merits and defects of the composition are indicated, and a comparison made to show why it is placed above the one below it and below the one above it. We have here an advance on the Hillegas scale, and further investigation may gather still more useful specimens. All this is to the good, but teachers will at the end of the day still have to depend mainly upon their own judgment and their knowledge of the local conditions and the powers of the pupils concerned. The new teaching recognizes the value of an objective standard where it can be set up, and of an approach to one where it cannot, as in this case. After all, it is not quite essential that we should be able to rank compositions in order of merit. What we aim at is to make our pupils capable of using effectively their mother tongue. The grading of them is valuable mainly because it draws our attention to certain elements in their work that might otherwise escape our notice. To make and apply a scale is an excellent exercise for any teacher. Whether a successful scale is evolved or not, the pupils get the benefit of the teacher's work. When it comes to English Literature we find that the radical difference between the old teaching and the new is that we have passed from books about books to the books themselves. The mass of books that make up English Literature is so vast that it is not surprising that teachers quailed before it, and sought refuge in text-books that gave a summary account of the unmanageable whole. The result was that instead of English Literature the pupils were called upon to study the history of English Literature, with the result that they acquired a more or less slight acquaintance with the lives of certain authors, and a a fairly clear general impression of the sort of books they had written. The feebler teachers confined themselves to synopses of the contents of the various great books, but the more enterprising sought to bring their pupils into touch with the actual texts by means of extracts, after the manner of the University lecturer. Books of extracts were also used, but as a rule they were too short to be effective. The ordinary "Literary Reader was roundly condemned by the more advanced teachers, and the wider scope of such books as Chambers's Cyclopædia of English Literature was not sufficiently utilized. Dependence was placed on the intensive study of one or two masterpieces, on the principle of ex pede herculem. But the intensiveness was overdone. Thirty-page texts were published, swollen into a big book containing ten times as much matter in the form of introductions and notes. Nothing is more refreshing in the history of educational method than the flood of invective these overladen texts have drawn out from exasperated teachers possessed of real literary appreciation. The explanation of the long reign of the over-annotated text lies in the fact that anybody can teach literature in this way, and in particular anybody can examine on it. Between them, mechanical teachers and more mechanical examiners have been able to keep the bad system in being, long after its dangers had been fully exposed and even generally admitted. We are not so much surprised at the long resistance of the note-makers when we realize the difficulties that lie in the path of the new teaching that seeks a more rational way. The problem is to get the pupils to read for themselves with intelligence and zest. Any one with a fair degree of firmness can cram into a more or less unwilling pupil F a certain amount of "facts." But when it comes to making the pupil take an active and interested part in the process of studying English Literature we are faced by a problem of extraordinary difficulty. The new teaching deals with it under the name of appreciation.1 We may order a pupil to learn by heart a passage that we consider to be of great beauty, but we recognize that it would be ridiculous to order him to like it. So far as appreciation is concerned, the teacher is too frequently reduced to the state sarcastically described by Jacotot in his definition of a teacher as “one who goes about wringing his hands and saying to the pupils 'Don't you see? Don't you see?'" Still the problem is not altogether insoluble. The teacher has at his command certain forces, some of them legitimate, others not. Perhaps the least palatable of the small-print aids to be found at the foot of a difficult page is "Note the beauty of this passage." Disappointed in his hope of some real help, the pupil is inclined to take an unfavourable view of the portion set out for his admiration. But when the master sets forth in resounding phrase the beauties of a certain bit of writing the force of suggestion acts powerfully, and is strongly supported by the desire not to confess to a worse taste than one's fellows. So we have a more or less honest endeavour to like what has for us really no attraction. The contrariant pupils, no doubt, will react in the opposite sense; but the majority of the class will be led into a more or less unwholesome acceptance of the master's view. Now it has to be 1 Cf. The Lesson in Appreciation, by Dr. F. H. Hayward, 1915. The sub-title is An Essay on the Pedagogics of Beauty, as it includes many other subjects besides English Literature, but the teacher of English will find it greatly to his advantage to read what Dr. Hayward has to say. recognized that it is impossible for the teacher to avoid altogether using suggestion. Whether he will or no, his whole attitude towards a particular passage is suggestive. The danger is in making the suggestion so plain as to lead to a somewhat hypocritical attitude on the part of the pupil. What is wanted is the pupil's own reaction to the stimulus of the author's words. The teacher is acting within his rights in presenting a passage in such a way as to make the strongest appeal to the known capacity and attainments of his pupils. He is entitled to prepare the ground, and to give his author every chance of a fair field. He may even claim that there is nothing wrong in his letting it be known how he himself regards the passage-though this is sometimes questioned-but he must make it clear that the pupil's decision is to depend entirely on how the matter appeals to himself, and not on how it strikes the teacher. As an example of what is regarded as a legitimate preparation by the new teaching as compared with the old I quote the following reminiscent passage from an article by O. J. Stevenson in The English Journal (Chicago) for February 1914. "We were reading The Lady of the Lake, and the subject of the day's lesson was the opening stanza of Canto V "Fair as the earliest beam of eastern light, When first, by the bewilder'd pilgrim spied, It smiles upon the dreary brow of night, And silvers o'er the torrent's foaming tide, Shine martial Faith, and Courtesy's bright star, Through all the wreckful storms that cloud the brow of War. "It was a strenuous lesson. The stanza was torn to shreds. Word after word was put under the microscope and examined as to its grammatical relation, its literal or figurative use, its precise shade of meaning, and its special appropriateness in the passage. I enjoyed the exercise, I believe, after a fashion, but I have a distinct recollection of my bewilderment after it was over, and my feeling that I should like to know, after all, what the stanza was all about. "I remember, too, years later, when I came to teach the passage, with what a thrill I discovered for myself what the stanza meant, and set about to find some means of helping my class to see its simple meaning and to feel for themselves as they read it something of the pleasure that I had missed. I asked them to turn their books over for a moment and to imagine a traveller who has lost his way in the black night in a dreary mountain country. He cannot see the path, and is fearful that the next step will plunge him over a precipice into the roaring torrent below. Weary and disheartened as he is, what to him will be the most welcome and most beautiful sight in the world? The sight of the first beam of returning light? Yes, that is beautiful, but the poet says there is something more beautiful still. Look at your books and tell me what it is. Martial Faith and Courtesy's bright star. What do you think is meant by martial faith? A soldier's promise. Where does a soldier's promise come into this story? Roderick Dhu has promised to guide Fitzjames as far as Coilantogle Ford. To what does the poet compare the keeping of a soldier's promise? To the beauty of the first beam of eastern light when seen by the lost pilgrim. And now let us read the stanza again, and in reading it let us try, if we can, to express the poet's feeling." |