Part 1 (1/2)
Special Method in the Reading of Complete English Cla.s.sics.
by Charles McMurry.
CHAPTER I
EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF LITERATURE
The gradual introduction of the choicer products of literature into the grades of the common school has been going on for several years.
Bringing the school children face to face with the thoughts of the masters has had often a thrilling effect, and the feeling has spread among teachers that a new door has been opened into what Ruskin calls ”The King's Gardens.” As we stand at this open portal to the Elysian Fields of literature, there may fall upon us something of the beauty, something even of the solemn stillness, of the arched cathedral with its golden windows. But how inadequate is the Gothic cathedral, or the Greek temple, to symbolize the temple of literature.
Within less than a score of years there has been such reading of varied literary masterpieces by children as to bring us face to face with a problem of prime significance in education, the place and importance of literature in the education of American children.
Millions of children are introduced yearly to bookland, and it is a matter of greater importance than what Congress does, what provision is made for these oncoming millions in the sunlit fields and forest glades of literature, where the boys and girls walk in happy companions.h.i.+p with the ”wisest and wittiest” of our race. We have now had enough experience with these treasures of culture to get a real foretaste of the feast prepared for the growing youth. We know that their appet.i.tes are keen and their digestive powers strong. It is inc.u.mbent upon educators to get a comprehensive survey of this land and to estimate its resources. Other fields of study, like natural science, geography, music, etc., are undergoing the same scrutiny as to their educative value. Literature, certainly a peer in the hierarchy of great studies, if not supreme in value above others, is one of the most difficult to estimate. Tangible proofs of the vital culture-force of good literature upon growing minds can be given in many individual cases. But to what degree it has general or universal fitness to awaken, strengthen, and refine all minds, is in dispute.
It seems clear, at least, that only those who show taste and enthusiasm for a choice piece of literature can teach it with success. This requirement of appreciation and enjoyment of the study is more imperative in literature, because its appeal is not merely to the intellect and the reason, as in other studies, but especially to the emotions and higher aesthetic judgments, to moral and religious sentiment in ideal representation.
It has been often observed that discussions of the superior educative value of literature before bodies of teachers, while entertaining and delightful, fall far short of lasting results because of the teachers'
narrow experience with literature. In the case of many teachers, the primitive alphabet of literary appreciation is lacking, and the most enthusiastic appeals to the charm and exaltation of such studies fall harmless. Yet literature in the schools is hopeless without teachers who have felt at home in this delightsome land, this most real world of ideal strength and beauty.
The discussion of the subject for teachers is beset, therefore, with peculiar and seemingly insurmountable difficulties. The strength, charm, and refinement of literature are known only to those who have read the masters with delight, while even people of cultured taste listen doubtfully to the praise of authors they have never read. To one enamoured of the music of Tennyson's songs, the very suggestion of ”In Memoriam” awakens enthusiasm. To one who has not read Tennyson and his like, silence on the subject is golden. To those not much travelled in the fields of literature, there is danger of speaking in an unknown tongue, while they, of all others, need a plain and convincing word. To speak this plain and convincing word to those who may have acquired but little relish for literature, and that little only in the fragmentary selections of the school readers, is a high and difficult aim. But teachers are willing to learn, and to discover new sources of enthusiasm in their profession. It is probable, also, that the original capacity to enjoy great literature is much more common than is often supposed, and that the great average of teachers is quite capable of receiving this powerful stimulus. The fact is, our common schools have done so little, till of late, to cultivate this fine taste, that we have faint reason to expect it in our teachers.
Overwhelmed as we are with the folly of indulging in the praise of literature before many whose ears have been but poorly attuned to the sweet melody or majestic rhythm of the masters, we still make bold to grapple with this argument. There is surely no subject to which the teachers need more to open their eyes and ears and better nature, so as to take in the enrichment it affords. There is encouragement in the fact that many teachers fully appreciate the worth of these writers, and have succeeded in making their works beautiful and educative to the children.
Very many other teachers are capable of the full refres.h.i.+ng enjoyment of cla.s.sic works, when their attention and labor are properly expended upon them. The colleges, universities, high schools, and normal schools have largely abandoned the dull epitomizing of literature, the talk about authors, for the study of the works themselves of the masters. The consequence is, that the study of literature in English is becoming an enthusiasm, and teachers of this type are multiplying.
The deeper causes for this widespread lack of literary appreciation among the people, and even among teachers and scholars, is found partly in the practical, scientific, and utilitarian spirit of the age, and partly in the corresponding unliterary courses of study which have prevailed everywhere in our common schools. The absence of literary standards and taste among teachers is due largely to the failure of the schools themselves, hitherto, to cultivate this sort of proficiency.
Those very qualities which give to literature its supreme excellence, its poetic beauty, its artistic finish and idealism, are among the highest fruits of culture, and are far more difficult of attainment than mere knowledge. It is no small thing to introduce the rarest and finest culture of the world into the common school, and thus propagate, in the broadest democratic fas.h.i.+on, that which is the peculiar, superior refinement of the choicest spirits of the world. If progress in this direction is slow, we may remember that the best ideals are slow of attainment.
There is also an intangible quality in all first-cla.s.s literature, which is not capable of exact description or demonstration. George Willis Cooke, in ”Poets and Problems” (pp. 31-32), says:--
”Poetry enters into those higher regions of human experience concerning which no definite account can be given; where all words fail; about which all we know is to be obtained by hints, symbols, poetic figures, and imagings. Poetry is truer and more helpful than prose, because it penetrates those regions of feeling, beauty, and spiritual reality, where definitions have no place or justification. There would be no poetry if life were limited to what we can understand; nor would there be any religion. Indeed, the joy, the beauty, and the promise of life would all be gone if there were nothing which reaches beyond our powers of definition. The mystery of existence makes the grandeur and worth of man's nature, as it makes for him his poetry and his religion. Poetry suggests, hints, images forth, what is too wonderful, too transcendent, too near primal reality, too full of life, beauty, and joy, for explanation or comprehension. It embodies man's longing after the Eternal One, expresses his sense of the deep mystery of Being, voices his soul sorrow, illumines his path with hope and objects of beauty.
Man's aspiration, his sense of imperfection, his yearning for a sustaining truth and reality, as the life within and over all things, find expression in poetry; because it offers the fittest medium of interpretation for these higher movements of soul. Whenever the soul feels deeply, or is stirred by a great thought, the poetic form of utterance at once becomes the most natural and desirable for its loving and faithful interpretation.”
This intangible excellence of superior literature, which defies all exact measurement by the yardstick, puzzles the practical man and the scientist. There is no way of getting at it with their tools and measurements. They are very apt to give it up in disgust and dismiss it with some uncomplimentary name. But Shakespeare's mild reign continues, and old Homer sings his deathless song to those who wish to hear.
Teachers need both the exact methods of science and the spiritual life of the poets, and we may well spend some pains in finding out the life-giving properties of good literature.
Lowell, in his ”Books and Libraries,” says:--
”To wash down the drier morsels that every library must necessarily offer at its board, let there be plenty of imaginative literature, and let its range be not too narrow to stretch from Dante to the elder Dumas. The world of the imagination is not the world of abstraction and nonent.i.ty, as some conceive, but a world formed out of chaos by a sense of the beauty that is in man and the earth on which he dwells. It is the realm of Might-be, our haven of refuge from the shortcomings and disillusions of life. It is, to quote Spenser, who knew it well,--
”'The world's sweet inn from care and wearisome turmoil.' Do we believe, then, that G.o.d gave us in mockery this splendid faculty of sympathy with things that are a joy forever? For my part, I believe that the love and study of works of imagination is of practical utility in a country so profoundly material (or, as we like to call it, practical) in its leading tendencies as ours. The hunger after purely intellectual delights, the content with ideal possessions, cannot but be good for us in maintaining a wholesome balance of the character and of the faculties. I for one shall never be persuaded that Shakespeare left a less useful legacy to his countrymen than Watt. We hold all the deepest, all the highest, satisfactions of life as tenants of imagination. Nature will keep up the supply of what are called hard-headed people without our help, and, if it come to that, there are other as good uses for heads as at the end of battering-rams.”
”But have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means? That it is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination? to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moments? That it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time? More than that, it annihilates time and s.p.a.ce for us; it revives for us without a miracle the Age of Wonder, endowing us with the shoes of swiftness and the cap of darkness, so that we walk invisible like fern-seed, and witness unharmed the plague at Athens or Florence or London; accompany Caesar on his marches, or look in on Catiline in council with his fellow-conspirators, or Guy Fawkes in the cellar of St. Stephen's. We often hear of people who will descend to any servility, submit to any insult, for the sake of getting themselves or their children into what is euphemistically called good society. Did it ever occur to them that there is a select society of all the centuries to which they and theirs can be admitted for the asking, a society, too, which will not involve them in ruinous expense, and still more ruinous waste of time and health and faculties?
”The riches of scholars.h.i.+p, the benignities of literature, defy fortune and outlive calamity. They are beyond the reach of thief or moth or rust. As they cannot be inherited, so they cannot be alienated. But they may be shared, they may be distributed.”
This notion of the select companions.h.i.+p of books finds also happy expression in Ruskin's ”Sesame and Lilies”:--