Special Method in the Reading of Complete English Classics Part 3

While the plot of the story covers a narrow field, only a few days of time and a small area of country, its roots go deep into the whole social, religious, and political fabric of that time. It touches real history at a critical point in the relations between England and Scotland. It is stirred also by the spirit of the Scotch bard and of minstrelsy. It shows what a hold Rome had in those days, even in the highlands of Scotland. It is full of Scotch scenery and geography. It rings with the clarion of war and of battle. It reveals the contempt in which letters were held even by the most powerful n.o.bles. Oxen are described as drawing cannon upon the field of Flodden, and in time these guns broke down the walls of feudalism. As a historical picture Marmion is many-sided, and the roots of the story reach out through the whole fabric of society, showing how all the parts cohere. Such a piece of historical literature may serve as a centre around which to gather much and varied information through other school and home readings. Children may find time to read "Ivanhoe," "The Crusades," "Roland," "Don Quixote," "The Golden Legend," "Macbeth," "Goetz von Berlichingen," etc.

They will have a nucleus upon which to gather many related facts and ideas. It should also be brought into proper connection with the regular lessons in history and geography. History reveals itself to the poet in these wonderfully vivid and lifelike types. In many of these historical poems, as "William Tell," "Evangeline," "Crusoe," "The Nibelung Song,"

"Miles Standish," the "Odyssey," "Sohrab and Rustum," some hero stands in the centre of the narrative, and can be understood as a representative figure of his times only as the whole series of events in his life is unrolled.

Where the study of larger literary wholes has been taken up in good faith, it has brought a rich blessing of intelligent enthusiasm. Even in primary schools, where literary wholes like "Hiawatha," "Robinson Crusoe," and the "Golden Touch" are handled with a view to exploit their whole content, there has been a remarkable enrichment of the whole life of the children. Such a treatment has gone so deep into the problems and struggling conditions of life delineated, that the children have become occupied with the tent-making, boat-building, spinning, and various constructions incident to the development of the story.

5. If it is true, as clearly expressed by strong thinkers in the most various fields of deeper investigation, that many of the chief literary products that have come down to us from former ages are the only means by which we can be brought into vital touch and sympathy with the spirit and motives then ruling among men; if it is equally true that children will not grow up to the proper appreciation and interpretation of our present life, except as they have experienced, in thought and interest at least, the chief struggles and motives of our fathers,--we may find in these historic and literary materials the deep and living springs of true education for children.

The thought of the educative power of this ancestral literature has been forcibly expressed by many eminent writers.

Scudder, in "Literature in School," says:--

"There is the element of continuity. In the Roman household there stood the cinerary urns which held the ashes of the ancestors of the family.

Do you think the young ever forgot the unbroken line of descent by which they climbed to the heroic founders of the state? In the Jewish family the child was taught to think and speak of the G.o.d of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob. In that great succession he heard a voice which told him his nation was not of a day. It is the business of the old to transmit to the young the great traditions of the past of the country; to feed anew the undying flame of patriotism.

"It is this concentration in poetry and the more lofty prose which gives to literary art its preciousness as a symbol of human endeavor, and renders it the one essential and most serviceable means for keeping alive the smouldering coals of patriotism. It is the torch pa.s.sed from one hand to another, signaling hope and warning; and the one place above all others where its light should be kindled is where the young meet together, in those American temples which the people have built in every town and village in the country."

Mabie, in "Books and Culture" (pp. 88, 89-113), says:--

"Now, it is upon this imperishable food which the past has stored up through the genius of great artists that later generations feed and nourish themselves. It is through intimate contact with these fundamental conceptions, worked out with such infinite pain and patience, that the individual experience is broadened to include the experience of the race."

"The student of literature, therefore, finds in its n.o.blest works not only the ultimate results of race experience and the characteristic quality of race genius, but the highest activity of the greatest minds in their happiest and most expansive moments. In this commingling of the best that is in the race and the best that is in the individual, lies the mystery of that double revelation which makes every work of art a disclosure, not only of the nature of the man behind it, but of all men behind him. In this commingling, too, is preserved the most precious deposit of what the race has been and done, and of what the man has seen, felt, and known. In the nature of things no educational material can be richer, none so fundamentally expansive and illuminative."

Emerson, in his "Essay on History," says:--

"The advancing man discovers how deep a property he has in literature,--in all fable as well as in all history. He finds that the poet was no odd fellow who described strange and impossible situations, but that universal man wrote by his pen a confession true for one and true for all. His own secret biography he finds in lines wonderfully intelligible to him, dotted down before he was born. One after another he comes up in his private adventures with every fable of aesop, of Homer, of Hafiz, of Ariosto, of Chaucer, of Scott, and verifies them with his own head and hands.

"The beautiful fables of the Greeks, being proper creations of the imagination and not of the fancy, are universal verities. What a range of meanings and what perpetual pertinence has the story of Prometheus!

Besides its primary value as the first chapter of the history of Europe (the mythology thinly veiling authentic facts, the invention of the mechanic arts and the migration of colonies), it gives the history of religion with some closeness to the faith of later ages."

"Thus in all ways does the soul concentrate and reproduce its treasures for each pupil. He, too, shall pa.s.s through the whole cycle of experience. He shall collect into a focus the rays of nature. History no longer shall be a dull book. It shall walk incarnate in every just and wise man. You shall not tell me by languages and t.i.tles a catalogue of the volumes you have read. You shall make me feel what periods you have lived. A man shall be the Temple of Fame. He shall walk, as the poets have described that G.o.ddess, in a robe painted all over with wonderful events and experiences; his own form and features by their exalted intelligence shall be that variegated vest. I shall find in him the Foreworld; in his childhood the Age of Gold; the Apples of Knowledge; the Argonautic Expedition; the calling of Abraham; the building of the Temple; the Advent of Christ; Dark Ages; the Revival of Letters; the Reformation; the discovery of new lands; the opening of new sciences, and new regions in man."

6. It is not intended to limit the reading of the schools to the longer cla.s.sics, such as "Snow-Bound," "The Vision of Sir Launfal," and Webster's Bunker Hill speech, etc. There are also many shorter poems and stories, ballads, and myths, that are equally good and stand out as strong, complete expressions of thought such as Tennyson's "Brook,"

Longfellow's "Village Blacksmith," Whittier's "Barefoot Boy," and many others. These shorter pieces should be interspersed among the longer, and freely used to give greater variety and zest to reading exercises.

Many of the finest literary products of the language are found in these shorter poems and stories. They also should be studied for the beauty and unity of thought contained in each.

7. But the _sustained power_ gained from the full and rich study of longer cla.s.sics is the best fruitage of the reading work. Every term of school should lead the children into the full appreciation of one or more of these masterly works. The value of such study is well expressed by Scudder in his "Literature in Schools" (pp. 54-56):--

"The real point of practical reform, however, is not in the preference of American authors to English, but in the careful concentration of the minds of boys and girls upon standard American literature, in opposition to a dissipation over a desultory and mechanical acquaintance with sc.r.a.ps from a variety of sources, good, bad, and indifferent. In my paper on 'Nursery Cla.s.sics in School,' I argued that there is a true economy in subst.i.tuting the great books of that portion of the world's literature which represents the childhood of the world's mind for the thin, quickly forgotten, feeble imaginations of insignificant bookmakers. There is an equally n.o.ble economy in engaging the child's mind, when it is pa.s.sing out of an immature state into one of rational, intelligent appropriation of literature, upon such carefully chosen cla.s.sic work as shall invigorate and deepen it. There is plenty of vagrancy in reading; the public libraries and cheap papers are abundantly able to satisfy the truant: but it ought to be recognized once for all that the schools are to train the mind into appreciation of literature, not to amuse it with idle diversion; to this end, the simplest and most direct method is to place before boys and girls for their regular task in reading, not sc.r.a.ps from this and that author, duly paragraphed and numbered, but a wisely selected series of works by men whom their country honors, and who have made their country worth living in.

"The continuous reading of a cla.s.sic is in itself a liberal education; the fragmentary reading of commonplace lessons in minor morals, such as make up much of our reading-books, is a pitiful waste of growing mental powers. Even were our reading-books composed of choice selections from the highest literature, they would still miss the very great advantage which follows upon the steady growth of acquaintance with a sustained piece of literary art. I do not insist, of course, that 'Evangeline'

should be read at one session of the school, though it would be exceedingly helpful in training the powers of the mind if, after this poem had been read day by day for a few weeks, it were to be taken up first in its separate thirds, and then in an entire reading. What I claim is that the boy or girl who has read 'Evangeline' through steadily has acquired a certain power in appropriating literature which is not to be had by reading a collection of minor poems,--the power of long-sustained attention and interest."

8. The study of literary wholes, whether longer or shorter, in the common school is based upon the notion that the full, rich thought of the author is the absorbing purpose of our effort. Literature is a reservoir of mental refinement and riches, for the gaining of which we can afford to sacrifice many things and make many even good things subordinate. The words of the wise man in recommending wisdom to the sons of men are not inappropriate: "Hear; for I will speak of excellent things and the opening of my lips shall be right things, and wickedness is an abomination to my lips. Receive my instruction and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it."

To get at the wisdom of the best thinkers of the world, so far as it is accessible to children, is the straightforward aim of such study. The teachers of reading, if they but realized it, are the guardians of a temple more beautiful than the Parthenon in the days of Pericles, more impressive than the sacred towers and porticos at Jerusalem; they are the custodians of a treasure far more rich and lasting than that in any palace of a king. Such comparisons, indeed, are almost belittling to the dignity of our subject. How n.o.ble and vast is the temple of literature!

What single mind can grasp its proportions or the boundless beauty of its decorations? Moreover, it is a living temple, ever springing up afresh, in all its pristine strength and beauty, whereever minds are found reverent, studious, and thoughtful.

9. The old proverb suggests that we "beware of the man of one book," and is significant of a strong practical truth. Our modern life demands a somewhat broader basis of operations than one book can furnish. But a few of the great books, well mastered, give the main elements of strength.

Mabie has a short chapter on the "Books of Life" which "include the original, creative, first-hand books in all literatures, and const.i.tute in the last a.n.a.lysis a comparatively small group, with which any student can thoroughly familiarize himself. The literary impulse of the race has expressed itself in a great variety of works of varying charm and power, but the books which are fountain-heads of vitality, ideas, and beauty are few in number."

The effect upon the teacher of the study of a few of the "Books of Life"

is deserving of emphasis. First, by limiting the choice to a few things, teachers are able, without burdening themselves, to penetrate into the deeper thought and meaning of standard works which are good specimens and criteria of all superior literature. Teachers are enabled thus to become, in a limited way, real students of literature. It has been observed, not seldom, that teachers of usual capacity, when turned into a single rich field like that of "Hiawatha" or the "Merchant of Venice"

or "The Lays of Ancient Rome" or the "Lady of the Lake," receive an awakening which means much for their general culture and teaching power.

The scattering of the attention over miscellaneous selections and fragments can hardly produce this awakening.

Certain difficulties are incident to the reading of longer works as wholes which it is well to recognize.

1. There is no such nice grading of verbal and language difficulties as has been wrought out in some of the standard readers. On this point Scudder says (p. 41 of "Literature in Schools"):--

"The drawback to the use of these nursery cla.s.sics in the schoolroom undoubtedly has been in the absence of versions which are intelligible to children of the proper age, reading by themselves. The makers of the graded reading-books have expended all their ingenuity in grading the ascent. They have been so concerned about the gradual enlargement of their vocabularies that they have paid slight attention to the ideas which the words were intended to convey. But just this gradation may be secured through the use of these stories, and it only needs that they should be written out in a form as simple, especially as regards the order of words, as that which obtains in the reading-books of equivalent grade."

But in the longer cla.s.sics for more advanced grades there can be no such adaptation, and the author's form should be retained. The authors of "Rip Van Winkle" or "Snow-Bound" or "Horatius at the Bridge" were not trying to phrase their thought to meet the needs of children, but wrote as the spirit moved them. The greater vigor and intensity of the author's style will make up, however, in large part, for this defect in easy grading. Children are not so much afraid of big or new words, if there is attractiveness and power of thought. The larger richness and variety of language in a fruitful author is a positive advantage as compared with the leanness and dulness of many a smoothly graded reading lesson.

2. It is claimed that there is, in some masterpieces, like "Evangeline"

or one of Webster's speeches, a monotony and tiresome sameness which grows burdensome to pupils ere the conclusion is reached. At least there is much less variety in style and thought than in an equal number of pages in the usual reader.

In some cases there is good ground for this criticism. It may be a defect in the writer's style, or in not finding a suitable selection for the cla.s.s. In some cases it is due to lack of power in the teacher to bring the children properly into close contact with the author's thought.

But dulness and apathy are often found in reading short selections as well as in longer ones. Generally speaking, longer pieces are apt to kindle a deeper and stronger interest. Many of the longer selections have also great variety of rhetorical style. d.i.c.kens's "Christmas Carol"

is employed in one of the drill books in reading to ill.u.s.trate all phases of voice and tone.

3. It is not an unusual experience to find that a longer story or poem seems too hard for a cla.s.s, and it may be impossible to interest them because of verbal or thought difficulties. But the teacher should not give up the struggle at once. Often, in a new author, difficulties that seem at first insurmountable give way before vigorous effort, and a lively interest is awakened. This has been noticed in Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome," in Irving's "Rip Van Winkle," in Scott's "Lady of the Lake," also in Webster's "Speech in reply to Hayne." The teacher should not depend wholly upon the author's making himself intelligible and interesting to the children. His own enthusiasm, clear grasp of thought, suggestive a.s.signment of lesson, and skill in comment and question should awaken insight and attention. It is advisable at times to pa.s.s by specially difficult pa.s.sages, or leave them for later special study.

4. In some schools it is not possible to secure books containing the complete cla.s.sics. But even the regular readers often contain complete poems and stories, and several of the large companies are publishing many of the complete masterpieces in good print and binding, no more expensive than the regular readers.

5. The greatest difficulty, after all, is the lack of experience of many teachers with the longer cla.s.sics. In many cases their inability to select what would suit their cla.s.ses is a hindrance. But the experience of many teachers with these materials is rapidly settling the question as to the place and importance of the leading masterpieces as well as of many shorter selections.

CHAPTER III

LITERARY MATERIALS FOR THE FIVE UPPER GRADES

There is great abundance and variety of choice reading matter suitable for the grades from the fourth to the eighth inclusive. The best sets of reading-books have drawn from this rich material, but no series of readers can compa.s.s adequately the field. Some of the longer cla.s.sical stories and poems have been incorporated into readers, but a single set of readers cannot be made large enough to contain a quarter of the valuable reading matter which should be furnished in these grades. The large publishing houses now supply, at moderate expense, in small and convenient book form, a great variety of the very best complete masterpieces. In order to show more clearly the richness and variety of this material, we will discuss briefly the princ.i.p.al kinds of reading matter which are distributed through these five grades. We a.s.sume that during the first three years of school life children have learned how to read, having mastered the forms and symbols of printed language. At the beginning of the fourth grade, therefore, they are prepared to read some of those choice literary products which const.i.tute a part of the permanent literature of the world. After having collected and arranged these products, we find that they fall into several distinctly marked cla.s.ses.

1. The Myths.

These include such stories as Hawthorne's "Wonder Book" and "Tanglewood Tales," Peabody's "Old Greek Folk Stories," Kingsley's "Greek Heroes,"

"The Story of Ulysses," Bryant's translation of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey," Pope's "Homer," and many other prose and poetic renderings of the Greek myths.

Another group of myths include Mabie's "Norse Stories," "Heroes of Asgard," "Siegfried," "Myths of Northern Lands," Skinner's "Readings in Folk Lore," and many forms of the Norse myths. The story of "Hiawatha"

belongs also to this group, while some of the earlier English and Roman myths belong to the same cla.s.s.

The choicest of these mythical stories are distributed as reading matter through the fourth and fifth grades. They const.i.tute a large share of the most famous literature of the great civilized nations. It is worth while to name over the virtues of these stories and poems.

They have sprung directly out of the people's life, they are race products, worked over from age to age by poetic spirits, and finally gathered into enduring form by a Homer, Virgil, or Spenser. The best of our later poets and prose masters have employed their finest skill in rendering them into simple and poetic English, as Bryant, Kingsley, Longfellow, Pope, Hawthorne, Palmer, Tennyson, Church, and many more.