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New Series Vol. VIII
IS MODERN LANGUAGE TEACHING
A FAILURE?
PROFESSOR C* H. GRANDGENT
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
?
No. 19
Reprint from the School Review, September, 1907
800.7
·G 75
C.2.
*
IS MODERN LANGUAGE TEACHING A FAILURE?1
PROFESSOR C. H. GRANDGENT
Harvard University
We traffickers in living tongues are admirable exponents of
that attitude of mind which some sociologists call "the noble dis-
content." Discontented we all are; if not with our own minis-
trations, at least with the efforts of our fellows, and especially
with the operations of those instructors who immediately pre-
cede us.
If we be high-school teachers, let us recall what we
said, at the beginning of the year, about the modest attempts
made to impart a little German to our pupils in the grammar
school: did we not express a preference for children who had
not tried to study a foreign language in the grades at all, de-
voutly wishing that our charges had spent their extra time on
English grammar? What does the college instructor remark,
when he first sizes up the hopeful product that comes to him from
the high school? Does he not invariably declare that the years
spent on French in the preparatory school have been worse than
wasted, and that his best students are those who never opened a
French book before? As to the observations of collaborators
in the same institution, each on the pedagogical ability of his
colleague in the next grade below, they are better forgotten than
remembered. And the saddest part of it is—making allowance
for the exaggeration due to recurrent disappointment and dis-
couragement—allowing, too, for the different standards of suc-
cessive teachers, each of whom has his peculiar antipathies
among the countless possible kinds of failure-the saddest part
of it is that these uncomplimentary estimates are, for the most
¹ Address before the Joint Session of the Classical and Modern Language
Conferences at Ann Arbor, Mich., March 28, 1907.
Through the kind assistance of the Board of Regents of the University of
Michigan and the courtesy of the publishers of the School Review, it has been
possible to secure some reprints of this address for distribution. Those desiring
a copy may forward their request to MR. LOUIS P. JOCELYN, Secretary Michigan
Schoolmasters' Club, South Division St., Ann Arbor, Mich.
513
166077
800.7
-25
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THE SCHOOL REVIEW
part, substantially correct. The amount of positive, accurate
knowledge carried from one grade to another, seems, in propor-
tion to the quantity of ignorance and misapprehension, insignifi-
cant.
But, it may be urged, all this is true of other subjects as
well. The teachers of English composition, history, music,
drawing make the same lament; and the only reason why anat-
omy, hygiene, physiography, meteorology, astronomy, botany,
and zoology do not give rise to a like complaint is that these topics
are disposed of in a single year. Both foreign and domestic critics
affirm that the American schoolboy shows a general deficiency
of from one to three years, as compared with the French or
German child of the same age. Are not his shortcomings in
modern languages merely one manifestation of a national
incompetency in matters of education?
True it undoubtedly is that our boys and girls are, on the
average, some two years behind those of France and Germany
in common book-learning. We shall perhaps be able to pursue
our subject with a clearer understanding if we turn aside for a
moment to consider the origin of this backwardness. The blame
has sometimes been put, and with some justice, upon our
migratory habits and upon the heterogeneous character of our
population. But there are other and more fundamental causes:
three, especially, call for more extended examination.
The most obvious source of the transatlantic superiority is
the Spartan discipline maintained in the foreign schools, a dis-
cipline which forces pupils through a curriculum so crowded
that neither American scholars nor American parents would sub-
mit to it for a year. The school child in Europe is in a state of
bondage: from the age of six to eighteen he scarcely knows any
occupation but study; his whole life centers in school, while,
as we all know, for the American youth of that age school is
merely one element in a highly variegated existence. No doubt
we might advantageously imitate our neighbors by insisting on
more expert school management, by strengthening somewhat
our grip upon our students, and above all by making the award of
diplomas depend in some degree on the successful performance
IS MODERN LANGUAGE TEACHING A FAILURE?
515
of school duties. In a community where public instruction is
directed by a committee chosen by parents, who in turn are
controlled by their children, we have a kind of indirect educa-
tional self-government which makes strict standards impossible.
Fortunately there are some American cities to which this criti-
cism no longer applies; but those towns are few indeed in which
the general administration is in the hands of the really compe-
tent. If, however, it came to an absolute choice between our
happy-go-lucky method-with the abundant opportunity it
affords our children for wholesome exercise, play, spontaneity,
and varied experience—and the scholastic sweat-shop of the
Europeans—with its renunciation of so much that makes child-
hood worth living-we might well prefer our backwardness to
a proficiency bought at such a price.
Another reason for the quicker progress of the foreign pupil
is the greater inducement offered him to study. There is no
doubt that our children are as intelligent as those of other
nations. In organizing a concert, a dramatic performance, a
magazine-in fact, in any task that does not fall within the
scope of school routine, the young American is the equal of
any boy on earth; in resourcefulness and enterprise it would be
hard to match him. Only when he turns to prescribed study
does he show himself a drone. And why? Because he sees
nothing to be gained by application. Under our ordinary
administration nothing but death can prevent him from getting
his diploma; and the promises of the joy of superior enlighten-
ment, of enhanced civic usefulness, of higher social prestige
are to him not only vague and unsubstantial, but contrary to
everyday experience. Who are the men that tower above their
fellows in the columns of the newspapers? They are for the
most part the untutored geniuses whose education went little if
at all beyond the red schoolhouse. All the talk about the advan-
tages of learning is, like the stories of storks and Santa Claus,
only a part of the well-meaning fiction with which grown-up
folks try to blind their offspring to the realities of life. Our boy
good-naturedly studies a little, to oblige his parents and teachers;
but as to really exerting himself, he very seldom thinks that
C
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•
worth while. Not so the schoolboy in the crowded Old World.
He knows only too well the value of scholarship; he foresees
the cruel competition, the fierce struggle for existence, that
await him; and he has reason to strain every nerve to attain
that degree of proficiency which may assure him a modest live-
lihood in the career that fate has marked out for him. As
America fills up, as the opportunities for money-making without
capital decrease, as the requirements in the performance of all
labor advance, the value, the necessity of special training and of
general discipline will become more and more apparent; and
some day the American boy's outlook upon the future may be as
clear and calculating as that of his European brother. May that
day be slow to come!
The third and least important cause, which is a direct out-
come of the pitiless competition just mentioned, is the better
equipment of the teacher in France and Germany. The quali-
fications demanded of this unfortunate being-who in return
receives starvation wages-would be likely to debar 99 per cent.
of the secondary-school instructors in America. But are all these
requirements really conducive to the welfare of the pupils? No,
in large measure their only effect is to reduce the host of candi-
dates. A long training in Romance philology, with original
investigation of some topic in Old French or Provençal, does
not perceptibly increase the efficiency of a teacher of elementary
French, nor is it necessary even for an adequate presentation of
modern French literature. On the other hand, the absolute
requirement of a thorough practical knowledge-obtained in
part by at least a year's residence abroad-of the language to
be taught is one that we shall do well gradually to adopt. There
is nothing more essential to the teacher than the confidence that
springs from complete mastery of his subject. When his chief
preoccupation in the classroom is not to impart what he knows,
but to conceal what he does not know, the value of his labor is
questionable. A very gratifying improvement in this respect
has occurred in American schools in the last quarter of a cen-
tury; in another twenty-five years, at the same rate of progress,
the standard for high-school teachers of foreign languages in
IS MODERN LANGUAGE TEACHING A FAILURE?
517
our principal cities will not be inferior, in the really important
things, to that maintained in France and Germany. And this
increased equipment need not be accompanied by any diminution
of human sympathy.
î
In addition to these three very patent reasons for the com-
paratively slow advance of our children, there is a fourth, which
has not been set forth until recently, and even now does not
receive the consideration it deserves. The difficulties of English
spelling are in themselves enough to account for the whole defi-
ciency under discussion. They have been, during the past year
or two, so often and so well set before the public that there is no
need of expatiating on the subject now. There seems to be no
doubt that our children spend two or three years in learning-
or rather in trying to learn-to spell. For French and espe-
cially for German children this process is much easier, owing to
the more logical character of the orthography; in actual time
spent, it is safe to assume that English and American pupils
labor under a handicap of at least a year. But there is a disad-
vantage worse even than the loss of time-a drawback so
serious as to impair the efficiency of all school work. It has
been admirably stated by an Associate City Superintendent of
Schools in New York:
Next to learning by imitation, the child must be taught to learn by asso-
ciation and analogy. He develops strength of mind by the exercise of judg-
ment. He must reason from known facts in the solution of his little prob-
lems. If he comes to a new printed word and halts, the teacher asks him to
think of the oral word for which it stands. Having learned that puff and
muff stand for well-known oral words, he is staggered at rough and enough,
frequently used in conversation. Having learned that these characters stand
for well-known spoken words which he wrote ruff and enuff from his knowl-
edge of puff and muff, he is again confused when the teacher tells him that
dough is the spelling of the well-known word his mother uses when speaking
about bread-making, and that cough stands for the malady so prevalent in
the nursery during winter time.
The stage of the child's tuition during which all the similar incongrui-
ties of our spelling must be mastered, occupies many years of school life,
and the process has well-nigh produced a disbelief in reason as a means of
learning, and a total lack of confidence in inference. The result of falling
into absurd and ridiculous situations through the exercise of his judgment,
518
THE SCHOOL REVIEW
appears in a hesitancy or fear of drawing any inferences upon data relating
to other fields of knowledge. The child has lost faith in his own conclusions
with respect to problems in arithmetic, biology, geography, history, etc. To
what extent of subject-matter and time the school child has suffered irrep-
arable loss, by failure to acquire confidence in the exercise of his judgment
as a result of his early stultification during the process of learning to master
the spelling of common words, may never be determined.
When we consider these four drawbacks-the lack of suffi-
cient authority and competence on the part of the school manage-
ment, the absence of any strong incentive to study, the
inadequate training of teachers, and the stultifying effect of our
eccentric spelling-far from wondering at the backwardness of
our boys and girls, we may feel a justifiable pride that they are
no farther behind, and we may conclude that both they and their
instructors must be made of superior stuff to achieve anything
at all. It is therefore apparent that a comparison of the results
obtained in any one field of knowledge in our country should
not, in fairness, be made with the work done in that same line
abroad, but rather with the product in other branches at home;
and a just estimate of the value of our modern language teach-
ing can be reached only by setting it beside the instruction given
in other departments here in America.
Cand
Such a comparison can never be made with objective exact-
ness: it must express itself in terms of individual opinion based
on observation. And inasmuch as one's judgment derives its
value largely from the scope of the investigation on which it is
founded, it may not be inexpedient to set forth the personal
views of one who has had opportunities to study the question
from the standpoint of a college instructor in elementary French
and German, from the comprehensive experience of a director
of all the modern language instruction in the public schools of a
large city, and finally in the capacity of chairman of the
Romance department in a great university. In school and
college alike one significant fact constantly obtrudes itself
namely, that the previously mentioned denial of the worth of all
foregoing instruction in a subject-constantly on the lips of
modern language teachers-is seldom or never heard from the
IS MODERN LANGUAGE TEACHING A FAILURE?
519
1
mouth of an instructor in classics or mathematics. In these
older topics one often hears, to be sure, complaint and impatient
criticism; but only in very exceptional cases does the work done
under a predecessor appear wholly fruitless. The steps may be
slow, but they are sure; at each promotion the scholar has
added a definite acquisition to his sum of knowledge. In the
other new subjects, however-such as "science," history, and
English composition-the efforts seem, judging from such
comments as one may gather in the course of years, to be fully as
futile as in French and German. An eminent professor in a
scientific school has been heard to declare that he would rather
have, as advanced students of applied science, men who had
devoted themselves to Latin than those who had spent their
time on scientific studies; and his voice is one of many. College
instructors in English composition are sometimes heard to regret
that their pupils ever tried to write English at school. It
appears to be the unanimous opinion of college professors of
modern languages that their best pupils are those whose school
years were given mostly to Greek and Latin, while their poorest
are those in whose previous curriculum French or German or
"science" was the principal factor. On the other hand, the boy
from a good classical school finds that his college Latin, Greek,
and mathematics are the natural continuation of what he has
already acquired; and his instructor, with no great upsetting or
reviewing, simply takes him on from the point he has reached
under the guidance of his former teacher.
It would seem, then, if our data and inferences are correct,
that Latin, Greek, and mathematics are so taught as to allow
but little waste in the passage from one teacher to another, while
in other subjects the apparent or real loss is most discouraging.
Furthermore, school study of the classics furnishes not only an
excellent basis for further work along the same line, but also
the best foundation for studies of a different character; while
modern language courses, in common with "science" and some
other topics, far from fitting a pupil to take up new branches of
study, do not adequately prepare him to continue what he has
begun. It is likely enough that French and German, as taught
}
520
THE SCHOOL REVIEW
today, are more effective than most of the other new studies,
but they are still vastly inferior to the classics. And inasmuch as
the modern tongues to a considerable extent have replaced Greek
and Latin in the secondary-school curriculum and in the ordi-
nary college training, we cannot regard any instruction in them
as satisfactory which does not produce results comparable to
those derived from the study of the old humanities.
Is the inferiority of the modern to the ancient languages,
as a means of mental discipline, inherent in these tongues, or
does it arise from causes that can be overcome? A priori it is
not obvious why German, for instance, should not furnish nearly
as good an instrument for training the attention, the reason, and
the memory, as Latin. Moreover, long-continued search does
reveal some exceptional instances in which French and German
have in fact been made to bear most gratifying fruit. For it
must be understood that in all that has preceded we have been
considering the general average, and not the unusual specific
case. Until we have, then, conclusive evidence to the contrary,
we may proceed on the assumption that the modern languages
can be used to good purpose in education. What we need to do
first of all is to discover the obstacles that have hitherto pre-
vented success.
From time immemorial until our own generation the funda-
mental discipline of educated men throughout the civilized world
has been derived from Latin and Greek, with more or less
admixture of mathematics. The great writers, the imposing
figures in history, the mighty scholars of every type have formed
their intelligence on the classics; all that we revere in the intel-
lectual past derives from that abundant source. The majestic
tradition of classic study gives to the old humanities a dignity
that newer branches of learning can never attain, unless it be
after many centuries of like achievement. In the far-distant
future we may picture a time when French and German will be
invested with the glory of ancient and perennial success; but that
thought affords us no present help, save the gift of an ideal
toward which our efforts may converge, a faith that may
brighten the hours of discouragement. Under the conditions
IS MODERN LANGUAGE TEACHING A FAILURE?
521
x
that face us today we cannot hope that either pupils or teachers
will approach our modern tongues in a spirit of reverence com-
parable to that which properly hallows the study of Greek and
Latin. We must respect our subjects; we must, if we can, make
our students respect them; but that respect will at best fall far
short of veneration. Hitherto the living languages have not
enjoyed even the moderate consideration that justly belongs to
them; and the slight esteem in which they have been held is due
mainly to the short-sighted policy of pedagogues who have too
often sacrificed the substantial to the showy, the facile, and the
frivolous. If we wish others to take us seriously, if our pupils
are to devote sober attention to our instruction, we must set a
high standard for ourselves. No magisterial airs will help us,
no lectures or upbraidings: what we need is, in the first place, a
thorough and ever-increasing knowledge of the matter we are to
teach, and, secondly, a wise earnestness that is satisfied with
nothing less than the real intellectual development of our
scholars.
On this score, then-the honor in which our department of
learning is held—we cannot, for long ages, equal the classics;
but we can distinctly improve our present position.
And we
have an advantage which, if rightly used, may offset the lack of
time-sanctioned regard: I mean the attractiveness born of
➤ actuality. If German, French, and Spanish cannot be revered.
let them benefit by that affection which the youthful mind
instinctively bestows on all that is alive. Let the learner realize
that in studying a foreign tongue he is penetrating the life, the
thought, the feeling of real people-people who are like himself
in most things but interestingly divergent in others. Let him
be led to compare the effects of different material environment,
dissimilar national traditions, contrary ideas of beauty, various
methods of utilizing words for the expression of what is in the
mind. Nothing is more fascinating than such comparisons and
contrasts, affording as they do ever longer and deeper glimpses
into a world so near yet so remote from our ken. Few things,
on the other hand, can be made more tiresome, if imparted in
formal lectures, with an appalling apparatus of specimens, charts,
522
THE SCHOOL REVIEW
and wall-pictures of cheap and hideous design. The pupil must
be aroused to see things for himself; his curiosity must be
awakened by an incidental explanation, a casual remark, a timely
anecdote. Tact, insight, and overflowing fulness of information
must be the teacher's stock in trade. Even a comparison of
grammatical forms and constructions can be made of absorbing
interest, if not carried too far: a revelation of the manifold
ways in which human ingenuity uses speech, combined with a
discussion of the relative merits of a foreign and a correspond-
ing English idiom or inflection, may impress the facts indelibly
on the hearer's memory, while kindling his desire for further
knowledge. Such study has the additional advantage of impart-
ing to the child an understanding of the real structure of Eng-
lish, of which he is likely, otherwise, to remain in eternal igno-
rance. Moreover, in languages that offer such a wide range of
choice, the reading can be so selected that the subject-matter
itself shall be an inducement to continued effort. Short stories.
of adventure, devoid of mawkish sentimentality, are most pleas-
ing to the young beginner. Longer and more diversified works
attract the student who is older or more advanced. Poetry,
judiciously administered, may serve
to train the ear, to
cultivate the sense of beauty, to reveal the latent harmo-
nies of language; and verse of the right kind, rightly pre-
sented, will appeal to the average girl or boy. The pieces
chosen should not be too childish; children relish literature,
especially poetry, that is a little above them, but look down with
speechless scorn on that which lies in the least beneath their level.
Furthermore, teachers should not forget that poetry is a kind
of music; it is intended not merely for the mind, but for the
hearing. The reason why verse, particularly French verse, is so
little and in general so unsuccessfully used in the schoolroom is
that very few instructors know how to read it. The real
rhythm, the proper intonation can be acquired only by close and
patient imitation of a native elocutionist. The teacher who does
not possess the art does well, until he masters it, to avoid the
Castalian spring; and he who does possess it should habitually
do the "reading aloud" himself, instead of compelling his pupils
IS MODERN LANGUAGE TEACHING A FAILURE?
523
to murder the verse. Only after the learner has heard the poem
many times should he be allowed to attempt it.
One reason why the living tongues are relegated to a lower
plane than Greek and Latin is that people-including scholars
and teachers-harbor a totally false conception of their diffi-
culty. Our modern languages are fully as hard as the ancient,
and require to be studied just as industriously. I do not believe
there is or ever was a language more difficult to acquire than
French; most of us can name worthy persons who have been
assiduously struggling with it from childhood to mature age,
and do not know it now: yet it is treated as something that any-
one can pick up offhand. When I thus compare the old and the
new tongues, I have in mind, of course, the degree and kind of
attainment that is expected in each. If we were as careful of
Latin pronunciation as we try to be of French, if we compelled
our pupils to talk Greek, as we labor to make them speak Ger-
man, the comparison might result differently; but even then the
balance, in my opinion, would be not far from even. The
obstacles to proficiency in the classics are more apparent than
real, and they present themselves most conspicuously at the out-
set. The inflections seem formidable, but, if attacked at the age
when memory is good, are soon mastered; and the very abun-
dance of forms, with definite rules for the use of each, removes
in great measure the endless and desperately intricate syntactical
problems that beset the student of French. The copiousness of
Latin and Greek grammar, for a scholar who really learns the
language, is an advantage rather than a drawback: in a book of
moderate compass he has all that he needs to know, every
emergency is foreseen, every construction has its formula; a
French grammar of equal size makes no provision for three-
quarters of the puzzles that an ordinary student encounters.
Aside from the difference in the inherent difficulty of languages,
there is a great divergence in the adequacy of textbooks. The
classics have been studied so long and so well, and the field they
cover is so definite and so restricted, that they are furnished
with an equipment which the modern tongues can probably
never rival. The completeness, the accuracy of a Latin lexicon
524
THE SCHOOL REVIEW
↓
or a Latin grammar may well fill us with envy. When I look
up a strange word in a Latin dictionary, I do so with the firm
belief that I shall find it, and my faith is nearly always
rewarded; but when I come upon an unknown term in French,
I turn to Littré or the Nouveau Dictionnaire with a dishearten-
ing apprehension that it will not be there, and my foreboding
is usually justified. The same thing is true of grammars and of
textbooks generally. The task of the Greek or Latin teacher,
compared to ours, is an easy one; and so is that of the pupil,
if the learning of a given definite amount of Latin be compared
with the acquisition of the same amount of French. It is an
incalculable advantage to a language to appear harder than it
is: both scholar and instructor approach the study seriously,
school-boards allow adequate provision of time and books,
parents are contented to have their children work hard, and the
satisfaction of achievement is multiplied fourfold. French stag-
gers under the fearful burden of apparent easiness. The alphabet
is identical with ours, although the letters all stand for differ-
ent sounds; a large part of the vocabulary is spelled like Eng-
lish, although the meaning of the words is hardly ever exactly
the same. The superficial resemblances impress the learner;
the fundamental distinctions he ignores. It takes him four
years or so if he keeps on that long-to convince himself that
French really demands application, and then he awakens to the
fact that he has not been learning the language at all. What he
has been learning is a sort of pidjin-English made up of Eng-
lish substitutes for French sounds and English transliterations
of French words, arranged in such fashion as to signify nothing
in any tongue that man ever spoke. In fact, he has never
expected his text to mean anything, French being, in his concep-
tion, a kind of speech in which people talk a great deal without
ever saying anything in particular. Let us consider an ordinary
university class in French literature, made up of students of
average ability, who have had, for the most part, some four
years of French, usually three at school and one in college: it is
safe to say that of these boys, at the beginning of the year, not
more than one in ten can read a page of easy French under-
-
書
​IS MODERN LANGUAGE TEACHING A FAILURE?
525
standingly. They think they understand it, while in reality they
miss the point of nearly every significant sentence they read.
When such pupils are once awakened from their delusion, if
they are not too discouraged to continue at all, they are ready to
make good progress, having realized at last that their slipshod
ways have led to naught. Unhappily few reach the Socratic
stage of knowing that they know nothing; and parents and school
authorities are not likely to suspect the truth. German has the
good fortune to seem rather hard, though not so hard as Greek
and Latin: it has a queer-looking alphabet, and the beginner is
obliged to memorize a good many declensions. The result is
that German, in general, is much better studied and better taught,
in secondary schools, than French, and a more substantial knowl-
edge is attained. Anyone who has given elementary instruction, in
school and college, in both these languages, can testify that
German is twice as satisfactory to teach as French, the reason
being, no doubt, that the former language looks a great deal
harder while it is in reality considerably easier. What are we
to do about it? We can hardly erect scarecrows along the path
of the French pupil. We can, however, refrain from distorting
the truth; we can insist upon accuracy from the start, in pro-
nunciation, in comprehension, in inflection, in construction; we
can refuse to be satisfied with approximations and meaningless
guesses. The whole tendency of French instruction has been to
disguise its difficulty; to represent the subject as one in which
serious exertion is unnecessary-a thing that can be caught by
intuition; to grade the progress and conceal the obstacles so
adroitly that the learner shall never be aware of them. The
object of this disingenuous policy has no doubt been to induce
children to study French; its effect has been the opposite, for
while it may often have led pupils to elect French as a part of
their programme, it has uniformly deterred them from studying
it.
In the case of a branch of scholarship so recently developed it
is natural that there should be no underlying uniformity of
purpose; and that, presumably, is why our efforts are so
scattering, so unfocused. If we had a clear conception of what
526
THE SCHOOL REVIEW
we are teaching a language for, we should be more likely to
concentrate our forces and thus avoid the waste incident to
unsystematic endeavor. Why, in fact, is it worth while to teach
or to study French or German? How many of us can answer
that question? How many have so much as asked it? The
first and most obvious answer, the one given in three cases out
of four, is that we teach French and German in order that our
pupils may know these languages, because it is a pleasant and
useful thing to know them. And if we inquire further in what
this pleasure and this utility consist, either we receive no response
at all or we are told that it is delightful to converse with
foreigners and profitable to be able to conduct foreign
business correspondence. By this time it must be obvious that
we are on the wrong tack. How many of our pupils, unless
they have enjoyed exceptional advantages, can speak French to
a Frenchman with anything like pleasure to either party? How
many ever secure positions as foreign business correspondents
through the training that we give them? No: if this is our
object, we must confess that our instruction is a gigantic fail-
ure. And even if we succeeded, the end attained would be insig-
nificant in proportion to the expenditure of time and labor.
Only a tiny fraction of those who study French will ever go
abroad or have frequent opportunity to display their skill at
home; and if all those who study German are to become commer-
cial correspondents, that profession will have to expand a thou-
sand fold. It is just such frivolous and inane statements as those
cited, and the thoughtlessness from which they spring, that have
prevented our subjects from winning the esteem of the com-
munity. If our branch of learning has no better claim to con-
sideration, it is not worthy of a place in any public-school
curriculum.
Let us look at the matter from another side. The modern
tongues have been introduced into schools and colleges mainly
as a partial or total substitute for the classics. Now, as I have
said before, it is through the classics that the man of European
stock, from ancient times almost until our own day, has received
his mental discipline: it is they that have taught him how to
IS MODERN LANGUAGE TEACHING A FAILURE?
527
observe, how to discriminate, how to reason, how to remember;
they have afforded practice in analysis and synthesis; they have
cultivated the taste and broadened the horizon. It is they that
have given man the intellectual power to cope with any prob-
lem that may confront him; it is they that have made him an
educated being. Among the other topics that our children
study, mathematics stand forth as affording a part, but only a
part, of the necessary discipline: they teach concentration and
accuracy, but not much more; and there is no indication that
mathematical study will increase as Greek and Latin dwindle.
Natural science and the host of minor subjects recently adopted,
while they impart interesting and sometimes valuable informa-
tion, furnish none of the requisite training. It is to modern
languages that we must look for the shaping of that strong,
versatile, well-rounded intelligence without which civilized
man will relapse into barbarism. Perhaps, in spite of the best
endeavor, French and German will prove inadequate means; if
they do, either the classics must be restored or another discipline
must be found, else our race will degenerate. At all events we
must see to it that they have a fair trial. We have a duty and a
glorious opportunity. Our object must be the discipline of the
mind, the training of observation, judgment, and memory, the
development of esthetic discrimination and enjoyment, the
opening of a wider outlook on the world, the cultivation of a
love of good reading. If we strive with all our might for these
things, we shall soon find, I am sure, that our own work will
assume a new dignity, our pupils wili face their books with a
better spirit, our department will deserve and win a respect
which it has never enjoyed before; and, lastly—as a by-product,
so to speak-our scholars will learn a great deal more French
and German than they ever acquired when the mastery of these
languages was our sole ideal.
The long vogue of the classics has given them more than
an exalted position and a superior array of textbooks; it has
provided them with a consistent, effective, and long-tried sys-
tem of instruction. In our groping we may find a guide in the
traditional practices of our elder companion; or, to speak con-
528
THE SCHOOL REVIEW
cretely, the French teacher may learn something by occasionally
looking in upon his Latin colleague next door. It cannot be
repeated too often that Latin instruction has been a success; for
a thousand years or so it has been the one conspicuous success
in the field of education. Our successes are still before us. A
modestly receptive frame of mind is the appropriate one for us
when we are face to face with classical practices. When the
living tongues first began to supersede the ancient in our
schools, their advent was accompanied by a spirit of enthusiastic
innovation similar to that which quickened the Romantic move-
ment in art. There was the same talk of bursting narrow
bonds, discarding outworn tradition, and returning to nature.
The Romantic ebullition soon subsided, leaving, however, some
permanent and beneficial mementos of its passage. So it has
been with the Romantic period of linguistic pedagogy: the
excitement is calmed, the extravagant claims of iconoclasts are
exploded, the revolutionary spirit has abated, the allurements
of the new no longer blind us to the abiding worth of the old.
Something, however, we have gained: the conviction that
language is a thing alive and that its inherent interest must be
utilized as the best incentive to study. Our experience has
profited our classical brethren as well as ourselves; and if we
examine their policy today, we shall see that while it has suf-
fered no fundamental alteration, it has grafted upon itself some
of the fruits of neo-linguistic theorizing. It has not, however,
fallen into the error of believing that all difficulties can be
solved by a formula that will-o'-the-wisp which has led us
on such mad chases. The idea that there is a pedagogic
panacea, a sovereign method that can make everything right, is
a fallacy that we have now well-nigh outgrown, although it still
smolders, and sometimes crops up where one would least expect
it. A few years ago I received a visit from a Japanese pro-
fessor, an eminently learned and practical man, who was travel-
ing around the world on a quest for the one sovereign method
of teaching a foreign language. It seems that in Japanese
schools the children have English, if I remember aright, six
hours a week for ten years, but seldom learn enough to be of
IS MODERN LANGUAGE TEACHING A FAILURE?
529
material use. The authorities-trusting that the western world,
which had been in the business a good while, had found the
right formula-sent my visitor on his mission. I described to
him all the methods I knew-the "natural," the "direct," the
"cumulative," the "categorical," all that had ever been written
with a capital M-but I soon found that he knew them as well
as I did, and had tried them all. "Have you devised nothing
better?" he asked. "Nothing," I admitted; "haven't you dis-
covered a way?" "None," said he. And we parted, sadder but
no wiser than before. East and West may put their heads
together: the precious formula will never come. This the Latins
seem to have known all along, although there was a time when
they, too, were a little dazzled by Friar Tuck's lantern.
But Latin tradition possesses something besides the negative
virtue of skepticism. It has the very positive merit of doing
one thing at a time and doing that thoroughly; of building only
on a firm foundation; of never stepping forward until the
present foothold is secure. That, with a fitting sense of the
dignity of the subject taught, and an unquestioning faith in the
utility of every part of it, is the most valuable lesson that our
classical colleagues can teach us. In our eagerness to hurry on
to the things that seem practical and interesting, we almost
invariably neglect those prosaic fundamentals without which
there can be no real progress-nor even genuine, sustained
interest, because there is no understanding. The inflections of
verbs, the use of pronominal forms, the significance of tenses
and moods, the meaning of connectives afford the indispensable
clue to the foreign sentence: to proceed without them is as
futile as to engage on mathematical operations with no knowl-
edge of the signs of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and
division. The attitude of the average schoolboy confronted
with a French sentence is that which a person unacquainted
with the plus-mark might assume toward the formula a+b.
"It is something about a and b,” he says, " but what a has to do
with b I cannot tell." It is just this knowledge of the relations
of words and clauses that is all-important in the comprehension
of a foreign tongue. We must look out for the plus and
530
THE SCHOOL REVIEW
minus symbols, and we must realize that the thorough mastery
of them requires much time, drill, and patient repetition. It
does not follow that the first two or three years of study should
be nothing but a dull grind: the very practice in conjugation
and syntax can be interestingly diversified, illustrated by attract-
ive texts; the ingenuity of pupils may be aroused in devising
new variations and in executing manifold imitations of model
constructions. Furthermore, a considerable amount of fairly
rapid sight-reading or translation, done at first mainly by the
instructor, may be introduced, as a relief and a stimulus, from
the very start. The exhilarating exercise of swift reading
should never be abandoned; but we should avoid the almost
universal mistake of making all translations rapid and super-
ficial. Here is one of the chief causes of our failure. For
several years, both in school and in college, a given portion of
text should be minutely analyzed and parsed. In no other way
can pupils be made to heed the really essential things; in no
other way can the belief be hammered into them that the
foreign writer actually means something, and that his words,
when turned into English, must invariably make sense.
Our young school-children need constant oversight. They
are often left too much to their own devices. For instance,
after they have had a few lessons in grammar, a bit of German
is assigned to them to translate at home. This is a task for
which they are totally unfit. To ask them to do it is to put upon
them the work that belongs to the teacher. For a long time,
all, or nearly all, the new reading or translation should be done
in the classroom, and the pupil's home lesson should be a
review. The same thing is true of grammar: very few chil-
dren are capable of assimilating linguistic principles from a
book until the rules and examples have been carefully expounded
by the living voice. The bane of much of our instruction is
that the master does not teach-he "hears lessons." Vigilant
watch must be kept, also, to prevent the child from falling into
error through ignorance of English. This applies not only to
the interpretation of grammatical statements, but likewise, and
still more, to the translation of foreign texts. It is impossible,
IS MODERN LANGUAGE TEACHING A FAILURE?
531
without the closest and most sympathetic attention, to imagine
what idea a common English word nay suggest to the youthful
mind. I remember that in a class which I was visiting a little
girl translated the German schlau by pretty. Her teacher cor-
rected, rebuked, and passed on. Wondering how the child got
such a notion, I turned to the vocabulary of the reader,, and there
I found the definition, schlau cunning. The only meaning
that this child, or almost any American of her years, ever
attached to cunning was pretty. A large proportion of the
faulty translation that so vexes teachers is due merely to lack
of familiarity with English words; and for this the child is
seldom to blame. The difficulty is increased in the case of boys
and girls of foreign parentage who have no native language at
all. In the evening high schools of Boston I have met many
a youth of eighteen or twenty who scarcely had the gift of
human speech: his parents, perhaps, spoke only German, the
school teachers had spoken only English, and he had never
learned either tongue well enough to do anything but express
the most rudimentary concepts. Such pupils naturally demand
special treatment and unwearying patience.
In our field of education, more, perhaps, than in any other,
the attempt has been made to fit the same coat upon all comers:
sometimes the infant has been smothered in the pedagogic rai-
ment of the grown-up; oftener the adult has been all too scantily
clad in the educational dress of babyhood. It seems self-evident
-but it obviously needs to be repeated many times-that the
method best suited to one age not only may be, but must be, ill
adapted to another; that a course which is natural to the child
must be unnatural to the man. Some general principles the
pedagogue should always bear in mind; but the application of
them, the method itself, should vary with perfect freedom
according to the age, antecedents, and ability of the scholars.
It should vary, also, in accordance with the character and com-
petence of the master. Few spectacles are more painful than
that of a teacher conscientiously endeavoring to pursue a course
for which he is by nature or training unfit. Everyone
who adopts the pedagogic profession should strive
to
532
THE SCHOOL REVIEW
qualify himself to pattern his instruction after any rational sys-
tem that may be required; but every born teacher will develop
out of the system adopted a way of his own.
If a language is to seem alive it must be read aloud and
spoken. And here we meet the greatest of the permanent and
unavoidable obstacles in our field of instruction-the difficulty
of pronunciation. Here again the French teacher has a harder
task than the German: firstly, because the French sounds and
intonations are more remote from American habits, secondly,
because the standard exacted by the French ear is higher than
that demanded by the German, and thirdly, because proficiency
in German pronunciation is often facilitated by the presence of
many pupils of German extraction. I shall therefore consider
primarily the French side of the problem, although the general
principles involved belong equally to German. It is well to accept
once for all the fact that French pronunciation is hard and
requires a vast amount of intelligent teaching and patient exercise.
Almost invariably it is slighted. In bad schools it is scarcely
taught at all, the teacher expecting that scholars will "pick it
up"-heaven knows where. Hosts of boys are sent up to
college who do not even know that the s at the end of plural
nouns is silent. For such pupils French is no living language-
it can hardly be a language at all. Other teachers, more con-
scientious, waste a great deal of time in hearing pupils read
aloud without ever having taught them how to read. Such
reading merely confirms them in their bad habits. The com-
monest mistake consists in offering only a brief (and generally
incorrect) exposition of principles at the first lesson and then
trusting to subsequent occasional directions and a large amount
of uncorrected reading. There is only one time to learn to pro-
nounce, and that is at the very beginning: if scholars do not pro-
nounce right, they will pronounce wrong; and when they have
pronounced wrong for some months they are generally incur-
able. Not only do they take no pleasure in their work, feeling
that what they acquire is a mere sham, but they are afraid to
open their mouths to utter a French sound; if they want to ask
the meaning of a French word, they do not dare to speak,
IS MODERN LANGUAGE TEACHING A FAILURE?
533
I
because they cannot pronounce it. The bogy of French pro-
nunciation cannot be dodged; it must be conquered. Now, many
American teachers who know this full well, and are anxious to
do their duty, have not the courage to undertake the task, being
conscious that their own pronunciation is imperfect. Of course
an instructor should embrace every opportunity to prepare him-
self for his business in every way, and in this respect more than
any other; but the idea that a teacher not to the manner born
is unfit to impart a good pronunciation is a delusion as harmful
as it is natural. The best results I have ever seen achieved in
French pronunciation, with large classes of schoolboys, were
obtained by an elderly American gentleman whose own accent,
though carefully acquired, was not that of a Parisian.
am not sure that he had ever been abroad. But he taught pro-
nunciation with the same seriousness and thoroughness with
which he taught grammar, composition, or translation;
he never would let a class go until every member of it pro-
nounced as well as he did; and while his pronunciation was far
from satisfactory to himself, it was admirable in the mouth of
a pupil. Indeed, on the general question whether a Frenchman
or an American is the better teacher of French pronunciation,
there may well be a difference of opinion. There are advan-
tages on both sides. The Frenchman has confidence in himself,
and this confidence is shared by his scholars, who feel sure that
they are getting the real thing; this is worth much. On the
other hand, the American knows the difficulties that are to be
overcome: if he has succeeded in consciously acquiring an abso-
lutely good accent, he is obviously in a position to show others
how to do it; if he has not, his pronunciation, moderately good
but less foreign than that of the foreigner, is less discourag-
ing to his pupils and more readily imitated by them.
Of whatever race the master be, he should not be satisfied
with English substitutes for French sounds. Usually there is
no attempt made to teach any French sound but u and the four
nasal vowels; all the rest are unquestioningly replaced by the
English vowels and consonants that most nearly resemble them,
although both teachers and pupils may be haunted by the con-
534
THE SCHOOL REVIEW
sciousness that they are really pronouncing English and not
French at all. Especial pains should be taken to appropriate
some kind of French r; the r, may, indeed, be regarded as the
central feature in the acquisition of any foreign language by
an English-speaking person. Perhaps the most striking and
characteristic element of a spoken tongue-the one by which
we guess the nationality of a stranger without understanding
a word he says-is intonation, the varied sequence of pitch;
and that is seldom even mentioned in schools. Every language
has its familiar inflections; these should be taught as carefully
as the individual sounds. Very helpful is a set of phrases pro-
vided with a musical notation of pitch and time. For the proper
study of the single vowels and consonants a phonetic alphabet is
very desirable; without it the beginner, unless he be provided
with a phonograph, cannot practice by himself and is helpless
the moment he leaves his teacher.
With a full consciousness of what is before him, with a
definite, systematic plan of campaign, with such help as may be
needed in the way of alphabet and music, the instructor should
first drill his class long and carefully in single sounds, then in
syllables, then in words, and finally in sentences-always taking
care that his pupils hear more of his own correct pronunciation
than of the faulty utterance of their comrades. Sound, syllable,
word, or phrase should be spoken by the learner immediately
after the master, before the auditory impression has become
blurred. If this initial practice is faithfully and rightly con-
ducted, the subsequent training-and there must be much of it
throughout the course-will be interesting and comparatively
easy. Then both teacher and pupil will have the satisfaction of
at least striving to attain genuine French and German. The
schoolboy's diffidence-his unwillingness to hear his own voice
attempting the strange tongue-will vanish; a sense of mastery
will replace his distrust. Then, and then only, will the modern
languages come into their own; not until then can we answer
the question whether modern language teaching is a failure.