THE
LIBRARY
OF
EMORY
UNIVERSITY
EMORY UNIVERSITY. X3A.
Accession No.
Date
Date Due
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A 1 1 f* JU
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1951.
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Library Bureau Cat. no. 1137
THE NEW
DEMOCRACY IN THE
TEACHING OF ENGLISH
THE NEW
DEMOCRACY IN THE
TEACHING OF ENGLISH
By
WALTER BARNES
Head, of English Department, Fairmont State Normal School,
Fairmont, West Virginia. Author of "English in the
Country School. Collector and Editor of "Types
of Children's Literature. Editor of Palgrave's
"Golden Treasury, Churchill's "The
Crisis, etc.
RAND MTNALLY & COMPANY
CHICAGO NEW YORK
Copyright, 1023, by
Rand M?Nally & Company
Made in TJ. S. A.
To
Mr. Joseph Rosier
Advocate and exponent of democracy
in education
THE CONTENTS
PAGE
The Introduction ix
I. Making English Democratic 1
II. The Palace of Pedagogy 22
III. Democratic Ideals [of Culture and Efficiency:
Their Relation to English . . . .60
Outlines for Study .93
vii
THE INTRODUCTION
The three addresses in this volume attempt to treat
the most important general principles underlying the
liberalization and democratization of the English subjects
in the elementary and the high school, with implications
which reach up even to the college and university. They
are to be thought of, not as an exposition of the entire
theme, but as an argument for the fundamental ideas
involved.
Two of the three addresses have been printed before.
The first one in this volume, after being read under the
title "The New Democracy in the Teaching of English
before the English Section of the Education Association
of Western Pennsylvania in 1918, was printed in booklet
form by the Board of Public Education of Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, with a foreword by William M. Davidson,
superintendent of the schools of Pittsburgh. The address
on "Democratic Ideals of Culture and Efficiency: Their
Relation to English was read before the English Club of
West Virginia University in 1919, and printed in the
November and December numbers of Education of that
year. '' The Palace of Pedagogy'' was read before the West
Virginia State Education Association in 1920, and since
that time before other audiences. It has not before been
printed.
The author has thought it best, in bringing the addresses
together in this volume, to leave them substantially as
they were in content, spirit, and style. They are perhaps
somewhat controversial in attitude, and they may be at
times somewhat conversational in tone. But to recast
ix
x
The Introduction
them would not only be a work of some magnitude; it
would, in the opinion of the author, rob them of whatever
vigor and directness they have. For that reason he is
presenting them here virtually as they first appeared, the
only alterations being unimportant ones in phrasing.
,He is the more willing to send his ideas forth in this
form because he designs to publish soon a more complete
and formal exposition of the theme, with the aim of
indicating how these general principles may be applied
in detail to actual schoolroom conditions. The present
volume may therefore be regarded as but the statement
of the author's creed and an argument for the spirit
which he believes should animate the teaching of English.
The author gratefully acknowledges his indebtedness,
for his general conception of democracy in education, to
A. Duncan Yocum. He has obtained much, in ideas
and inspiration, through books published by him, through
personal discussion with him, and through service under
him in the work of the National Council of Education's
Committee on the Teaching of Democracy.
Fairmont, West Virginia
January 15, 1923
W. B.
THE NEW
DEMOCRACY IN THE
TEACHING OF ENGLISH
I. MAKING ENGLISH DEMOCRATIC
Democracy in government. A few years ago the
American people was engaged in a war which had as its
primary and avowed object the making of the world safe
for democracy.
This slogan, "The world safe for democracy, clearly
implies that we believe that democracy is the best and
wisest government, and that America, the greatest
democracy of the world, stands forth as the champion of
democracy throughout the world—indeed, as the exem-
plar of democracy to the world. We are tacitly saying to
all nations, "The principles and institutions of democ-
racy are worth preserving, worth extending, and worth
imitating. And this is well: we must, though in no
arrogant fashion, set ourselves to the large task of
convincing the world that democracy is the happiest,
most successful, most reasonable form of government.
But the instant we step forward as the model of democ-
racy, to assist in making democracy attractive and influen-
tial, it behooves us to turn our eyes inward, strictly to
examine ourselves, our beliefs, our ideals, our institutions,
to determine whether all is well with us, whether, in all
vital matters, we are a genuinely democratic people.
Now, democracy is more than a government in which
all are citizens, in which all have a right to vote and hold
office. A democracy' is a government which allows and
1
2
The New Democracy in
encourages and assists each individual citizen to develop
himself to the utmost limits of his individual capacities
and opportunities. Differentiation, infinite variety, chance
and inspiration for each man (and for each woman) to
reach his tallest height, to do his own best work of his
own kind, yea, and the education which makes one
conscious of his specific talents, which provides those
talents with nourishment and exercise, which equips one
to travel as far as he can along the particular path on
which the Creator set his feet—this is the essence of true
democracy.
Are the schools democratic? An accurate measure of
a people's democracy is the democracy of its public
institutions. One of the most convenient and trust-
worthy tests of a nation's policies and ideals and principles
may be made by an examination of her public schools,
the largest, most representative, and farthest-reaching
institution supported by the people. America is as dem-
ocratic as her public schools. Are her public schools
democratic?
Yes, in general. They are free to all classes, and, since
they are attended by all classes, the democratic spirit
prevails; the articulation between the parts of the sys-
tern is very close, so that any child may climb from
the first grade through the university; the teachers are
recruited from the ranks; school discipline has become
liberal. Even the curriculum is becoming democratized,
with the entrance of new subjects, so that now we give—
in theory, at least — an opportunity for each child to
travel along the natural channels of his interests and
abilities. In all these matters we have made remarkable
progress, though we have much farther to go.
The Teaching of English
3
Is English teaching democratic? The one subject
that has stood firm, while the current of popular opinion
has swept away other traditional subjects from the
course of study, is English. English, we have thought, is
truly a democratic subject. Its two main divisions, litera-
ture and composition, provide what every child needs,
whether that child is to be a laborer in the mines,
a clerk in the store, a housewife in the kitchen, or a
preacher in the pulpit. No matter what a child's rearing
has been, what his present interests and tastes are, what
his future will bring, English, we have felt, has an invalu-
able contribution for him—for each, as Uncle Remus
would say,  'cordin' ter the breed an' the need.
English, therefore, we have said, is a genuinely demo-
cratic subject.
But it is just here that I take issue. English may be
democratic, provide education for all, for each the kind
he needs; or it may be aristocratic, provide education
for a limited few, for a selected group. It depends upon
the English, upon the material, the aims, the methods.
Very often, nearly always, in fact, English has been an
aristocratic subject. That is why it is necessary to
contend for the democratization of the English subjects,
for a clearer recognition of the diversified interests and
powers of all our pupils.
I have said that the English subjects have not been
sufficiently democratic. Does the statement need proof?
It is easily found.
Language-composition branch. Let us take first the
language-composition branch of English. Have we made
it fit in with the needs and the capacities of all our pupils,
or even of the majority of them ? Far from it. We have,
4
The New Democracy in
for one thing, overemphasized writing. Very few persons
have need for much writing, while virtually all have
urgent need for talking; yet we have ignored the claims
and necessities of the many to satisfy the wishes of the
few. Is this democratic? Or, consider the forms of
discourse we emphasize. Many of us force our pupils
over a steeplechase of story writing, of literary descrip-
tions, of formal orations and debates, which, if of value
at all, is of value only to the scanty few who are to be
professional writers and speakers, the while we ignore
letter writing, the telling of anecdotes and personal
experiences, and the important arts of conversation and
discussion, which are of inestimable value to all persons,
regardless of what their vocation in life is to be. Is this
democratic? The strongest reason for the making of
expositions is that the process involved in finding and
limiting a topic, and in gathering and arranging material,
is of value to everyone, since it parallels the process of
constructive thinking; yet we neglect this important
contribution to the education of all in order to give to
a small group training in mere verbal expression. Is
this democratic?
Theme subjects. Or, again, reflect upon the subjects
we assign for themes. Topics pulled bodily from litera-
ture: analysis of characters in Scott's romances, repro-
duction of stories, book reports and criticisms, debates
on whether Brutus or Mark Anthony made the better
oration; topics found by the "book-minded English
teacher in a text in rhetoric manufactured by a still
more "book-minded teacher, topics of interest only
to those concerned with literary matters: these are the
theme subjects most popular with high-school teachers
The Teaching of English
5
of English. Does anyone fancy that thinking on these
subjects (if thinking it may be called) is of interest or of
great worth to that vast majority of boys and girls who
have no literary proclivities? But the English teacher—
who would not be an English teacher if he were not
genuinely interested in these topics — has found them
stimulating and valuable to him, and he has his eye-
glasses on two or three bookworms in his class whom he
can hypnotize into a pretense of attention. So he goes
happily on his way, unperturbed by the obvious fact
that all this lies outside the charmed circle of the
experience and interests of the average child. Is this
democratic ?
Rhetoric. Finally, observe how we stress the purely
rhetorical qualities in our teaching of language and
composition. With what complacency do we teach all
the details of "purity, propriety, and precision, the
various kinds of paragraph development and of sentence
structure, the proper ratio of Latin and Anglo-Saxon
words in the ideal vocabulary, and all the other glorious
rubbish, which has but doubtful value even for the
extremely literary student, while we pay but perfunctory
attention to spelling, to pronunciation, to straightforward,
natural, free expression, which has undoubted value for
all. Is this democratic?
Literature. And what of literature, the other branch
of English? Surely it is democratic? It may be; indeed,
I believe it is more democratic than language and compo-
sition, and that it is yearly becoming more conscious of
the desires and demands of the majority of average
persons who constitute the student body. But we must
further and more fully democratize it.
6
The New Democracy in
A caution. And yet, in our effort to democratize litera-
ture, there is one grave danger of which we must beware.
Some would persuade us that all our education must be
extremely practical and utilitarian: that anything which
cannot prove itself from this standpoint must be banished
from the curriculum, and that we must either make
literature immediately and directly practical or give it
up. This I utterly deny. "Life is more than meat and
the body than raiment, whether one be a ditch digger
or a Chautauqua lecturer. Democracy does not imply
making everything useful; leisure, taste, culture, and the
pursuit of happiness are as vital to the laborer in the
fields as to the judge upon the bench. We must democ-
ratize literature, not by making it aridly utilitarian, but
by selecting the kind of literature that will have the
widest appeal among all classes. Literature is, by its
very nature, cultural, as truly as composition is, by its
very nature, practical. Literature arouses healthjq whole-
some emotions and develops and guides them; it satisfies
the craving for beauty, reveals spiritual truth, trains
taste, and provides a fine, pure, permanent pleasure.
Literature teaching is genuinely democratic when it
makes its contribution of culture to all.
When we scrutinize the material, the purposes, and the
methods of literature teaching, we discover that in many
respects it, like language teaching, is undemocratic in the
extreme.
Materials in use in teaching of the literature. In the
first place, the literature generally placed in the course of
study is not of the kind that will touch the emotions of
most children, gratify their feeling for beauty, and per-
form all the other gracious services that literature should
The Teaching of English
7
perform. The list of classics to be studied for entrance
to college, for example, or the list prescribed in almost
any high-school course contains a large proportion of
books and selections not suitable for the ninety per cent
of unliterary boys and girls. Take a certain popular
anthology as a case in point. Of the three hundred and
thirty-nine lyrics in this volume, it is doubtful whether
more than one hundred deal with themes and moods and
feelings of intrinsic interest to most children of high-school
age. Or call the roll of authors. Spenser and Chaucer
have much that is admirable for children, if well-chosen
specimens of it were put before them, and if it were not
locked up in an obsolete language. Shakespeare has much,
Milton almost nothing, Dryden and Pope and Addison
and Samuel Johnson very little, the early novelists
nothing, Scott much in both prose and verse; and so
on, down to and into present-day writers. We have only to
reflect upon these matters for a moment to see that, of
English and American authors of equal rank, some make
a strong appeal to average children and are therefore in
a sense "democratic, while others render the services of
literature only to the elect few, to those reared in a more
or less bookish home, to those with a literary learning, or,
at least, leaning.
The old and the new. A similar situation is revealed
when we observe the age-old battle of the books, the con-
flict between the old and the modern, In Dean Swift's
satire and Sainte-Beuve's brilliant essay the ancients con-
quer. And so they do in the opinion of all authors and all
teachers of English, and the few young people in high
school and college who are pronouncedly literary in their
tastes and tendencies. Personally we may care more for
2
8
The New Democracy in
Chaucer than for Masefield, for Fielding than for Bennett,
for the Spectator than for the Cosmopolitan. But we of
the literary gentry must beware lest we commit the most
insidious of all pedagogical sins: the sin of imputing to
our pupils the interests and inclinations and outlooks-on-
life which we have now or had as children. And to this
sin we are continually tempted.
Of course, some of the classic literature of the past is
as much alive today as when it was penned; it is forever
contemporaneous. It stands out like great mountain
ranges; the world may travel along its foothills for cen-
turies without getting out of sight of it. Literature
is alive as long as it has life, and it has life as long
as it influences life. But many of the masterpieces
of classic literature, beautiful specimens of literary
craftsmanship, have lost all significance except to the
specialist in literary history or the lover of style. The
virtue has gone out of them, their glory has departed.
These writings we should unhesitatingly banish from the
required courses in literature in all public schools. They
make literature teaching undemocratic in that they appeal
only to the highly specialized few.
Chronological organization of literature undemocratic.
This leads naturally to another criticism of the literature
in many courses of study: it is usually organized by
chronology, so that the authors and periods may be
studied in their time sequence. This also is undemocratic.
Nine-tenths of our students care nothing about the lives
of authors or the historical and literary backgrounds, and
the knowledge crammed down their reluctant throats is
almost never digested and metabolized into intellectual
and emotional cellular structure. For nearly all it fails
The Teaching of English
9
to be cultural, it fails to be practical; yet we keep on
teaching it because, forsooth, we enjoy it and appreciate
it, and because a few of our students gulp it down when
we serve it to them.
Our teaching methods objectionable. Our method of
dealing with literature, after we have chosen it, is open
to similar objection. We analyze it and dissect it; we
examine it with microscopes and telescopes and stetho-
scopes, with audiphones and colorimeters. We weigh
each fact on the apothecary's scales; we employ the
metronome to discover whether the poetic feet be
trochaic or iambic, and the yardstick to measure off
tetrameters and pentameters; we chart the rime scheme
of the sonnet and the Pindaric ode; we trace every
allusion to the "last point of vision and beyond"; we pry
and peer into the mechanism of every figure of speech
to see whether it be metaphor or simile—and why.
Now this is pleasant fun for us who care for the niceties
of literary style, and it makes a considerable contribution
to that particular brand of education to which we may
lay claim. This is the way to perceive the fine points of
art; I would not discount its value—for us; and I should
hesitate to recommend a teacher of English who could
not perform all these pretty exercises. But very few of
the students in our high schools, or colleges, for that
matter, are interested in the technicalities of literary
craftsmanship. What the great mass of students should
get—all they can get — from literature is the stimulation
of wholesome emotions, the invigoration of lofty ideals,
the satisfaction of their instinct for beauty, and joy
"that after no repentance draws"— in short, the content-
aspect of literature, not the form-aspect. If the average
10
The New Democracy in
boy or girl does not get this from literature, he gets
nothing, nothing of worth. And yet apparently we
prefer to train a few of our kind of students to use the
critical microscope than the many to use their eyes.
Undemocratic again, aristocratic again.
In consequence of all this we are failing to train in
the proper and natural reading habits, the habits that
are of use when the children leave school. Assuredly
they will not use the intensive method of studying
literature when they leave school; if they read at all,
they will read much, read rapidly, read the lighter
forms. Our class teaching of literature fails to "carry
over into life, fails to "modify the behavior of our
students. And if we fail to establish a method and
proper habits while the children are in school, we have
failed in one of our most important functions, so far as
the majority of children is concerned.
Literature which is too "literary. But let me make
myself clear, even at the cost of repetition. I am not pro-
posing to eliminate the classics and substitute Harold Bell
Wright; I am not proposing to gallop through the miles
of jejune, ephemeral stories and articles of recent litera-
ture; I am not proposing a method whereby we leave
out thoughtful discussion and criticism of what is read.
And I am far from proposing that we replace literature
with informational reading-matter on the score that it
is "practical. Not at all. What I am contending
for is good literature, to be treated as literature, from
which we expect the natural fruits of literature: taste
and discrimination, steadily improving; increase in
emotional sanity and intensity and range; nourish-
ment of the appetite for the romantic, the beautiful,
The Teaching of English
11
the ideal: in a word, contributions to culture. But the
mischief is that we have been putting before children
literature that is too "literary, too mature, too sophisti-
cated, dealing with themes too narrow in their appeal, so
that the children have not been receiving these contri-
butions.
Not that I would feed the children upon baby food,
upon that which is merely "easy"; now and then it is
good for them to stand on tiptoe. But we must begin
with what the children have and are. Culture, like
charity, begins at home. Little matter what we English
teachers enjoy and from what we abstract culture. We
may get more exquisite pleasure from our classics than
children get from the more childish literature they enjoy
— I for one am strong in the faith that we do get a far
more exquisite pleasure; the nub of the matter is that
most students cannot get our pleasure, our culture,
from many of our favorites. Therefore I propose that
we put before them that from which they can secure
cultural rewards, rewards not so rich as ours, but the
richest they can get.
Have I not adduced sufficient proof that our teaching
of English, in both language and composition and in
literature, is undemocratic in the extreme? Is it not
evident that in almost every phase of our work we have
our eyes fastened upon the few students (we call them
the bright ones, the talented ones, whereas they are
really only bright and talented in a special way, a literary
way, our way) and pay but cursory attention to the
multitude who are not literary-minded, perhaps not even
eye-minded, and who therefore—the more's the pity—
especially need our help?
12
The New Democracy in
Training leaders? "But, our classical friends pro-
test, "a democracy must have leaders: we are training
the leaders. Of course, a democracy must have leaders;
Russia furnishes abundant demonstration of this. But
two counterstatements need to be made. In the first
place, it is extremely doubtful that we are training the
leaders, even the leaders in the literary professions, by
this method; in the second place, training leaders at the
expense of the followers, which is the most effective of
principles for nourishing aristocracy, is the most dan-
gerous for a democracy. A truly democratic education
trains both leaders and followers.
Facing the issue. We must democratize the teaching
of English, we must have a broader appreciation of the
needs of the "many-headed crowd that throngs our
schools. While the secondary school was aristocratic in
the personnel of its student body, it could be aristo-
cratic in purposes and curriculum, it could train the four
per cent for the professions while it forced the ninety-six
per cent of tradespeople to learn their calling through the
long training of apprenticeship or the longer training of
experience. But when "all the children of all the people
come to us for teaching and training, for preparation for
their vocations, for coal mining or iron working or house-
keeping or farming—and they have as much right to come
as the elect—we should not serve out to them that which
we have prepared for a far different circle of diners. We
must teach them that kind of English which will give
them efficiency and culture in their own walks of life.
I am not forgetful of what has been accomplished
through providing special courses in English in high
school and college for certain vocations, such, for example,
The Teaching of English
13
as business English and engineering English. This is
good; but it comes far short of solving the problem of
the democratization of English. The vast majority of
those who are to form the "common run of citizens are
not affected by this. We must make the traditional and
the required courses in English more democratic.
How? By a square facing of the facts relative to the
immense diversity of personalities, of natures, of motives
and ambitions and desires and needs among our public-
school students. By a recognition of the law that each
separate fascicle of tastes and talents requires its own
kind of education, that a person is educated by that
which contributes to his own life and experience. By
a realization of the fact that the training of Kate to
be a housewife or Bill to be a plumber is precisely as
important as the education of Kathryn to be a lady of
fashion or Willy to be a preacher. By carrying out the
doctrine that work is work, power is power, service is
service, success is success, wherever found; that a given
amount of intelligent activity is equal to the same amount
of intelligent activity, whether in a doctor's office or in a
railroad locomotive, whether in an editor's chair or on
an office stool, whether playing the piano or washing
the clothes. Then by a resolute remodeling of our
course of study and a facing about in our aims and
purposes; by adopting an elective, or at least an eclectic
system.
Let us see what this means in practice. First, in the
language-composition activities.
Democratizing language-composition activities. We
should allow and encourage each child to find his own
subjects for writing and speaking. When we first
14
The New Democracy in
attempt this, the class is at a loss; the children do not
realize the richness of their lives and experiences and
the potentiality of their possessions for language expres-
sion. But if we are patient and tactful, if we lead them
for a time by suggestion, direct them by indirection,
they soon find themselves and their powers and launch
forth, each on his own fledgling wings, each toward his
own goal. And oh, the joy they feel, as, with each flight,
their pinions grow and strengthen and their skill in
flying increases, as they see spreading out before them a
wider expanse of earth and sky!
An illustration. Recently in his weekly batch of
themes an English teacher found the following: a social
letter; a business letter ordering dress goods from a
supply house; an article for the local paper advertising
an exhibit of Raemakers'1 cartoons; a criticism of the
four-minute speeches made in the local theaters; an
editorial for the school paper; a comparison of the school
paper with another one; a history of one of the literary
societies for the yearbook; an exposition on "Why the
Blank Car Is the Best Car for the Money"; an analysis
of a new reference set just put into the library; a book
report on Christine; an Easter story; an account of the
Salvation Army campaign in ; a report of an investi-
gation of how the students raised their money for the
Y.M.C.A. fund; a humorous sketch, entitled "How We
May Know There Has Been a Smallpox Scare in the
Normal"; a study of the words misspelled by the class;
an article for the school paper on the baseball pros-
pects for the spring; and a sample page of history
notes. v
1 The reader will remember that this was written in 1918.
The Teaching of English
15
I need not point out the advantages of this system.
It is obvious that by thus allowing the students to express
themselves on subjects of personal interest we encourage
them to develop themselves in the directions indicated
as best for them by their powers and experiences.
Democratic "forms of discourse. As to the forms
of discourse, we should make few requirements and
those in the interests of the greatest good for the
greatest number. We should have enough story writ-
ing to determine whether any students have talent
in this (and it is extremely rare); then we should
encourage those who have talent to contribute stories
when they feel a strong impulse, releasing the other
members of the class from this form of writing. Literary
descriptions and essays and formal debates and orations
we should handle in somewhat the same way. The
forms we should compel all students to pay attention to
are: the writing of business and social letters, for this
training is certain to be needed by all; the making of
explanations, largely oral, emphasizing the compositional
features of the work rather than the expressional features;
and conversation and discussion, all-important and almost
altogether neglected. And we should look as kindly
upon a first-rate explanation of "How to Clean a Gun
or "How to Make Griddlecakes as upon a patriotic
oration or a short story—the chances are it will be a
better thing of its kind.
Oral and written modes of expression. Moreover,
we should spend much more time upon the various
details of oral language than upon those of written
language. This also has to do with the democ-
ratization of language teaching; for only a few need
16
The New Democracy in
extensive training in writing, while all need extensive
training in speech. If one student wishes to give expres-
sion to his thoughts in talk and another in writing, we
should sanction and encourage both. No matter if
our themes deal with every conceivable subject, molded
in every conceivable form. The points at issue are: Is
the theme good of its kind? Is it natural to the person?
Is it along the lines of his interests and powers? Is he
urged on by a strong motive?
"Formal elements. A similar attitude should be taken
toward the technical details of language teaching. Let us
not busy ourselves with the petty niceties of literary style,
of concern to a small number only, when most of the
children need long-continued training in spelling, punc-
tuation, pronunciation and enunciation, sentence struc-
ture, and the arrangement of ideas in a series of symmetri-
cal paragraphs. Most children cannot hope to attain to
literary excellence. Let us give this literary training
to those who show promise, but let us not force the
others over the same route. And if either class must
be neglected, let us neglect the smaller class.
The problem of models. For the most part, classic
literary models have no place in a democratic method of
teaching language. We know that Franklin and Steven-
son, that pair of "sedulous apes, trained themselves by
the study and imitation of literary models, and that
authors will continue this practice. But these are
mature, studious men, zealous for literary success, endowed
with native literary gifts, interested in subjects similar to
those treated in the models they are using. Only a tiny
group of students will be benefited by this aping of litera-
ture; the overwhelming majority do not learn language
The Teaching of English
17
this way. They learn it by expressional activity through
guidance; and if any models are to be used, the most
helpful ones are found in good conversation and in
writing which is not so "literary.
Summary of doctrine on democratizing language teach-
ing. Of course, no one is so foolish as to believe that we
should allow a child to follow his own devices entirely in
these matters. There is a body of minimum essentials
to be mastered by all, whether they are interesting or
not, because there is almost absolute assurance that they
are needed and will be needed in the everyday life of
every person. But we should permit and desire each
child to speak and write on subjects interesting to him,
in his own way, for his own purposes; and we should allot
as much credit to one good piece of work as another.
This is what I mean by democratization of the language-
composition group of English.
Democratizing literature teaching. The same general
principle is applicable to the teaching of literature—
though in this subject, since the natural results are so
hard to measure and the spiritual and cultural effects
upon personality are so subtle, the principle is more
difficult to apply. In general, the course in literature
should consist of two kinds of work.
First, class work. A bit of literature can have no effect
upon a child if it makes no appeal to him, if it fails
to come home to his heart and bosom. The principles
of democracy demand, therefore, that for class study no
literature be required the theme and tone and emotions
of which are foreign to the majority of the class. Each
required selection, with certain exceptions, should be a
classic, for nothing but a classic will justify and reward
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intensive class study; but it must be universally interest-
ing to young folks. Silas Marner and Burke's famous
speech—to cite but two examples—are certainly not
such specimens, while Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and
many of Tennyson's poems as certainly are.
But it is doubtful whether there are many such speci-
mens. Let us make out a course of class reading and
study composed of those selections which are really
democratic in their appeal, in that they produce results
upon every member of the class — not necessarily the
same results or an equal sum of results. Let us study
these, not too intensively, seeking to emphasize the
cultural and artistic and content phases. One day, or
at most two days, a week throughout the course will
suffice for this. And when we have provided this—the
literary "minimum essentials, so to speak—we should
turn the students loose and let them follow their own
paths.
Second, individual reading. A child, like an adult, has
his individual tastes in books, and he has a right to their
gratification, provided, of course, they are not perverted.
What is one man's meat is another's poison. What gives
cultural enjoyment to one fails utterly with another.
This robust, athletic young fellow may prefer the out-
of-door tale, the Indian story, the soldier story; that
romantic boy may desire to race through Dumas and
Scott; this girl may wish strong doses of Jules Verne or
Rider Haggard; yonder quiet maiden may cleave to the
immortal Louisa M. Alcott. Some children like history,
others are fond of books of humor, some indulge themselves
in poetry, others steep themselves in love stories. Any
librarian, any student of human nature, can inform you
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19
how varied, how heterogeneous, are the reading interests
of children in their teens.
Guiding the reading. But I am not advocating an
extreme hands-off policy. Children should not be allowed
to read as part of their literature course anything that is
not literature—not necessarily great literature, but sound,
wholesome, good literature. The teacher must be liberal
and catholic and democratic in her sympathies, willing
to lower her strict standards somewhat and to accept
as pleasant and profitable for others what she personally
may find a bit trite or melodramatic. We must meet the
children a little more than halfway, and then, as rapidly
as possible, lead them on and up to higher reading
levels.
Nor must we allow children to indulge themselves to
the point of satiety in any form of literature. We must
suggest and insinuate and guide, lead them on, always in
the grooves of their interests, from book to book, from
author to author, and see that each child is properly
introduced to the vast array of good literature within
the scope of his interests. Every book read must be
approved by the teacher, but the teacher must be pre-
pared to approve much that she personally does not
fancy.
Most of this individual reading will be in fiction,
much of it in recent fiction. This is desirable, for it is
recent fiction that most of the students will read when
they are students no longer, and we should attempt to
train in separating the good from the worthless and
inane. There should be much magazine reading, some
of it in class; but we should include no magazine that
is not healthful and sound. The children with literary
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tastes will, of course, be encouraged to breathe the fine,
bracing atmosphere of the great literature.
I would put before the students a library full of a
variety of good books—many of them light, but all of
them good. I would direct their reading through indi-
vidual conferences, and once or twice a week I would
have the class meet for reports, reviews, discussions, and
exchange of book talk. Each child would be expected
to read a certain number of books—not necessarily the
same number, and not necessarily specified books. In
this way each boy and girl would have an opportunity to
gratify his hunger, to receive the particular training in
forming reading habits which he needs, and to extract
the largest degree of literary profit from his reading.
That is what I mean by democracy in literature.
Some of my friends, when they have heard me speak
in this fashion and have seen my own classes in action,
have told me that I am degrading the teaching of litera-
ture, that I am putting the lofty, permanent classics on
a level with the lowly, transitory productions of the day.
Not at all. I personally happen to care infinitely more
for some of the classics than for any modern books. I
believe that some of them are masterpieces, matchless in
their beauty, and that my joy in reading them is finer
and subtler than the joy of the young fellow absorbed in
his Sherlock Holmes or his Penrod. Moreover, I wish—
sometimes, at least—that I could bring that young
fellow, one of my students perhaps, to my appreciation
of the classics. But I need not expect to, and possibly
I should not desire to. His culture is not my culture,
though his may be as genuine as mine. And besides, even
though I love Shakespeare, may I not enjoy also the
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21
Saturday Evening Post f I believe Shakespeare would
have enjoyed it; I think I could prove it.
Will it work? If one warns me that this democratic
freedom will not work in practice, I tell him that I have
seen it work. If one tells me that this individual method
requires more time and labor than the already burdened
English teacher can stand, I tell him the teacher should
approximate this ideal as closely as possible. The truth
is, we can come nearer to doing all that I have proposed
than we think, once we cut loose from the traditional,
aristocratic material and methods that have hampered
us. And at the same time we can encourage and assist
the few literary students in our classes to go as far in
their personal development as the unliterary go in theirs.
This is true democracy in the teaching of English: that
each student get from the English subjects that training
and that life of most worth to him—to him, not to some
one else.
If America is to represent democracy, it must present,
in all her institutions and in all the details and depart-
ments of her institutions, democratic ideals and standards
in action and application. It is clear that the English
subjects in our schools are not, in substance or in spirit,
completely democratic. It is also clear that they may
be made democratic, so thoroughly democratic that
their influence will permeate the schools and the world
around and beyond the schools. So rich in democratic
implications and possibilities are the English subjects, so
potentially powerful for democratic education, that we
have but to follow along the paths they point out and
let them lead us to the goal.
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II. THE PALACE OF PEDAGOGY
The Palace of Art.  I built my soul a lordly pleasure-
house"—thus begins Tennyson's poem "The Palace of
Art. A beautiful palace! It was erected upon a lofty
plateau which rose sheer from the plain, and upon this
plateau the poet-architect laid out four spacious courts,
in each of which was a fountain. The palace was full of
long-sounding corridors, full of great rooms and small,
all varied, each a perfect whole. Rich tapestry and
arras, depicting landscapes and legendary scenes, cov-
ered the walls, and here and there hung choice paint-
ings, while in the floor mosaics shadowed forth allegories
of life. Up in the towers were placed great silver bells
which swung of themselves and made a sweet and noble
music. In brief, all that imagination could dream and
art express, all that might satisfy the senses and gratify
the craving for beauty, was here. And in this palace
the soul lived alone.
My soul would live alone unto herself
In her high palace there.
In the Palace of Art the soul dwelt apart, sequestered
and secluded, holding no intercourse with the crude and
plebeian things of the earth.
.... let the world have peace or wars,
'Tis one to me.
O God-like isolation which art mine,
I can but count thee perfect gain,
What time I watch the darkening droves of swine
That range on yonder plain.
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23
—the "darkening droves of swine being the men and
women dwelling in the plains below the palace.
I care not what the sects may brawl,
I sit as God holding no form of creed,
But contemplate them all.
Aloft above the petty affairs of life, cloistered and
serene, the soul existed alone, looking down in scorn upon
the work and play, the hopes and joys, the fears and
struggles of human existence, with interest only in the
beauties of art and the truths of abstract philosophy.
"It is all so trivial and sordid, I can hear her say; "all
so mean and menial and materialistic, these problems of
how to make a living, how to get food and shelter, how
to build roads and till fields and tend cattle.
Full oft the riddle of the painful earth
Flash'd thro' her as she sat alone,
Yet not the less held she her solemn mirth,
And intellectual throne.
"As she sat alone"—that was the sole reason for
the construction of the Palace of Art: that the soul
might be relieved of the vexations and troubles of humble
humanity and free to devote her mind to beauty and
pure intellectual pursuits.
And so she throve and prosper'd; so three years
She prosper1 d.
The Palace of Pedagogy. And while for three years
she prospers, let me describe another palace, the Palace
of Pedagogy. Builded by poets and philosophers, this
palace like the other, set upon a hill, apart from the
homes and haunts of men; dedicated to the service of
beauty and high aesthetic and intellectual accomplish-
ments; looking down in fastidious scorn upon the farms
3
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and villages, the shops and stores, where labor and live
the men and women of the valley—there stands the
Palace of Pedagogy.
The lords and ladies who dwell in this Palace base
their philosophy upon a few tenets and dogmas. These
are the most fundamental: that there is but one success,
one happiness, one culture, one great good, one education
— that attained by those who dwell in the Palace; that
this is to be attained only by the hardening of the will,
the disciplining of the mind, and the training of the
spirit to discern beauty and to learn a remote and abstract
philosophy; that none except those studies and activities
which are far removed from the ordinary, transitory
affairs of life are worthy of the attention of a dweller in
the Palace; that they who live in the Palace, though by
nature and special training fitted to be the teachers and
leaders of all the children of men, should deal with none
but those who are destined for the Palace—should train
artists but not artisans, poets but not advertising writers,
portrait painters but not photographers, architects but
not carpenters, sculptors but not stone masons; should
teach the fine arts but not the useful arts; should prepare
for the painful professions but not for the gainful trades.
There must be no condescension, no lowering of pure and
lofty standards to a mundane plane, no truckling to the
wishes of the groundlings.
"If you desire to be educated, they say, "you must
come up to us, we shall not come down to you.  Exten-
sion work? That is cheap and shoddy. "Household
economics and manual training? They are "easy and
'' common.  Popularizing knowledge ?'' That is undig-
nified and unprofessional. It is better to learn how
The Teaching of English
25
Caesar built his wooden bridge in Gaul than to learn how
to build a concrete bridge in America. The inmates of the
Palace of Pedagogy stand for the "humanities, which
seems sometimes to mean that which humanity does not
directly and immediately need; they contend for a "liberal
education, though they themselves are illiberal in the
extreme toward all studies except a narrow group of
studies, a narrow group which nevertheless they call
broadening.
The "English Wing in the Palace. But I intend to
speak more explicitly concerning those who occupy a cer-
tain section of the Palace of Pedagogy, that which may
be called the "English Wing of the Palace. Despite
all attempts to democratize the teaching of English, to
fit it into the uses and usages of life, to render it definitely
valuable to each individual, English still remains too
"high-brow, too remote from the urgent desires and
pressing needs of common life, too vague and visionary.
Teachers of English think too much of preparation for
life and too little of participation in life, too much of
discipline and too little of deeds, too much of exercises
and too little of activities, too much of books and bookish
enjoyments and too little of life and living employments.
The source of most of the false doctrine and mischievous
method in English teaching is here: many English teachers
are residents of the Palace of Pedagogy. They conceive
of but one desirable kind of life, their kind; of but
one desirable type of education, their type. Enthroned
high above the practical affairs of the world, they have
not a vision of or sympathy with those who live in the
plains and valleys. Being ignorant of life, they ignore
life.
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"You wish to speak and write? Very well; train your-
self through story writing, the making of essays, orations,
descriptions.
"But I wish to learn how to converse, to discuss,
to write letters, to use language in conducting the business
and social affairs of my life.
"Nay; there is but one type of expression that merits
attention, the literary type; you must prepare yourself
for conversation by writing expositions.
"I wish to learn to read.
"Very well; here are Shakespeare and Milton, Words-
worth and George Eliot and Henry James.
 But I wish to learn to read newspapers and magazines
and to know what is the best in modern fiction and
poetry.
"Nay; there is but one type of reading, the 'classic'
type. It may be that through temperament and expe-
rience you are not able to derive pleasure or profit from
the reading of these masterpieces; nevertheless this is all
that is read in the Palace of Pedagogy, therefore all that
is worth reading.
It is this detachment, this remoteness from life, this
obliviousness to the daily and hourly desires and demands
of life, this abstraction in the purely rhetorical and
aesthetic aspects of English—it is this that holds back
English teachers from their richest service and finest
enjoyment.
Value of English for life. I should not be a teacher of
English, I think, if I did not believe that English, the
right kind of English, has a tremendous value for life.
And I should not be a critic of the teaching of English if
I did not believe that the English which has been taught
and is being taught in most places is not the right kind
The Teaching of English
27
because it fails so frequently to have a value for life'
Life is complex, not simple; life is multiform, not uniform;
heterogeneous, not homogeneous. And English has been
taught as if all boys and girls were to be dwellers in the
Palace of Pedagogy, concerned with literary art, whereas
to the end of time ninety-nine per cent of the boys and
girls will be dwellers in the valleys and plains below the
Palace, workers in the farms and shops and offices and
kitchens, and concerned only with the lighter forms of
reading and the more practical phases of speaking and
writing.
Let me be specific, for I have no desire to rest my
indictment on loose, unsubstantial charges and denuncia-
tions. What is the English which the average boy and
girl, the dweller on the plains, should be taught? As I
try to answer this, bear in mind that what I shall now
say applies only to elementary and high-school English.
Later on I shall have something to say of college English.
Fundamental English needs. The fundamental English
needs of those children who are to remain in the valley
dominated by the Palace of Pedagogy are not many—
though for that very reason they are urgent.
Rapid silent reading needed by all children. First,
children need to be taught to get the thought rapidly,
easily, and accurately from subject matter that is
within their scope, whether it be informational or liter-
ary. This does not mean that they are to be taught to
read aloud artistically—far from it. We must come to
see, we must have it seared into our minds, that only the
few, the literary few, the future dwellers in the Palace,
can be trained to read literature, especially poetry, aloud,
with any degree of effectiveness. Oh, the years we waste
in the elementary and high school trying to make accom-
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plished oral readers of those who never, by any means
whatsoever, can be trained to read aloud anything but
plain reading matter from a book or newspaper! The
old definition, "Reading is getting and giving the
thought from the printed page, has done infinite harm.
Reading, the common, practical reading of life, does not
include nor imply giving the thought, either in oral read-
ing or in dramatization or even in reproduction. If we
could be persuaded to give up this futile business and
devote the time we should save to training children in
getting the thought quickly and fluently, we could
hope to accomplish this, the first duty of the English
teacher.
Knowledge and appreciation of literature. Second,
the children of the valleys and plains should be brought
to care for good literature and to know what is good
literature. Our present system fails pitifully in this
respect. I contend that it fails largely because the
dwellers in the Palace of Pedagogy, the high priests of
literature, attempt to bring up the children on a narrow
diet of classics. It sounds perverse, but I must say it:
their aims are too high. Only those who are destined to
dwell in the Palace can breathe the atmosphere of the
supreme classic literature. And yet most of the required
reading in grades and high school is of the classic type,
far beyond the taste and appreciation of boys and girls.
Perhaps, if they were "wisely guided, they might in their
maturity come to enjoy these masterpieces — for master-
pieces they are; but it is folly to expect puny youngsters
to scale the heights of art and wisdom of Milton and
Shelley and Browning, of Thackeray and Hardy and
Hawthorne.
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29
Yet there are some of the classics which, by virtue of
the themes and content and the personality of the authors,
belong by right to all children. Shakespeare is theirs,
and Scott is theirs, and Cooper and Mark Twain are
theirs, and Dickens in part and Tennyson in part, and
scores of scattered selections, prose and poetry, old and
modern. All children should arrive at a loving apprecia-
tion of this classic literature, because it deals with those
aspects of life, those ideas and feelings, those events and
personages, which are of paramount interest to them.
I say all children should love such classic literature.
That they do not is because of our bungling method of
presenting it.
Errors in presenting literature, a) Analysis. Our
favorite blunder is presenting this literature as fine art, to
be studied and analyzed as specimens of art, instead of as
documents of life, romantic or realistic, to be observed
and reflected upon as fragments of existence. Are we
reading a sonnet? Instead of finding and admiring the
fundamental ideas, the new points of view, the truths in
the poem, and allowing ourselves to be stirred by the
emotion, we must split up the fourteen lines carefully
into octave and sestet, we must examine the architec-
tonics, must diagram the rime scheme to see whether it
be Italian or Shakespearean—all of which is of interest
largely to sonneteers, to students of literary craftsman-
ship, to those who will become inmates of the Palace
on the hill. Are we taking up a drama of Shakespeare's?
Instead of reading rapidly through the play, following
the story, and comparing it with life as the children have
observed life, getting acquainted with the characters
and watching them act and react upon circumstances
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and upon one another, noting passages of wisdom and
eloquence with which the pages of Shakespeare are so
generously strewn; instead of treating the play as a cross-
section of human existence, we must study the sources of
the plot and conjecture why the author modified them, we
must learn the architecture of the play, the exposition,
rising action, and so forth, we must admire the play-
Wright's skill in character grouping, we must try to deter-
mine why characters use prose in one place and blank
verse in another, we must count the number of rimes and
run-on lines to enable us to tell in just what year this
play was written—all matters of interest to the tech-
nician, to the student of the art of stagecraft, to the
dwellers in the Palace, but of no concern to the inhabit-
ants of the plains.
Teachers of English need not try to ignore the fact
that the average pupil, that is to say, the unliterary
boy and girl, does not care for and will not profit from
the discussions, the dissertations, the desiccations of liter-
ature, the fine points and the nice problems of literary
style, the never-ending distinctions between the tweedle-
dums and the tweedledees of the writer's art. Having
selected that literature which because of its content and
its style is of the kind which will come home to the hearts
of children and young people, we must regard that litera-
ture as areas of life rather than as specimens for literary
analysis, we must drive straight to the essential qualities,
the main issues, the vital matters of thought and feeling,
of story, character, and situation—this to the end that
we may enrich and enlarge the lives of those who are to
run the shops and stores, to manage the offices and
homes in the valley, not that we may coach initiates
The Teaching of English
31
for the Palace of Pedagogy. This does not mean, of
course, that we are to read everything at the same rate
of speed. Whenever an important thought, a lofty
truth, a subtle point, is couched in involved language,
whenever any difficulty stands between the reader and
some vital idea in the reading, naturally we must slow
down our pace. But what is so exasperating is to see a
teacher eternally reining the class in, keeping the boys
and girls for three weeks on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
when it is obvious that they could exhaust its possibilities
in three days, or spending a month on Julius Caesar when
a third of that time is all-sufficient. Does it not strike
you as queer—to put it mildly—that, though in two
hours we can appreciate and understand Julius Caesar as
we see it played, we must devote weeks to studying the
play in class?
b) The history of literature. Another of the decrees
handed down from the Palace of Pedagogy and imposed
upon the children of the plains is that all must study,
long and unflaggingly, the history and development of
literature and the biographies of authors. Even for
the boys and girls who are preparing themselves for occu-
pancy of the Palace of Pedagogy this is of question-
able value, since usually they are forced to take up the
study of authors and the history of literature before
they have done sufficient reading of the literature itself.
As for the children of the plains, it is time lost and energy
wasted. One needs no further proof of this than the
fact, obvious to all, that children who have been thor-
oughly drilled—and grilled—in the history of liter-
ature remember but the tiniest fractions of what they
have studied, and usually remember these fractions
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wrong. They forget the characteristics of the different
periods, they forget the chronological sequence, they for-
get the epochs to which the authors belong, they forget
the analyses of books and styles, they forget the events
in the existence of authors—if, indeed, the meditative
lives of authors can be said to have events. It is amazing
— and amusing—to see the blunders that graduates of
high school and even of college make in the details of
literary history a few short months after they have flung
away their textbooks. The knowledge that is acquired
with such drudgery is so unrelated to the affairs of the
world that it cannot be used. And how shall knowledge
that is not used be useful ?
It is not as if the study of the history of literature and
the biographies of writers were generally interesting. The
life of Daniel Boone is more generally interesting and
much more inspiring to young people than the life of
Joseph Addison; the lives of Stanley and Peary, of Nel-
son and Napoleon, of Edison and Burbank, of Florence
Nightingale and Father Damien, than the lives of Milton
and Wordsworth, of Keats and Shelley, of Irving and Poe.
What of value is there to any but the literary gentry in
the learning of the three periods of Chaucer's life, of the
long development of drama which culminated in Shake-
speare, of the difference between Pope and Dryden, of the
manner in which Doctor Johnson ruled his petty senate,
of the interminable quarrels of Cooper, of the length of
time Hawthorne lived in Salem? Why are the lives of
authors more worthy of compulsory study by all pupils,
regardless of their inherent interests, than the lives of
painters, of musicians, of mathematicians, scientists, or
captains of industry? Why? Merely because those
The Teaching of English
33
who dwell in the Palace of Pedagogy, being themselves
interested in the lives of authors, have agreed that this
knowledge is indispensable to culture, to a liberal edu-
cation, and, holding positions of authority, they have
decreed that it shall become a part of the curriculum.
The better method. I have said that the second duty
resting upon teachers of English (the second clause of
the contract we have made with the public) is to indoc-
trinate children with a love of good books and to train
them to a degree of discrimination in books. We shall
not do this by a line-by-line analysis of classics, by a
precept-upon-precept study of the laws and principles
of art, by a here-a-little-and-there-a-little survey of the
history of literature and the careers of literary personages.
This is what we should not do. What is it we should do ?
The field of literature. I propose that we search out
all the desirable literature, all the good books which, by
virtue of their subject matter and their style, are suitable
and profitable to children and young people; that we
read these books with them as rapidly as an intelligent
appreciation of the most important qualities and most
striking features of each specimen of the literature permits
and suggests; that we read primarily for life, not for art;
that we read scores and hundreds of books instead of a
meager and miserly few; that each child be allowed to
read, according to his interests, from a generous list;
that our reading comprise the best of modern newspapers,
magazines, fiction, and poetry; that a good book be
appraised and admired as a good book, no matter when
or by whom it was written; that we build up principles of
criticism and canons of art surely and gradually, through
the children's reading and observation, and that we place
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a premium upon that quality which is most desirable in
a critic: sincerity, integrity; that as interest manifests
itself we read something of the lives of authors we like
and obtain a few glimpses of the backgrounds of modern
literature. I propose that wre break down the traditions
which fence us in to pasture upon a few books—and those
better suited to adults — and that we range freely over all
the good, wholesome reading available for young people.
Books are of several grades of merit. Dwellers in
the Palace of Pedagogy would have us believe that there
are but two kinds of books: the books which they call
"classic and the books which, if they were not afraid
of slang, they might call "classy. As a matter of fact,
one can distinguish in the field of fiction at least six
grades of books: first, the supreme classics; second, the
good, serious, carefully written books, of sincere purpose
and sound art but not great enough to rank among the
classics, such books as Mr. Britling Sees It Through,
The Harbor, The Crisis, A Certain Rich Man; third, the
light, ephemeral books, worth reading once, and once in
a while for entertainment, books of the romantic sort,
such as those of Zane Grey and Rex Beach; fourth, the
sentimental, insincere, melodramatic books of Harold
Bell Wright and Ethel Dell; fifth, and slightly below these,
the mawkish, inane love stories and crime stories of
Bertha M. Clay and Nick Carter; sixth, the depraved and
depraving sex stories, such as those of Elinor Glyn and,
at his worst, Robert W. Chambers. There are at least
these six classifications of novels, with gradations between.
One can find as many groups of magazines, from the
Atlantic down to Snappy Stories; and in the poetry and
drama of today there are three or four distinct levels.
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35
Now if the dwellers in the Palace of Pedagogy will have
dealings only with the reading material of the first class,
how shall immature boys and girls learn how to discrimi-
nate, to choose the best and shun the worst among the
other classes ? And it is the literature of the other classes,
the recent books and magazines, that crowd upon our
attention everywhere. There appear each year scores of
books and a liberal dozen of magazines which are well
worth anybody's leisure time—light reading, perhaps,
but thoroughly good, thoroughly healthful and salutary.
But—and here's the pity of it — these are buried out
of sight beneath the hundreds of inferior books. I
would start with the better of the light modern books,
and, as the child grows older and his taste becomes finer
and more dependable, I would lead him on to the place
where, of his own free will and accord, he will select the
higher and sounder reading and reject the shoddy and
the sentimental. As long as we confine ourselves to
the classics and ignore all other reading, so long will boys
and girls give the classics up and give themselves up to
random, reckless perusal of whatever chances to make the
most urgent and direct appeal. Perhaps in the library
of the Palace of Pedagogy is to be found no literature but
the classic; but in the bookstores on the plains, below the
fine and the trashy, the sincere and the flashy, occupy
the same shelves and sell at the same price, and there
is no one, least of all the salesman, who knows or cares
what is genuine. It is for this state of affairs that we
must educate our children. Only the one literary child
will cleave immediately and forever to the classics; the
ninety and nine, when released from the required reading
of the schools, either quit reading altogether or revert to
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the haphazard reading of whatever tickles their fancy.
Do you doubt that? Talk with high-school graduates,
with college graduates, about their reading and see how
untrained and untutored they are in modern literary
questions. No, we shall never bring the average boy and
girl to care for books or to know what books to care for
until we have given up our notions about the sanctity
of the classics and the inanity of books below the classics.
I have written at length and with fervor upon this
topic because I feel it is of great importance. But I must
hasten on.
Use of English in everyday life. The third duty
devolving upon teachers of English, if they are to equip
children for life and not for art, for the everyday business
of existence and not for the elegance and '' culture'' of the
Palace of Pedagogy, is to train the children in the use of
their mother tongue in the common language forms and
activities. Even the residents of the Palace engage
more freely in talking than in writing; and in the valleys
and plains almost all work and play is carried on through
oral language intercourse.
Voice training. Obviously, our first duty is this: to
train boys and girls to talk fluently, effectively, success-
fully. This includes enlargement and enrichment of
their speaking vocabulary (not their reading or their
writing vocabulary), training in pronunciation and
enunciation, in voice production and control, in the
forms and the conventions of social speech. We have
spelling classes in the grades, and that is commendable;
but correct spelling is not nearly so important as clear,
distinct articulation. Nor can we evade our responsibility
by the assertion that children will learn to articulate
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anyhow without our training, for the plain fact is that
they do not learn. How many muffled, piping, throaty,
nasal voices we hear! How lazy and slack our vocal
muscles grow! We do not have sufficient vocal energy
to utter "probably or "suspect or "geography, we
slur the vowels in unaccented syllables, we may mind
our p's and qs, but we drop our g's and ignore our r's.
I am not making a plea for rich, cultivated, musical
voices, however warmly I admire them. I am speaking
of voices that are adequate for the ordinary business and
social demands—voices that will carry ideas, not mere
gibberish, over the telephone; voices that can make
themselves heard above the hum of factory wheels or the
buzz of a roomful of conversation; voices which, when
lifted in discussion in club, lodge, grange, or labor union,
will be audible and intelligible to all in the group. The
elementary and high school might well take a part of the
time now given over to the mechanics of writing and use
it for training in the mechanics of speech.
Vocabulary building. And the children of the plains
need more practical and constructive work in vocabulary
building. We go about this in the wrong way. We
assume that children enlarge and enrich their speaking
vocabulary through reading and the study of literary
diction. No doubt those who live in the Palace of Peda-
gogy and those who, because of their special temperament
and upbringing, are bound for the Palace do carry a great
many words over from their reading to their speaking.
But the vast majority of the boys and girls and of men and
women construct their vocabulary almost entirely out of
the words which they hear. The words we speak are
the words we hear spoken; few of us, and none except
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those of the pronouncedly literary type, get any substan-
tial addition to their stock of words through reading.
It is therefore folly to attempt to build up a vocabu-
lary by studying words found in books. Constructive
vocabulary work is based upon three principles: First,
begin with ideas which the children have, not with words
which you want them to acquire; then lead them to dis-
cover and appropriate the word which names the idea they
have. Second, through all the oral work of the school,
train the children to employ the specific instead of the
general word, the concrete instead of the abstract word,
the sheathe-tight word which reveals the precise shade of
meaning instead of the Mother Hubbard word which
covers everything and reveals nothing. And third,
train them to add to their vocabulary the picturesque,
rich-flavored, emotion-laden words of the vernacular.
Idiomatic speech. The language of literature contains
no diction superior in expressiveness and forcefulness to the
best examples of animated, idiomatic speech. The best
examples, mark you. I know how tame and dull, how
anaemic and lethargic, how devoid of grip and vigor, is
the language in which we usually try to express our
thoughts and feelings. This is because we are either
afraid or ashamed of the natural, racy, humorous, homely
language of life, because we have been repressed and
restrained by the regulations of literary correctness and
elegance, because the pedagogs from the Palace have
forced us to use the proper, sedate, cultivated language
or the bookish, stilted, pedantic language with which they
talk—or "converse, I should say. Scores, hundreds
of words full of force and color and warmth are heard by
the children on the streets and playgrounds, in the stores
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and homes adjacent to the schoolhouse, but woe be to
that sacrilegious urchin who dares utter them within the
cloistered domain ruled over by the teacher.
Slang. I should like to express myself fully on the
subject of slang, of colloquial and provincial and idiomatic
English, for I am convinced we have the wrong slant on
this question. Because we have held up literary, or
rather, bookish, language as the model for everyday inter-
course, and because, naturally and properly, slang and
colloquial diction are barred from literary and bookish
language, we have jumped to the conclusion that slang and
colloquial speech are linguistic crimes, always to be con-
demned and punished. The pedagogs in the Palace assert
that slang is coarse and vulgar. Some slang is coarse and
vulgar, and many words in thoroughly approved usage,
not slang at all, are coarse and vulgar; naturally one
should avoid all such words, whether slang or not. But
many words which we stigmatize as coarse are, in reality,
strong, vigorous, direct, vulgar. "Beat it, "that's the
limit, "I'm on to you, "punk, "swell, "swat,
"scoot, are brusque, terse, forceful modes of expression;
they are, to my way of thinking, better conversational
English than their more staid and dignified literary
synonyms. '' Cut it out'' is more graphic than '' eliminate
it, "butt in is more expressive than "intrude, "spill
the beans is more picturesque than "injure the cause.
The pedagogs inform us also that "slang impoverishes
the language. Why, of course, if a girl calls everything
"swell and a boy terms everything "rotten, neglecting
the synonyms that express the finer shades of meaning,
they do impoverish their language, they make it poverty-
stricken indeed. But this tendency is not peculiar to
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slang; many persons weaken their language through
overworking certain words which are in well-established
usage. We can, and many of us do, overwork "nice
and "fine. I met recently an intelligent woman who
was "impoverishing her language by calling everything
"sweet. Almost everyone I know overworks the word
"thing, employing it as synonymous with "idea,
"thought, "plan, "point, "cause, "circumstance,
"situation, instead of reserving it to designate a material
concrete object. This is "impoverishing the language":
to use frequently a broad, general, inexact word when we
should use a narrow, specific, precise word, whether that
general word is a waif from the music hall and the back
alley or a highly respected child of Noah Webster's own
lineage.
And in this connection we need to remember that
slang has enlarged and enriched and strengthened our
language, that thousands of words and phrases now
in established use, rendering stout and gallant service in
expression, have come into English through the door of
slang. In fact, the refreshing and renewing springs
of language are, first, creative literature and, second,
colloquial speech. Our patrician language would find
its blood running thin and its vital forces ebbing low, if
it did not continually bring into the family the strong,
crude offsprings of plebeian slang.
But of course I realize that a slang phrase often
becomes so popular that it displaces many useful words.
"I'll say so, "You said it, "What do you know about
that? wear us out with their mere reiteration. For-
tunately they wear themselves out and disappear like
popular songs and novels—without leaving any trace
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upon the language. The fact of the matter is, many
young people bandy about current slang phrases just to
be in style, to be up to the minute, precisely as they wear
the latest monstrosities in clothes. Some of our youthful
friends wear nothing but the extremely and strangely
modern in clothes and approve and use nothing but the
very latest Parisian models in slang. Of course, that
kind of slang and that kind of dressing are silly; but still I
doubt whether we would seriously consider doing away
with slang—or clothes—because some young people show
no discretion in their use. Some one—doubtless some
wiseacre from the Palace—has suggested that slang be
not used by anyone under forty years of age. That
would solve it. In the same way we could remove all
the risks from dancing, automobiling, bathing, even from
courting and marrying.
No, seriously, we must teach children to use common
sense and discretion in slang as in other arts and activities.
We should regard slang as we regard other language
phenomena. Some slang is cheap and coarse, some slang
is rich and vivid; some slang is inane and pointless, some
slang is apt and striking; and no slang, however novel and
picturesque, should be permitted to become the dominant
quality in our speech. I would not warn against all
slang—I would warn against undesirable and excessive
slang. I would not discriminate against slang; I would
discriminate among slang expressions.
"But slang is not proper, say those who speak the
refined language of the Palace of Pedagogy. Not proper?
"Proper means "appropriate. Of course, slang is not
proper, because not appropriate, in a sermon or an oration,
in a serious essay or a business letter. But in intimate,
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familiar, happy-go-lucky talk, slang is not only proper
but highly commendable and desirable. Do not let us
be overawed and browbeaten by those who, speaking
the literary dialect of the Palace of Pedagogy, regard
that as the only authorized language. Doubtless their
dialect is good, perhaps it is better than that spoken on
the plains; but those who live on the plains speak and
will speak a dialect more to their liking and more like
them. Let the pedagogs, instead of tabooing all slang
and colloquial language, condescend to descend and
help us to search out what is the most desirable, the most
expressive, and the most effective slang, and assist
us to establish that.
The blunt truth is that even yet, despite the progress
we have made in the teaching of English, most English
teachers still think in terms of writing instead of in terms
of talking. In nearly all schools much more attention is
paid to written than to spoken language. Naturally,
therefore, we place before children ideals and specimens
of written discourse, and deceive them and ourselves
into believing that formal written language is the natural
and normal and customary language.
Literary bias in English teaching. This accounts for
the literary trend and bias in our teaching of the English
language. Instead of taking snatches of lively, animated
talk as models and endeavoring to teach children the
principles and secrets of good talk and to train them in
the practice, we set before them specimens of the classics
and urge them to imitate these. Our rhetoric texts are
full of discussions of literary language, literary style,
literary forms. If it is a question of effective use of
words, the Palace pedagogs resort invariably to literature
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for models. Are there no examples of good diction in
the conversations and discussions in which we take part,
in advertisements in newspapers and magazines? If it
is a question of good social letters, we place before the
pupils some of the letters of Phillips Brooks or Charles
Dickens—charming letters, to be sure, but literary
letters. If it is a question of story-telling, we teach the
literary method of telling the story, with the climax last,
instead of the newspaper method, with the chief point
in the first paragraph. We think of all language forms
and activities as literary forms and activities, whereas
literature is but one of the many molds into which language
pours itself. Shall we say that the only desirable and
legitimate manner of using colors is in portrait painting,
or that the only permissible manner of employing tones
is in singing? Let us leave the literary artists to their
trade, our only natural relation to them being that of
readers and admirers, and let us set to work to learn
the practical arts of language expression needed for the
everyday business of living.
Types of language activity. The older rhetoric books
presented exhaustive analyses of what they termed the
four forms of discourse. You remember them: narration,
description, exposition, and argumentation, always in that
definite order. And you remember you got the impression
that these were the only possible forms of discourse; it
was all predetermined, it was natural law, inevitable ?
unchanging, like the four seasons of the year; there could
not, by any conceivable accident, be a fifth. And then
some one, perhaps a deserter from the Palace of Pedagogy,
discovered a fifth form, the letter; and after a time it
began to find a place in the'newer rhetoric books. But,
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we were assured by the pedagogs on the height, this was
not a "pure form of discourse; it was "mixed"—which
in some manner subtly discredited it. Perhaps the lords
in the Palace would not have vouchsafed it even this
much courtesy if they had not reflected that literary
personages write letters, some of which could be used as
models. But this is as far as we have gone. These, we
are assured, are the five forms of prose discourse, including
this troublesome, mongrel form, the letter.
Now I am willing to concede that, from the standpoint
of literary art, these are the forms of discourse. But
here is the crux of the whole problem: the teaching of
English—by which is meant the teaching of the English
language—is not primarily or even largely a matter of
teaching literary art. It is a matter of teaching those
forms or types of language activity which are most used
and therefore most useful in life, in the everyday, work-
ad ay experiences and circumstances of life.
Five forms of discourse? There are at least eight.
I must name them and discuss them briefly, in order to
clarify my position.
Conversation. Conversation is far and away the
most important form of discourse, or, to use a better
1 term, type of language activity. There are laws and
principles of conversation quite as fixed, quite as firmly
based, as the laws and principles of exposition or argu-
ment, and, to the dweller in the plains, infinitely more
valuable. These must be learned and followed by him—
or should I say "her"?—who would become a good
conversationalist. But they are not learned and fol-
lowed; to assure ourselves of that we need only to look
around us, or rather to listen around us. It is fatuous
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45
folly to contend that, since we must all talk, we shall
learn to talk by sheer dint of talking. We learn to do,
at least we learn economically to do, not by mere doing,
but by thoughtful, progressive, guided doing. The most
natural, the most convenient, and the most efficient
way of teaching the laws and qualities of good conversa-
tion and of training in the art of conversation is by making
conversation an integral part, indeed the central part, of
the work in English. And it is equal folly to contend
that conversation cannot be taught, that it is a natural
talent, that talkers are born, not made. No matter how
richly gifted or how poor one may be in this regard, he
will learn with less waste and more haste by studying
the principles of the art and practicing under guidance,
or, better yet, by practicing under guidance until he is
led to discover the principles of the art. This type of
language activity may not be so valuable to those who
dwell in the Palace of Pedagogy; but it is invaluable to
those who, in the plains below, carry on and carry through
much of the work and play of life by means of talk, and
who should therefore learn how to talk efficiently and
effectively.
Discussion. Discussion is one of the necessary tools of
a democratic society. Through discussion we make deci-
sions, render judgments, work out plans and campaigns,
pass laws, solve problems. A Boy Scouts company
preparing for an outing, a group of bankers investi-
gating a business proposition, a committee of teachers
trying to find ways and means of increasing salaries, a
labor union deciding whether it shall declare a strike,
a ladies' aid society planning how to raise money, or a
political party planning a campaign—all these employ
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discussion as the means of clarifying opinion, balancing
arguments, influencing judgments, planning the work and
working the plan. How very important that discussion
be taught and taught well! And yet it has not been
taught; for the most part no effort has been made to teach
it in school or elsewhere. It can be taught, and it will be
taught, as soon as we see clearly that preparation for the
vocation of living in a democracy involves preparation
for that form of language intercourse most essential in
the solution of the problems of a democracy, as soon as
we tear loose from the dominating influence of that
domineering hierarchy in the Palace who think that
literature and literary technicalities are more important
than life and life's realities.
Explanation. Not exposition, be it noted, though of
course the two words are synonymous. "Exposition
suggests the essay, the article, the textbook, the sermon,
the address, the lecture, the ambitious and erudite and
somewhat literary type of discourse. We use explanation
when we give some one instructions on how to go from
one place to another, how to serve a "cut ball in tennis,
how to discard in whist, how to make a birdhouse or a
bird's-nest pudding. We use explanation when we show
or tell some one how to take a kodak picture, how to
mark a ballot in voting, how to drive an automobile.
We use explanation when we tell about a book we have
read or a plan we have made, when we pass on to others
ideas and information, from whatever source they have
come. "Explanation implies that some one has a bit
of knowledge or experience which some one else wishes
to share. It implies a direct contact between speaker
and hearers and a genuine social desire to tell and teach
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on the one hand and to hear and learn on the other. It
is usually brief and informal, and. it is often accompanied
by chart or diagram or demonstration.
Every day of their lives the boys and girls, the men
and women, on the plains employ explanation in their
dealings with one another. Nearly always they fail to
use it skillfully. How should it be otherwise? They
have never been taught. And it is a difficult and com-
plicated type of language activity. The dwellers in the
Palace of Pedagogy themselves are often clumsy and
awkward, as witness their attempts to make clear to the
average mind a truth in science, history, and art. But
they at least can learn, they can discover and set forth
the fundamental laws and principles of explanation, and
they can elevate explanation to its rightful place as one
of the democratic forms of discourse. But first they
must see clearly that exposition, with its rigid and frigid
rules, its pedantry, its formality, its impersonality, and
its literary and bookish cast, that exposition, however
highly honored in the Palace of Pedagogy, must be
renounced for explanation, with its flexibility and infor-
mality, its true social motive, its practical and specific
nature, and its objective result. The only test of expla-
nation is, Does it explain, explain briefly, skillfully,
economically, and thoroughly, anything, no matter how
lowly and humble, which one person knows and which
others do not know but wish to know?
Informal argument. For the solemn treaties on argu-
mentation compiled in the library of the Palace of Peda-
gogy we should substitute useful directions for the
carrying on of informal argument. The day of the
studied, set debate has almost closed; for that matter,
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it never dawned upon the average dweller in the plain.
Literary societies and debating clubs have become almost
extinct in our schools; forensic contests of the Lincoln-
Douglas type are rarely staged. The kind of arguments
that most people, at least most of those who live in the
plains, engage in, is the free, unfixed, informal argument
arising from conversation and discussion. We have no
selected debaters, no remote and impersonal question, no
appointed judges, and no decision except that recorded in
the minds and rendered subsequently through the beliefs
and actions of those who hear and weigh the evidence.
A group of persons is led through discussion into a
topic upon which there is a difference of opinion. Perhaps
it is a question of what kind of class pin to buy, or which
of the local newspapers is best, or where to go for a class
picnic, or who is to blame for an automobile accident, or
what kind of electric wiring to use in a building. Con-
sider now what are some of the requisites for a satisfactory
argument. There must be a leader, either the naturally
dominating personality of the group or the president of
the class or club or organization. This leader must be
unbiased and fair-minded; he must be strong enough to
keep the argument moving toward a conclusion, yet
tactful enough to subordinate himself; and he must be
desirous that the truth prevail or the expedient plan be
adopted. Each individual in the group must be led to
express himself forcefully and frankly, yet temperately
and courteously, advancing the arguments on his side
and repelling the arguments on the other side. There
must be no wrangling, no quarreling, no resorting to
mere assertion and denial, in the  'tis-'tain't manner
of children. Everyone must be taught to recognize valid
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evidence and sound reasoning and be trained not to
rely upon merely personal opinion. No one must be
permitted to bully his opponents or to filch more than
his fair quota of time. There must be no unmannerly
interruptions. All must be taught to marshal their
arguments logically and almost on the spur of the moment,
and to avoid repetitions, arguments in a circle, and diver-
sions from the subject at issue. The points on both
sides of the question must be adduced, misunderstand-
ings cleared up, the facts revealed. And out of this
must come knowledge, action and reaction, conviction,
judgment, decision, and, whenever feasible, action—
concerted action—those in the minority acquiescing in the
will of the majority until such time as they can change it.
"What a pretty theory, says some one. "But do
you ever find such ideal informal arguments in life?
Of course not. We find disputation, bickering, quibbling,
misunderstandings, and dissensions, personal animosities
aroused, prejudices confirmed—leading to nothing except
confusion of mind and purposes. That is what we find.
But need it be so? If we will give our young people
systematic instruction and training in these matters, if
we will thresh out in the schoolroom and school organi-
zations the thousand and one questions that arise,
assisting the pupils not only to discern the truth and
take the desirable action in the particular cases in dispute
but also to perceive the broad, basic principles underlying
all argument, can we not go far toward securing the kind
of informal argument I have been discussing? Not that
we shall reach perfection, of course, for human nature is
human nature; but we shall have a far better type of
reasoning and argument than we have had hitherto and
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a far more satisfactory method of molding public opinion
and making decisions.
Speech making. The ability to stand before one's
fellows and speak to them pointedly and movingly on
topics of interest to them is much coveted and richly
rewarded in a democracy such as ours. I do not mean
professional and oratorical public speaking, such as that
practiced by the lawyer, the preacher, the lecturer, the
politician. Certainly this has great value, but it requires
a certain talent which, though not necessarily of a very
high order, is possessed by a limited few. School training
in this kind of speech making, therefore, should be given
only to those who reveal undoubted gifts. The kind of
public speaking which should be taught in school is the
kind practiced by men and women in the customary life
of the plains. At meetings of labor unions, granges,
fraternal organizations, church societies, Rotary and
Kiwanis clubs, women's clubs, it is the person that can
speak most forcefully and fluently on the problems that
demand solution who is most likely to become the leader,
to influence public sentiment and sway it according to
his will.
Not everyone can become an effective speaker even in
these humbler forms. But there is no one who cannot
become more effective than he would otherwise be, by
being given directed experience in school and by being
encouraged to speak on occasions that arise in class and
school organizations; and, since it is a certainty that the
average person will be frequently placed in situations in
life where he wishes and needs to deliver his mind to a
group of his peers, surely we must incorporate speech
making into our course of study in English. We should
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not set up lofty standards of oratory, as do the pedagogs
in the Palace; we should be content if we succeed in
training the boys—and certainly in these days, the girls
—to speak frankly, clearly, briefly, directly, with some
degree of charm and persuasiveness and personal magnet-
ism, or at least with some degree of intelligibility and
intelligence. The only trustworthy test is, Did it get
over to the audience ? The speeches the children make may
seem puerile and amateurish to the literary crew in the
Palace, whose standards have been set high by Burke
and Webster and those great orators who produced
literature, but it is the kind of speech most practiced and
most practical in the ordinary affairs of life.
Story-telling. Here again I believe we gain some-
thing by substituting the term "story-telling for the
older term "narration. For it is story-telling that
the dwellers in the plains find most useful and desirable.
Only the specially favored, the elect, can create and write
narratives; everyone tells stories. A literary short story
is a work of fine art; even among people of decidedly
literary tastes and talents, even among the inmates of
the Palace of Pedagogy, there are but few who can
construct the literary story. In all my years in school,
both as student and as teacher, I have known only a
few really good, publishable short stories to be written
by students, though I have read hundreds of attempts.
Do we want good short stories? Let us read the maga-
zines. And let us leave the fine art of literary narration
to those who have the talent, the while we train our
pupils in the humbler sister craft of telling stories.
What kinds of stories? The three kinds which we all
have to tell: anecdotes, htEmorous, striking, apt, and pat;
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personal experiences, stories of what we have seen and
heard and done; and children's stories, for there is hardly
one of us who is not called upon at some time to tell the
centuries-old classics of the nursery to our sons and
daughters, our nephews and nieces, our younger brothers
and sisters, our boy and girl friends. There is a special
art in telling each of these three types of stories; there
are certain fundamental principles to learn and methods
to practice. Most of us tell stories ineffectively and
awkwardly and crudely, missing the fine points and
delicate touches and subtle effects; yet most of us could
learn how to do it fairly well provided we were given
instruction and experience. Surely here is a pleasant
task for the English teachers, if only they will break
loose from the traditions of the Palace of Pedagogy, if
only they will occasionally unhitch their wagon from the
star of fine art and put it to the humbler uses for which,
after all, the wagon was intended.
Letter writing. I need not emphasize the importance
of letter writing of both the social and the business type.
Even the pedagogs in the Palace have laid down their
arms in this engagement. But we are half-hearted in
reaping the fruits of our victory. Surely, since the writ-
ing of letters is virtually the only kind of writing done in
the homes and places of business on the plains, we ought
to give pronounced and prolonged training in the writing
of letters. But we don't. We do a little desultory and
dilettante dabbling in this important art, we put up a
sheepish and half-furtive pretense; but it is felt to be a
concession to the radicals and utilitarians, and as soon as
the bare letter of the law has been observed the teacher
leads her class straightway back to the familiar and
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traditional fields of expositions and short stories and
literary descriptions. We don't really teach letter writ-
ing; we merely putter about, touching the subject here
and there, but failing to establish thoroughly the prin-
ciples and train in the practice of this type of language
activity.
Various written forms. Then there are the written
forms, such, for example, as note taking, making reports,
keeping diaries and records and household and office
accounts, drawing up petitions, writing announcements
for posting and printing—prosaic, unpretentious types
of writing, but how necessary! And how neglected!
From the standpoint of education and of life, it is more
important to train a pupil to write out a report of a com-
mittee of which he is chairman, write it legibly, clearly,
correctly, effectively, than to require him to write an
essay or an oration or a character sketch or a book review.
These homely, bread-and-butter species of writing may
not be needed in the Palace of Pedagogy; they are inces-
santly demanded in the plains and valleys below.
Importance of oral English. So much for the types
of language activity which should supplant the four forms
of discourse of the old-time rhetoric. Six of these types
are predominantly oral. And this is as it should be. If
anyone will honestly follow, for a day or for a month, the
life of a student in school or an adult in even a profes-
sion, to say nothing of an adult in a trade or in indus-
try, he will be struck with the constant and inexorable
demands made upon him to use the oral types of language
and the infrequent and evadable requests to use the
written types. Any English teacher who tries to base his
teaching upon the actual day-by-day lives and needs and
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social desires of his pupils rather than upon the ex cathedra
assignments from a textbook will discover that there are
hundreds of occasions for using the different kinds of oral
language and but rare occasions for using those of written
language; and, moreover, he will have valid reasons for
teaching the oral forms, whereas he must invent excuses
for dealing with the written forms. And if this is true of
life in school, it is trebly true of life outside of and beyond
school. For in school, in the business of teaching and
learning, we employ, naturally and legitimately, more writ-
ing than any of us—unless it be those who live in the
Palace of Pedagogy—will ever have occasion to use out
of school. We must realize the paramount importance
of oral expression. Some of us have come to believe that
half of the time available for English training should
be given over to oral English; we shall come to believe
that a much larger ratio of time should be devoted to it.
The pedagogs in the Palace will oppose us, since the
oral types are, for the most part, not so literary, so artistic,
so elevated and dignified, and not so easily reduced to
rules and formulas as the written types; but nothing
short of this will allow us to teach sensible, practical,
functional English.
English in the higher institutions. Up to this point I
have been discussing elementary- and high-school English.
Let me now glance at normal-school, college, and univer-
sity English and see its bearing on our problem.
It might seem that here we are poaching on the preserves
of others. The higher institutions of learning, we might
contend, may very well be left to their own devices. They
can work out their own ideas and plan their courses of
study, and in general it may be assumed that they do it
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55
well, much better than we could do it for them, When
a student, now mature enough to have graduated from
high school, elects English, especially when he majors in
English, he indicates clearly that he has, or thinks he has,
a literary temperament and a special interest in English,
and that he desires a higher and a special education in
English. He thus joins a small, select group, far differ-
ent from the large, unclassified mass of boys and girls in
the high school. The arguments we have been urging
have no validity here. By all means let us wish our
young friend Godspeed in his Anglo-Saxon, his pre-
Shakespearean drama, his history of literature, his
courses in exposition and narration. "I too have been
in Arcadia"; it was my good fortune to travel through
that country. And then as student of English I believed,
and now as teacher of English I contend, that no country
is more spacious and noble and hospitable and delight-
ful than the country of books and writing.
But this is not quite the whole story. A goodly num-
ber of those who attend normal school, college, and
university come out to teach — English among other
subjects — in high schools. They are certificated by the
state and employed by the state to teach and train the
youth of the state, all the youth of the state, the multi-
tude of boys and girls who will not and should not spe-
cialize in English, who desire and need instruction and
guidance in the common, practical business of speech and
the humbler, lighter forms of reading. Now, what if
these graduates of higher institutions have not had any
education in English except in Anglo-Saxon and Middle
English and the classics and in the literary and artistic
modes of expression—what would happen? What does
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happen ? Our graduates, now metamorphosed into teachers
of English in the "poor man's colleges, the high schools,
the schools designed to train the '' common run'' of citizens
and to prepare for the unimposing but important pursuits
of life—our graduates forthwith move, bag and baggage,
books and student lamp, to the Palace of Pedagogy on
the hill, and there begin to impose upon the boys and
girls in the plains the same kind of cultural, aesthetic,
literary English which they themselves have had. Does
this not happen? And thus we go on perpetuating the
un-American, undemocratic system. We call for teachers
to train the boys and girls in the fundamental matters of
reading and speaking, and the higher institutions respond
by sending us pedagogs nurtured in the traditions of the
Palace on the hill. It is vain to talk of a democratic high
school as long as we have an aristocratic college and
university.
I shall not undertake to prescribe what English should
be taught in the higher schools. But this I know, or I
think I know: that some of the English work in college
should deal specifically with the subject matter and the
methods involved in the teaching of high-school English,
and that those who intend to teach English should take
this work. Among the courses which should be offered
are: modern literature, including fiction and poetry and
the modern newspaper and magazine; oral English in its
various forms; and sound, progressive courses in the
teaching of high-school English. If there is not suf-
ficient time for such courses and also for the traditional
cultural courses in English, the latter must give way, as
being not so essential to teachers of high-school English.
Surely this is not an untenable position.
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One other indictment I have to bring against the
English course and the English teachers in normal schools,
colleges, and universities. Nearly all these schools require
what they call Freshman English, which every student, no
matter in what department he is enrolled or in what sub-
ject he is specializing, must take. In my judgment we
have no shadow of right to require Freshman English
unless we make Freshman English of undoubted and
specific value to every Freshman, no matter what his
interests are and his vocation is to be. Now, in general,
Freshman English is open to precisely the same objections
which have been brought against high-school English. It
consists of writing in the four traditional forms of discourse,
with little attention given to the oral phases of English,
and of general "survey study of literature, with readings
in the classics, no time being allotted to newspapers, maga-
zines, and contemporary literature. That specialists in
English or those particularly interested in literary matters
should be required to take this course seems reasonable
enough; but when we require it of students of law, of
medicine, of agriculture, of engineering, we are saying
in effect: "There is but one kind of reading that is
important, the reading of the classics; there is but one
form of expression, the literary form"—which is, word
for word, the creed of the pedagogs in the Palace. Can a
kind of English not be found which will be more valuable
for the future farmer or business man or dentist than these
required courses in the history of literature and the
biographies of authors and in the scribbling of literary
exercises? If this is the best that English can offer, then
English as a required subject is doomed. As a teacher
of English literature and language I yield to no one
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in my conviction that English can be made educative
and profitable for all; but as a teacher of American boys
and girls I stand firmly for this principle: "No course
in English should be required that does not possess
demonstrable general value for all and specific value for
each.
I have been speaking of the Palace of Pedagogy. The
old-fashioned college is the training school for the Palace.
The college is where the dogma of formal discipline still
holds sway, where the pretty conceit of a liberal education
still has admirers, where the ideal of a static, stately
culture reigns supreme. In no department of the old-
fashioned college except the department of education
does one find a democratic theory of education. The
professors of English, of history, of languages, of science,
of mathematics, still cleave to an obsolete, aristocratic
philosophy, based upon the theory that there is but one
kind of education, of success, of culture, of life: their
kind. They set themselves, with a conscience and a
resolution worthy of a better cause, to the task performed
successfully only once in all history: they would create
man in their own image! This is the very essence of the
pedagogy of the Palace.
The Palace of Art and the Palace of Pedagogy. But
I must return to Tennyson's poem, "The Palace of Art.
The poet built his soul a lordly pleasure house, where
she could live alone, high above the "darkening droves
of swine that range on yonder plain.
And so she throve and prosper'd: so three years
She prosper'd: on the fourth she fell,
Like Herod, when the shout was in his ears,
Struck thro' with pangs of hell.
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Lest she should fail and perish utterly,
God, before whom ever lie bare
The abysmal deeps of Personality,
Plagued her with sore despair.
Deep dread and loathing of her solitude
Fell on her, from which mood was born
Scorn of herself; again, from out that mood
Laughter at her self-scorn.
So when four years were wholly finished
She threw her royal robes away.
"Make me a cottage in the vale, she said,
"Where I may mourn and pray.
"Yet pull not down my palace towers, that are
So lightly, beautifully built:
Perchance I may return with others there
When I have purged my guilt.
"Perchance I may return with othersI would that
all mankind might dwell on the heights, in the Palace
of Art, in the Palace of Pedagogy, that all might breathe
that air serene, be free from drudgery and ignorance
and the grinding cares of existence and the disheartening
tasks and petty problems of everyday living. But until
that blessed day comes, the poets must descend from the
Palace of Art and the teachers from the Palace of Peda-
gogy, must build them "cottages in the vale, "houses by
the side of the road, yea, in the midst of the villages on
the plain, and there they must instruct and awaken and
elevate and inspire the common sons and daughters of
man in the commonplace work of man. This is the task
to which we are called and challenged. Perchance, after
we have purged away our guilt of egotism, of aristocracy,
of intellectual pride, "perchance we may return with
others there.
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III. DEMOCRATIC IDEALS OF CULTURE AND
EFFICIENCY: THEIR RELATION TO ENGLISH
Purpose of discussion. To determine whether the
English subjects are essentially cultural or practical is
the purpose of this discussion. But before we can judge
whether the principles of culture or of efficiency should
be predominant in the teaching of the English subjects,
we must examine minutely our two major terms. Many
of the misunderstandings and misconceptions we have
labored under, many of the blunders we have made in
education and life have been due to feeble and crooked
thinking, to lazy acceptance of hazy catchwords, to
traditional notions—heirlooms from a remote past. In
this address, therefore, I propose to devote a great deal of
my attention to a consideration of the general principles,
then make but a brief application of those principles to
the teaching of English. What is culture? What is
efficiency? And what relation do they bear to the group
of English subjects and to their democratization? These
I conceive to be the vital questions.
What is culture? The reader need not fear that I
shall attempt to mark out the exact limits beyond which
culture may not extend, that I shall try to build a tight,
high fence around it. To define culture too straitly is to
deny it altogether. It is too spiritual to be embodied in
substantial rules; you cannot cork up this genie in a
bottle. It is easier to recognize culture than to analyze
it. Yet I must, so far as I am able, resolve it into its
elements; I must break up this warm, clear beam of
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61
sunlight into all the colors that compose it. Clear-cut
thinking on this subject were not possible otherwise.
But before I attempt a positive determination of what
are the component elements in culture, before I attempt
to answer the question, What is culture? I wish to
attack the question, What is culture not? For con-
cerning culture there are two prevalent errors that bar
the way of our analysis.
Cultivation not culture. The first error is that cul-
ture is polish, politeness, good manners, observance of
the laws of etiquette. Culture is no such superficial,
artificial thing as that. Good manners depend upon
fixed rules, which are altered, like fashions, as ways and
customs and modes of living come and pass, which hold
sway for a limited time in a circumscribed sphere. What
was "good form a century ago may be "bad form now.
What is "good form in the city is not necessarily "good
form in the country. It is impolite to speak to a
stranger in a crowded city street; it is impolite not to
speak to a stranger in a lonely country road. Culti-
vation is not culture; often it is not even indicative of
culture. The crass farm boy who fails to lift his hat to
a lady may have more true chivalry in his heart than the
urbane gallant who knows all the pretty ways of social
usage. Surely, culture is not such a petty, ephemeral
matter. It does change, to be sure; it grows and develops
from century to century, and it takes various shapes in
different countries and civilizations. But it is not a
mere mode, a fashion, a style, a fad; it is deep-rooted,
it is fundamental and elemental. Let us not confound
culture with good breeding, though we should not the
less appreciate good breeding and all that it implies.
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Knowledge not culture. The second misconception is
that culture is knowledge, usually interpreted as knowl-
edge of the "liberal arts subjects, of the humanities,
of belles-lettres. According to this view, you must
be steeped in literature and history, you must be able
to read in at least one foreign language, you must have
"gone through geometry, you must be able to prate
of books and authors, painting and music, else you are
outside the pale. You may be an estimable person,
useful, influential, but you are not cultured. Now there
is a modicum of truth in the foundation idea of this
conception of culture, just enough truth to beget error.
Certain subjects do contain more cultural food than
others and may thus contribute more generously to the
development of culture. But knowledge is never iden-
tical with culture, however closely related it may be.
One may attain culture with surprisingly little knowledge
of the so-called cultural subjects, and one may fail to
attain culture after a lifetime spent in the acquisition of
the humanities. In truth, the setting up of a narrow,
prescribed list of information as containing the sum and
substance of culture, as including "that knowledge which
is the common property of all cultured persons, is sub-
versive of the first principles of culture. Pray, what is
it that makes the knowledge that agricola is the Latin
word for "farmer more precious and powerful in life
than a knowledge of farming? Why should knowing
about the Rosetta stone be -more contributive to the
enrichment of life than knowing shorthand? or knowing
what kind of clothes Queen Elizabeth wore be more
significant than the ability to make one's self a dress?
No single mind can now take all knowledge as its province;
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63
no one should arrogate to his subject or group of subjects
all the grace and beauty and benignity and humanizing
influences of knowledge. Culture can bloom and flourish
on the scantiest of learning. What counts is not so much
the contents of one's mind as the state of one's mind.
Let us not confuse knowledge with culture, though we
should, by no means despise knowledge of any kind,
whether useful or pleasant.
Other misconceptions of culture. Along with these
two cardinal errors we must place a number of other
narrow and twisted ideas of the quality of culture. A
gentleman of the old school was wont to assert very
dogmatically that you could always tell a cultured person
by the elegance and correctness of his language, adding
that a truly cultured person never uses slang. Piffle!
It is said that one who cannot write a good social letter
is uncultured. Stuff! Some one else says you must
have traveled widely before you may call yourself cul-
tured. Nonsense! These are the blunders of the intel-
lectual aristocrats. Culture is nothing so definite, so
obvious, so recognizable; it does not reveal its presence
through such crude tests. The moment you erect arti-
ficial standards of this sort, you cheapen and stultify
the very idea of culture. None of these is of the true
and authentic nature of culture, though each may, or
may not, make contributions to it or give evidence of
its existence.
Democratic culture. What, then, is culture ? Or, to
put the question somewhat more suggestively, what is
culture in a democratic country like America? For,
obviously, democratic culture and aristocratic culture are
diverse, and, obviously again, it is the democratic ideals
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of culture which we wish to set up and approximate to as
closely as possible in our day and world. Greece had her
culture, Rome had hers. Each race, each epoch, sets
before itself, more or less consciously, certain individual
and social ideals of taste, conduct, character, a certain
philosophy of life, a certain standard of personal, civic, and
moral virtue. When we speak of a man as "cultured, we
mean, in the last analysis, that he sums up within himself
these national and racial ideals. Let us understand,
therefore, that in the discussion that follows I am using
the word culture as meaning democratic culture, the
culture which we prize in our modern American civili-
zation.
What, then, is culture, the culture of our democracy?
Its elements, I think, are five: appreciation of beauty, a
rich, emotional nature under control, many-sided inter-
est in life, sympathy, and a well-trained mind. I shall
discuss these elements in the order in which I have named
them.
Appreciation of beauty. First, a feeling for beauty, an
appreciation and a full recognition of its gracious influ-
ence in the life of men. And by beauty, I hasten to
say, I do not mean mere prettiness, mere shapely form or
musical sound or fragrant odor or bright, well-harmo-
nized color. A farmer is cutting the purple asters and
goldenrod that grow in his fields, and a poet passing by
groans at the wanton destruction of beauty. But the
farmer may have in his mind's eye a vision of broad fields
of wheat, may see that grain feeding hungry children;
he may discern a beauty far finer than that of the poet;
he may be mowing down surface prettiness to make room
for essential beauty. How beautiful are the gossamer
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hammocks which the spider hangs, during the night, over
the herbs and weeds in the fields! But not so beautiful
as the delicate and intricate organism by which the
spider, which we deem ugly, spins its web. A butterfly
hovering above flowers is lovely, yet not so wondrously
beautiful as the metamorphosis of the worm into that
same butterfly. Beautiful was the deathbed of Tennyson
— the majestic figure reposing in peace and resignation
upon the bed, the soft moonlight beaming upon him and
upon the volume of Shakespeare on his breast. Yes, but
not so nobly beautiful as the death of a young American
soldier writhing in the slime and muck of a Flanders
battlefield in the midst of the hideousness and filth of war.
Not that I would decry prettiness. Flowers, birds'
songs, moonlight nights, murmuring streams, these have
also their mission, their ministry to the hearts of men.
But we have so narrowed our conception of beauty that
we have shut out all but this type of beauty and are
prone to condemn those who do not recognize and appre-
ciate this type. If one dare say that he does not enjoy
music or poetry, if one is blind to the glory of the sunset or
of a forest tree in its autumn transfiguration, we call him
dead to beauty, we say he has no appreciation of the finer
things of life, whereas he may have more feeling for the
truer beauties of existence and human relationship, for
the deeper harmonies of life, than have we professed
worshipers of conventionalized, poetic beauty. I do
not assert that he does have; I say he may have. Nor
am I suggesting that everything is beauty, for I know
better. What I am endeavoring to say is that beauty is
pervasive, multifarious, that she assumes as many forms
as Proteus; we affront her by narrowing her manifestations.
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Beauty is fitness, beauty is proper relationship. There
is a beauty of use, a beauty of conduct, a beauty of service,
a beauty of morality, a beauty of truth, far finer and more
exquisite than the beauty upon which we devotees of
culture have lavished so much sentiment. I verily believe
that no one is cultured who does not have an intense
appreciation of beauty, and who does not labor that
beauty may prevail, but it is no petty, integumentory
prettiness that I have in mind.
A rich, emotional nature under control. Nor do I call
that person cultured who does not possess a broad, rich,
emotional nature, and that nature balanced and poised,
under control. One must be sensitive to life, must react
to its stimuli, its glory and sordidness, its comedies and
tragedies, its hopes and fears, its beauty and ugliness. He
must be eternally aware of them, and respond with the
appropriate thrill of happiness or chill of grief. The
fount of his tears must flow, his cheek must blanch with
fear, his heart swell with grief, his muscles grow taught
with indignation, his teeth set with resolution, his eyes
glow with aspiration. The cultured person has a wide
gamut of emotions, and his heartstrings vibrate readily to
every touch. He feels, feels keenly, strongly, deeply.
He whose emotions are atrophied through disuse, he whose
bosom is so hard that the arrows of life cannot penetrate it,
lacks one of the intrinsic elements of culture.
But it is necessary that this strong, virile, emotional
temperament be under control. We know very little
about the education of the emotions, but I think we know
that it consists in encouraging all the elemental human
feelings and at the same time purifying them, guiding them.
There are those who fancy that culture is calmness, apathy,
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67
who think it ill-bred to display feeling, who shrink back
from anything "common or human, anything likely to
ripple the surface of their lives. This is mere repression.
Such persons Stand upon the bank of the river of existence,
with their boats drawn up on the shore. This is the
glory of life: to be swept along by the powerful current of
vital human feelings—to love, hate, aspire, fear, laugh,
weep, worship, pity—yet to control our course, yea, to
make the current serve to carry us whither we would go.
And this is one of the masculine factors in true culture;
culture is sterile without it.
Many-sided interest in life. The third element in
democratic culture is not unlike the second. The cul-
tured person has an expansive interest in life; he thinks
nothing human to be foreign to him. It is an erroneous idea
that the cultured man or woman is detached, impersonal,
a star that dwells apart. He inhabits not the palace of
art but the house by the side of the road, and into it he
invites all kinds and conditions of men, and from it he
emerges to mingle freely with his fellows. He can hold
converse with the old on death and immortality, with the
young on love and romance, with the minister on the arts
of pastorship, with the hunter on the pursuits of the
chase, with the farmer on raising chickens. Though
absorbed at one moment in one interest, he can leave it
at will and plunge himself into another, perhaps diamet-
rically opposite. The cultured man cannot be a bigot,
a partisan; he has too many points of view, can stand in
the shoes of too many others. He does not travel con-
tinually the same road, is not tied down to a monotonous
routine, is not confined to one field of thought or one
round of activities, does not bore you with reiteration
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of his one song. It is not so much that he contains
all knowledge as that he is accessible to all knowledge.
It is not so much his full mind as his open mind. One
sure indication of the cultured person is the breadth, the
diversity, and ^richness of his scope of interests.
Sympathy. Sympathy is the fourth element in demo-
cratic culture. Here again I wish to enlarge the con-
ventional meaning of the term. By sympathy I mean
more than pity: I mean fellow-feeling, rejoicing with them
that rejoice, weeping with them that weep. Sympathy
implies fellowship, ability to put one's self in the other
man's place, to understand his thoughts, to get his angle
of vision. There is no more certain proof of lack of cul-
ture than selfishness, self-seeking, self-absorption, plunging
ahead to gratify one's desires and ambitions regardless
of the rights and feelings of others. The cultured man
or woman is considerate of other persons, even of the
lower animals, because he has imagination enough to
enable him to apprehend their states of mind and because,
through his kinship with them, he feels for them and with
them. Let us not confuse this with mere politeness,
mere grace of manner, deference, courtesy. True sym-
pathy goes deeper than that: it is related more closely
to benevolence, charity, love. Would you know the
cultured man? Does he grieve when his friends are
stricken with sorrow? Does he rejoice when his friends
make merry? Does he fear with them, love with them?
Does he lose himself in them? Can he play with the
children and cheer the bed of the aged? Is he kindly,
compassionate, tolerant, catholic in his sympathies, and
democratically indulgent? This is the man of culture:
he who obeys the Golden Rule most implicitly.
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A well-trained mind. The fifth attribute of the cul-
tured person is a well-trained mind. There is only one
way to train the mind: to employ it in real activities,
to engage it in genuine, vital experiences, accustoming it
to reflect upon these activities and experiences, to leam
from success much and from failure as much as is possible,
to judge, compare, contrast, to remember what is signifi-
cant and to bring what one remembers to bear on any
present problem, to discern clearly the roots of the matter
at issue and to ignore what is extraneous, to project one's
self outward and forward in imagination. To do all
this long enough is to insure a well-trained mind: nothing
else will produce it. No formal set of mental gymnastic
exercises will suffice, nothing but educative activities often
repeated and reflected upon will serve. Memorizing
Latin declensions, conning geometric laws, tabulating the
succession of English kings or of Revolutionary War
battles, learning the names and dates of authors and their
books: this may produce well-filled minds, not well-
trained minds. Studies can train the mind only in pro-
portion as the studies deal with actualities, of personal
import to the student. Thus studies become experience,
life material, upon which the mind may reflect, even as
upon the events of one's own existence.
No one is cultured if he lacks this kind of mind. He
may be amiable, attractive, "nice, but, lacking a well-
trained mind, he lacks one of the dynamic factors of
culture. It is not necessary that the mind be trained
logically. It need not be disciplined in school. It may
have little of the learning which is traditional in our
curriculum; but it must be a mind capable of conceiving
clearly, judging justly, balancing fairly, remembering
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freshly, imagining vividly, concentrating sharply. Such
a mind does not in itself constitute culture, for it some-
times is the possession of one who is utterly hard and
selfish, impervious to all the finer phases of life. Demo-
cratic culture requires all five elements: a feeling for
beauty, an emotional nature strong but controlled, varied
interests, wide sympathies, a well-trained mind. And
these must be fused into perfect union with one another
and interfused with the individuality, the intrinsic,
temperamental quality of the person, so that the culture
of no two beings, though composed of the same elements,
is alike.
Summary. I presume this analysis of culture has
pleased neither the old school of thought nor the new.
The old school men will contend that I have minimized
the knowledge element in culture. I can hear them
quoting Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater and others
of my friends and acquaintances, to the effect that
culture is the knowledge of the best of the past, that
culture is the sharing in that learning that is possessed by
all educated persons. This is the culture of aristocracy,
not the culture of democracy. Let me repeat that no one
is capacious enough to comprehend all the vast extent
of human knowledge, that there is no certain knowledge
that can be singled out as exclusively cultural, that
culture is more an attitude toward knowledge, an interest
in all forms of knowledge, and a humility in the presence
of true knowledge in any form. Culture implies rather
that a stream of knowledge has flowed through the mind,
depositing a soil which is alluvial, instinct with generous
thought, capable of engendering gracious feelings and
beneficent deeds. Doubtless the native richness of
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the stream is important, but yet more important is the
contour and nature of the region through which the
stream flows.
And some of the modern educational philosophers may
take issue with me because I have claimed too much for
culture. I have claimed much for it, for it is, according
to my analysis, the finest flower of human personality.
But however desirable it may be, however much I may
admire anyone who possesses more of it than I do, it is
only a part of one's equipment for life, only one of the
strands in the cable by which man tries to climb toward
the ideal. Culture, as I have defined it, does not include
—though assuredly it does not exclude—those essential
qualities which we call spiritual: bravery, humor, religious
fervor; and it takes no account at all of the other group
of powers that we group under the title of efficiency.
Culture is whole and perfect within itself, we need not
broaden it to comprise all virtues in order to justify it;
but the human being who possesses only culture, even in
its brightest effulgence, is not whole and perfect within
himself. To it must be added efficiency, modern effi-
ciency, democratic efficiency.
Culture and efficiency not to be confused. I have
no patience with those who insist that culture and effi-
ciency are but different aspects of the same quality,
reverse sides of a coin. They are not the same. To
use the terms of geometry, they are complementary,
not identical. They are not incompatible—in fact, they
are so frequently blended in the human personality that
it is sometimes impossible to fix the limits of either;
but they are nevertheless widely different in nature,
methods, purposes, and accomplishments. Let no one
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persuade you that culture leads inevitably to efficiency,
or that efficiency grows into culture. Much of our
obfuscated philosophy in education has resulted because,
perceiving that everyone needs both culture and effi-
ciency, we have "clashed the two together, have tried
to obtain both by the same means, the same education,
have endeavored to make the cultural subjects practical
and the practical subjects cultural.
The difference between the two will be made very
evident by a brief analysis of efficiency. We shall not
need many words, for concerning this phase of our subject
there is not much probability of misunderstanding. In
this analysis I shall examine efficiency at its highest and
best in our modern and democratic world, ignoring the
sinister associations connected with the term but not
necessarily a part of it.
What is efficiency? Efficiency implies, first of all,
ability to make a good living, to get on and up in the
world, to work at some calling skillfully, capably, with
deftness and without friction and waste; to succeed, in
the material sense of the word, that is, to make money,
hold good jobs. As society is now constituted, this
means mastery of some one gainful vocation—it matters
not what, though, of course, some vocations demand
more intelligence or manual skill or physical strength
than others, and some vocations are more remunerative.
In the second place, efficiency implies certain work
habits and qualities. Industry, inventiveness, energy,
perseverance, patience, thrift, ambition, ability to work
rapidly and easily, to eliminate useless motions, to dis-
cover the speediest mode of working well — these are
some of the most important of work habits and qualities.
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Now, this demands intelligence, it demands a well-
trained mind. To be sure, in some kinds of work a man
may apparently be efficient through sheer skill or brute
strength, but even here ingenuity and shrewdness count.
And in the higher callings notable efficiency is not possible
without a finely trained mind. It need not be a capacious
mind, it may be a narrow mind—that depends upon the
vocation—but it must be keen, alert, logical, able to
cope with every situation, to follow up every ramification
in the business in which it is employed.
Physical health and vigor is the fourth factor in the
efficient life. This includes all that has to do with
preserving and improving bodily well-being, such as
play and recreation and practical knowledge of the body
and the laws of health.
Finally, efficiency in most vocations is not possible
without ability to get on with our fellows. We may not
be interested in them especially; but as our success
depends upon our power to deal skillfully with those with
whom we are brought into contact, it is evident that to
be efficient we must study human nature and cultivate
certain social graces.
Culture and efficiency contrasted. Surely it must be
evident that culture and efficiency, as thus analyzed,
have but few points in common. Culture deals with
the spiritual, the emotional, the aesthetic; efficiency rules
over the realm of materialism, of direct practicalness, of
immediate utility. Culture enriches the personality;
efficiency, the person. Culture regards life as an explora-
tion; efficiency, as a business transaction. Culture is
aesthetic play; efficiency relates everything, even play,
to work. Culture asks, "Is it true? Is it beautiful? Is
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it fine and noble? Efficiency asks, "What are the
facts in the case? What does it cost? Does it pay?
The circles of culture and efficiency overlap, it would
seem, at only two places: both claim a well-trained
intellect, and both establish relationships with human
beings. But culture prizes more highly the broad,
sympathetic, catholic mind, the mind open to all truth
and beauty; whereas efficiency prizes more highly the
canny, practical mind, the mind well stored with useful
facts. And with regard to contact with life, culture goes
out from itself, wanders somewhat aimlessly in attractive
by-paths, searching — though never directly — for beauty,
for the grace and glory of life, for emotional and aesthetic
experiences. Culture regardeth not the harvest, except
indeed its beauty, seeketh not her own. Culture is centrif-
ugal. But efficiency is centripetal. It relates everything
to itself, ignores all that has no immediate bearing upon
profit, is impatient with beauty for the sake of beauty,
though it cultivates that beauty which is negotiable. In
culture it is what we think of other men that counts; in
efficiency it is what other men think of us.
Or, consider the attitude of the two toward morality.
Culture says: "Be honest, for honesty is an aspect of
honor, of truth, of beauty; an honest action is in tune
with the harmony of life. Efficiency says: "Be honest,
for honesty is the best policy. Culture says: "Be
courteous, for courtesy comes from the heart; it is an
emanation of love, good will, benevolence. Efficiency
says: "Be courteous; it's good business.
Let us not be deceived in this matter. Culture and
efficiency are not the same, not even similar. They
face in opposite directions. If occasionally they meet at
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a common equator, yet at their extremes they are as far
apart as the poles. Culture cannot be practical; effi-
ciency, though it dons the clothing and the manners of
culture, remains efficiency.
Both culture and efficiency essential in life. But it
does not follow that, because culture and efficiency are
not the same, they are not both essential in life in demo-
cratic America, or that they may not both be acquired
by the same person. Or, to state it positively, the well-
rounded, evenly balanced, full-grown individual, the
happiest, most useful individual, is he who combines
within himself the five qualities of culture and the five
qualities of efficiency: he who can make a good living, be
thoroughly efficient, take part in practical affairs, and at
the same time live a full, rich, varied life, attaining a
fuller measure of culture every year he lives. Happy is
he if his vocation permits and encourages him to view
existence from both angles, to travel as far east as west.
In no calling, indeed, whether the ministry of the gospel
or the ministry of the coal mine, need one renounce the
joys and values of either the aesthetic or the practical.
But since some vocations lean too far in the one direc-
tion or the other, we must needs restore the balance by
readjusting avocations. Life demands both. We should
work and we should play — not work in order that we
may have leisure to play, not play that we may have
health to work, but work and play because both are
necessary to fulfill our natures, to perfect and complete
our lives.
The school's contribution to culture and efficiency.
And if this is true, it follows that school education, which
is training and preparation for complete living out of
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and beyond school by means of complete living within
school, should make contributions to both culture and
efficiency. (I say "contributions, for it is evident that
school can give but a small portion of either.) I would
not have John cultured and Will efficient; I would have
both John and Will both cultured and efficient. I prefer
one man with two eyes to two men each with one eye.
Three principles, far-reaching in their effect upon the
curriculum and methods of teaching, not only of the
English subjects, but of all the other subjects, may be
based upon the preceding truths:
First, the school curriculum as a whole should be
made up of those activities, subjects, and parts of sub-
jects that contribute to both democratic culture and
efficiency.
Second, the school curriculum should contain nothing
else, except, perhaps, certain moral and civic ideas and
ideals not comprised in either of our major terms.
Third, each subject or part of subject should be closely
scrutinized to determine whether its material and methods
may be expected to add something to democratic culture
on the one hand or to efficiency on the other. There
should be no confusion of purposes or values. The
two kinds of education should be kept absolutely separate;
if they mingle, let them mingle in the personality of the
students, not in the methods of the teachers.
These three principles, if applied to the course of
study, would work great changes in nearly all the subjects.
Our task now is to determine their application to the
English branches.
Application of culture and efficiency to English teaching.
Fortunately—in some respects, unfortunately — English
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divides itself naturally, inevitably, into two distinct
groups, the one cultural, the other practical. I say
"fortunately, for it allows the English teacher to give
her pupils education in both departments of life. I say
"unfortunately, for too often the English teacher, not
recognizing the dual nature of her task, attempts to
make all the work practical or all the work cultural, or
selects the wrong parts of it for the one purpose or the
other. More of this presently.
The second principle, that we exclude everything that
does not add some educative increment to the lives of
our pupils, would enable us to eliminate from English
a considerable quantity of material which clings to the
curriculum only because we have false ideas of culture.
From literature it would cut loose a sodden mass of
information about authors, dates, literary periods, it
would banish much memorization of poetry and all cram-
ming for examination in literature, it would do away
with all that part of our literature material and method
which has to do with the acquisition of conventional and
traditional and pseudo-cultural knowledge. It would
eliminate the intensive study of forms, of vocabulary,
the insistence upon knowing the meaning of every word
and the significance of every allusion; for nothing in all
this adds one cubit to our stature in any of the five
essentials of culture, and assuredly contributes not one
iota to our efficiency. It would strike many of the
classics from our list of literature to be read in school,
because in content and spirit they are so remote from the
lives of present-day boys and girls that they cannot
impress upon them either cultural ideals or practical
rules of life. In the language group of English subjects
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our principle would permit us to reduce spelling to that
limited extent which is needed in the actual writing of
life, to reduce grammar and rhetoric to that small fraction
which functions in the written and spoken language of
communication, since only this contributes to efficiency,
and nothing in these subjects contributes to genuine
culture. We should then have left in literature all that
has an appreciable effect upon true culture, we should
have left in language all that prepares us for an efficient
life.
The third principle bears directly upon one of the most
important and puzzling questions of English teaching:
To what extent should the English subjects be cultural,
to what extent practical? This question entails a minute
examination of the nature of the content and methods
of the English studies.
The nature of literature and literary artists. Let us
consider literature first. What is literature? What is
there in this subject which we may reasonably expect to
make a contribution to democratic culture or efficiency?
To answer it bluntly, we can get out of literature what the
makers of literature put into it; no more, and, of course,
not so much as that. What, then, are the purposes of
the makers of literature? What material do they work
with? What do they strive for? What manner of men
are the creators of literature? What manner of creation
do they offer us?
The creator of literature is intent primarily on the
discovery and revelation of beauty. If we except some
of the most radical realists, all literary artists are, first
of all, seekers after the beauty of life. They construct
their poems, their stories, out of the materials, the stuff,
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of human existence, but they select only that area of
existence which is beautiful, using the ugly and sordid
and commonplace only to point out its hidden charm or
to sharpen the contrast between ugliness and beauty.
James Russell Lowell perceives the beauty in a dandelion
—beauty that our dim eyes, though they have gazed upon
the flower hundreds of times, have not seen; and always
thereafter we also can perceive the beauty. Shake-
speare may show the ugly degradation in the character of
Macbeth and may put before us the beastliness of the
witches, but he traffics in this ugliness only that he may
the more clearly reveal the beauty of the fundamental
laws of conduct. Fielding may insist upon our knowing
Blifil, mean, narrow, spiteful, selfish, hypocritical, but
only that we may discern more vividly the honest worth
and sincerity and simple human charm of Tom Jones.
Beauty of content, beauty of expression, this is the
artist's guiding aim; beauty of scene and circumstance,
beauty of manners, beauty of motives, of thoughts,
and of conduct, beauty of truth, sensuous beauty, ethical
beauty.
The creator of literature is remarkable, in the second
place, for his emotional range and his emotional intensity.
Are not artists notoriously high-strung, palpitating with
enthusiasms, sensitive to emotional stimuli? Do they not
veer continually to the shifting gusts of passion? William
Cowper lies awake the night through, laughing at the
thought of John Gilpin and his ride; Keats almost faints
with ecstasy as he broods over the loveliness of a flower;
Wordsworth remembers for a lifetime the emotion kindled
in his heart by the sight of the little Scotch girl; Dickens
weeps bitterly as he foresees the death of Little Nell.
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Your true artist is an Eolian harp, which sounds to the
lightest touch of life's breeze. A literary artist without
keen sensibilities, quivering nerves, instantaneous and
violent reaction to the emotional situations in life, is
unthinkable. And yet, no matter how impetuous his
passion, he must guide and control it, else he cannot
produce art; he must not only ride, he must guide his
Pegasus.
Another quality that characterizes the creator of
literature is his never-ceasing interest and curiosity about
existence. Most of us accept life without reflection, we
take it for granted, we are passive, inert, lazy, listless.
Like horses, we wear blinkers, so that we see only the
stretch of road just before us; like falcons, we are hooded,
so that we perceive but a tiny segment of earth and
sky. But the literary artist gazes in all directions,
wonders about everything, ponders everything, follows
up every stream to its secret springs, snatches the masks
off the masqueraders. He is the eternal Adam—a new
creature in a new world, curious, inquisitive, interroga-
tive; he must give everything a name of his own choos-
ing. Nothing is staled by usage, every incident is an
adventure, every day a new era. Chaucer travels forty
or fifty miles in company with a score of people, some of
them commonplace, some of them coarse and crude, only
a few of them persons that you or I would care about or be
interested in, no odds how long we traveled with them.
But Chaucer has no peace of mind until he has studied
and understood each member of the group, winding
through the labyrinth of word, manner, and deed till he
has penetrated into the secretest and sacredest recesses
of personality and temperament. He is curious about
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them — that is all. He cannot help asking, "What
manner of men are these? What is below the surface?
Robert Browning casually opens a book containing the
record of a murder trial, sensational, tawdry, sordid, such
a story as you and I often glance at in the newspaper.
But he is curious about it. Who is guilty: the man,
the woman, the lover? What is the truth here? And
out of it he evolves the Ring and the Book, in which he
reveals the truth from every angle, as each person involved
in the story saw it. All literature bears witness to the
keen interest that the makers of literature take in human
life, in all the facts and facets of existence.
And they have not only interest in the scenes and
situations in life, but sympathetic fellowship with the
characters that "strut and fret their hour upon the
stage. None but Maupassant and a few of his followers
remain aloof from the personages they have translated
from the world to the pages of their books. A Shake-
speare feels kinship with a Lear, with a Falstaff, a Hamlet,
a Shylock, with a Rosalind, a Beatrice, a Juliet. He
pictures them forth, divergent and heterogeneous, without
prejudice or personal bias, with sympathetic appreciation
because each is a member of the human tribe to which he
himself belongs, because each one is Shakespeare, Shake-
speare is each one. A Whitman enfolds every class of
humanity within his brotherly arms; an O. Henry or
Edna Ferber are near of kin to laborers, clerks, shop girls,
show girls. The very beasts of the field and forest are
adopted as members of the clan of Burns, Thoreau, and
Uncle Remus. In this all-embracing, all-comprehending
sympathy literary artists are unique among men; they
and children are the only true democrats.
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Finally, literary people are so constituted, so endowed
that they can read intuitively the riddles of life, can lighten
The heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world.
By virtue of the celestial radiance within them, they cast
an illumination into the darkest mysteries of life and
death. The universe is confused, formless, chaotic; good
and evil, joy and sorrow, beauty and ugliness, divinity
and bestiality, lie mixed, it would seem, inextricably,
without apparent plan or order. What is life for? What
is our relation to our fellows and to God? Why does God
suffer crime and grief, sickness and sorrow, to disturb his
world? What does it all mean? Hosts of vital questions
throng our minds.
The creator of literature is the creator of order out of
this weltering chaos. He does it by abstraction, selection,
and recombination. If I may compare great things with
less, it is like the child's game of jackstraws. We tumble
down upon the floor a handful of sticks of different shapes
and colors, mixed, shapeless. The literary artist draws
out the sticks one by one, placing those of like color, of
like shape and size, in their separate places; and out of
this material he may fashion whatever may seem good
to him. Or, if I may compare great things with greater,
God has sent the artist, as He sent His great Son, to
guide us through the wilderness of this world, to show
us the way, the truth, and the life.
Great books are full of great truths. Not facts, though
facts are held as in chemical solution within books. The
maker of literature needs but few facts, and those only as
hints, or as points of departure. Bryant sees the water-
fowl flying overhead. The only essential fact is that
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of birds' migration; but from this he induces the uni-
versal law of human helplessness and divine guidance.
Tennyson hears the Killarney echoes. The fact is the
physical nature of echoes; but from this meager and
unpromising fact he discovers anew the universal law of
undying human influence. Holmes sees a nautilus shell.
The fact is the peculiar configuration of the shell; but it
is sufficient to reveal to him the universal law of man's
aspiration. Bare facts are of no value or interest to the
creator of literature; he is one of the few mortals not
gulled or browbeaten or obsessed by facts.
The man of letters is rarely a profound scholar, rarely
skilled in logic, trained in reason. But he is a pene-
trating observer, he compares and contrasts closely, he
induces and deduces unerringly, he can recall his knowledge
and experience and apply it to the matter at issue, he
can trace cause and effect, he can fathom purposes and
motives, and, above all, he can imagine with extreme
vigor and vividness; and when he has done all this, he
can put his intellectual accomplishment before us in
such a manner that we are moved to thought and reflec-
tion. His presentation of truth is the more mind-
stirring because he embodies it in stories, in persons, in
concrete situations, clothes it in attractive language,
warms and colors it with feeling, and allows it to express
itself in suggestions. Inasmuch as the material of liter-
ature is drawn from life, then reshaped to resemble life,
it engages our interest and reflection even as does life
itself.
Literature contributes to culture. These five qualities
the maker of literature possesses in abundance. This is
what he puts into his literature—all he can put into it,
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because his writing is life as seen through his personality.
This is what he has to offer us; through this and this
alone can he influence us, touch us, teach us. Does
literature contribute to culture or to efficiency? The
question answers itself. The five qualities we found in
culture we find as the preeminent qualities in the creators
of literature and therefore in literature. Literature con-
tribute to efficiency! — to making a living, to working
deftly, skillfully, to getting on well with people! Lit-
erary men, who are pathetically unsuccessful from the
efficient man's point of view, laughably impractical,
idealistic, romantic, fanciful — will you engage these
men to teach your children the secrets of efficiency?
Nay, they make contributions to culture, or they have
no place in our education or life. Any attempt to attain
efficiency through literature, as I understand and have
defined the term, is farcical; it frustrates the cultural
purposes and fails to realize the practical purposes of
education. The only possible effect literature can have
upon the efficient man is to give him relaxation that he
may work the harder, and this is possible only because
the library is a different world from the office.
It is our insistence upon securing practical results from
literature that vitiates our method of teaching this subject.
We are too eager to figure and handle profits, too greedy
for immediate and tangible returns on our investment of
time and labor. In our desire—natural enough, of course
— to assure ourselves that our pupils are "getting some-
thing out of literature, we require them to memorize
passages, retell the ins and outs of intricate plots, pass
examinations on the meaning of words and on the details
of authors' lives — facts, facts, facts, facts that have
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no relation to culture and no relation to efficiency. Oh,
the futility and falsity of such facts! Do we compel a
man to take an examination after he has heard a recital
of music, or seen the mountains or the sea, or taken a
walk in the woods, or passed through a dark grief, met
a great man, married a wife, fought in a battle, or had
any other emotional experience ? Culture grows inaudibly,
imperceptibly. Perhaps we may never be able to certify
that a certain poem or story has had effect upon a reader;
no more can we certify that a certain portion of a
piece of beef, eaten and assimilated, has furnished cells
to the thumb on our right hand. All we can be sure of is
that suitable literature, satisfying our taste and contain-
ing food elements, will, when digested and metabolized,
become, gradually but inevitably, culture and character.
The teacher of literature must have a firm and fervent
faith in the ultimate effect of literature upon life — always
provided the literature is of the kind that will supply the
reader with real experience.
Literature makes no contribution to efficiency. Are
there, then, no material profits from literature? A
person gets on better in the world, makes more money,
holds higher positions, if he can use his mother tongue
effectively. Do we not enlarge our vocabulary, rectify
our mistakes, refine our style by reading literature? I
believe that reading literature has no appreciable effect
upon the language, spoken or written, of ninety-nine out
of a hundred readers, and that the hundredth person, in
endeavoring to secure this value, is likely to lose most
of the other values. We do not learn to spell by reading
literature, we do not learn to punctuate, to paragraph,
we do not carry words over from our reading vocabulary
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to our speaking and writing vocabulary; even when we
memorize passages, the words are so imbedded in the
context that we rarely use them separately. In my
judgment, the two kinds of intellectual activity engaged
in, in reading literature and in expressing thought, the
states of mind, the attitudes, are so divergent, so antago-
nistic, that we cannot transfer the profits over from one
set of books to the other. We should not use models of
literature in teaching children to speak and write, because
when they speak and write we should desire that they be
absorbed in the practical business of speaking and writing;
they will get nothing from models of literature that they
would not get much more easily and economically and
fully from models of everyday speech and writing. I
know that Tennyson and Stevenson and scores of other
authors patterned after their predecessors; but these
were literary men engaged in literary work—of course,
they could get value from models of literary art. I
know that most teachers can derive some language value
from literature; but we also are literary folk in our way,
else we would not be teaching. I am speaking here and
throughout about average young people, the vast majority
of whom are not literary at all—this is the true demo-
cratic standpoint. Of all the thousands of boys and
girls I have taught, in the grades, high schools, normal
schools, and other schools, only a half-dozen were pro-
nouncedly of the literary type. The English teacher
busying herself with facts, with dates and names, the
pupils using up their time in searching out definitions,
tracing out allusions, studying the style, sentence, and
paragraph structure — that teacher, those pupils, are inter-
fering with the one value that literature can give—and
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a very great value it may be—in the useless endeavor to
secure benefits that literature is not designed to give,
cannot, from its very nature, give. Oh, yes, you can
make a book of literature practical—and you can use
the book to drive a nail, but it injures the book and
doesn't drive the nail very effectively.
Literature can contribute to culture—note can, note
contribute. Some of us English teachers are prone to over-
emphasize literature as a cultural force. It can, at best,
make contributions, provide a part of the necessary food
and exercise. In so far as the literature read helps to
beget in the reader these five qualities that characterize
culture, in so far as literature produces improvement
in these respects in his attitude toward life, toward
persons in the actual world, in so far as it becomes real
experience, to that extent is it a cultural force. And
in order that it may be a great force the absorption of
the cultural properties in literature and their application
to life must be continued through years. Most of our
pupils would get larger cultural returns from literature
if our methods of dealing with literature were not so
pitifully wrong; but, no matter how perfect our methods,
there would be still a number of our pupils who, by
reason of temperament or "set of mind, can extract
but a minimum of culture from literature. They may
get it from some other art or from nature, they may get
it from experience, from contact with the realities of life,
from parents and friends, from farming, teaching, travel-
ing, from falling sick or falling in love. There are some
persons who must work from without in, who change them-
selves subjectively by acting objectively, who must get
their culture as they get their education, by physical
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activity, by affecting people. Now, you cannot alter a
book. Thackeray's Vanity Fair may influence you, but
you cannot, except in a quibbling use of the term, influ-
ence Vanity Fair: it is fixed for all time; so that those
who derive power almost altogether by the exercise of
their own power over others can get little from the book.
Let us recognize this fact. Let us be humble in the
realization that culture does not abide with us or alone
in our subject. We know how great is our own indebted-
ness to literature for what culture we possess, we know
how admirably fitted literature is to communicate culture
to others. I would magnify and glorify literature for its
gracious offices; but that same literature has taught me
how diversified and myriad-minded are the children of
men, and from how many sources they may draw the
elements of beauty, charity, faith, power, and inspiration.
Is the language group cultural or practical? And
now, what of the other group of English subjects, the
language group: composition, grammar and rhetoric, and
the forms of oral and written expression, with all the
details involved in each? Are they cultural or practical?
Let us examine each one separately-—but as briefly as
possible.
Composition, whether oral or written, has as its chief
purpose the selecting and organizing of ideas on a given
subject according to a preconceived plan, for this is what
we do when we really compose. Its chief value, then,
is that it gives training in constructive thinking: the
finding, limiting, and stating of a theme; the collection
and examination of material and the inclusion or rejec-
tion of parts of this material, depending upon whether
they are or are not useful in the development of the
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leading idea; the arrangement of this material in such a
way as to bring out this leading idea; and finally the
expression, oral or written—this last being, in many
respects, the least important part of the process. This,
observe, exactly parallels the process of constructive
thinking in any subject. Obviously, long-continued
repetition of this round of activities under guidance—
provided always the subjects are recognized and felt to
be real situations and problems of life—will assist in
training the mind to think.
But a well-trained mind is a requisite both in the cul-
tured and in the practical man. Does composition then
contribute both to culture and to efficiency? Theo-
retically, yes, but practically no. Only a small pro-
portion of students can really compose—that is, think
through—any but narrow, practical, commonplace sub-
jects, those subjects immediately before them, directly
concerning their lives. They cannot create, they can
only compose, and that only in a limited field; they
cannot grapple with the larger truths of life, they must
deal with facts, concrete, material facts. We try to
make them cultured by having them write short stories,
literary essays and descriptions, orations, even poetry, in
the fond belief that they can attain culture in this way.
But not one effort out of a thousand, from high-school
boys and girls at least, is worth writing or reading. The
energy expended is therefore largely wasted; it accom-
plishes nothing, is abortive. Failure in that which we
undertake of our own initiative may sometimes be edu-
cative; but failure in a task imposed upon us is depress-
ing, debilitating; it secures for us nothing, in education
or culture. What we can get from composition is some
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degree of mental training of the kind and on the sub-
jects needed in the efficient life—logical, practical
thinking on useful subjects, in the forms of expression
most used, and therefore most useful, in ordinary life.
Doubtless this has some bearing on the ultimate develop-
ment of culture—I believe it has; but the practical value
is paramount, and the other value will be secured most
certainly, if it be secured at all, as a by-product.
Grammar and rhetoric consist of the analysis of the
laws and principles underlying expression. Neither
subject is of any but the slightest value in developing
our appreciation of beauty, enriching our emotions,
giving us wide interests or keen sympathies. As for
mental training through these subjects, the thought
processes are so restricted that they provide no general
training, and the subject matter is of such a nature that
it is valuable as knowledge useful in the practical affairs
of life or not valuable at all. We should include in
grammar only those facts and rules that have immediate
and unquestionable influence on correct language (and
that would make but a tiny volume), and in rhetoric
only those facts and laws that concern the common
forms of expression used by the common person in the
common business of life. We should eliminate the
rhetoric of literature as out of place in a subject that
prepares for efficiency, and we should introduce the
rhetoric of literature in the classes in literature, as
belonging to the world of culture.
I am aware that there are those who say that attempting
to produce literature in the rhetoric and composition
classes increases the students' appreciation of literature
and that therefore this activity has cultural value. My
The Teaching of English
91
own experience has led me to believe that this production
of imitation literature must be continued for a long time
before it increases the students' appreciation of literature,
and even then it is appreciation only of the outward
forms and of the difficulties of creating them. If we
have two periods for teaching literary appreciation, we
should not spend one period in reading literature and
the other in writing imitations of it; we should spend the
first period in reading literature and the other in reading
more literature.
As for the forms of oral and written language, pro-
nunciation and enunciation, spelling and punctuation,
and the rest, they have but a borrowed value, they have
importance only as they are needed in expressing the
content; if the content is practical, the forms are practical.
The only compelling reason why we should spell correctly
is because we are thus rated higher in the estimation
of others. If we spell incorrectly, we impair our stand-
ing, our chances for success. Observance of these forms
and conventions gives, at most, but the faintest, most
untrustworthy indications of culture; it may be found
where no culture is, and it may be absent from the
finest culture; while, on the other hand, the relation of
these forms to efficiency is close and unmistakable.
Literature, cultural; language group, practical. The
language subjects, then, are, in my judgment, entirely
practical subjects, as truly as literature is entirely cul-
tural. We should hold them apart rigidly. If they are
fused in the teaching methods, they,will_be confused in
their values. We should teach these subjects at different
periods, we should credit them separately, we .should, if
possible, have them taught by different teachers, or by a
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The New Democracy in
teacher with a dual personality, one who has business-
like, practical efficiency and rich, genuine culture.
These are my articles of faith, thus set forth at length.
Should the English subjects be cultural or practical?
The English subjects should be cultural and practical
— the one branch cultural, the other branch practical.
Neither culture nor efficiency is sufficient to make the
complete, symmetrical, well-equipped individuality;
neither should be the sole aim of school education.
English teachers should hold themselves happy that
their subject lends itself so naturally to the great funda-
mentals of education. Let them not perpetuate the
mistake of trying to make both departments of their
subject both cultural and practical, but rather hold the
one sacred to culture and the other as sacred to efficiency.
The Teaching of English
OUTLINES FOR STUDY
I. MAKING ENGLISH DEMOCRATIC
PAGE
1. Democracy in government i
2. Democracy in the schools 2
3. Aristocracy in the teaching of English 3
a. The language-composition branch 3
(1) Theme subjects 4
(2) Rhetoric 5
b. Literature 5
(1) Materials 6
(a) The old and the new 7
(b) Chronological sequence 8
(2) Methods 9
(3) "Literary literature 10
c. English has been aristocratic x 1
d. Facing the problem 12
4. Democracy in the teaching of English 13
a. The language-composition activities 13
(1) Forms of discourse 15
(2) Speech and writing 15
(3) Technical elements 16
(4) Use of models 16
(5) Summary 17
b. Literature *7
(1) Class work *7
(2) Individual, guided reading 18
5. Conclusion 21
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The New Democracy in
n. THE PALACE OF PEDAGOGY
1. The Palace of Art 22
2. The Palace of Pedagogy 23
3. The "English Wing in the Palace 25
4. Value of English for life 26
5. Fundamental needs in English 27
a. Rapid silent reading 27
b. Love of good literature 28
(1) Errors in teaching literature 29
(a) Too much analysis 29
(b) Emphasis on history of literature . .31
(2) The better method 33
(a) Many books, not few 33
(.b) Recognition of grades of merit . . 34
c. Use of mother tongue 36
(1) Voice training 36
(2) Vocabulary building and diction . 37
(a) Idiomatic speech 38
(b) Slang 39
(c) Literary bias 42
(3) Types of language activity 43
(a) Conversation 44
(b) Discussion 45
(c) Explanation 46
(d) InformaLargument 47
(e) Speechjnaking 50
(/) Story-telling 51
(g) Letterwriting 52
(h) Various^ written forms 53
(i) Importance of oral types .... S3
6. English in the higher institutions 54
7. The Palace of Art and_the Palace of Pedagogy ... 58
The Teaching of English
95
HI. DEMOCRATIC IDEALS OF CULTURE AND EFFICIENCY:
THEIR RELATION TO ENGLISH
1. Culture 60
a. What it is not 61
(1) Not cultivation 61
(2) Not knowledge 62
(3) Other misconceptions 63
b. What constitutes democratic culture .... 63
(1) Appreciation of beauty 64
(2) Emotions under control 66
(3) Many-sided interest in life 67
(4) Sympathy 68
(5) A well-trained mind 69
(6) Summary 70
2. Culture and efficiency not to be confused . . .71
3. Democratic efficiency analyzed 72
4. Culture and efficiency contrasted 73
5. Both qualities essential in life . 75
6. The school's contribution to culture and efficiency . 75
7. Relation of culture and efficiency to English teaching . 76
a. To literature: qualities of literary artist ... 78
(1) Appreciation of beauty 78
(2) Emotional nature 79
(3) Curiosity about life 80
(4) Sympathetic fellowship 81
(5) Power to reveal truth 82
(6) Literature contributes to culture .... 83
b. To language 88
(1) Composition practical 88
(2) Grammar and rhetoric practical .... 90
(3) Technique of language practical . . . . 91
(4) Language study contributes to efficiency . 91
c. Literature, cultural; language group, practical. . 91