary" productions should not be too minutely criticized, and the revising and rewriting of them should not become a matter of drudgery. They should have other and more colorless written work upon which they may be drilled, lest the drill should kill their creative impulse or spoil their pleasure in the created product. Their more important productions may be filed and given back to them six months later for their own correction. This critical review of their own work is generally an occasion of much pride, and the acquisition of some wholesome self-knowledge.

It is possible that this attempt to distinguish literary writing from other composition may convey the impression that literature and literary production are set off, quite apart from life, and the children's other experiences and interests. This would be a misfortune. Whenever any aspect of their lives, their work, or their play appeals to their emotions and their imaginations, when they are provided with a large vocabulary and have opened for them avenues of comparison, they will turn back a literary product. But it is seldom desirable to create this atmosphere in connection with their other studies, and the literary style and method is not a desirable one for all subjects.

For the sake of the practice in writing and composing, and for the sake of acquiring ease in telling in writing what they know or desire to communicate, the children may write something every day. But not oftener than once in six weeks can we build up in a cla.s.s the atmosphere, furnish the material, and bring up the enthusiasm for the production of something worth while in a literary way--story, essay, play, or poem.

To set the elementary child, or even the high-school scholar, tasks of investigating in literature, as if he were a little college student is a serious mistake; or to set for him themes which call for such opinions and judgments as could be safely given only by a mature person. For instance, to ask the eighth grade in the average school to write a character-sketch of Shylock is to make a bid for insincerity and unfounded judgment. But satisfactory results may be obtained by giving the children a simple syllabus of questions and suggestions, indicating quite suitable problems for them to work at in their out-of-school reading; this little syllabus is then made the basis of cla.s.s discussion, and parts of it finally, of written work. It requires some skill to make such a syllabus, since it must not be made up of leading questions nor of tediously detailed suggestions, neither must it attempt to exhaust the material; but must be calculated to stimulate the children to observe and to think, and must be designed to guide them into those aspects of the story, play or poem that they may suitably and profitably consider. Such a guide should be placed in the hands of young students including secondary children, whenever they are studying a mature and complex masterpiece.

The dramatization and acting of any bit of literature that yields to this process is in many ways the most satisfactory return we can ask. In a previous chapter much has been said about the various dramatic settings and accompaniments of literature. From the treatment of rhymes and jingles as suggestions for games and plays, on through the genuine dramatization of a story, to the presentation of _The Merchant of Venice_ or some other developed literary drama, the teacher should forward as much as possible this mode of calling out the children. They must, of course, be guided by the teacher in the choice of a story for dramatization, seeking one that has clearly marked movements, some distinct events, a pretty well-rounded plot, occasion for dialogue, and other dramatic possibilities. The cla.s.s may early be guided to the division of the story into its natural acts and scenes, which implies the omission of superfluous incidents and details. The difficulty comes in the supplying of the actual dialogue. The resourceful teacher will secure this dialogue by various means; for some of the scenes it will flow off without effort from the cla.s.s in lesson a.s.sembled, one child suggesting a remark, another the reply, these being recorded and criticized by the cla.s.s. For certain other scenes the dialogue may be prepared by groups of two or more children working apart from the cla.s.s.

For certain crucial and lofty scenes the teacher should make the "book."

The whole must be submitted for discussion in the cla.s.s, and may in the end call for considerable revision from the teacher; for the younger children cannot be expected to know and to meet the demands of dramatic dialogue--it must not only be speech, and fairly good as conversation, but it must forward the play with every sentence. Of course, this revision must never be so sweeping as radically to remake the play, or even to alter the essential character that the children have given it, no matter how crude it may seem to the teacher and to other mature persons who hear it. Let it stand as a bit of child-art, just as we rejoice to let crude productions stand as folk-art.

Of course, when the older children present a literary play or any part of it, they must memorize and give it conscientiously as it is written.

Indeed, the rendering with understanding and appreciation, of whatever they have learned of good and beautiful literature is, after all, the most satisfactory and natural return. If even in high school we asked this of the children, instead of those themes of crude or stale literary criticism which we all too often get, great would be the gain in freshness, in sincerity, in appreciation, and in ultimate taste.

If we accustom the children to it from the beginning, and never intimate to them that it is difficult, it is about as easy to get verse out of them as prose. This is particularly true if the exercise is a social or co-operative one, in which the whole cla.s.s unites to produce the ballad or the song. What the single child could not accomplish, the group does with perfect ease. And when the poem is done, n.o.body can tell who suggested this rhyme, this word, this whole line; but the whole is a product of which each child is proud, though he alone could never have compa.s.sed it. The communal story, ballad, song, or play is a unique and interesting performance, and any teacher who has ever a.s.sisted in making it feels sure that he has seen far into the social possibilities of art and the philosophy of literature. Every teacher must devise his own plan of getting this co-operative, communal, social bit of literature made, but every teacher of literature should try it.

All this, of course, has to do with the immediate practical return from the studies in literature. Concerning the ultimate, distant return we cannot speak in terms of teaching and learning. Art is long; like the human child, being destined to a long and vicissitudinous life, it had a long childhood; and this is true of its growth in each individual as of its growth in the race. So far as regards many of the most desired results of literature, we can but sow the seed, and wait years for the bloom--a lifetime, maybe, for the fruit. But though we may not reach a hand through all the years to grasp the far-off interest of our toil, we have every reason to believe that the harvest will be fair.

CHAPTER XVI

THE CORRELATIONS OF LITERATURE

The term "correlation" is not to be used in this chapter in the specialized and technical sense that it has taken on in pedagogical discussion. It will be used, with apologies, to designate all connections of literature with any other subject or discipline in the elementary curriculum.

No one interested in education can have failed to notice the fact that the doctrines of concentration, correlation, condensation, by whatever name called or under whatever aspect approached, have undergone many modifications and shifts of emphasis. Like every other educational doctrine that has much of the truth in it, it was welcomed in the early days of its promulgation as the final solution, and seemed for a time to sweep out of existence, or into its own radius, every other theory or practice.

One is obliged to wonder if educational people are peculiarly liable to be caught by a formula or an apparently axiomatic statement, build everything upon it, and silence every question by a reverential appeal to it. Such seemed to be the att.i.tude toward the doctrine of correlation when it first sifted down from the savants to the actual teachers in the actual schools; and many and monumental were the follies committed in the name of this pedagogical religion. Modified and adapted under actual practical conditions, and criticized by the present generation of educational philosophers, it has come down to the school of today--that is to say, the school that is sensitive enough and free enough to respond quickly to new thinking--as, on the one hand, a protest against isolation and abstraction, and on the other hand, an appeal for such a conservation of the unity and naturalness of the child's consciousness as is consistent with the natural and legitimate use of material. In its present form the doctrine no longer justifies the violent wresting of subjects and topics from their natural settings, to be fitted together in some merely logical and theoretical system of instruction.

In the days of determined and thoroughgoing correlation no department of discipline suffered more than the arts; and none of the other arts suffered as did literature. This is not difficult to account for. Music and painting are quite professedly and obviously unconcerned with subject-matter--are, as a rule, entirely empty of definite intellectual content. But literature has ideas, it embodies concrete images, mentions specific objects, reflects experience, and sometimes even uses actual persons and historical events; above all, it employs the same medium of expression as the other subjects. All these matters made literature the peculiar prey of the ardent correlationists; to each or any, perhaps to all, of these phenomena in literature they could attach bodies of teaching in technical subjects, and systems of discipline in formal training.