Special Method in the Reading of Complete English Classics Part 11

To the teacher who stands in the presence of thirty or fifty distinct species of incipient men and women, social insight and culture, the ability to appreciate each in his individual traits, his strength or weakness, are a prime essential to good educative work.

Now, there are two avenues through which social culture is attainable,--contact with men and women in the social environment which envelops us all, and literature. Literature is, first of all, a hundred-sided revelation of human conduct as springing from motive.

Irving, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Holmes, and Lowell are revealers of humanity. Still more so are d.i.c.kens and Eliot and Shakespeare and Goethe. To study these authors is not simply to enjoy the graphic power of an artist, but to look into the lives of so many varieties of men and women. They lay bare the heart and its inward promptings. Our appreciation for many forms of life under widely differing conditions is awakened. We come in touch with those typical varieties of men and women whom we shall daily meet if we will but notice. It broadens one's perceptions and sympathies, it reveals the many-sidedness of human life.

It suggests to a teacher that the forty varieties of humanity in her schoolroom are not after one pattern, nor to be manipulated according to a single device.

The social life that surrounds each one of us is small and limited. Our intimate companionships are few, and we can see deeply into the inner life of but a small portion even of those about us. The deeper life of thought and feeling is largely covered up with conventionalities and externalities. But in the works of the best novelists, dramatists, and poets, we may look abroad into the whole world of time and place, upon an infinite variety of social conditions, and we are permitted to see directly into the inner thought and motive, the very soul of the actors.

Yet fidelity to human nature and real life is claimed to be the peculiar merit of these great writers. By the common consent of critics, Shakespeare is the prince of character delineators. Schlegel says of him:--

"Shakespeare's knowledge of mankind has become proverbial; in this his superiority is so great that he has justly been called the master of the human heart. A readiness to remark the mind's fainter and involuntary utterances, and the power to express with certainty the meaning of these signs, as determined by experience and reflection, const.i.tute 'the observer of men.'"

"After all, a man acts so because he is so. And what each man is, that Shakespeare reveals to us most immediately; he demands and obtains our belief, even for what is singular and deviates from the ordinary course of nature. Never perhaps was there so comprehensive a talent for characterization as Shakespeare. It not only grasps every diversity of rank, age, and s.e.x, down to the lispings of infancy; not only do the king and the beggar, the hero and the pickpocket, the sage and the idiot, speak and act with equal truthfulness; not only does he transport himself to distant ages and foreign nations, and portray with the greatest accuracy (a few apparent violations of costume excepted) the spirit of the ancient Romans, of the French in the wars with the English, of the English themselves during a great part of their history, of the Southern Europeans (in the serious part of many comedies), the cultivated society of the day, and the rude barbarism of a Norman foretime; his human characters have not only such depth and individuality that they do not admit of being cla.s.sed under common names, and are inexhaustible even in conception,--no, this Prometheus not merely forms men, he opens the gates of the magical world of spirits."

What is true of Shakespeare in a preeminent degree is true to a marked extent of all the great novelists and poets.

The teacher needs to possess great versatility and tact in social situations. A quick insight, social ease, freedom, and self-possession are of the first importance to him. The power of sympathy, of appreciation for others' feelings and difficulties, is wholly dependent upon such social cultivation. Otherwise the teacher will be rude, even uncouth and boorish in manner, producing friction and ill-will where tact and gentleness would bring sympathy and confidence. Many people absorb this refinement of thought and manner from the social circles with which they mingle, and it is, of course, a smiling fortune that has placed a teacher's early life in a happy and cultured atmosphere, where the social sympathies and graces are absorbed almost unconsciously. But even where the earlier conditions have been less favorable, the opportunity for rapid social development and culture is most promising.

The numberless cases in our country in which young people, by the strength of their energetic purpose and desire for improvement, have raised themselves not only to superior knowledge and scholarship, but also to that far greater refinement of social life and manner which we call true culture,--the numberless instances of this sort are a surprising indication of the power of education. Literature has been a potent agent in this direction. It emanc.i.p.ates, it sets free, the spirit of man. It lifts him above what is sordid and material, and gives him those true standards of worth with which to measure all things. It contains within itself the refining elements, the aesthetic and ethical ideals, and, best of all, it portrays human life in all its thought, feeling, and pa.s.sion with such intensity and realistic fidelity that its teaching power is unparalleled.

This potentiality of the better literature to produce such n.o.ble results in the higher range of culture is dependent upon conditions. No one will understand literature who does not study and understand ordinary life as it surrounds him; who does not constantly draw upon his own experience in interpreting the characters portrayed in books. No stupid or un.o.bservant person will be made wise through books, be they never so choice. Even the student who works laboriously at his text-books, but has no eye nor care for the people or doings about him, is getting only the mechanical side of education, and is losing the better part. He who will draw riches out of books must put his intellect and sympathy, his whole enthusiastic better self, into them.

The indwelling virtue of great books is that they demand this intense awakening, this complete absorption of the whole self. The mind of a child and of a man or woman has to stretch itself to the utmost limit to take in the message of a great writer. One feels the old barriers giving way and the mind expanding to the conception of larger things. Speaking of the ancient drama at Athens, Sh.e.l.ley says, "The imagination is enlarged by a sympathy with pains and pa.s.sions so mighty that they distend in their conception the capacity of that by which they are conceived."

Those who have received into the inner self the expansive energy of n.o.ble thought and social culture, are the better qualified, from the rich variety of the inner life, to act effectively upon the complex conditions and forces of the outer world. The teacher whose inner life is teeming with these rich sympathies and potent ideals will react with greater prudence and tact upon the kaleidoscopic conditions of a school.

Practical social life and literature are not distinct modes of culture.

They are one, they interact upon each other in scores of ways. Give a teacher social opportunities, give him the best of our literature, let these two work their full influence upon him,--then, if he cannot become a teacher, it is a hopeless case. Let him go to the shop, to the farm, to the legislature; there is no place for him in the schoolroom.

Literature is also a sharp and caustic critic of his own follies or foibles, to one who can reflect. It has a mult.i.tude of surprises by which we are able, as Burns wished,--

"To see oursels as ithers see us."

Even the schoolmaster finds an occasional apt description of himself in literature which it is often interesting and entertaining for him to ponder. One of the most familiar is that of Goldsmith in "The Deserted Village":--

"Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way With blossomed furze unprofitably gay, There, in his noisy mansion, skill'd to rule, The village master taught his little school.

A man severe he was, and stern to view; I knew him well, and every truant knew: Well had the boding tremblers learn'd to trace The day's disasters in his morning face; Full well they laugh'd, with counterfeited glee, At all his jokes, for many a joke had he; Full well the busy whisper, circling round, Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd.

Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was in fault.

The village all declar'd how much he knew; 'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too; Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, And even the story ran that he could gauge; In arguing, too, the parson own'd his skill, For even though vanquish'd he could argue still; While words of learned length and thundering sound Amaz'd the gazing rustics ranged around; And still they gaz'd, and still the wonder grew That one small head could carry all he knew."

A like entertainment and suggestion of what the schoolmaster may be, as seen by others, are furnished by Irving's Ichabod Crane. William Shenstone's description of the schoolmistress and the school near two hundred years ago in his native village, is very diverting. Charles d.i.c.kens's description of schools and schoolmasters is important in the history of England, and, like his portrayals of child life generally, of deep pedagogical worth to teachers.

In his book, "The Schoolmaster in Literature," Mr. Skinner has done a real service to the teaching world in bringing together, into a convenient compilation from many sources, the literature bearing directly upon the schoolmaster. Even the comic representations and caricatures are valuable in calling attention to common foibles and mannerisms, to say nothing of the more serious faults of teachers.

It is in literature, also, and in those lives and scenes from history which literary artists have worked up, that the teacher can best develop his own moral ideals and strengthen the groundwork of his own moral character. The stream will not rise above its source, and a teacher's moral influence in a school will not reach above the inspirations from high sources which he himself has felt. Those teachers who have devoted themselves solely to the mastery of the texts they teach, who have read little from our best writers, are drawing upon a slender capital of moral resource. Not even if home influences have laid a sound basis of moral habits are these sufficient reserves for the exigencies of teaching. The moral nature of the teacher needs constant stimulus to upward growing, and the children need examples, ideal ill.u.s.trations, life and blood impersonations of the virtues; and literature is the chief and only safe reservoir from which to draw them.

We have already discussed the moral value of the right books for children. The lessons of the great works are so profound in this respect that they offer a still wider range of study to the teacher. Even the foremost thinkers and philosophers have found therein an inexhaustible source of truth and wisdom.

In the Foreword to his "Great Books as Life Teachers," Newell Dwight Hillis says, "For some reason our generation has closed its text-books on ethics and morals, and opened the great poems, essays, and novels."

This is a remarkable statement and is the key-note to a silent but sweeping change in education. He adds, "Doubtless for thoughtful persons this fact argues, not a decline of interest in the fundamental principles of right living, but a desire to study these principles as they are made flesh and embodied in living persons." Again, "It seems important to remember that the great novelists are consciously or unconsciously teachers of morals, while the most fascinating essays and poems are essentially books of aspiration and spiritual culture."

It is suggestive to note that this fundamental text is worked out in his book by chapters on Ruskin's "Seven Lamps of Architecture," George Eliot's "Romola," Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter," Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables," Tennyson's "Idylls of the King," and Browning's "Saul."

This suggests a fruitful line of studies for every teacher.

Among modern essayists, Emerson, Carlyle, Ruskin, and Matthew Arnold stand preeminent, and they are already well established among the mightiest teachers of our age, and it may be, of many to come. Sure it is that teachers could not do better than put themselves within earshot of these resonant voices. Their heart-strings will vibrate and their intellects will be stretched to a full tension, not simply by the music, but by the truth which surges up and bursts into utterance. It is scarcely a figure of speech to say that the lightning flashes across their pages. The stinging rebuke of wrong, the n.o.ble ideals of righteousness, place them among the prophets whose tongues have been touched with fire from the altar.

Besides the historical, social, and moral tuition for teachers in literature, there are several other important culture effects in it. The deepest religious incentives are touched, nature in her myriad phases is observed with the eye of the poet and scientist, and the aesthetic side of poetry and rhythmic prose, its charm and graces of style, its music and eloquence, work their influence upon the reader. Literature is a harp of many strings, and happy is that teacher who has learned to detect its tones and overtones, who has listened with pleasure to its varied raptures, and has felt that expansion of soul which it produces.

Literature, in the sense in which we have been using it, has been called the literature of power, the literature of the spirit. That is, it has generative, spiritual life. It is not simple knowledge, it is knowledge energized, charged with potency. It is knowledge into which the poet has breathed the breath of life. The difference between bare knowledge and the literature of power is like the difference between a perfect statue in stone and a living, pulsing, human form.

One of the virtues of literature, therefore, is the mental stimulus, the joy, the awakening, the intensity of thought it spontaneously calls forth. Textbooks are usually a bore, but literature is a natural resource even in hours of weariness. Who would dream of enlivening leisure hours or vacation rest with text-books of grammar, or arithmetic, or history, or science? But the poet soothes with music, solemn or gay, according to our choice. If we go to the woods or lakes to escape our friends, we take one of the masters of song with us. After a day of toil and weariness, we can turn to "Evangeline," or "Lady of the Lake," or the "Vision of Sir Launfal," and soon we are listening to--

"The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,"

or the echo of the hunter's horn,--

"The deep-mouthed bloodhound's heavy bay Resounded up the rocky way, And faint, from farther distance borne, Were heard the clanging hoof and horn."

At a time when we are not fit for the irksome and perfunctory preparation of text-book lessons, we are still capable of receiving abundant entertainment or hearty inspiration from Warner's "How I killed a Bear," or Tennyson's "Enoch Arden," or "Sleepy Hollow." Literature is recreation in its double sense. It gives rest and relief, and it builds up.

Teachers should shake themselves free from the conviction that severe disciplinary studies are the best part of education. They have their well-merited place. But there are higher spiritual fountains from which to draw. Read the lives of Scott, Macaulay, Irving, Hawthorne, and Emerson, and discover that the things we do with the greatest inward spontaneity and pleasure and ease are often the best.

Literature, both in prose and verse, is what the teacher needs, because our best authors are our best teachers in their method of handling their subjects. They know how to find access to the reader's mind by making their ideas attractive, interesting, and beautiful. They seem to know how to sharpen the edge of truth to render it more keen and incisive.

They drive truth deeper, so that it remains embedded in the life and thought. Let a poet clothe an idea with strength and wing it with fancy, and it will find its way straight to the heart. First of all, nearly all our cla.s.sic writers, especially those we use in the grades, handle their subjects from the concrete, graphic, picturesque side. They not only ill.u.s.trate abundantly from nature and real things in life; they nearly always individualize and personify their ideas. Virtue to a poet is nothing unless it is impersonated. A true poet is never abstract or dry or formal in his treatment of a subject. It is natural for a literary artist, whether in verse or prose, to create pictures, to put all his ideas into life forms and bring them close to the real ones in nature. Homer's idea of wisdom is Minerva, war is Mars, strength is Ajax, skill and prudence are Ulysses, faithfulness is Penelope. d.i.c.kens does not talk about schoolmasters in general, but of Squeers.

Shakespeare's idea of jealousy is not a definition, not a formula, but Oth.e.l.lo. Those books which have enthralled the world, like "Robinson Crusoe," "Pilgrim's Progress," "Gulliver's Travels," "Arabian Nights,"

"Evangeline," "Ivanhoe," "Merchant of Venice,"--they deal with no form of cla.s.sified or generalized knowledge; they give us no definitions, they are scenes from real life. They stand among realities, and their roots are down in the soil of things. They are persons hemmed in by the close environment of facts.

This realism, this objectifying of thought, this living form of knowledge, is characteristic of all great writers in prose or verse.

The novelist, the romancer, the poet, the orator, and even the essayist, will always put the breath of reality into his work by an infusion of concreteness, of graphic personification. The poet's fancy, building out of the abundant materials of sense-experience, is what gives color and warmth to all his thoughts. Strong writers make incessant use of figures of speech. Their thought must clothe itself with the whole panoply of imagery and graphic representation in order to be efficient in the warfare for truth.

What a lesson for the teacher! What models upon which to develop his style of thinking! If the teaching profession and its work could be weighed in the balance, the scale would fall on the side of the abstract with a heavy thud. Not that object lessons will save us. They only parody the truth. For the object lesson as a separate thing we have no use at all. But to ground every idea and every study in realism, to pa.s.s up steadily through real objects and experience to a perception of truths which have wide application, to science--this is the true philosophy of teaching.

The cla.s.sic writers lead us even one grand step beyond realism. The fancy builds better than the cold reason. It adorns and enn.o.bles thought till it becomes full-fledged for the flight toward the ideal.

As the poet, standing by the sea-sh.o.r.e, ponders the life that has been in the now empty sh.e.l.l washed up from the deep, his fancy discovers in the sh.e.l.l a resemblance to human life and destiny, and he cries:--

"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, n.o.bler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown sh.e.l.l by life's unresting sea!"

Is it possible that one could fall under the sway of the poets and artists, appropriate their images and fruitful style of thought, be wrought upon by their fancies, and still remain dull and lifeless and prosaic in the cla.s.s-room? No wonder that true literature has been called the literature of power, as distinguished from the literature of knowledge (supplementary readers, pure science, information books, etc.). The lives and works of our best writers contain an expansive spiritual energy, which, working into the mind of a teacher, breaks the sh.e.l.l of mechanism and formality. The artist gives bright tints and colors to ideas which would otherwise be faded and bleached.

The study of the best literature adapted to children in each age is a fruitful form of psychology and child study. The series of books selected for the different grades is supposed to be adapted to the children at each period. The books which suit the temper and taste of children in primary grades are peculiar in quality, and fit those pupils better than older ones. In intermediate cla.s.ses the boyhood spirit, which delights in myth, physical deeds of prowess, etc., shows itself, and many of the stories, ballads, and longer poems breathe this spirit.

In grammar grades the expanding, maturing minds of children leap forward to the appreciation of more complex and extended forms of literature which deal with some of the great problems of life more seriously, as "Snow-Bound," "Evangeline," "Roger de Coverley," "Merchant of Venice,"

etc.

Any poem or story which is suited to pupils of the common school may generally be used in several grades. Hawthorne's "Wonder Book," for instance, may be used anywhere from the third to the eighth grade by a skilful teacher. But for us the important question is, to what age of children is it best adapted? Where does its style of thought best fit the temper of the children? The eighth grade may read it and get pleasure and good from it, but it does not come up to the full measure of their needs. Children of the third grade cannot master it with sufficient ease, but in the latter part of the fourth or first part of the fifth grade it seems to exactly suit the wants, that is, the spiritual wants, of the children. It will vary, of course, in different schools and cla.s.ses. Now, it is a problem for our serious consideration to determine what stories to use and just where each belongs, within reasonable limits. Let us inquire where the best culture effect can be realized from each book used, where it is calculated to work its best and strongest influence. To accomplish this result it is necessary to study equally the temper of the children and the quality of the books, to seek the proper food for the growing mind at its different stages.

This is not chiefly a matter of simplicity or complexity of language.

Our readers are largely graded by the difficulty of language. But literature should be distributed through the school grades according to its power to arouse thought and interest. Language will have to be regarded, but as secondary. Look first to the thought material which is to engage children's minds, and then force the language into subservice to that end. The final test to determine the place of a selection in the school course must be the experiment of the cla.s.s-room. We may exercise our best judgment beforehand, and later find that a cla.s.sic belongs one or two grades higher or lower than we thought.

We really need some comprehensive principle upon which to make the selection of materials as adapted to the nature (psychology) of children. The theory of the culture epochs of race history as parallel to child development offers at least a suggestion. A few of the great periods of history seem to correspond fairly well to certain epochs of child growth. The age of folk-lore and the fairy tale is often called the childhood of the race; the predominance of the imagination and of the childlike interpretation of things in nature reminds us strikingly of the fancies of children. We find also that the literary remains of this epoch in the world's history, the fairy tales, are the peculiar delight of children from four to six. In like manner the heroic age and its literary products seem to fascinate the children of nine to eleven years. In connection with this theory it is observed that the greatest poets of the world in different countries are those who have given poetic form and expression to the typical ideas and characters of certain epochs of history. So Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, Scott. The best literature is, much of it, the precipitate of the thought and life of historical epochs in race development. Experiment has shown that much of this literature is peculiarly adapted to exert strong culture influence upon children. Emerson, in his "Essay on History," says: "What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek history, letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods, from the Heroic or Homeric age down to the domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans, four or five centuries later? What but this, that every man pa.s.ses personally through a Grecian period?" And again: "The student interprets the age of chivalry by his own age of chivalry, and the days of maritime adventure and circ.u.mnavigation by quite parallel miniature experiences of his own.

To the sacred history of the world, he has the same key. When the voice of a prophet out of the deeps of antiquity merely echoes to him a sentiment of his infancy, a prayer of his youth, he then pierces to the truth through all the confusion of tradition and the caricature of inst.i.tutions." The literary heritage of the chief culture epochs is destined therefore to enter as a powerful agent in the education of children in our schools, and the place of a piece of literature in history suggests at least its place in child culture.